Honest Doubt Part 7 - The Agony and the Ecstasy

Thsi program looks at the doubts expressed in the religious writing of John Donne, John Bunyan and Gerard Manley Hopkins.

It just seems to me strange that anxiety should feature so prominently in this series. It seems similar to Kierkegaard that  our loss of certainty, the inability to prove God, or even worse our ability in many cases to disprove him, should be so central to the religious enterprise. It sounds like a psychological disorder, as if a husband was constantly worried that his wife didn't love him and was having an affair, or that having left the house you may have left a tap running or the front door unlocked.

John Bunyan seens a strange choice to include - Pilgrim's Progress isn't exactly full of anxiety and fear. I wonder if some of this spiritual worry is related to the fear of hell ? Certainly this seems to have been a very cruel and unnecessary doctrine that has caused a lot of anxiety among Christians, but any simple examination of the hell will show that it isn't Biblical and certainly isn't an essential part of the spiritual life.

Similarly I thought Hopkins took great delight in nature and experienced it full of awe and wonder as pointing to a creator - not in a scientific sense of explaining anything, but at the sacred oneness of what we are a part of.

I guess any person goes through moments of doubt and questioning - perhaps these poets are able to give good specific examples of such worries - but I don't think anxiety is central to the spiritual life and I'm not convinced these poets thought so either.