Abstract

Stories about the divine are meant to help our imagination cope with what is ultimately not fully imaginable. In the process we make use of metaphors that rely on quantitative relationships to express the qualitative difference between the reality accessible to us and the transcendent reality of God. For example, because we have no notion of what it would mean to “be outside of time,” eternity tends to be explained in terms of infinite temporality. With the increasingly bizarre and unimaginable worldview of contemporary physics, it is perhaps no longer clear what the difference is between the unknown and the unknowable, or even whether it is possible to articulate a meaningful difference. Science appears to have outrun theology in creating stories that engage our imagination. How to overcome the difficulties this raises, particularly with respect to a widening gulf between academic analysis and popular belief, is at present not clear. A “flight from metaphor” into formalized theory, although apparently valid in science, leads to a dead end in theology. A re‐thinking of many traditional concepts, such as immanence and transcendence, seems to be indicated.

Keywords

imagination, eternity, superstring theory, metaphor, story‐telling, unknowability, transcendence, immanence

How to Cite

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