{"id":196,"date":"2014-04-06T05:00:24","date_gmt":"2014-04-06T09:00:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sjcmetheology.wordpress.com\/?p=196"},"modified":"2014-04-06T05:00:24","modified_gmt":"2014-04-06T09:00:24","slug":"imagine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.sjcme.edu\/theology\/imagine\/","title":{"rendered":"Imagine"},"content":{"rendered":"

In John Biguenet\u2019s short story, The Vulgar Soul<\/em>, an atheist who is unexpectedly experiencing the stigmata is speaking to a psychiatrist, who asks,<\/p>\n

\u2018\u201cWhat about religion?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWell, I\u2019m Catholic — at least I was raised a Catholic — but of course I don\u2019t practice.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhy not?\u201d<\/p>\n

To believe in God, he patiently explained to the psychiatrist, one has to be willing to close his eyes to a great deal. \u201cIsn\u2019t that what they mean by faith — refusing to accept the obvious, refusing to accept what has always been right there in front of our eyes.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cBut that\u2019s exactly what believers say,\u201d she countered. \u201cGod has always been right there in front of us. We just won\u2019t open our eyes.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cMaybe it\u2019s not so easy to see what right in front of our eyes.\u201d<\/p>\n

The psychiatrist laughed. \u201cThat\u2019s certainly true, Mr. Hogue. I\u2019d be out of business if that weren\u2019t true.\u201d\u2019<\/p>\n

Faith is an act of seeing what God reveals. As seeing, it is an act of the imagination. The tradition speaks of the \u201ceyes of faith\u201d that see what the \u201clight of faith\u201d reveals. Seeing and believing are complementary. By believing one can see and by seeing one can believe. The phrase \u201cblind faith\u201d is profoundly misleading. God cannot bypass the senses, and since the senses lead to knowledge through the imagination, God cannot bypass the imagination, the means by which the eyes of faith see the form\/gestalt of God\u2019s revelation, Jesus Christ. The form is the incarnate, yet risen, human reality of Jesus. The risen Jesus is absent to the physical eyes, but is visible to the eyes of faith. John says, \u201cBlessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.\u201d But those who believe now see. Jesus must be imagined to be believed in, or if he is believed in, Jesus is then imagined. To the eyes of the believer, the risen Jesus is not imaginary, but is indeed imagined, and thus the whole world is seen as transformed. If the world is transformed by the resurrection of Jesus, then a living faith must be Catholic, where \u201cCatholic\u201d means \u201cthrough the whole.\u201d The dynamic imagination of Catholicism, \u201cthrough-the whole-ness,\u201d cannot rest short of attempting to see and then understand everything.<\/p>\n

Daniel Sheridan<\/strong> is Professor of Theology at Saint Joseph\u2019s College of Maine and former Director of the Online Theology Program.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In John Biguenet\u2019s short story, The Vulgar Soul, an atheist who is unexpectedly experiencing the stigmata is speaking to a psychiatrist, who asks, \u2018\u201cWhat about religion?\u201d \u201cWell, I\u2019m Catholic — at least I was raised a Catholic — but of … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":48,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,23],"tags":[113,142],"class_list":["post-196","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-literature","category-spirituality","tag-faith","tag-imagination"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sjcme.edu\/theology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/196","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sjcme.edu\/theology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sjcme.edu\/theology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sjcme.edu\/theology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/48"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sjcme.edu\/theology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=196"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sjcme.edu\/theology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/196\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sjcme.edu\/theology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=196"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sjcme.edu\/theology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=196"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sjcme.edu\/theology\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=196"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}