God and the Creative Imagination ‘Among contemporary theological voices, that of Paul Avis is always wide- ranging, constructive and sane, combining scholarship with a nuanced feel for tradition. This book covers the central questions in the philosophy of religious language in a way that is digestible and fresh.’ Rowan Williams, Bishop of Monmouth ‘This is a book of scholarship and integrity. A unique combination of theology and literary methodology.’ R.William Franklin, Berkeley Divinity School at Yale ‘God and the Creative Imagination is an extremely well written and carefully researched study of the place of metaphor, symbol and myth in religion and theology. I read this with considerable enjoyment.’ Robert Hannaford, University College Chichester In God and the Creative Imagination, Paul Avis argues that metaphor, symbol and myth are the keys to a real knowledge of God and the sacred. Avis explores what he calls an ‘alternative tradition’, stemming from the Romantic poets Blake, Wordsworth and Keats, and drawing on the thought of Coleridge and Newman. In his illuminating discussion, Avis shows us that Christianity lives from the imagination, that divine revelation is both given and received in imaginative modes, that theology requires imaginative insight, and that belief is a form of aesthetic perception. Drawing on a range of non-theological disciplines, including literary theory, anthropology and philosophy of science, Avis clarifies the nature of metaphor, symbol and myth, and develops a critical, symbolic and mythic realism on the premise that God is appropriately likened to an artist or poet and that the greatest truths are expressed in imaginative form. This book challenges theological conservatives and liberals alike as it develops a realist, cognitive theology of the imagination. Anyone wishing to further their understanding of God, belief and the imagination will find this an inspirational work. Paul Avis is General Secretary of the Council for Christian Unity of the Church of England, Sub Dean of Exeter Cathedral and Director of the Centre for the Study of the Christian Church. He is also the author or editor of numerous books, including Faith in the Fires of Criticism and Divine Revelation. This page intentionally left blank. God and the Creative Imagination Metaphor, symbol and myth in religion and theology Paul Avis London and New York First published 1999 by Routledge 11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2005. “To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.” Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001 Routledge Ltd is a Taylor & Francis Group company © 1999 Paul Avis All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication Data Avis, Paul D.L. God and the creative imagination: metaphor, symbol and myth in religion and theology/Paul Avis. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Imagination—Religious aspects—Christianity. 2. Metaphor— Religious aspects—Christianity. 3. Christian art and symbolism. 4. Myth 5. Apologetics. I. Title. BR115.I6A95 1999 230’.01’9–dc21 99–19282 CIP ISBN 0-203-16503-9 Master e-book ISBN ISBN 0-203-25941-6 (Adobe eReader Format) ISBN 0-415-21502-1 (hbk) ISBN 0-415-21503-X (pbk) Contents Preface vi List of abbreviations ix PART I 1 Speaking of God in the language of the imagination 3 2 The fate of the imagination in modernity 12 3 The fate of the imagination in postmodernity 20 4 Affirming the truth of imagination: The alternative tradition 26 PART II 5 The world of biblical imagination 44 6 Creative theology and the making of doctrine 60 7 Imagination and the adventure of faith 69 8 Liturgy as literature 73 PART III 9 Metaphor 82 10 Symbol 91 11 Myth 100 PART IV 12 Critical realism 120 13 Symbolic realism 133 14 Mythic realism 139 Bibliography 154 Name index 165 Subject index 172 Preface How can we envisage God, who is beyond all human imagining? How can we speak of God, who transcends all human speech? These are ultimate theological questions for almost all religions. But theistic religions, particularly Judaism, Christianity and Islam, turn the question round, asking first not what we humans can do to express the truth of God, but what God does in divine revelation to make himself known to us. In what form and by what means does God reveal God’s nature and purpose to us? Only when we have established the priority of divine revelation can we go on to ask how we receive, express and interpret that revelation. Whichever way round we look at them, these divine-human encounters of revelation and response are invariably expressed in the highly figurative language of metaphor, symbol and myth. Is such figurative language capable of telling the truth about reality, or is it merely the expression of free-wheeling fantasy projected onto a void? Can metaphor, symbol and myth be vehicles of truth-giving insight into the sacred realm? Can they become paths to God? My contention in this book is twofold: first, that it is primarily through the imagination and the genres typically generated by the imagination (metaphor, symbol and myth) that we are brought into living contact with our object (the sacred, the divine, revelation, God), both in living religion and in theological reflection; second, that these modes of discourse have a truth-bearing capacity and can support a critical-realist theology, one that does justice to both the subjective and the objective aspects of theology. The argument of this book develops in four stages: • In Part I I set out my stall. I open up some of the key issues and explore the background in modernity and postmodernity, showing that both are inhospitable— for different reasons—to the symbolic and its truth-bearing capacity. I sketch an alternative tradition of epistemology that stems from the Romantic poets and thinkers and has been put to work in some modern philosophies of science. • In Part II I explore the role of imaginative thinking and its expression in metaphor, symbol and myth in four key areas of the Christian religion: revelation through the Bible; theology and doctrine; faith and belief; worship and liturgy. I carry forward important questions for discussion later. • In Part III I draw largely on non-theological disciplines, such as literary theory, anthropology, philosophy of language and philosophy of sci-ence, to clarify the nature of metaphor, symbolism and myth, in preparation for deploying these concepts in the final part. • Finally, in Part IV I tackle the fundamental questions of whether and how figurative discourse—primarily metaphor, symbol and myth—can bear truthful witness to the nature of reality and of God. I ask what consequences this has for Christian beliefs and examine some thorny doctrinal—mainly Christological—issues. So the argument is cumulative and advances in a sort of spiral, coming back to the central issues of the Bible, doctrine, faith and worship from several different perspectives. We can only adopt this critical, interpretative and evaluative approach to the language of faith and theology when we recognise that religious imagery is humanly and socially constructed. If the metaphors, symbols and myths of Christianity were given, ready- made, whole and entire, and without remainder in divine revelation, there would be little work that we could appropriately do on them. It would be a question of receiving them in all humility and merely presenting, arranging, elaborating and expounding them. The critical, comparative and evaluative approach would be out of place. It is, then, a presupposition of this study that religious imagery did not fall ready-made from heaven, but emerges out of the human response to the disclosing of divine presence in revelation. While revelation stands over against all human subjectivity and social construction, it remains true that (as Marx has taught us) man makes religion. The phenomena of religion—beliefs, forms of worship, structures of organisation, moral codes—are human artefacts derived from revelation but mediated through human cultural perspectives. The response to revelation that is articulated in religion is culturally and socially conditioned. Divine revelation and the human response embodied in religion interact creatively and critically. This realm of divine-human encounter and interaction may be called ‘the sacred’. In it the elements of givenness and of appropriation may be distinguished in conceptual analysis but are difficult to separate out in lived experience. The whole repertoire of religious imagery—primarily metaphor, symbol and myth—forms the primary constituents of the sacred. The sacred is a set of related images that carry the sense of mystery. Sacred images are those that open a world to the transcendent. They mark the limits of the human world and the boundary points where men and women meet the unknown but felt reality that encompasses their world. (Davis, 1976, p.90) My overall intention is to defend the rationality, coherence and credibility of the Christian faith. I do not make the assumption, however, that the truth-claims of Christian theology can be established or defended merely by analysing the figurative language in which they are expressed. What such an analysis can and does show, however, I believe, is the unequivocal intention of Christian discourse to speak of the nature of reality and of the true relation between God and humanity.