The word of the Lord came to me, saying, “Jeremiah, what do you see?” And I said, “I see a branch of an almond tree.” Then the Lord said to me, “You have seen well, for I am watching[a] over my word to perform it.” The word of the Lord came to me a second time, saying, “What do you see?” And I said, “I see a boiling pot, tilted away from the north.” Then the Lord said to me: “Out of the north disaster shall break out on all the inhabitants of the land. (Jeremiah 1:11-14)
I was having an interesting and mutually surprising discussion with an online friend about imagination. The resurrection narratives were the topic. Their skepticism was concerning a suggestion the Lord’s appearances were rooted in imagination. God could work that way, I supposed. (I’m not personally convinced of that, but I’m also unconvinced it is a heresy.)
The human imagination is not part of some biological or psychological flaw in our makeup. It is not “disordered,” to use a popular/unpopular parlance. It would be a way of perceiving the universe, just as light and sound appeal to human sight and hearing.
When Jeremiah heard God as recounted in chapter 1 of the book bearing his name, were sound waves manipulated outside of the prophet’s ears? Did God directly touch the centers of Jeremiah’s brain? Or was imagination involved?
“You must be imagining it.” That’s not usually a kind statement. And yet great achievements, especially in art, are based on a human being’s ability to perceive something beyond the five senses. Take Jeremiah, for example. Perhaps he was praying outside when asked what he saw. His eyes were drawn to a flowering branch, and God affirmed, “You have seen well.” A ministry of God’s Word was about to come to fruition.
Without imagination, who would connect a flower to the message of God, or a boiling pot to a coming time of trial for the Northern Kingdom? Who’s to say such an experience is not as real as the fragrance of a blossom, or the pain of a burn?
Catholic Sensibility 
Imagination is real in its individual experience, but the Gospels and Acts appear to anticipate and take care to negate that idea explicitly when it came to the disciples as a group in terms of their encounters with the Risen Lord. I don’t see the need to for today’s disciples to effectively re-cast their witness in that regard as it were a pack of lies – that would multiply entities more than is necessary (to implead Occam’s Razor). The bodily resurrection is dogmatic and made part of the very sacrament of Baptism for every baptized.
I’m not convinced imagination is always an individual experience. A composer presents a piece and her or his imagination is splashed into the playing of the musicians and the listening audience. A visual artist creates, and viewers gaze upon something more than colored oils or stone or wood with pieces peeled away.
My point was that my friend too easily dismissed imagination. Too much modernism in the notion of reason and logic, I suppose.