Conclusion: Inspiration and Revelation

Abstract

Thus wrote Mary Wamock in an article published in Theology in November 1980, entitled ‘Imagination Aesthetic and Religious’. This study has sought to trace in Coleridge’s writings his endeavours to perceive the nature of divine revelation in his experience of poetic inspiration and creativity. His habits of self-reflection prompted his insights into the psychology of belief, and his concern for language as a poet led him to a concern for the nature of ‘God-language’ in theology and religious discourse. This final chapter is not so much a conclusion in a formal sense, as it does not attempt to draw together and sum up the arguments of those which precede it. Rather, it seeks to illustrate the continuing importance of those matters which concerned Coleridge, as a Christian thinker who worked primarily through the categories of literature and poetry. Its approach is not historical, nor does it attempt to describe writers and theologians who have, in some way, been directly influenced by Coleridge,² not least because, invariably, Coleridge is greater than any example given, slipping through its confines with an elusive abundance of creativity.³

If religion is concerned with the relation between man and nature, or between man and God, if it must explore the difference between time and eternity, between goodness and badness, between the helplessness and the power of human beings, between their deep solitude and their superficial sociability, then knowledge of such things must come from the significance we find in our sensory experience, in what we actually see and hear.¹