Table of Contents

1. Introduction: Theology, Fantasy, and the Imagination

Andrew D. Thrasher and Austin M. Freeman

Part I: Invocations

2. The Old Magic

Nicholas Adams

Part II: Classical Christian Fantasy: Renewing Christian Imagination

3. Sins of the Imagination

Austin M. Freeman

4. C.S. Lewis, Apologetics, and the Imagination: Breaking the Spell of Secularism

Alison Milbank

5. Between Tolkien and the Philosophers: Greek and Scholastic Theories of Phantasia

Giovanni Carmine Costabile

Part III: Post-Christian Fantasy: Opening the Door Beyond

6. Why Theology Should Always Be Fantasy: Imagination, Fantasy, and Science-Fictional Messianism in the Writings of Rabbi Shagar

Levi Morrow

7. Theology in Shadow: Sin and Redemption in Ursula K. Le Guin’s A Wizard of Earthsea

Oliver D. Crisp

8. Cosmology as Agnostic Self-Actualization in Terry Pratchett’s Discworld

U-Wen Low

9. Fantastic Inter-Religious Resourcement in Robert Jordan and David Eddings

Andrew D. Thrasher

10. The Hero as God: An Exploration of Mormon Soteriology in the Fantasy Novels of Orson Scott Card and Brandon Sanderson

Josh Herring

Part IV: Fantasy at Play: Theologizing with Fantastic Games

11. Imaginative Hermeneutical Theology: Paul Ricoeur and Dungeons & Dragons

Scott Donahue-Martens

12. Magic: The Gathering and Meaning: The Theological Outlook of the World’s Most Complex Game

Jacob Torbeck

About the Author

Andrew D. Thrasher is an adjunct instructor of Religious Studies at George Mason University and Tidewater Community College.

Austin M. Freeman teaches at Houston Christian University and King’s College New York.

Reviews

It is exciting to see the continuation of the philosophical Paulinist tradition, especially one that begins to take Paul's Judaism into account. Any biblical studies work that seriously engages with the (political) philosophy of its concepts is sorely welcome to the field of biblical studies.

We are quite accustomed to approaching theology from the front, with reason and intellect. Only rarely do we approach from behind, with imagination. And rarer still is theological engagement that takes imagination seriously on its own terms. Theology, Fantasy, and the Imagination uses examples from the fantastic to show us insights into theology that can only be imagined, and in doing so, greatly strengthens our overall theological engagement. And, it's a lot of fun!