Part One - Selections from Religious Writings, 1843– 48

Summary

On Rationalism

The full title of the work, given on the opening page is as follows: ‘On Rationalism, with a Particular Application to the Doctrine of Baptismal Regeneration’. The epigraph is from 2 Corinthians 3: 18: ‘But as we all with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord’.

Passage 1 comprises the opening pages of ‘On Rationalism’. Sara Coleridge distinguishes her philosophical conception of ‘Reason’ from the Tractarian pejorative term ‘rationalism’. She refers to STC's Kantian distinction between Reason and Understanding, and establishes the Kantian basis of her epistemology, which underlies her conception of the relationship of the Divine with the human subject, and forms the basis of her critique of Tractarianism. By reference to Kantian epistemology, and to analyses of conversion narratives in the New Testament, particularly that of the jailor in Acts of the Apostles, Coleridge establishes her defining principle that cognitive and volitional activity is essential in the conversion of the individual to Christ. This tenet is opposed by the theologians of the Oxford Movement. The chapter title is from the 1848 text.

Passage 1: From Chapter 1, ‘On Reason and the MinistrativeAgency of the Understanding’

What is Rationalism? The word is a derivative of Ratio, Reason, and from its form together with its usual application we know that it is to be understood in malam parte. It is commonly defined a wrong or unwarrantable use of reason; but there can be no misuse of reason in the primary and proper sense, as the light by which we read the law written in the heart, or rather the law itself, read by its own light, when that is enkindled from above. As well might we contend that the seeing faculty may at times lead men to stumble and fall as maintain that reason can misdirect or be misdirected. The luminary within us may be clouded or obscured, and the understanding, thus left to grope in the dark, may wander out of the right way; but light itself becomes darkness only by a figure of speech; nor can reason grow unreasonable and lead the soul into error.