The Religious Wars in George Herbert Criticism: Reinterpreting Seventeenth-Century Anglicanism

The Religious Wars in George Herbert Criticism: Reinterpreting Seventeenth-CenturyAnglicanism by Gene Edward Veith, Jr. The religious wars of the seventeenth-century, according to some observers, are being re-fought by twentieth-century literary critics.1 Once again, factions representing Catholics and Protestants, Anglicans and Puritans, are battling it out, each one struggling to attain hegemony over George Herbert and the metaphysical poets. The Roundheads would include William Halewood, Barbara Lewalski, Richard Strier, and me, who have been arguing that Herbert can best be understood in terms of Protestant models.2 The Cavaliers would include Rosemond Tuve, Louis L. Martz, Stanley Stewart, and others who insist that Herbert can scarcely be understood apart from the liturgy, the sacraments, and "Catholic" means of devotion.3 The battle was joined at an MLA Special Session, "George Herbert's Theology: Nearer Rome or Geneva?," as published in the previous issue of the George Herbert Journal.4 Although it is in the nature of religious wars to be to the death, I would like to offer a settlement, a way for both sets of scholars to be right. Although some would see this debate as an example of post-structuralist "indeterminacy," in which the text has no inherent objective meaning, allowing distinguished and learned scholars to come to completely opposite conclusions, I do not. Both Lewalski and Stewart are utterly convincing in illuminating Herbert's poetry because they both focus our attention to important aspects of his verse which are not necessarily incompatible with each other. The reason they might seem contradictory is not because either of them misreads Herbert but perhaps because our assumptions about Herbert and his times are inadequate. Herbert's historical and theological context has often been misinterpreted by both the "Protestant" interpreters of Herbert and the "Catholic" interpreters. It may not be so much Herbert's poetry that needs re-interpreting as it 20Gene Edward Veith, Jr. isthe modelsand assumptions by which weapproach Renaissance spirituality. American views of Protestantism, for example, tend to be dominated by our image of the Puritans, who have loomed so large in American culture. Thus, when we think of Protestantism, we think of the particular strain of Protestantism that we have most contact with, generally anti-sacramental and non-liturgical. In thinking about Herbert's Protestantism, it might be more helpful to see the Church of England in the context of the other state churches of Northern Europe. The churches of Germany and Scandinavia were Lutheran. As such, they followed a traditional and ceremonial liturgy (sometimes even in Latin), tended to retain the authority of the Bishops, insisted upon the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist, and, at the same time and with no sense of contradiction, strenuously affirmed the centrality of the Bible and that salvation is by grace through faith.5 The members of these churches were, in Richard Neuhaus'termtodescribeLutheranism, "Evangelical Catholics."6 Their Protestant understanding of salvation was fully integrated with a liturgical style of worship and a sacramental spirituality. The other state churches of Northern Europe went through many of the same controversies the Church of England went through in regards to worship, ecclesiastical structure, and the nature of the sacraments. The chief difference was that the "Puritan" factions were soundly defeated in the Lutheran countries. The Church of England was much more inclusive and tolerant, choosing to include a wide range of beliefs and practices rather than insisting upon strict doctrinal conformity as the Lutherans did. The Lutheran churches considered the Church of England too Calvinist, particularly in its refusal to affirm clearly the doctrine of the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist. Thus, the Church of England allied itself with the Reformed, Calvinist churches of the low countries and was never in fellowship with the Lutheran churches.' Still, the early Anglican church, in its worship and sacramental life as synthesized with the Reformation Gospel, was in many ways part of what Krauth terms the "Conservative Reformation" in the rest of Europe.8 Herbert's commitment to the doctrine of justification by faith and to a high view of the sacraments was in the mainstream of European Protestantism. Literary criticism has tended to interpret seventeenth-century...