1. Davis, Ellen, Imagination Shaped: Old Testament Preaching in the Anglican Tradition (Valley Forge, PA: Trinity Press International, 1995), p. 250.Google Scholar

2. Davis, , Imagination Shaped, p. 251.Google Scholar

3. My offering will be shaped by attention to Coleridge throughout, but it will be, in the end, an imaginative construal of Coleridge's thought on the imagination, Scripture and God's redemptive work in us. By this I mean I will weave Coleridge's manifold and diverse discussions of these topics around the focus of this paper—its ‘pre-dominating passion’—and thus give to his work greater unity than he, perhaps, intended. I don't believe, however, that in this unity I will betray the intention of his thinking on these topics.

4. So Coleridge's famous definition: ‘The primary IMAGINATION I hold to be the living Power and prime Agent of all human Perception, and as a repetition in the finite mind of the eternal act of creation in the infinite I AM.’ (Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, Biographia Literaria, The Collected Works of Samual Taylor Coleridge [London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1983], vol. I, p. 304)Google Scholar. Coleridge, of course, will distinguish the unique mode of God's creativity—that it is creation ex nihilo—from our own. Our creativity always works with the manifold of experience which we are given, and it is most true when the vision it brings to this manifold is the spiritual reality revealed to it in Scripture. Our creativity is not God's, for Coleridge, but it nonetheless, by an act of grace, works in tandem with God's.

5. Coleridge, , Biographia, p. 304.Google Scholar

6. Basil Willey offers a rich discussion of imagination in Coleridge. Willey, Basil, Coleridge on Imagination and Fancy (Folcroft, PA: The Folcroft Press, 1946)Google Scholar. Here (p. 3) he directs us to note Coleridge's comments on Wordsworth's poetry (Coleridge, , Biographia, pp. 77–82).Google Scholar

7. Willey, , Coleridge on Imagination, p. 3.Google Scholar

8. Coleridge is convinced of the objective reality of the world outside of the knowing subject.

9. Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1988), p. 26.Google Scholar

10. As Kaudie McLean pointed out to me, the multiple dimensions of this revelation—the naming and the locating, for example—are opened out through Scripture's multiple literary genres. The psalmist's poetic cry gives words for my grief, for example, while the dramatic narrative of Job and his friends depict for me the plight of spiritual truth in the midst of the hypocrisy of the world.

11. Coleridge, , Confessions, p. 64.Google Scholar

12. Coleridge, , Confessions, p. 45.Google Scholar

13. Coleridge is primarily concerned here with reductive approaches to Scripture that occlude Trinitarian readings in favor of a common-sense Unitarianism. Douglas Hedley's excellent book on Coleridge, , Coleridge, Philosophy, and Religion (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000)Google Scholar explores in telling detail both Coleridge's commitment to a rich Trinitarianism and his concern with empiricist readings of the biblical text. See esp. pp. 36–75 and 136–45.

14. Many modern exegetes would challenge, of course, the notion that we have simply the direct revelation of God, apart from authorial shaping, at any place in Scripture. It is worth noting, however, that Coleridge does want to set apart a place for God's distinct contribution to Scripture and not see the text as a wholly human enterprise.

15. Coleridge, , Confessions, p. 37.Google Scholar

16. Coleridge, , Confessions, p. 36.Google Scholar

17. Coleridge, , Confessions, p. 36.Google Scholar

18. Coleridge, , Confessions, p. 36.Google Scholar

19. Coleridge, , Confessions, p. 37.Google Scholar

20. So we grasp the proper sense of Hedley's claim that for Coleridge Scripture ‘expresses the reaction of human beings to divine revelation’ when we pair it with the understanding that its language is ‘not merely human’ because of the work of the Spirit in and through these authors. See Hedley, , Coleridge, p. 134.Google Scholar

21. Coleridge, , Confessions, p. 49.Google Scholar

22. My intention is specifying that our interaction with Scripture must be spiritual is not to distinguish Coleridge's reading of Scripture from any particular method of reading Scripture—historical criticism, for example. It is, rather, to be clear that the strong claims for the power of this spiritual reading of Scripture are grounded not in any human powers, in and of themselves, but rather emerge out of the power of God's Spirit to redeem our reading and God's Logos to inform it. This is a theological capacity into which we have been invited, for Coleridge, not an anthropological capacity, pure and simple.

23. Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, Aids to Reflection, The Collected Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1993), p. 404Google Scholar, quoting from Wordsworth.

24. Coleridge, , Aids, p. 406.Google Scholar

25. See Hedley, , Coleridge, pp. 136–37.Google Scholar

26. Coleridge, , Aids, pp. 406–407.Google Scholar

27. Coleridge's vision here is distinctly Johanine.

28. Coleridge, , Aids, p. 407.Google Scholar

29. Coleridge, , Aids, p. 407.Google Scholar

30. Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, ‘The Statesman's Manual’, in Lay Sermons, The Collected Works of Samual Taylor Coleridge (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1972), p. 30.Google Scholar

31. Coleridge, , ‘The Statesman's Manual’, p. 30.Google Scholar

32. Symbol, for Coleridge, is a particular way of describing the relationship between words and things in their mutual connection to spiritual reality that lies at their heart. For Coleridge, language functions symbolically only as it is attached to those things which it renders for us through its symbolic construal. Coleridge's poem, ‘The Aolean Harp’, allows us to hear the silence in the murmurings of the sea only as we hear the sea under its guidance. Likewise, things are symbolic only in relationship with their visionary construal through the language that we bring to them—the poem makes for us the murmurings of the sea into silence. Again, the relation between language and thing in the symbol is mutual, while spiritual reality will inhere for the knowing subject within this relationship—the symbol points beyond itself only by manifesting what is within itself—we find the Eternal in the temporal, in a seamless relationship, so that we cannot leave the temporal behind as we reach for the eternal.

33. Coleridge, , ‘The Statesman's Manual’, p. 29.Google Scholar Coleridge believes that through our reason we can have a direct intuition of the spiritual, so that Imagination is the capacity to express that intuition in a manner accessible to our understanding of the world. I have edited the above quotation to express our capacity for spiritual vision through our reason. See Hedley, , Coleridge, pp. 215–28Google Scholar for Coleridge's understanding of Reason's capacity for spiritual intuition.

34. He also rejects any attempt to so spiritualize Scripture that it no longer speaks to the materiality of the world. His sermon, ‘The Statesman's Manual’ argues for the Old Testament histories and their spiritual truths as far better guides than contemporary histories, guided by mechanistic philosophies, for politicians of his day. Lay Sermons, ‘The Statesman's Manual’, p. 28.Google Scholar

35. Coleridge, , ‘The Statesman's Manual’, p. 28.Google Scholar

36. Coleridge, , ‘The Statesman's Manual’, p. 28.Google Scholar

37. See also, Hedley, , Coleridge, pp. 132–34.Google Scholar

38. This understanding of imagination is counter-intuitive for most of us. Imagination is often seen as the power to create fictional worlds, the power to escape reality. Coleridge, contrariwise, believes that we can encounter reality fully only through the imagination.

39. Coleridge, , Biographia, p. 304.Google Scholar

40. Coleridge, , Biographia, pp. 272–78.Google Scholar

41. J. Robert Barth presents an extended discussion of Coleridge's Augustinian understanding of the will in his Coleridge and Christian Doctrine (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1969), pp. 108–32.Google Scholar

42. See Hedley, , Coleridge, pp. 161–62.Google Scholar

43. Coleridge, , Biographia, p. 283.Google Scholar

44. Coleridge, , Aids, p. 202.Google Scholar

45. Davis, , Imagination Shaped.Google Scholar

46. Davis, , Imagination Shaped, pp. 138–46, 177–84.Google Scholar

47. Davis, , Imagination Shaped, pp. 96–113.Google Scholar