Only imagination births the living God

In my last column I focused on the vital role of human imagination as an essential element of traditional biblical interpretation in the church.

This will come as a worrisome surprise only to those out of touch with the history of Catholic theology brilliantly phrased by St. Augustine in his early fifth century book, On the Trinity. "God is more truly imagined than expressed, and exists more truly than is imagined."

Therefore, the full spectrum of Christian belief entails first, imagining, then expressing and then going beyond both. Belief is not a conclusion signifying the end of the search, but rather a contemporary signpost pointing to a creative future.

The initial imaging, the birthing of images, results in what we call metaphors. What is a metaphor? Literally, the Greek roots of the term signify a "carrying over." The best definition I have found comes from Arthur R. Peacocke, a biochemist and theologian, Dean of Clare College, Cambridge in his 1984 book Intimations of Reality. A metaphor, he writes, is "a figure of speech in which we speak of one thing in terms suggestive of another." It is a carrying over of the relatively known to the relatively unknown: a figure of speech, i.e. a way of talking, which suggests a clarifying link between the two realities. Now a suggestion is simply an attempt, more or less successful, at understanding; it is not the fullness of understanding, but a bridge that invites us to cross over and explore.

As Joseph Campbell writes: "A metaphor is like a finger pointing." It necessarily points beyond itself. To remain fixed on the image is to miss the point of it all, an error, which can lead to idolatry, the worship of an image erected to the status of a static truth.

Our New Testament tradition respects the birthing of multiple metaphors or models of reality by ascribing a plethora of images to Jesus. He is pictured as the Word, Son of God, Son of Man, Prophet, Messiah (Christ), Servant, Teacher, Miracle Worker and Healer, Shepherd, Lamb of God, Suffering Servant. Each of these suggestive metaphors reveals some aspect of his person. As Father John F. O'Grady puts it: "No one image can claim the exclusive portrayal of the meaning of the Lord. Each one contributes to an overall picture. The New Testament teems over with images. As the record of the experience of the early church, the writers of the New Testament present in their collective consciousness and individual writings the many faces of Jesus." This creativity stems, of course, from the Hebrew Scriptures, which abound in metaphors for the Divine born out of the history, joys and sorrows, of the Chosen People. The initiative stems from Abraham's emunah, firm trust, that God will guide, that moved him to set out courageously into un charted lands. Later, rabbinical creativity followed suit with the rise of midrash, the embroidering or an imaginative expansion of a text to bring home a point. This is not tampering with the Bible, but a means designed to open up new perspectives on the text.

Today, as we struggle anew to understand and embrace the divinely inspired biblical message, we as a faith community, must reinsert its essence into the full spectrum of our lives, personal, interpersonal, political, economic, social, psychological and scientific micro and macro, all in the context of World religions and cultures. This is the only way to open us and the world to the Way, the Truth and the Life, which Jesus promised. A refusal to embrace this task along with its undeniable risks would reduce us to cloning the past in the service of a dead God. Our vocation is to birth the living God vigorously, gloriously, bravely, in the intercoursing of life/death, male/ female, past, present and future. The path is through metaphor.

Fr. Jim Roberts writes from Burnaby, B.C.

COPYRIGHT 2004 Catholic New Times, Inc.
COPYRIGHT 2004 Gale Group