Biblical (In)Sufficiency in Samuel Taylor Coleridge's The Statesman's Manual

Unlike other examples of Coleridge's late work on personal experiences of Bible reading (Confession of an Inquiring Spirit) or comments on religious issues (Aid to Reflection), The Statesman's Manual is a religious sermon with the aim of warning Britain of the empire's possible disintegration. Gesticulating like a Biblical prophet, Coleridge constructs a British national narrative using the Bible as the meta-text, through which he points out the nation's deviation from God's path and asks the people to repent. Following the traditional structure of sermonic writing, including the exposition of Biblical sufficiency as its application and confirmation, Coleridge argues for the Bible's relevancy in addressing national affairs. Situated in a period when the status of the Bible was in decline, Coleridge's sermon engaged in the contemporary hermeneutical debates to save Biblical authority while developing his theory of the Bible. However, the construction of this theory leads to illogical conclusions in the section on confirmation: The distinction between revelation and inspiration turns upside down the hierarchy of the Word of God; the dominance of symbolic reading overlaps with and contradicts the literal reading. In the section on the application, the two major contemporary events recalled to justify Biblical prophecy present after-the-fact (ex post facto) history writing and circumstantial possibility rather than typological repetition of a clear historical pattern. As the sermon finishes its argument and reasoning, it attests only to the impossibility of a comprehensive theory of Biblical sufficiency and to its limited relevancy for Britain, a signal that the Bible would gradually lose its absolute authority over British politics as the 19th century proceeded.

關鍵字

Samuel Taylor Coleridge ； The Statesman's Manuel ； Biblical sufficiency ； the Word of God ； Biblical prophecy

並列摘要

有別於柯律芝晚期涉及宗教的作品，談論聖經閱讀經驗（《一個困惑心靈的告解》）或是義理探究（《雷頓大主教格言的再沉思》），《政治家手冊》是一部旨在警告大英帝國面臨危機的佈道書。柯律芝以聖經做為大英帝國國家敘事之後設文本，並以聖經預言家的姿態，告誡後拿破崙時期的英國已經背離上帝意旨，必須立即懺悔，從聖經中尋求救贖之道。《政治家手冊》遵循著傳統佈道詞的書寫結構，包括闡釋、論證、以及應用，其主旨在於說明聖經的完備性並不侷限於個人靈魂救贖，同時也涵蓋了治國之道。由於這部作品寫於聖經權威逐漸式微的十九世紀初期，促使柯律芝必須考量當時聖經詮釋學的論證，從中發展出聖經完備性的理論。然而，在聖經飽受各方質疑的時代，《政治家手冊》並無法同時兼顧所有的論點，這也導致科律芝在論證部分做出了不合邏輯的結論：啟示和靈感的區別導致了上帝話語等級的顛倒，且象徵意義的閱讀和字面意義的閱讀兩者相互矛盾。此外，在聖經實際應用部分，柯律芝援引了兩個歷史事件證明聖經預言的準確性，但卻在解釋其與聖經的關聯性時，證實了所謂以聖經做為歷史事件原型的閱讀方式，其實是一種事後書寫的歷史詮釋，亦或是歷史發展的可能性推斷。簡而言之，科律芝在說明聖經完備性的過程中，反倒證明了聖經的不完備性，無法做為領導英國政治的絕對權威。

並列關鍵字

柯律芝；《政治家手冊》；聖經完備性；上帝話語；聖經預言

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