The Theology of John Donne (Studies in Renaissance Literature, 1)

by Jeffrey Johnson

John Donne discussed as an original religious thinker, drawing on his extant sermons for evidence of his personal theology.

John Donne is here treated as an original religious thinker; the evidence for the distinguishing features of his theology is drawn primarily from his extant sermons studied in context, beginning with an exploration of what is forDonne the fundamental belief for regulating Christian faith and practice, the doctrine of the Trinity. Building on this theological groundwork, Johnson goes on to examine such topics as Donne's understanding of common prayer; thepre-eminence of sight and spectacle, in terms of religious self-fashioning and the iconoclastic controversy; the doctrine of repentance, in conjunction with Donne's own sense of clerical calling; and the doctrine of grace, including Donne's views regarding the controversy over the Lord's Supper.
JEFFREY JOHNSON is Professor of English at Northern Illinois University.

184 pages, Paperback

First published June 1, 1999

About the author

Professor at the Northern Illinois University's College of Liberal Arts & Sciences. Professional interests: John Donne's sonnets, sermons, elegies; the metaphysical poets, especially George Herbert and Henry Vaughan; religious, historical and hermeneutical contexts for 17th-century literature.

Reviews

[Chad D · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a short book about a long topic: John Donne as an original theological thinker. In order to make that sort of claim substantive and persuasive, an author would have to master an immense amount of material just from Donne's own pen, and then master the theological background against which Donne could be shown to be original or derivative. Donne's sermons alone run to 10 vols. in the acclaimed Simpson/Potter edition, and will run well over that in the emerging Oxford edition. Johnson does a reasonably good job collating evidence from the sermons and sallies now and then into Donne's poetry and devotions. His claims for Donne's originality often touch on Hooker, Calvin, Aquinas, Augustine, and generalisations (supported by secondary sources in footnotes). Maybe not fully persuasive, but illustrative and tantalising.

Johnson's premiss is that Donne bases his entire theological system of thought on the Trinity. It is a relentlessly communal, relational theology. Johnson has the quotations to back up this claim. Other quotations he doesn't use also back him up. I'm pretty sure he's right and names one of the reasons I find Donne so relationally warm and theologically winsome.