What is a Social Imaginary?

The phrase social imaginary is most closely associated with the philosopher Charles Taylor. He uses it to describe the way ordinary people imagine and talk about their social surroundings. It is the common understanding that makes possible, and facilitates, common practices.

A social imaginary is carried less in explicit ideas or concepts than in images, stories, legends, and assumed ways of life.

Consider the medieval social imaginary. For people in the Middle Ages, the world was thoroughly enchanted. God was present in the cosmos, and humanity had no difficulty recognizing his action. The self, as Taylor describes it, was porous: open and susceptible to transcendence.

In our modern social imaginary, the self has become buffered: closed off, disenchanted, sealed from the world beyond.

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"Most people did not arrive at this way of thinking through argumentation. It simply became the water in which we swim."

Pneumatology is the doctrine of the Holy Spirit, from the Greek pneuma. It is the way Christians confess that the Holy Spirit, whom we see in Scripture breathed out by Christ and filling believers with tongues of fire, is himself God in his fullness. He is the third divine person, together with the Father and the Son.

When we speak of the doctrine of the Spirit, we may be quick to speak about the Spirit's missions, the things the Spirit does in the lives of believers and in the world. But before we speak of what the Spirit does, we need to understand how Scripture leads us to affirm who the Spirit is.

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"Before we speak of what the Spirit does, we need to understand how it is that Scripture leads us to affirm who the Spirit is."

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The Bible tells us that the works of the Spirit are God's works. They are divine. The Spirit brings creation into being (Genesis 1). The Spirit is breathed into man to bring life (Genesis 2).

The Spirit also bears the divine names. When the Bible says in 1 Corinthians 3:16 that Christians are the temple of God, it clarifies in the very same breath that this is the Spirit's temple. When Ananias lies about holding back money in Acts 5, Peter says that he has lied to the Spirit, and that he has lied to God. In the Great Commission, Christians baptize believers in the name, the one single name, of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. All this drives us to see that the Spirit himself is God.

The Spirit also possesses the attributes of God. The Spirit knows the mind of God, and whoever knows the mind of God knows all things; the Spirit is omniscient (1 Corinthians 2:10–11). The Spirit is everywhere, just as God is omnipresent (Psalm 139:7). The Spirit is eternal (Hebrews 9:14), and only God is eternal.

Ere by the spheres time was created thou
Wast in His mind, who is thy Son, and Brother;
Whom thou conceivest, conceived; yea thou art now
Thy Maker’s maker, and thy Father’s mother;
Thou hast light in dark, and shutt’st in little room,
Immensity cloister’d in thy dear womb.

— John Donne, “Annunciation”

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A Lofty Title

John Donne’s poem “The Annunciation” speaks directly to (and about) Mary, the mother of Jesus, demonstrating the majesty of the infinite God who is “cloistered” in her womb.¹ Today we sometimes balk at such stark antinomies of divine attributions of Jesus and his humanity. For example, contemporary churches sing “Amazing love! How can it be, That you, my king, should die for me”—even though the original lyrics of Charles Wesley’s hymn are, “that thou, my God, shouldst die for me.” Further, Protestants sometimes hear the title, “Mary the mother of God” and recoil at perceived Roman Catholic associations.

Yet, Donne and Wesley stand in a long line of thinkers who have affirmed these lofty titles for Mary, not fundamentally because of how great Mary is, but because of how great her son, Jesus, is. And we would do well to locate ourselves within this trajectory of Christians who (like Elizabeth) look upon Mary and “exclaim with a loud cry” the good news of the Son of God, who was born of “the mother of our Lord” (see Luke 1:42–43).

The church gave this trajectory specificity and focus in the early fifth century as she wrestled with the implications of the affirmation of the Council of Nicaea. In 325 the church affirmed that Jesus is the “true God from true God . . . [who] became man.”² So what does it mean to say that the Son who is homoousios with the infinite Father became man, and what does it have to say about Mary?

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Cyril and Nestorius

One historical figure who stands stalwart in this line is the theologian Cyril of Alexandria (ca. 374–444).³ While little is known about his early life, he served as a socially and politically active archbishop in Alexandria for over thirty years. Once called “the episcopal warrior” for his political zeal,⁴ Cyril has been viewed suspiciously for his use of power and influence. However, recent scholarship has reinterpreted his roles in many of these controversial events, such as the attacks on Jewish synagogues, oppression of the Novatians, and execution of Hypatia (a female Neoplatonic philosopher).⁵ Regardless, our interest in him here is much more in his theological benefit to the church.

Cyril’s lasting impact may especially be found in his contributions to the Council of Ephesus in 431. The council, itself fraught with political complexity, theologically pitted Cyril (patriarch of Alexandria) against Nestorius (patriarch of Constantinople). Both Cyril and Nestorius appealed explicitly to the Council of Nicaea and believed that their views each preserved the doctrine of the Nicene Creed.⁶

Nestorius was especially committed to preserving the impassibility of God—i.e., that the infinite God cannot be acted upon by another agent in such a way that he suffers or changes. He distinguished between the impassible Son of God and “Christ,” who suffers and dies. When Scripture mentions Jesus’ birth (Matt 1:16) and suffering death (Phil 2:5–8), it uses the title “Christ” to protect the divinity of the Son from being polluted by human suffering.⁷ So, since Jesus’ birth refers to his humanity rather than his divinity, Nestorius says that Mary is “more accurately termed mother of Christ than mother of God.”⁸

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EPHESUS, 431 · Theodosius II, Cyril, Nestorius and the Church of Mary