Augustine on Imagination in his Pastoral Theology

Abstract

This dissertation offers a theological account of Augustine’s approach to the imagination by evaluating how the imagination functions in his preaching for moral formation. The project begins with Augustine’s most direct statements about the imagination and then expands beyond those to explore the way he seeks to cultivate the imagination for moral formation. My primary claim is that, in his sermons, Augustine’s approach to moral formation aims to cultivate a theologically calibrated imagination in his audience for the sake of coming to see spiritual realities. To demonstrate this claim, I examine the way Augustine in his sermons deploys the rhetorical devices of enargeia and prosopopoeia, exhorts his audience toward imaginative self-reflection, and preaches on visual spectacles from nature, Scripture, and the martyrs. Joining recent scholarship on Augustine’s sermons, the thesis presents a more holistic sense of Augustine’s approach to the imagination by integrating his explicit statements on the imagination with evaluation of his pastoral practice. By framing Augustine’s approach to the imagination in terms of Christ’s mediation and by grounding Augustine’s use of it for moral formation in his theology of grace, this project clarifies the significance of the imagination for coming to know and love God.