Divine and Human Agency in the Poetry of George Herbert

Abstract

In this article, I explore the technical poetic strategies by which George Herbert represents the relation between divine and human agency. In Herbert’s poetry, God works upon the human will not by external influence but by indwelling human nature and enabling it from within. I show that Herbert follows the contours of an Augustinian theology according to which God is both immanent and transcendent, both “in and beyond” the human being. My reading of Herbert considers two groups of poems: first, poems of divine revelation that depict God and humanity engaged in a dialogue in which only one voice speaks (“JESU,” “Heaven,” and “Coloss. 3.3”), and second, poems about believers’ growing awareness of the interpenetration of divine and human agency in their lives (“Aaron,” “The Odour”). In both groups of poems, God’s action is represented as both internal to and beyond the resources of human agency.