The Uses of Imagination: A Preface

The Uses of Imagination: A Preface . . . the very simple and primary things that the imagination is about: life, love, freedom, dignity. —Northrop Frye He who is the Lord of all things is the lord of the imagination. —William Lynch, S.J. In many ways, what a new journal chooses to present first says a great deal about what it intends and how it may develop. In choosing the imagination as the theme of this first issue we took up a concept that has had a troubled history, has often been misunderstood or distorted, and, on top of everything, is difficult to define precisely. Often, the imagination is erroneously dismissed as delusory and dangerous. Even Shakespeare—that quintessential exemplar of imaginative insight, identification, and sympathy— had one of his characters equate the imagination with "seething brains"and reason with coolness.1 Thus, many were the reasons to Logos 1:1 1997 The Uses of Imagination: A Preface take a more mundane topic when doing something as daunting as starting a new journal. But any reservations were immediately allayed when we thought of all the powerful writers who have given formal consideration to the matter, especially as it affects faith: John Henry Newman, G. K. Chesterton, C. S. Lewis, J. R. R. Tolkien, Dorothy Sayers, RichardWilbur, Flannery O'Connor, andWalker Percy, to name a few.We considered also the rich engagements of faith in the poetry of such as Jill Baumgaertner, Edward Hirsch, Luci Shaw, Samuel Hazo, Denise Levertov, Diane Glancy, Mark Rozema, Annie Dillard, Dana Goia,William Stafford, and Jeanne MurrayWalker (and, again, this listing, drawn from the twentieth century only, is of necessity a sampling). Likewise, when we thought about Christian novelists, any listing of which would yield at least a book-length bibliography, we were once again not only encouraged but struck by how the forms of the imagination —in this case storytelling—have been central in helping believers understand the Christian reality, especially the mystery of grace. Thus far, I have been relating the "outward story" of this first issue, but there is a more interesting inner one. And among the characters ofthat inner story, four characters stand out: a theorist; an apologist who is also a storyteller, poet, and critic; a poet who has ventured into critical commentary; and a preacher/professor. They are, respectively, William Lynch, S.J., G. K. Chesterton, RichardWilbur, and Peter J. Gomes. How can one not be intrigued by William Lynch's audacious assertion that Christ is "lord ofthe imagination"? 2We know Christ as redemption from sin, as the efficacious sacrifice, as the way to eternal life and by many other titles, for in the end he defies all our powers of description and definition. Lord of history, yes—but "lord of the imagination"? Is such an appelation eccentric or is it true, and iftrue, what are its implications? Lynch contends that he Logos is "lord ofthe imagination"because ofhis obedience to reality, the ultimate goal ofwhich is unity—the drawing ofall creation to the Godhead. In this obedience, Lynch suggests, Christ shows that the imagination is not a wild but a chaste thing, a perceiving rather than an inventing power. In conclusion, Lynch asserts that "Christology stands as the model and enduring act of the healthy and successful human imagination which, ifit really grasps the act of Christ, will be able analogically to transfer this act to its own plan of human life."3 In this equation of the healthy and successful human imagination with Christ, we see rather markedly how innovative Lynch's take on the imagination and on salvation is. What Lynch sees the imagination contributing to faith is stated with great explicitness in his 1975 preface to a new edition ofhis great work Christ and Apollo: The Christian faith should never think of itself as a conceptual bundle of ideas which must beg imaginative support from literature and art.This faith is also a life of the imagination—historical, concrete, and ironic. There will, hopefully, never be an end to collaboration between theology and literature, but it must be a collaboration of (theological) imagination with (literary) imagination. Otherwise theology loses its nerve and does not have the strength...