Unitive Theology: George Herbert’s Revision of “The H. Communion”

Abstract

Unitive Theology: George Herbert’s Revision of “The H. Communion” Esther Gilman Richey Helen Vendler was the first to say that “The H. Communion” of the Williams Manuscript (W) allows us to hear Herbert as we have never heard him before, the “tart satire” of this poem perhaps registering the speech patterns of George Herbert himself.1 As Herbert “mocks ‘impanation,’ transubstantiation and consubstantiation,” Janis Lull adds, he balances his acerbic wit with sensitive insights into the Incarnation and the Eucharist. Moreover, Lull argues, Herbert does not abandon theology when he revises this poem for The Temple; rather, he moves beyond what is so personal to him to render “a glimpse of the Holy Communion as it feels to Everyman.”2 The difference between the two versions of “The H. Communion” might best be summed up in Richard Hooker’s keen assessment that “The real presence of Christ’s most blessed body and blood is not therefore to be sought for in the sacrament, but in the worthy receiver of the sacrament.”3 This is Herbert’s recognition too, as he moves from analyzing what occurs in the sacrament to exploring what occurs within the receiver of it. In this essay I want to follow up on Vender’s and Lull’s initial insights by exploring the theological position that Herbert reveals in the poem in W, perhaps the most personal assessment of holy communion Herbert ever offers.4 Because Herbert identifies what occurs in the sacrament within the context of the dispute between Luther and Calvin over this very question, I will briefly summarize their major points of difference before analyzing Herbert’s “The H. Communion” in W. I will then show how Herbert carries this theological position into “The H. Communion” of The Temple by creating a double poem. Giving structural integrity to his unitive theology, Herbert links man and God, bread and wine, body and spirit to demonstrate how two become one within holy communion itself, each section of the poem reciprocally enacting the interdependency and vulnerability of this process. For Luther, the Eucharist weds the material properties of the world to the spiritual properties of Christ in incarnational terms: very much as Christ unites man and God in one person, the Eucharist unites [End Page 97] creaturely and divine elements to make Christ universally available in the world whenever the Words of Institution are spoken. The bread is present and Christ is present; no conversion of one into the other is finally necessary as the Words of Institution join them, the physical elements to the Word who is Christ. In uniting himself to human flesh, Christ sanctifies and redeems the flesh, meeting the flesh in its limitation in order to conquer what sin has brought to bear on it and so to restore it absolutely. The Eucharist, united with the grace made available through Christ’s death, is open to all who will receive it because the material world has now been fully redeemed by God. From this viewpoint, no one can be excluded. Luther draws his understanding of the unitive nature of the divine and the human in Christ from patristic tradition, in particular from the doctrine of the communication of properties as Gregory of Nazianzus, Basil, Augustine, Eusebius, and others in the fourth-century Church understand it.5 Luther is quick to say that the Fathers affirm his stand on holy communion unequivocally.6 For Calvin, the Eucharist involves the physical elements that Christ has offered as a sign of his spiritual action, but there is nothing more to be found in those elements themselves; indeed the physical bread and wine are offered only as a means of accommodating human limitation to divine truth, inasmuch as the flesh has difficulty understanding what is occurring spiritually. The purpose of the elements, then, is pedagogical and analogical: they illuminate in material terms what actually happens spiritually. Just as bread is eaten, Calvin affirms, Christ spiritually nourishes us. But it is the Spirit who carries out this action, not Christ, who remains at the right hand of God in heaven. The Spirit, however, joins the receiver to Christ during holy communion, so that the receiver is transformed...