Unimaginable: What We Imagine and What We Can’t

by Graham Ward

What we imagine can crush us or create us, destroy us or heal us; it can pitch us into battles with demons or set us among the songs of angels. It has roots beneath consciousness and is expressed in moods, rhythms, tones and textures of experience that are as much mental as physiological.
In his new book, a sequel to the earlier Unbelievable , one of Britain's most exciting writers on religion here presents a nuanced and many-dimensional portrait of the mystery and creativity of the human imagination. Traversing landscapes that are both physical and emotional, palpable and intangible, the author enlists the company of fellow-travellers William Wordsworth, William Turner, Samuel Palmer and Ralph Vaughan Williams – alongside many other creative artists – to try to get to the bottom of the true meanings of originality and memory. Drawing the while on his own rich and varied encounters with belief, he asks why it is that the imagination is so fundamental to who and what we are.
Using metaphor and story to unpeel the hidden motivations and architecture of the mind, and show what might lie beneath, Graham Ward grapples here with profound questions of ultimacy and transcendence. He reveals that, in understanding what it really means to be human, what cannot be imagined invariably means as much as what can.

264 pages, Hardcover

Published November 1, 2018

About the author

Graham Ward is an English theologian and Anglican priest who has been Regius Professor of Divinity at the University of Oxford since 2012. He is a priest of the Church of England and was formerly the Samuel Ferguson Professor of Philosophical Theology and Ethics and the Head of the School of Arts, Histories and Cultures at the University of Manchester. Previous to that he was the Professor of Contextual Theology and Ethics and Senior Fellow in Religion and Gender at the university.