One of the greatest theologians failed to write a systematic theology for later generations. Even though he had great trials as a spiritual and political leader, he left no manuals for pastors or statesmen. Instead, his inspired gift to the church was a collection of poetry that we call The Book of Psalms. Christians through the centuries have continued in David’s footstep and have written poetry. The Christian centuries have included such poets as Prudentius, Caedmon, the anonymous author of Beowulf, William Langdon, who wrote The Vision of Piers Plowman, Geoffrey Chaucer, Dante, and Christina Rossetti. Many we know because we sing their poems, and here we think of such lyricists as Isaac Watts and Charles Wesley. The poetic Muse has long been a faithful church member in good standing.
Certainly the great theological and polemical tracts and treatises have enriched the Christian faith. Of a truth, the great apologetic works have confounded the enemies of the faith and comforted the faithful. Commentaries on the Scriptures continue to bless both clerical and lay Christians. Books on pastoral theology, guides for Christian living in the home, and devotionals for personal piety all have their places and have played key roles in edifying Christians. Whether one looks to the early church fathers, the Medieval theologians, the Protestant Reformers, the Puritans, or the theologians of more recent centuries, Christianity filled the earth with great books. Not to be neglected, but to be included in this embarrassment of riches is the great heritage of Christian poetry. Imagine a meeting of Christian leaders who are discussing ways to bring revival to the church and reformation to the land. In other words, men who seek be like the sons of Isaachar of whom it was said that they had “understanding of the times, to know what Israel ought to do” (I Chronicles 12:32). Such a group would discuss the need for Christian institutions and Christian culture. They would propose schools and universities, ministries and missions, books and media. Frequently, they would be brought back to that most central mission of Christianity, which is preaching the Gospel to the lost and the whole counsel of God to the saved. In the midst of such a meeting, imagine the silent reaction to the following proposal: “Perhaps we need some good poetry to change the world.”
Such a notion seems limp and dreamy. Surely at such a meeting, after a polite silence, someone would politely say, “That’s a good thought. Now back to funding for a chair in Christian studies at the Harvard University….”
So is poetry merely bric-a-brac? Is it leisure activity for the faint of heart? Can poetry play a role in sanctifying the soul or changing the culture? Do real men read or need poetry?
First, to determine this issue, we need not be distracted by bad poetry. Bad poetry exists in abundance. Just look at almost any greeting cards or find some frilly-cutesy books of inspiration thoughts. Such poetry is filled with sing-song rhymes and sentimental thoughts of love, family, motherhood, and friendship. It is dangerous for intellectual diabetics. A dash to the modern poetry journals yields a different type of revulsion. Much modern poetry is simply rehashed Walt Whitman without Whitman’s literary discipline and religious orthodoxy. (Let the reader ponder and understand.) Bad poetry—whether bad because of syrup or bad because of rebellious disorder—cannot make the case for or against poetry any more than bad music or bad art annuls good music or art.
The case for Christian poetry as a tool for cultural transformation begins with history. Christian transformation always begins with the Bible and then quickly transitions to history. This happens in part because the Bible itself is structured as history rather than as philosophical or theological abstracts. Genesis begins with history, not with a systematic theology on the doctrine of God. In all areas of Christian cultural endeavors, wisdom says to look to the old paths. Look at the history, and go to the sources. Christians did not wake up to the need for cultural transformation with the Moral Majority or the Religious Right.
Paul admonished Christians to “take every thought captive to Christ” sometime before 70 A.D. Even earlier, Jesus said believers are to be salt and light in a decaying and dark world. Even earlier, prophets foretold of godly realms where even the bells on horse harnesses would be engraved with the saying, “Holiness to the Lord” (Zechariah 14:20). Even before that mandates and decrees went forth from Moses, Joshua, David, and Solomon to establish righteous kingdoms, cultures, and laws. The mandate for culture finds its origins in God’s command to Adam and Eve to exercise dominion over an unfallen world, and that command was not annulled or abrogated by the fall.
In Christian theology, the foundations are found in the early church fathers, the Reformers, and their successors. In Christian music, the creative impulses trace back to Christian musicians like Bach and Watts. In fields such as architecture, painting, sculpture, politics, and law, Christians find precedents in history. So, for certain, a defense of poetry begins with an examination of Christian poetry in history.
An historical study of Christian poetry entails enlistment in warfare. But all cultural interaction is warfare, hence Paul’s martial language in II Corinthians 10:3-6. Larry Woidode calls attention to this matter:
Arbiters of consensus, let’s call them, who are largely drawn from the academic community, are working to erode the central fact of history—anyway for those in the Christian community. They would like to remove the slightest suggestion that God, as Jesus Christ, appeared incarnate on the same earth as the poets they celebrate, so they are now busy changing the designation AD (the Latin Anno Domini meaning ‘in the year of our Lord’) to CE, Common Era.
No matter how you fuddle with naming or centuries of acknowledgement of historical fact, however, or even artfully sift the entries in the pantheon of poets of the past, you always come up against that unassailable truth: the tradition in western literature is Christian.
Historically, Christian poetry reinforced Christian doctrine. Christian poetry established norms of language and usage. Christian poetry set ideals of manhood, of courage, and of chivalry. Christian poetry established boundaries and etiquette of male-female courtship and relationships. Christian poetry, in other words, created pictures of how the Christian was to incarnate Christian living in a fallen world.
In some cases, Christian poetry displayed not only the life of faith, but also the world outside of or unfaithful to Christ. Chaucer’s band of pilgrims on the way to Canterbury presents a vision of the very mixed lot of the people that make up the church. The church then (which was the Medieval Christian church at a low ebb), like the church in Corinth, and like the church today, consisted of some very faithful believers, but also people whose motives, lifestyles, and language was far from sanctified, devout, or exemplary. Fittingly, The Canterbury Tales ends with a sermon—a much-needed sermon—admonishing the pilgrims to live holy and chaste lives.
The Inferno, which is the first part of Dante’s Divine Comedy, takes the reader on a journey with Dante and Virgil through hell. There are plenty of screams of anguish and gory images in The Inferno. But the most frightening part of Dante’s Inferno is the mirror it provides us of our sins, whether actual sins or sins toward which we have a propensity. Even a Protestant, yea, even a Calvinist, finds much joy in the middle portion of Dante’s epic, Purgatorio. For here on Mount Purgatory, the sinner finds sanctifying grace and fellowship and the singing of Psalms. The entrance in Hell contains the frightening words, ‘Abandon hope all you who enter here.’ But Purgatory is a place of hope, just as in reality and a more Biblical theology, sanctifying grace gives us a sure hope in this world, in spite of remaining indwelling sin. The final portion of Dante, The Paradiso, brings Dante to a vision of the Triune God before he returns to his earthly task, now certain of what he must do as a redeemed man.
Whether one considers the longer epic poems, and put Milton’s Paradise Lost near the top, or shorter lyrics, time spent with the poems show the boldness, the beauty, and the power of the Christian faith in past eras. Sometimes, the poems let slip a weak theological strand or an overly mystical interpretation. All ages have their blind spots. Still, a survey of Christian poetry has much potential for changing our culture.
Holy Week Sonnets
It should be obvious now that reestablishing the Christian tradition in poetry is quite easy since we are surfeited with riches. Whether Anglo-Saxon and Medieval, Renaissance, or later centuries, Christian poets and poetry exists in abundance. The great epics, like Dante’s Divine Comedy, Spenser’s Fairie Queene, and Milton’s Paradise Lost, are each almost complete educations in the theologies of their times, with insights into the historical events, the mythological traditions, and literary conventions common to the educated classes. Such lyric poets as John Donne and George Herbert have never been bested at poetic arts. Gerard Manly Hopkins and Christina Rossetti created a great counter-witness to the apostasy of the late 19th century. Roman Catholic poet Francis Thompson wrote “The Hound of Heaven,” which is the greatest poetic description of irresistible grace ever written. Like the faithful heroes of Hebrews 11, time would fail us to even list the names of the great Christian poets of past centuries.
For most of us, the roll call of Christian poets begins running thin as we delve on into the Twentieth Century. But while the wellsprings of Christian culture and art ran dry in many areas in the Twentieth Century, God graciously raised up C. S. Lewis, J. R. R. Tolkien, converted T. S. Eliot, and even gave the American South Flannery O’Connor and Caroline Gordon. With the legion of evils, such as theological liberalism, Darwinism, Nihilism, Freudianism, and Marxism, surrounding the shires, the need for Christian theologies and apologies (defenses, not excuses) arose. So God gave revived the Faith through theologians, preachers, and book reprinting.
Christian artistic endeavors have continued to lag behind. Yet there are hopeful signs. Certainly, movies such as “To End All Wars,” “The Passion of the Christ,” and the Middle Earth and Narnian movies show us the potential and range of Christian cinema. The Christian community is awakening to the world of art. But we still need more Christian painters, poets, novelists, and musicians.
Since poetry does not get the kind of billing that music and movies attract, the Christian poets of our day are still largely unknown. So, let me introduce you to Philip Rosenbaum and his collection of poems titled Holy Week Sonnets.
Posterity Press (www.posteritypress.com) has published this collection of twenty-four sonnets in a beautiful small red book. The type and lettering, the ornamental decorations, and the paper in this book are all quite attractive. The beauty is matched by the price of $25, but the production of that which is beautiful cannot be mass-produced and dished out of a drive-through window. The book is small and can be quickly read, but the book is deep and meditative and should be frequently reread. It lends itself to a yearly reading during holy week, hence the title, but is still appropriate for any time of the year.
Sonnets are delicate things—small, dainty, and focused. Yet the form of fourteen lines with a set number of meters per line and a structured rhyme scheme reveal a power—a toughness—to the form. Literary critics of the New Criticism school saw irony as an essential element of poetry. Powerful imagery was always vital in good poetry. The short length of a sonnet demands highly compressed imagery and revels in ironic stances.
As Emily Dickinson said, “If I read a book and it makes my whole body so cold no fire can ever warm me, I know that is poetry. If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry. These are the only ways I know it. Is there any other way?” While Dickinson’s definition of poetry is itself poetic, it helps define the art.
Philip Rosenbaum has some outstanding qualifications for being a poet. He is a Christian. He survived growing up in Washington, D.C., obtaining an English degree from Harvard, and working as a school counselor and director. He lives in a blessed rural region of Virginia with his wife and five children. He authored How to Enjoy the Boring Parts of the Bible and The Promise. This poetry collection, Holy Week Sonnets, was first published in 1999.
Each sonnet in the book is preceded with one or more Scripture references. These Scriptures are printed in the back of the book for easy access. What we found successful in my high school class was to read a poem, read the Bible verses, and then read the poem again. These sonnets are built upon particular phrases—often unnoticed in casual Bible reading—or viewpoints of participants in the Gospel stories.
So we see Christ through the love of the Mary who anointed His feet. We feel the consolation of Christ through Martha who served Jesus. We even experience Palm Sunday through the experience of the donkey carrying Christ into Jerusalem. Such poetry takes what we know in general from the Bible stories and microscopically examines the event afresh. Each sonnet brings the reader back to his own relationship to Christ and to his own realization of Christ’s sacrifice for him.
Certain images remain with the reader. Consider a line like this: “The Tree that looms beyond these scattered palms.” The Christian’s sense is always heightened with foreboding expectation when the Palm Sunday account is read, for we know the where all is leading. Sometimes we learn new things about what was familiar. Gethsemane means “olive press.” Olive oil is a symbol of life and health in the Bible, so we see Jesus in Gethsemane being crushed—in effect—in this olive press for us. In another poem, Christ is likened to a perfect student in class—an ‘omniscient Scholar’—who is beaten for the fools in class, with the subtle reminder that we are those fools. Abraham’s task of offering up Isaac contains powerful typology of Christ’s sacrifice, and this theme finds powerful expression in the poem “The Man Who Walked.”
One of my class’s favorite lines is found in “The Old Man’s Prophecy”: “The Carpenter is tortured by the wood.” Sometimes the effect is heightened by capitalization, as in this case with Carpenter, for Jesus was more than a woodworker. The irony of Christ’s submission to those who should have submitted to Him is powerfully shown here. Likewise, the poem “And Jesus Stood” ends with the seemingly mild and passive line “And Jesus stood before the governor.” The humility of Christ, or to use the Westminster Catechism word, the humiliation of Christ, as shown by Him standing—in the position of the accused and guilty—before a governor (little g) simply gives me that sense of body chill and of head explosion that Emily Dickinson referred to.
So, how do we change the world for Christ? Be part of a faithful church, commit your soul and family to Christ, support Christian schools and missions, acquire lots of books on Christian topics, and read poetry. Whether you are beginning your study of poetry or are well read in the field, Holy Week Sonnets is a great read and great spiritual experience.
Arthur Quiller-Couch said, “ [N]either in these days nor any other can one afford to disregard Poetry without cutting himself from one of the best rewards of living, at once the cheapest to purchase and the most refined to enjoy. To listen to a man or a woman who ‘has no use’ for Poetry is like listening to a husband or wife who ‘has no use’ for children. They can never be answered, and for the simple and sufficient reason that they know not what they are talking about.”
Mr. Quiller-Couch and I stand together. You now have the testimony of two witnesses. Holy Week Sonnets by Philip Rosenbaum: buy and read.
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