Imagination of the Heart: New Understandings in Preaching. By Paul Scott Wilson. Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1988. 265 pages.  

Wilson, associate professor of homiletics at Emmanuel College in the Toronto School of Theology, describes how imagination works and how preachers can free their imaginations to enrich sermon preparation. Drawing on recent language studies, Wilson provides a detailed, technical account of this phenomenon. He also introduces a new vocabulary for discussing preaching.  

By “imagination of the heart” Wilson means “imagination illuminated by the Scriptures” (p. 16), that is, “the imagination that reconciles heart and head, body and mind, in discerning God’s purpose” (p. 18). Imagination of the heart occurs in “the bringing together of two ideas that might not otherwise be connected and developing the creative energy they generate” (p. 32).  

Wilson suggests that creativity in preaching lies in the interaction between four pairs of opposites: the biblical text and our situation, law and gospel (judgment and grace), story and doctrine, and the prophetic and the pastoral. Each pair is the subject of a chapter. This book will prove provocative for many preachers because Wilson challenges accepted practices that he thinks undermine creativity. For example, he warns against preaching from texts that have an immediate and obvious bearing on the subject being addressed. A seemingly unrelated text provides more creative preaching, he thinks, and can succeed because “any biblical text can speak to any contemporary situation” (p. 54).  

While Wilson may not finally persuade us on every point, he is persuasive on some points. He definitely will help us manage the creative tensions of preaching.