The Religious Thought of Samuel Taylor Coleridge by David Pym (review)

478 BOOK REVIEWS carefulness and comprehensiveness of this book, brought to bear on so fundamental an issue, make it an outstanding contribution to the field. Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State UniVersity Blacksburg, Virginia ELEONORE STUMP The Religious Thought of Samuel Taylor Coleridge. By DAVID PYM. New York: Barnes & Noble, 1979. Pp. 105. $14.50. As John Coulson states in his brief foreword, one always welcomes another book on Coleridge's thought or influence, even one as slim as this (84 pages of text plus notes!) . And indeed, Pym is to be commended on his work of synthesis in what every Coleridge scholar knows to be a morass of manuscripts and teeming fragments of a seemingly undefined whole. He has offered a short introductory chapter on Coleridge's basic interest in theology and successive chapters on Coleridge's notion of God, Christ, the historical Jesus, and the Scriptures and Interpretation. In a small space, he provides an overview of Coleridge's entire project as a religious thinker. During the course of this outline, there are helpful glances and capsule comments on the 19th century theologians and thinkers who followed Coleridge's path in the Broad Church. Yet the book is sadly lacking. Its general view of Coleridge the theologian remains bound by the customary canards of pre-contemporary criticism. While aware that Coleridge intended a systematic whole and that he occasionally believed he had accomplished it, Pym denies its authenticity as project. He argues that Coleridge's thought is of one weave (if not of the same materials), and yet ignores the influences his aesthetics of symbol had on his interpretation of religious language. These two major strictures make Pym's general interpretation less than useful since their neglect forces him into dichotomies which Coleridge preferred to resolve. Pym must leave Coleridge between the 18th and 20th centuries without even a symbolic lifeboat to save his own appearances. So Pym stresses a division between inner spiritual development (Coleridge 's religion) and outer socio-political events (Coleridge's lack of interest); between reason (Coleridge's universal and somewhat wrongheaded metaphysics) and history (particular illustrations). This reviewer would maintain that Coleridge was more than aware of these contraries, and that he did attempt to resolve them in his notions of perception, epistemology , and interpretation and metaphysics of symbol. Yet without these mediations Coleridge must appear as either a flawed Platonist, curiously tempted by the historical fact of Christianity, or a foggy Aristotelian hoping that evidence will not disprove principles. BOOK REVIEWS 479 Pym's solution to this issue has become a common one in Coleridge studies: to make him an existentialist avant la lettre. Coleridge's personal suffering forced him to place his person as the reference-point for the reality of things. The importance of miracles, Bible, external history, etc., is their existential import to the believer. That is what the word ' true ' means to Coleridge. If one dismisses Coleridge's claims to a system and prefers to ignore his arguments for a metaphysics of subjectivity which would include empirical history, then 'existential import' may be one's only recourse to justify continued interest in Coleridge's thought. Without the mediation of affection as an apprehension of value, it will be impossible to discern how Coleridge has struggled to overcome the conflict of Duty and Interest; without the arguments of Coleridge in his Essays on Method, MSS. Logic, or the notions of imagination available from the Bristol Lectures (1795) on, it will be impossible to explain 'how' for Coleridge the spirit works upon the letter in biblical inspiration. And Coleridge's Christology will seem ' idealized ' if one does not include his notations to Scriptural commentaries and their emphasis on the humanity of the Logos. The problem is not so much that Pym does not provide an overview as that without recognizing the difficulty of the questions Coleridge asked or the methodological complexity of his answers, overview becomes oversight. A comprehensive and systematic book on Coleridge 's religious thought remains a requirement. St. Meinrad School of Theology St. Meinrad, Indiana STEPHEN HAPPEL ...