"Generous Ambiguity" Revisited: A Herbert for All Seasons

From the time of its first publication in 1633, a wide variety of readers have found Herbert's The Temple immensely attractive. Such readers include not only believers in (and out of ) many different branches of the Christian church, but also non-believers like L.C. Knights, whose praise specifically mentions the substance of the poetry, its depiction of experience in unmistakably Christian terms.¹ Something here begs for explanation. How can Herbert's poetry cross those religious boundaries? What is it, more than the excellence of the verse, itself of course a major factor? An answer deserving attention is that of Louis L. Martz, who claims that Herbert's poetry reaches beyond the confines of one church group because of its "generous ambiguity."²

There is genuine merit in Martz's claim. His distinctive argument is that Herbert deliberately writes poems so that people of differing religious views can read and enjoy them, each in their own ways.³ Thus, for example, he argues that "Redemption" can be read as implying predestination "because the speaker receives the answer to his 'suit' before he has even asked for it," or alternately as representing "the eternal presence and reenactment of the sacrifice in the Mass," because the speaker "finds the Crucifixion being enacted before him" (pp. 39 40). Martz attributes such ambiguity to Herbert's generousness in wanting to be inclusive of as many people as possible in "The Church." This is an attractive thesis.

To help explain such reaching out, Martz looks to Herbert's church, and proposes to "read The Temple in its final form as a composition . . . representing, dramatizing, the tense and delicate equilibrium that prevailed in the Church of England for most of Herbert's lifetime" (p. 38). That too is good; as Joseph Summers said, it is impossible to "perceive or respond to Herbert's aesthetic achievement without an understanding of the religious thought and experience which is both its subject and its inspiration."⁴ It is evident that Martz has paid some attention to the church history of the time; consequently, he admits that some of the poems are "capable of a Calvinist interpretation," having, "like the Thirty-nine Articles, a Calvinist tone" (p. 38). There are Herbert critics who have been unwilling to concede so much. However in this essay I propose that the Calvinist form of the Christian faith prevailing in Herbert's own religious milieu was more significant than that, in fact even contributing to the poet's impulse to reach out in his poems. To show how this can be so we need to consult recent historians on the nature of the English church and probe into the actual characteristics of English Calvinism before examining in more detail Herbert's "generous ambiguity."⁵

One problem with Martz's actual explanation is that like many writers he greatly oversimplifies the church situation in Herbert's time. (By contrast, Achsah Guibbory is much more informed about the historical realities of the church.) Specifically, he takes the disputed Lambeth Articles of 1595 as inflexibly normative for English Calvinism, and consequently contrasts Herbert's generosity with what he sees as "predestinarian" exclusiveness.⁶ Church historian Anthony Milton protests against the persistent tendency toward "dualistic explanations," such as "the by now traditional Arminian/Calvinist divide." Instead he seeks in his authoritative book on the English church to "present a broad spectrum of views running from crypto-popish 'Arminian' zealots on the one hand, through to die-hard puritan nonconformists on the other."⁷ Milton includes in that spectrum "moderate puritanism" and "the different styles of 'Calvinist conformity' of authors such as Robert Abbot and John Davenant." (Here and throughout this essay I follow recent historians in using "conformist" and related words to refer to those English church members who happily conformed to the rituals and discipline of the Church of England. The word formerly used, "Anglican," not really current during Herbert's time, has often been simply equated with the Laudians, the group opposed to Calvinism, and thus has suggested an incorrect picture of the church.) Besides avoiding an over-simple dichotomy...