By the beginning of the nineteenth century, Deism had established itself as the intellectually respectable theological position. Yet Deism, whatever its strengths as natural philosophy and usefulness as a compromise between hostile creeds, signally failed to satisfy man's emotional, moral, or aesthetic needs, or to explain the intimations of transcendence experienced in encounters with the sublime.
Images of Eternity is James Benziger's magnificent exploration of how the Romantic poets (and, to a lesser extent, their successors), despite being alienated from Christian orthodoxy, nonetheless employed "love and imagination" to break out of what Kant described as the realm of necessity into the realm of freedom. Throughout, he emphasizes how their approach to the transcendent was influenced by Platonism as much, if not more than, straightforward Christianity, presenting a difficulty for many 20th century critics for whom the former was even more alien than the latter.
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