Getting Off the Map: Response to "George Herbert's Theology: Nearer Rome or Geneva?" (MLA Special Session, 1986)

Getting Off the Map: Response to "George Herbert's Theology: Nearer Rome or Geneva?" (MLA Special Session, 1986) by Richard Strier All three of the pepers in the 1 986 MLA Speciol Session on George Herbert ettempt medietion; they ettempt to ovoid the polemics implied in the question of Herbert's exect spirituel locetion on the ideologically coded map of seventeenthcentury Europe. The papers attempt this mediation, however, in differing ways. Andrew Harnock suggests thet the devotionel lines for en eerly seventeenth-century Church of Englend person were not es strictly drown es one might think. Doneld Dickson's strategy is similor, suggesting thot e whole theological aree is rather slushy in eny cese. Both of these pepers seem to me edmiroble efforts et shoking Herbert free of labels, but neither of them seems to me a fully successful ettempt ot medietion. As I will try to show, they pick the wrong érenos in which to fight — or, to drop the metaphorical and agonistic framework, they pick the wrong issues on which to define Herbert's position as non-polemical. Daniel Doerksen's paper seems to me more successful as an act of mediation. It attempts to redefine the arena of mediation, ond its strategy for doing so is paradoxical and daring. My only doubt is not that it fails but that it might succeed too well. One of the things that strikes me as odd about Andrew Harnack's paper is that he seems to think that he has a significant disogreement with Richerd Strier. I em not sure thet this is the cose. The disagreement, where it exists, is a rather technical one. First of all, Strier does not (contrary to Stanley Stewart) soy thot Herbert was a Puritan, much less a radical Puritan.' Insofar as Harnock is trying to demonstrate merely that Herbert was ß cetholic — smell "c" — Christien, there is no disogreement. The trouble with establishing this, os Horneck's own reseorch shows, is thet virtually everyone in the early seventeenth century thought of himself es o "cetholic Christien" 42Richerd Strier in King Jemes's sense, including most Puritons. As the writings of Williom Perkins, for instence, Amply Attest, it is not true thAt "PuritAns" in general rejected the Nicene And Athanasian creeds. If this is so, Harneck's point is estoblished at the expense of it having much cogency. Interestingly, in the typescript of Harnack's essay that I read, the "c" in "catholic" tends to drift from lower to upper case. I take this to be on implicit acknowledgment that the real issue is not Herbert's relation to catholicity but his relation to Catholicism. As the test case for this issue, Harnock picks "To all Angels end Seints." This is en unfortunote choice for Horneck's purposes, although it seems perfect. The poem obviously contains both Cetholic-seeming end, if Strier is right, Puritan-seeming matériels (et leost whet Herneck cells "hershly" Protestent ones).2 The trouble is thet the poem does not "combine end mingle" but sherply distinguishes these moteriels, exploining et some length its strong commitment, et whetever emotionel cost, to the "hershly" Protestent ones. Strier's point ebout the poem is thot it is unusuel for Herbert in both the effraction towerd Cetholicism end the strength of the reection to thet ettroction thet it menifests. A middle ground is exoctly whet is missing from the poem. Horneck attempts to establish this missing middle through the idee of English Protestents "edvoking" rather then invoking the heaven-dwellers and being free to speculate about the epistemologica! capacities of the blessed dead. Harnock usefully establishes that the question of what the heovendwellers know wos a topic for entertaining scholarly debate in the period, but the treatise by Richard Field from which he quotes makes it clear that Field shares exactly Herbert's agnosticism about whether the heaven-dwellers "Know / What's done on earth," and also shares Herbert's indifference to the whole question.3 "For ought we know," Field says, "the Saints are not particularly acquainted with the state of things here below," and in any case, the important point is thot "we invocete them not." Hernock defends the English Protestent's...