Classical Education by Poetry

Working as I do at the Torrey Honors College of Biola University means that I hear the phrase “Classical Education” quite often. The movement to return to an educational model that focuses on the classics is to be applauded. With the devaluation of the humanities, especially at the university level, there is not a lot of appreciation for those texts that might be labeled as “classics,” even if we do not fully understand what that designation might mean. For many readers, a “classic” is a book that has stood the test of time, is still read today, and has influenced the work of others upon its publication. For others, a “classic” might be something very different. It could include those texts that are called “modern classics,” a seeming contradiction in terms for those of us that teach Homer, Plato, and Sophocles, for example. I was recently told by someone in classical education that he no longer reads and discusses Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov, having opted to replace it with Toni Morrison’s Beloved. I get it, but it is hard to see how that text fits, right now, into the designation “classics.” But, then again, there is no definitive list of what might be termed a “classic.”

Once, over dinner on the campus of Biola University, Eva Brann, a long-time tutor of great books at St. John’s College, Annapolis, and known as the “godmother” of all great books programs, was having a spirited discussion with a group of Torrey Honors College faculty about what constitutes a “great book,” which I believe is simply another name for a “classic.” We found lots of common ground, but had it been a pop quiz, none of us would have earned a perfect score. Even the Great Books of the Western World series, assembled with the assistance of Mortimer Adler and published by Encyclopædia Britannica in 1952, underwent a second edition in 1990 that included the removal of some of the original works. It appears that a “great book” in 1952 may no longer be all that “great” forty years later. In short, all lists of the “classics” or “great books” will be subjective, even if there are a good number of the usual suspects, such as Ovid, Dante, and Shakespeare.

Recognizing the subjectivity of the term “classic” is what allows someone engaged in “Classical Education” to forge a reading list that suits her own “agenda.” Thus, a Christian classical educator will, I assume, read a different set of books than a secular classical educator. Zaytuna College in Berkeley, CA is “committed to studying the Muslim classics,” which, by definition, are not the same books as the “Christian classics.” But just as there is no universal consensus around the “classics,” the same is true of the Christian classics. But it is not difficult, nor should one have to be convinced, that the poet George Herbert (d. 1633) deserves a spot on such a list. His poetry is formative for later English religious poetry (such as Henry Vaughan, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Chrstina Rosetti and Gerard Manley Hopkins) and his style and beauty are, in many ways, in a class all their own. As T. S. Eliot once shared in a 1938 lecture on Herbert titled “A Tough Man in a Tough Age”: “I have been reading the poetry of Herbert’s period, over a long enough span of years to be able to observe a considerable development in my own appreciation and judgment. It is not only greater familiarity, but, I hope, greater maturity of mind and sensibility… which has brought me, to concede to Herbert as a religious poet a pre-eminence among his contemporaries and followers. I am, therefore, at the stage of asking for a revision of his reputation; feeling, as I do, that he has been not so much critically as implicitly underrated.” Christian classical educators would be well-served to agree with Eliot and place George Herbert on their reading lists.

George Herbert was born on April 3, 1593, one of ten children. Because his father died when he was three years old, his mother Magdalen, herself a friend of the poet John Donne, took responsibility for the education of her children. Home-schooled until he was twelve, Herbert then attended the Westminster School in London, learning Latin and Greek, and choral singing, for the students at the school provided music for liturgical services at Westminster Abbey. He then studied at Trinity College, Cambridge where, upon graduation, he was made Fellow, teaching undergraduates Greek, rhetoric, and oratory. At the same time, he was “Public Orator” at the University of Cambridge. Aspiring to become a Member of Parliament, he was elected to office in 1624. But soon thereafter, perhaps in 1625, Herbert experienced what might be called a “conversion” from a secular life in government to a life of service in the Church, immortalized in his poem “Affliction (I)”: “When first thou didst entice to thee my heart, I thought the service brave… Therefore my sudden soul caught at the place, And made her youth and fierceness seek thy face.” Now drawn to God by God, he began to pursue Holy Orders in the Church of England, being ordained a priest on September 19, 1630, serving a small parish church in the village of Bemerton, near Salisbury. Christian classical educators would be well-served to agree with Eliot and place George Herbert on their reading lists. Click To Tweet

As a priest Herbert was a dutiful pastor of his flock, attempting to put into practice the vision that he laid out in his pastoral manual titled A Priest to the Temple, or, The Country Parson his Character and Rule of Holy Life. Herbert’s main concern, as can be seen from this title, was that he and his parish would become holy people: “Avoid profaneness; come not here [into the Temple/Church]. Nothing but holy, pure, and clear or that which groans to be so, may further go at his peril” (Superliminare, Stanza 2). And the way that one became a holy person, in Herbert’s estimation, was through the church; that is, participation in one’s local parish. This became obvious when his collection of poems, The Temple (i.e., the Church), was published posthumously, given that Herbert died of consumption on March 1, 1633, at only 39 years old.

Other than a few poems shared in letters with his mother, Herbert never published any of his English poems during his lifetime. His friend Nicholas Ferrar (d. 1637) published the poems posthumously, using two different manuscripts received from Herbert. The one manuscript contains seventy-five English poems and is organized into three sections: “The Church-Porch,” “The Church” and “The Church Militant.” The other manuscript contains 165 English poems. According to Isaak Walton (d. 1683), Herbert’s biographer, Herbert thought of his poems as “a picture of the many spiritual conflicts that have passed betwixt God and my soul, before I could subject mine to the will of Jesus my Master” and only thought they should be published if Ferrar “can think it may turn to the advantage of any dejected poor soul.” Thankfully, Ferrar did think they were of great benefit so he published them in 1633, just months after Herbert’s death, in an order dictated to him by Herbert for none of the poems can be dated exactly. Herbert was clearly a prolific poet, but he failed to share his poetry or record the times or places of composition. Nonetheless, there is an overarching structure to his English poems, or, to stick with his own image of his poetry, there is an architecture to The Temple.

Herbert begins The Temple on the Church-Porch, with the first poem titled Perirrhanterium, which in Greek means “sprinkler” and is a reference to the waters of baptism. The point of this section is to prepare the reader to enter The Temple properly, to cause one to examine herself appropriately before entering. This is why it is concerned with describing a list of sins or vices (e.g., lust, drunkenness, and sloth) while also exhorting the reader to adopt virtues and spiritual practices, like living according to a rule of life, practicing asceticism, and examining one’s conscience. Herbert also discusses here particular ecclesial realities, such as public prayer, honesty in worship, paying attention in worship, preaching, and the worthiness of a minister. Herbert is instructing the baptized person how to live so as to enter the church building properly.

The second and last poem of the Church-Porch section is called Superliminare. Its title is a reference to the Passover of Ex. 12:22-23: “And dip a bunch of hyssop in the blood that is at the door, and sprinkle the transom [superliminare] of the door therewith, and both the door cheeks: let none of you go out of the door of his house till morning. For the Lord will pass through striking the Egyptians: and when he shall see the blood on the transom [superliminari], and on both the posts, he will pass over the door of the house, and not suffer the destroyer to come into your houses and to hurt you.” In Christian theology, there is a connection made between the Egyptian Passover and the greatest Passover – the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. In Christian practice, the resurrection is celebrated on Easter Sunday, but it is also acclaimed each Sunday in as much as each Sunday is a “little Easter,” creating a direct connection between the Passover(s) and Sunday worship. With Superliminare Herbert instructs the Christian to enter the church building itself through the blood of Jesus Christ. Click To TweetWith Superliminare Herbert instructs the Christian to enter the church building itself through the blood of Jesus Christ. There is, metaphorically, on the transom or lintel of the church door the blood of Jesus Christ, wherein we receive forgiveness and salvation by entering the church. In the words of Herbert, having prepared ourselves in the ways described in the Perirrhanterium we now “approach, and taste the church’s mystical repast,” that is, Holy Communion.

More could be said about the architecture of The Temple and the way it is structured as a journey into a literal church building. But it is also a journey into one’s inner self, an inward journey to God through the heart that mirrors the journey into a physical church. Herbert’s theology follows closely that of Augustine of Hippo (d. 430) so the poet spends time on topics such as fallen human nature (“Full of rebellion, I would die,” he writes in “Nature”), sin and death. But he also turns his attention regularly to those virtues and vices that the baptized Christian believer is either to cultivate or eradicate, with the aid of grace and personal mortification. Like so much of the Christian tradition, Herbert sums up the goal of the Christian life as a life of love, love for God and for one’s neighbor (cf. Matt. 4:37-39), and this is how he ends The Temple, with his “Love (III).”

The poem begins with one of the most well-known lines of Herbert: “Love bade me welcome.” “Love,” as used here, is not just an emotion, much less a sentimental affection for a person or a thing. No, Love is the very persons of the Holy Trinity – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, for God is love (1 John 4:8). Thus, it is God who is bidding the poet. But he immediately realizes that he is not worthy of drawing close to God, for he is “Guilty of dust and sin,” therefore, his “soul drew back.” The reference to “dust” is likely an echo of Gen. 3:19, wherein God tells Adam and Eve, having now sinned against him, that they “are dust, and to dust [they] shall return.” In Herbert’s estimation, he cannot accept God’s welcoming invitation because he is tainted by both original sin and by the guilt of his actual sins. But God is not content to let the poet ignore his gracious invitation for “quick-ey’d Love, observing [him] grow slack… Drew nearer to me.” If sinful humanity cannot accept God’s invitation, then it is God’s nature to draw near to him. If sin keeps one away from God, God’s sinlessness allows him to draw close to the sinner. James 4:7 promises, “Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you.” But if one cannot draw near due to sin, God will still draw near. Then, having drawn near, God, “sweetly questioning,” asks the poet if he “lack’d anything.” A terribilis quaestio for someone who judges himself unworthy of drawing close to God.

But instead of offering a litany of his lacks (i.e., sins and offenses against God), the poet responds, “A guest… worthy to be here.” God says, come here, draw close to me. The poet responds, I cannot. God responds, Why? What do you lack? The poet answers, worthiness. And then God, in his infinite grace and goodness, declares the poet worthy even though the poet continues to emphasize his “unkind, ungrateful” nature. With this, “Love took my hand, and smiling did reply, Who made the eyes but I?” God taking the hand of the sinful poet directs the reader to the kind of intimacy between God and his good creation like that pictured between the Bride and the Bridegroom in the Song of Solomon. Love’s appeal, however, is not based on the poet’s merited worthiness but on his unmerited worthiness as one created in the image and likeness of God (Gen. 1:27). Love, God the Holy Trinity, has created even those “guilty of dust and sin” and that makes them worthy of Love’s love.

Herbert’s poetry is a “classic” because it expresses the perennially great and profound truths of the Christian faith. Click To TweetHerbert’s poetry is a “classic” because it expresses the perennially great and profound truths of the Christian faith. In one last effort to withstand God’s invitation, the poet agrees that he is worthy because he is God’s creation but that he is, in fact, unworthy because he “marr’d” the goodness of his creation through sin. The poet ends where he began, with his sinfulness. And because of that, “let my shame/Go where it doth deserve.” The poet’s request breaks the heart: let my shame take me where I deserve – Hell and eternal separation from God. But God, setting the record straight, asks, “And know you not… who bore the blame?” The poet, as a Christian, knows the answer – Jesus Christ, the final Passover Lamb of God. In that case, Love concludes, “I will serve./You must sit down… and taste my meat.” At last, the poet relents and draws near: “So I did sit and eat.” Just as one enters the church building to partake of the body and blood of Jesus Christ in Holy Communion, so too does the Christian draw near to God to “sit and eat,” to partake of the sweet communion between one’s soul and the Holy Trinity, a communion of the creation with the Creator. Love unioned with the loved one.

The poetry of George Herbert is not a “classic” because it influenced others, though that is true, or because it is still read by many today, though that is true too. His poetry expresses the longing of the human heart for union with its Creator. Herbert’s poetry speaks to its readers because it touches on those themes and asks those questions that have always been the hallmark of the “great tradition”: what is the meaning of life and how do I live it well? For Herbert, union with God is the meaning and living in and with the church is how it is done well. Classical education, if it is to be Christian, must take up and read Herbert’s poetry.

Photo Credit: Stream of Light