The answer is to be found in the way in which we share in the triune splendor of the Good, the True and the Beautiful.
Whereas all things are good insofar as they are made by God, there is a deeper goodness, known as virtue, which requires a freedom from instinct, a freedom of the will to choose freely to do the good. An oak tree is good, as a work of divine art, but it is what it is. It can only be what an oak tree is and can only do what an oak tree is programmed or designed to do. It can do nothing else. It will do nothing else because it has no will with which to do it!
Man, on the other hand, has a freedom to choose to be more fully whom he is meant to be, which is Godlike, or he can choose to refuse. To be more fully like God is to be good as God is good, to be true as God is true, and to be beautiful as God is beautiful. To become good as God is good is to love more fully, choosing freely to set aside ourselves in sacrificial service of the other; to become true as God is true is to reason more clearly, seeking to know reality in conformity to the way that God knows it; to be beautiful as God is beautiful is to see the beauty of God’s image and presence in his creation and to seek to become creators ourselves, making beautiful things as God makes beautiful things.
If our making of beautiful things shows the image in us of the Maker of all beautiful things, we can see that the imagination is itself a shining forth of God’s image in us (image-ination). Man is not just made — he is made to be a maker. He is, however, free to choose to use his imagination virtuously, using the gift in conformity to the will of the Gift-Giver, or he can choose to take the gift and use it for his own prideful purposes, casting the priceless pearls of the imagination into the gutter.
The gift of the imagination is no different from the other gifts of God’s image in us. We are free to use them or abuse them. We can be good as God is good, or we can refuse, choosing evil; we can be true as God is true, or we can choose falsehood; we can bring forth the beautiful fruits of the imagination as God brings forth from his own Divine Imagination all that is good, or we can choose the ugliness of les fleurs du mal, the sickly blooms of an imagination poisoned by pride. The imagination, like the soul of which it is a part, must be baptized. It must die to itself so that it may be resurrected in Christ. It is this baptized imagination which has brought forth the cornucopia of Great Books which are the beautiful blossoms on the tree of Christendom.
This essay first appeared in the UK’s Catholic Herald and is republished with permission.