ABSTRACT
The imagination has been called, ‘the principal organ for knowing and responding to disclosures of transcendent truth.’1 This book probes the theological sources of the imagination, which make it a vital and reliable tool for knowing and responding to such disclosures. It approaches this study through focus on the theologian and imaginative writer George MacDonald. As a nineteenth-century pastor and writer, MacDonald contributed signifi cantly in fostering theological understanding of the imagination. He also modeled an imaginative way of communicating theological truth with transforming power to shape human lives, communities, and the discipline of theology. Furthermore, through his theological sensitivity to the imagination, he was able to speak prophetically in a number of areas of contemporary concern, such as the nature of suffering, aging and death, environmental degradation, moral imagination, and gender issues.
