JudithWolfe, <i>The Theological Imagination: Perception and Interpretation in Life, Art, and Faith</i> . New York: Cambridge University Press, 2024, xii + 196pp. $32.99

Too often, the imagination is dismissed as a means of escape.Recent research concerning the imagination indicates, however, that flattening one's understanding of the imagination to dalliances with the fantastic invites more problems than it solves.Confronting the details defining our existence not only demands honest appraisals of present circumstances but also means seeing more in and beyond those circumstances than rational thinking offers.In The Theological Imagination (the published manifestation of the Hulsean Lectures Wolfe offered at the University of Cambridge in 2022), Wolfe offers a compelling argument for the critical role the imagination plays in confronting the details that define our existence.For followers of Jesus Christ, who seek to see in those details how their Lord and Savior would call them to respond, understanding the role of imagination is critical.In Wolfe's estimation, it allows us to make 'sense of the world by enabling us to hold open horizons that we always wish to foreclose, and to sustain uncertainty in the light of a divine promise' (p.26).One thread running through Wolfe's previous works and finding full expression towards the end of The Theological Imagination is the framework afforded by a properly understood eschatology.She believes, in particular, that a 'Christian eschatology affirms a divine purpose for creation, which invites humans into creative co-creation.At the same time, it promises the consummation of this purpose not as the actualization of latent potential but as a divine gift of new creation' (p.26).Understanding the value of the imagination and the role it plays in orienting one's life thus proves fundamental to lives of Christian discipleship stretching towards eternity.For Wolfe, the imagination, at its root level, 'is first and foremost the power to make the continuous stream of sense perception meaningful by integrating discrete data points into forms or wholes' (p. 1).Those integrative processes often occur unconsciously as 'they form part of the very act of seeing and understanding' (p.2).In The Theological Imagination, Wolfe strives to bring those processes into full view.In doing so, their malleable nature can be aligned with formative practices oriented towards intentional ends.All too often, those processes are the result of a haphazard array of formative experiences.When properly framed by a particular eschatological end, Christian formation allows