“Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see.”
– Hebrews 11:1
It’s been said that imagination is required to have faith.
Can one have faith without having imagination?
What do you think?
January 7, 2019
Faith and imagination.
91 responses to “Faith and imagination.”
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January 15th, 2019 at 1:03 pm
I think one can not have faith without imagination because we do not know all about God but if we have imagination about God, we can imagine how he will punish us, if we do bad things. So I think we need to have imagination to have faith in him.
Yukino Watanabe
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January 15th, 2019 at 1:12 pm
Yes. Even though we don’t imagine I can have faith because we believe that Jesus saved us. We just believe it. So even though we don’t imagine, we believe like it is common.
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January 15th, 2019 at 8:20 pm
Personally, I believe that imagination is necessary in order to have faith. Take the dictionary definition for faith, “strong belief in the doctrines of a religion, based on spiritual conviction rather than proof”. The key point here is that it is not based off of proof. Lacking imagination means that one requires evidence for anything to be true. The person would have no ability to think outside the bounds of logic. This can be negatively reflected in art through only producing logical works rather than new ideas. When it comes to the subject of faith, the Bible provides the proof to Christians that God has done amazing things to our world. He breathed into the works of people to produce what Christians believe to be accurate, historical evidence. However, faith requires us to believe in what the Bible says, which includes “illogical” elements. Therefore, what can a man with no imagination do? Believe in the Bible, the evidence, which exceeds the boundaries of logic we see today? Take the dictionary definition for imagination, “the faculty or action of forming new ideas, or images or concepts of external objects not present to the senses”. This is a very similar action to believing in a religion in general. Religion is about belief in what you cannot see or prove yourself. If you are able to form images of things without proof of their existence, you are able to have faith.
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January 16th, 2019 at 12:13 am
I believe that it is not possible to have faith without imagination as we need to have ideas on what we want to believe and since everybody does not believe in the same thing. We all must have the imagination to believe (have faith) in something that might not always be visible.
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January 22nd, 2019 at 4:11 pm
Is faith more than belief?
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January 16th, 2019 at 7:23 pm
Yes, because sometimes there are things that we need to imagine. We need to imagine them because they may be a supernatural thing so it is not describable. But God still does these things. So that is why I think that you need imagination to have faith.
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January 20th, 2019 at 11:17 pm
I think it does take an imagination to believe in something. It’s like believing in Santa Clause. Imagination brings new images in our minds and makes us to hope for and wait upon for certain things.
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January 21st, 2019 at 9:42 am
Is belief the same as faith?
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January 24th, 2019 at 6:42 pm
I think that it is possible to have faith without having imagination. However, I definitely think that it is always better to have imagination. Someone who is really analytical would have a much harder time to have faith (in my opinion). I think this is because those who have no imagination and are very analytical would probably question a lot and not being able to imagine God. However, I do not think that it is impossible as we don’t all have imagination. Just because you aren’t creative and can’t imagine God and Heaven doesn’t mean you can’t believe or have faith.
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January 25th, 2019 at 9:49 am
I like your thinking here – but do you really think that we don’t all have imagination?
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January 28th, 2019 at 9:34 am
We can have faith without seeing but can we have faith without imagination? It’s not that we need to have imagination to have faith, but it’s our imaginations that fuel our faith. I think having faith is believing in what you imagine, believing in the things that we cannot see. Faith is having “complete trust in something.” As humans, our cognition forms a picture of what our God is like, and from our simple ability to create mental pictures, we are able to believe in them. Jesus said in John 20:29, “blessed are those who believe without seeing.”
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January 30th, 2019 at 8:38 am
Unlike logics and science that can we explained and logically evaluated, things as vague as gods, religion, and faith require a signifiant amount of individuals imagination to be “explained”.
This is because majority of religion is something that cannot be explained through human logic and these “gaps” in between scriptures that are not fully explained needs to be filled up by one’s imagination.
Therefore, I believe that faith cannot exist without one’s imagination in order for the believer to convince themselves to believe.
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January 30th, 2019 at 9:04 am
Interesting ideas, but do you think that we don’t need imagination for science or logic? Can we believe in science or logic (or anything) without imagination? Is faith something different than belief?
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January 30th, 2019 at 9:02 am
I don’t think that we need imagination to have faith. Maybe it is that additional seasoning to a food, but I don’t think that it is entirely necessary. I think that if you totally believe in him, you don’t even need to see him to believe him. You would be satisfied with just believing in Him. Imagination can be a help to bring connection to see who you are believing. I don’t think its bad but I also don’t think its avoidable for everyone because its our human nature (?) to imagine things that can bring us comfort to what we can’t see.
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January 30th, 2019 at 9:05 am
Are faith and belief the same?
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January 30th, 2019 at 2:32 pm
I believe that imagination helps faith grow, but also believe that faith can be achieved without imagination. Faith is trust, and trust isn’t directly related to imagination. While imagination can facilitate faith, it can block faith as imagination runs wide. Only by regulating imagination can one properly have faith.
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February 7th, 2019 at 1:13 pm
Faith is important. I believe that imagination is not required to have faith. You do not have to wander or imagine put your faith directly in God. Trust him enough that he will take care of things.
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February 12th, 2019 at 2:57 pm
Yes all humans need at least a small image of what the believe in for security and it counts because you haven’t seen what God actually looks like so imagining is fine.
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February 13th, 2019 at 12:54 pm
i personally think that we need to have imagination to have faith, because sometimes i will have to imagine the good things about something to have faith in it, so in my opinion, imagination is required to have faith.
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February 19th, 2019 at 6:23 pm
I think one can not have faith without imagination. I think this because faith is believing without seeing of proof. If you can not imagine what the thing you believe in is you can not believe in it for there is no evidence that it/him/her exists. Therefor, I believe on can not have faith without imagination.
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February 21st, 2019 at 2:06 pm
No, I don’t think one can have faith without imagination. I personally think that humans need some sort of visual to aid in their beliefs. The quote “seeing is believing” is relevant to this. Even though people today might not have seen God in a physical form, we still like to imagine an image of Him in our minds to validate his existence- even if the image is fabricated within our own brains.
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