For many people, the notion of the imagination has positive connotations. We like to be called imaginative and to be able to think "outside the box." Others, however, associate the term with fiction and fancy - flights of the imagination which have no basis in reality and are better to be avoided. In the Bible the notion of heart (leb or kardia) comes closest to what we would nowadays understand as the imagination. The heart is the centre of all human thinking, willing, desiring and acting, and, as such the locus of all imagining, concerning the person in its entirety. Imagining is something profoundly human and part of our creaturely DNA. Using our imagination, therefore, is not an optional extra, but a God-given calling to be fully human as He intended it.
List of recordings
Conference: 2011
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Adrienne Chaplin
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Adrienne ChaplinMore often than not we think about the imagination primarily as a mental faculty, rather than a form of imaginative understanding rooted in our senses and experience. Since the Greeks, western culture has tended to privilege sight and vision – the “image” – as the most important and reliable of all senses. Hebrew thinking and sensing, by contrast, always implied a multi-sensory dynamic, involving not only the eyes and ears, but also smell, taste and touch. Most of our common metaphors - hard, soft, warm, porous, sticky and so on - are rooted in physical experiences of textures and surfaces. Both the scientific and the artistic imagination are rooted in physical, embodied engagements with the world, but with different foci of attention. Scientific research aims at a deeper, quantifiable understanding of the laws and structures of our world whereas the arts aim to articulate human affective experience.
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Maithrie White"Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast." (Lewis Carroll - Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass). Why should we believe six impossible things before breakfast? Starting the day imagining things with God can make a significant difference to our lives. This talk examines how and why.
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Mike CliffordThe talk explored the apparent tension between objective science and creative thought. Examples of subconscious inspiration through dreams were discussed along with imaginative use of scientific knowledge in disparate scientific fields from pure mathematics to engineering. Concepts such as genius and inspiration were unpacked in sympathy with a Christian world-view.
Conference: 2010
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Alister McGrathThis talk focuses on the challenges and opportunities that face Christian graduates as they think through whether they are called to work in the academic work, and become "salt and light" by doing so.
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Alister McGrathThis talk looks at the natural sciences, exploring the challenges and the opportunities that they present for faith.
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Edith ReitsemaEdith looks at abstract and relational knowledge, and asks how can we build a bridge to those around us, instead of remaining within towers of intellect. She considers the intellectual challenges of the day, and considers what relational bridge building looks like - historically and in the present.
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Edith ReitsemaEdith asks what is culture, how does it work, and how does it fit in with faith. She then considers three theologians' perspectives on this relationship, and looks at how we might respond to the issues.
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