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Sanctification and Identity in Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century Literature

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Sanctification and Identity in Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century Literature University of Tennessee, Knoxville TRACE: Tennessee Research and Creative Exchange Doctoral Dissertations Graduate School 5-2012 Knowing the Holy: Sanctification and Identity in Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century Literature Elizabeth Anne Acker [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://trace.tennessee.edu/utk_graddiss Part of the Literature in English, British Isles Commons Recommended Citation Acker, Elizabeth Anne, "Knowing the Holy: Sanctification and Identity in Sixteenth- and Seventeenth- Century Literature. " PhD diss., University of Tennessee, 2012. https://trace.tennessee.edu/utk_graddiss/1259 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at TRACE: Tennessee Research and Creative Exchange. It has been accepted for inclusion in Doctoral Dissertations by an authorized administrator of TRACE: Tennessee Research and Creative Exchange. For more information, please contact [email protected]. To the Graduate Council: I am submitting herewith a dissertation written by Elizabeth Anne Acker entitled "Knowing the Holy: Sanctification and Identity in Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century Literature." I have examined the final electronic copy of this dissertation for form and content and recommend that it be accepted in partial fulfillment of the equirr ements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, with a major in English. Heather A. Hirschfeld, Major Professor We have read this dissertation and recommend its acceptance: Robert Stillman, Laura Howes, Jeri McIntosh Accepted for the Council: Carolyn R. Hodges Vice Provost and Dean of the Graduate School (Original signatures are on file with official studentecor r ds.) Knowing the Holy: Sanctification and Identity in Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century Literature A Dissertation Presented for the Doctor of Philosophy Degree The University of Tennessee, Knoxville Elizabeth Anne Acker May 2012 ii Copyright © 2012 Elizabeth Anne Acker All rights reserved iii Abstract Literary critics have long recognized the importance of religious dogmas to the formation and awareness of personal identity during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Stanley Fish’s seminal work, Self-Consuming Artifacts, argues that the goal of seventeenth-century writers, influenced by the theology of Augustine, was not so much a construction of the self, but a deconstruction of the self as a sacred act. Borrowing from more recent work by Brian Cummings and Gary Kuchar, this dissertation explores the Protestant conception of holiness, or good works, within a salvation paradigm that centered on faith rather than works. In Edmund Spenser’s Faerie Queene, John Donne’s Holy Sonnets, and John Bunyan’s Grace Abounding and Pilgrim’s Progress, sanctification is brought about through a right knowledge of both God and self through the agency of Scripture. In this way, sanctification was effected by the work of God, and the good works of the Christian could be attributed to divine rather than human agency. In The Faerie Queene, Redcrosse’s journey is marked by error and mistaken identities, until he learns from Fidessa and Contemplation how to correctly interpret Scripture and himself. In the Holy Sonnets, Donne articulates the process of re-identification required by the Calvinist model of salvation, both resisting and affirming the self-abnegation that identification with Christ requires. In Grace Abounding and Pilgrim’s Progress, Bunyan frames Christian identity through a definition of the fear of God, which obliges the Christian to identify with Christ at the expense of ties to family and community. This study concludes with a reflection on how the sanctification by identification with Christ was expressed outwardly through the Protestant concept of vocation. iv Table of Contents INTRODUCTION: SANCTIFICATION AND RE-IDENTIFICATION IN THE ENGLISH REFORMATION…………………………………………………………….. …………………1 CHAPTER ONE: THE RESTORATION OF EDEN………………………………... …………25 CHAPTER TWO: “RENOVATIONS ARE ALWAYS ACCEPTABLE TO GOD” …………..73 CHAPTER THREE: BUNYAN AND THE FEAR OF GOD…………………………………110 CONCLUSION: SANCTIFICATION AND VOCATION …………………………………...161 WORKS CITED ……………………………………………………………………………….169 VITA …………………………………………………………………………………………...179 1 Introduction Sanctification and Re-identification in the English Reformation For those who experienced the social upheavals caused by the Protestant Reformation, self-doubt was the inevitable consequence of religious controversy. The Reformation challenged authorities and institutions which had long guided the Christian understanding of selfhood, often turning obscure theological questions into pressing personal dilemmas for those who had to choose loyalties or navigate the social issues caused by government-enforced religious practices. At the heart of these questions was the problem of a personal salvation with all its implications. The Augustinian doctrine of Original Sin, the belief that human nature was hopelessly corrupted by the first sin of Adam and morally incapable of saving itself, shaped not only the doctrine of justification by faith, but Protestant teaching on sanctification as well. While not every Protestant shared a strict Augustinian perspective, the doctrine of moral helplessness was central to Reformation debates and proved to be a defining issue, particularly in England where Calvinism was ascendant under Elizabeth and James. Thus, each English Protestant was compelled to confront a theology that designated him or her a failed self, incapable of realizing the identity that God had constructed within human nature as the image of God. This study is concerned with how three English writers of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries addressed the issue of identity and sanctification, and how a Protestant model of sanctification - one based on the doctrines of sola fide and sola gratia - offered new scope in creating imaginative characters and in expressing private struggles. Edmund Spenser, John Donne, and John Bunyan are enticing characters for a study of the creation of religious identity in the English Reformation because all three were very much a product of England's religious 2 milieu. Spenser belonged to an Elizabethan Church that was Calvinist in doctrine, but which still retained many of the external trappings of Catholic worship. Donne was born into a recusant family, but then left his Catholic heritage to accept ordination into the Church of England when Calvinism was still ascendant in the reign of James I. Bunyan seems to have been born into a family with no particular religious fervor, and his first attempts at religion apparently centered on the parish church. It is only well into adulthood that Bunyan has what he afterwards considers a legitimate conversion experience and joins the Baptist congregation at Bedford. The rest of his life was marked by almost constant conflict with the laws governing the established church. Reformation teaching on sanctification, like the doctrine of justification by faith, has roots in St. Augustine and St. Paul. Luther, Calvin, Zwingli and Bullinger were indebted to Augustine's equation of Original Sin with moral helplessness. "What good work can a lost man perform?" asked Augustine (“Enchiridion” 256). To be spiritually lost is to be morally dead and incapable of acting on one's own behalf. It was justification that raised the dead and made it possible for the individual to become an active moral agent once again. In the process, that aspect of humanity that was defaced by Original Sin, the image of God, could be restored through sanctification. It is Paul who describes Christ as "the image of the invisible God" (Col. 1:15, ESV), and who admonishes Christians to have the mind of Christ (Phil. 2:5). As the incarnate God, Christ restores the image of God within human nature becoming, as Paul calls him, the "last Adam" (I Cor. 15:45). Delivered from the death of Original Sin, the Christian may be restored to the imago dei by becoming like Christ. In both Romans and Galatians, epistles beloved of the Reformation, Paul enjoins the Christian to "put on Christ" (Rom. 13:14, Gal. 3:27). 3 The expression "put on Christ" suggests that sanctification is less about performance than it is about an identification. In his Institutes of the Christian Religion, Calvin argues that the Scriptural promises of rewards for good works do not mean that Christians may take credit for those works. He states, "But though it is by mercy alone that God admits his people to life, yet as he leads them into possession of it by the course of good works, that he may complete his work in them in the order which he has destined, it is not strange that they are said to be crowned according to their works, since by these doubtless they are prepared for receiving the crown of immortality. No, for this reason they are aptly said to work out their own salvation . The moment they are admitted to fellowship with Christ, by the knowledge of the Gospel, and the illumination of the Holy Spirit, their eternal life has begun" (540). Sanctification, like justification, is by the election and grace of God. It is the process of taking possession of and living in the new and eternal life created by the saving mercy of God, and it is brought about through the revelatory knowledge that the Spirit gives of the Word of God. This raises the question of whether or not knowledge itself was understood to be a good work, since the Christian must presumably study Scripture in order to arrive at knowlege. Stanley Fish argues in Self-Consuming Artifacts
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