Godly Fear, Sanctification, and Calvinist Theology in the Sermons and "Holy Sonnets" of John Donne

Abstract

I N an influential interpretation of John Donne's religious poetry, John Stachniewski suggests that doctrinal Calvinism underwrites expressions of passivity, fear, and resentment in Holy Sonnets. After tracing influence of Calvinist emphasis on total depravity, double predestination, and prevenient grace in sonnets, Stachniewski concludes that the sonnets reveal that Donne experienced tormented doubt of his salvation in a way not dissimilar to [the] Calvinist despairers.' In response to such a one-sidedly Calvinist reading of sonnets-a reading that Stachniewski shares with John Carey and, with certain qualifications, Barbara Lewalski-Richard Strier has argued provocatively that Donne's Holy Sonnets are not consistently Calvinist in theology, and that throughout Holy Sonnets Donne alternates between on one hand an Erasmian belief in repentance as a means to salvation, and on other hand a Reformation belief in passively received, justified righteousness.2 In advancing his argument, Strier suggests that Stachniewski and others have mistakenly linked Holy Sonnets and Calvinism because Donne's evident preoccupation with religious fear, broadly defined, is a preoccupation that runs throughout Reformation theology and Puritan sermons. Strier questions such an affiliation by pointing out that Calvinist theology, particularly doctrine of justification by