529 - Spelling the Word: George Herbert and the Bible

Spelling the Word: George Herbert and the Bible

By Chana Bloch
Berkeley, University of California Press, 1985. 324 Pp. $29.00.

After two centuries of neglect, the seventeenth-century English clergy-poet, George Herbert, is recognized today as a poet of the first rank. His major work, The Temple, which consists of 164 individual poems that together portray the Christian pilgrimage, has been the subject of a dozen or more outstanding studies, including a pioneering monograph by T.S. Eliot. Chana Bloch, a professor of English at Mills

530 - Spelling the Word: George Herbert and the Bible

College, is herself a poet and translator of poetry. Her book concentrates on Herbert's understanding and use of the Bible. She is particularly interested in finding clues to the creative process. This may sound unduly analytic, but in fact it contributes to an understanding of the interplay of the Bible and Herbert's entire person. From that interplay, one comes to a greater appreciation of the Bible and how to use it oneself.

No reader of Herbert can fail to realize that the Bible influenced him deeply. This study is the first to make this the perspective from which to study Herbert and to argue with great success that an understanding of the role of the Bible in Herbert solves many critical questions: Are the poems public or private, didactic or expressive, self-consuming or self-accepting? What are we to make of the "happy endings" that leave some twentieth-century readers so unhappy? There are chapters on the relation of the Bible to doctrine and life, rhetoric, the relation of the old to the new life, Christian behavior, and praise.

The book is written in such a way that the professional student of' English must take its argument seriously. But its style is also lively and easy to follow, making it immediately accessible to non-specialists. Of' course, a person already familiar with Herbert will find it more interesting and useful, but the person encountering Herbert for the first time will likely be inspired to get a copy of The Temple and read Herbert firsthand.

I myself have always admired Herbert for his presentation of the Christian life or pilgrimage, especially because there has been little guidance in modern theology on sanctification, on how we are to conform our lives to the love of God, especially the love manifest on the Cross. I was not prepared, however, for the impact Herbert's treatment of the Bible, as presented by Bloch, would have. For example, the poem "The Quip" contrasts the attractions of the world with the believer's paltry achievement. The poet undoes the distress each voice causes him with the refrain "But thou shalt answer, Lord, for me," a paraphrase of' Psalm 38:15. This is not simply a literary device, Bloch argues, but "reflects an actual situation from life: the believer in distress repeating verses from the Psalms in order to invoke their saving power." Again and again, human wit is opposed by the authority of Scripture in such a way that the power of the Word is experienced. Herbert's masterful knowledge of the Bible and his ability to make deep and rich connections between its parts are instructive for this age, which suffers so much from the way critical study of the Bible has fragmented it and rendered it difficult to hear the Word of God. The intellectual, literary, and spiritual power of Herbert open us to the power of that Word.

DIOGENES ALLEN

Princeton Theological Seminary
Princeton, New Jersey