Images Above All: Richard Kroner and the Religious Imagination

Abstract

This essay returns to a largely forgotten achievement of mid-twentieth-century philosophical theology, Richard Kroner’s Culture and Faith (1951) and the “philosophy of faith” presented therein. It focuses on Kroner’s idea of religious imagination as the inspired medium of revelation. It considers implications of this idea with regard to religious epistemology and theological language. In doing so, it puts Kroner in conversation with John Caputo, Iain McGilchrist, and Kroner’s friend and colleague Paul Tillich.