The Johannine Renaissance in Early Modern English Literature and Theology by Paul Cefalu (review)

Paul Cefalu's study The Johannine Renaissance in Early Modern English Literature and Theology is written as a corrective to an orientation to the Pauline in recent critical work on the period, through an examination of the devotional poetry of the seventeenth century. In early chapters Cefalu draws on the discourses of Luther, Calvin, Cranmer, and Peter Martyr Vermigli to establish the importance of John to the wider Reformation. In the penultimate chapter he argues for the unrecognized importance of the extension of, or radical appropriation of, Johannine discourses to the dissenting movements of the seventeenth century. The focus here is on sectarianism and antinomianism, with a strong claim that Johannine discourses are central to understanding both.

The Christ of John's Gospel has seen God, he has descended from heaven and returns to it, leaving the Paraclete as comforter. God is love in John's First Epistle. Some key biblical passages, of the true vine and the good shepherd, the turning of wine into water, the raising of Lazarus, and Christ's description of himself as the bread of life, are found only in John and much devotional poetry draws on these themes. It is hard to see, considering this, how the importance of John might have become downplayed.

One of the illuminating strengths of the study is its analysis of the poetic application of Johannine irony, the Socratic-like process through which misunderstandings on the literal level lead to higher and more spiritual forms of understanding. In much of the poetry the result of interpreting a puzzle is reassurance, and there is an interesting relationship between the coolness of the intellectual process and the character of the comfort provided through it. Cefalu's central point is that interpreting the poems through the lens of the Johannine re-orientates the quest away from individual poetic idiosyncrasy and back to a reflection of the biblical source. The poems, in other words, make sense as devotions based in John and there is no need to reach for extraneous explanations beyond this.

This kind of summary naturally oversimplifies a complex and nuanced argument that is in turn grounded in, or responds in careful detail to (and through expansive footnotes), the complex critical work of many others. The study is often tantalizing because many of its points could have been usefully expanded to monographs in their own right. As a corrective it is not the purpose of the study to tease out the complex relationship between the Pauline and Johannine, although some of the subtlety of the task is glimpsed from time to time. It is a useful reminder, for example, that the Augustine whose interpretations of Paul so influenced the Reformation was also well-known by the Reformers for his sermons on the gospel of John.

The discussion on the spiritual comfort of the Paraclete and Johannine agape into the work of Donne and Milton, and of Herbert, Vaughan and Traherne respectively, forms the heart of the study. This analysis is preceded by an exploration of the Eucharist and John 6, Christ as the bread of life, and the importance of hearing for believing in the noli me tangere episode of Mary's encounter with the risen Christ, an episode that also appears only in John. After his treatment of the early modern dissenting movements, Cefalu returns, as if to move the study away from extremes and back to comfort, to the nature of disciple misunderstanding and the Johannine irony in the work of Herbert and Vaughan.

Cefalu argues, for example, that Herbert's use of the vine imagery in 'The Bunch of Grapes' works to allow a single Johannine portrayal of the divinity of Christ to emerge. In 'The Agonie' the imagery of the piercing of Christ's side conjoins the passion and love as in John 3.16. In 'Love Unknown' what is involved is a Johannine correction of...