Poetry as Sacramental Language
The relationship between theology and poetry has often been regarded, erroneously in my opinion, as incidental. As though poetry simply acts as a theological, devotional, or liturgical adornment, rather than constituting one of theology’s proper modes of communication. Such a view is foreign to the Christian religion. When we look to tradition, we must account for the Psalter, the hymns of the New Testament, the visions of Dante, and the sonnets of George Herbert. In each case, poetry has served as a natural theological language whenever divine mystery presses beyond the limits of ordinary speech. Poetry occupies a unique place within the theological endeavor because it participates analogically in the sacramental nature of reality itself. From an Anglo-Catholic perspective, poetry becomes a contemplative discipline, a means of participating in the divine beauty (pulchrum), and a language capable of mediating truths that far exceed normative discursive communication. Poetry speaks in ways that move us beyond the realms of proposition. I would argue that poetry, as a theological language, is ultimately one heart speaking to another laid open before God, inviting both poet and reader into deeper and more substantive communion.
Theology has, and always will, depend upon language. Yet, language itself possesses differing capacities. Some forms of speech define, some classify, and some explain, yet we mustn’t forget that some forms illuminate, evoke, and reveal. Both are of equal value and, within the context of theology, essential.
Much of modern academic theology privileges precision at the expense of imagination. Theology as a discipline has become increasingly, perhaps to its detriment, technical, borrowing much of its methods from the social sciences. These disciplines offer indispensable clarity, yet clarity alone cannot exhaust, penetrate, or enliven the heart in its pursuit of the mystery of God. The God we confess in the Church is not an object to be mastered but a mystery into whom one is drawn. Theological discourse, therefore, demands forms of speech capable of preserving and holding in tension both intelligibility and transcendence. Poetry, in my opinion, provides such a language.
I would argue that this claim is neither romantic nor novel; rather, it is grounded in the witness of Scripture itself. When we look at the biblical narrative, we see humanity seeking ways to process and articulate encounters with God. When facing the grandeur of divine mystery, poetry becomes the most common means of communication. Examples are far-reaching, from the Psalms of David, the Magnificat, the beautiful hymn of God’s salvific plan, to St. John’s apocalyptic vision of transcendence whose symbolic density defies reduction.
“Beauty demands for itself at least as much courage and decision as do truth and goodness.”
Hans Urs von Balthasar, The Glory of the Lord, Vol. I, 18–19.
Hans Urs von Balthasar once observed that “Beauty is the disinterested one, without which the ancient world refused to understand itself.”[1] If theology loses beauty and a form of language capable of penetrating into the heart of mystery, then it loses one of its principal means of revealing truth.
As an Anglo-Catholic, I think this is especially important. The Catholic tradition has long maintained that Truth, Goodness, and Beauty belong together. Which, when we look at Theology, must always inform not just how we treat the content of the discipline, but also the mode of its transmission. Beauty is not decorative. It is, and must be, theologically significant.
Christian theology necessarily employs propositions. The Creeds confess objective truths concerning the Trinity, the Incarnation, and the Resurrection, and dogmatic precision safeguards and ensures the transmission of the Faith. Yet, some of the greatest theologians of the Church have consistently acknowledged that God infinitely exceeds our conceptual frameworks. Saint Thomas Aquinas put it succinctly when he said: “If you comprehend it, it is not God.” Likewise, Saint Gregory of Nyssa argued that every genuine encounter with God draws the soul deeper into the mystery, not into the possession of its intellectual fullness.
Theological language functions analogically; we always make use of finite language to communicate infinite truths. Yes, this language speaks truly, but it never speaks exhaustively. Aquinas again comes to our aid when we consider his own assessment of his project in writing the Summa Theologiae in light of a profound spiritual experience in the late 13th century. He remarked, “All that I have written seems to me like straw.” This remark, often misunderstood as a rejection of the preceding project, is better understood as aligning that project within his experience of God as beyond the grasp of the finite. Theology, properly understood, requires the work, precision, and prayer characteristic of the Summa, while also acknowledging that there is always a limit. Poetry, in my opinion, frequently inhabits this frontier. Deeply Christ-informed poetry occupies a linguistic liminal space between theological articulation and mystery. Rather than dissolving into vagueness and imprecision, poetry aids the Church in communicating the language of the heart - inspired and enlivened by the Spirit.
Poetry can act as a sacramental language, both in its content and in its mode of communication. Catholic theology is always essentially rooted in the reality of the Incarnation. Material reality can, and does, mediate God’s grace and presence. The visible reveals the invisible. In like manner to the way the sacraments of the Church utilize bread, water, and oil to convey God’s grace, so too can language participate in this sort of sacramental logic. It is not a sacrament per se, but in its attendant ability to convey the underlying incarnational pattern of creation, language participates in the music of Heaven. It mediates realities exceeding itself. Poetry, when understood this way, becomes an encounter.
George Herbert, the eminent 17th-century English poet and priest, understood the strength of the poetic in conveying a deep encounter with God. One example comes from his poem “Prayer (I), in which he provides twenty-six metaphors for prayer that all, in their own way, defy a single definition. Prayer becomes, among other things, “God’s breath in man returning to his birth.” No systematic definition could communicate the depth, meaning, and experience of prayer more effectively. Herbert’s poem does not replace doctrine; rather, in showing the vastness of what prayer “is,” doctrine becomes embodied. It becomes tangible in a new and deeply transformative way.
“Prayer the church's banquet, angel's age,
God's breath in man returning to his birth”
George Herbert, Prayer (I)
Hans Urs von Balthasar argued persuasively in his book The Glory of the Lord: A Theological Aesthetics (Vol I) that beauty possesses an irreducibly theological function. Additionally, and perhaps most importantly, this function essentially carries with it the other Transcendentals of Truth and Goodness.[2] Divorcing beauty from the theological project eventually denudes the enterprise entirely because, without it, the soul is not awakened. Beauty invites and extends beyond the confines of a single sensibility; it awakens desire by virtue of its work in attracting and elevating the soul into the mystery of God. Christ says, “and I, when I am lifted up, will draw all people to myself.” (John 12:32) The Greek verb ‘to draw’ is helkō, which implies attraction. A magnetism which, in the midst of a passage outlining the passion and crucifixion of Our Lord, would seem incongruous to our understanding of beauty. However, in light of the complexity and significance of the mystery of salvation, this seemingly horrific moment takes on the strangeness of True Beauty. Beauty, in its heavenward ascent, evangelizes. It calls all who encounter it up and into the life of grace. Poetry shares this same character because it shares in Beauty. It awakens and attracts, rather than arguing. David Bentley Hart writes, “Beauty is not simply an aesthetic category but the very form of truth.” [3] Anglo-Catholicism has historically made this a feature of its work in the life of the church through architecture, liturgy, music, and hymnody. I believe that poetry naturally belongs within this constellation.
Perhaps poetry’s greatest gift lies in its ability to speak in a deeply personal and pastoral way. Saint John Henry Newman chose as his episcopal motto Cor ad cor loquitur, “Heart speaks to heart.” Poetry, in many ways, is one heart speaking to another. Every poem risks vulnerability; it acts as an offering of the self to another, to the world, and sometimes to God. Poetry reveals the inner life. While Newman applied the meaning of his motto to pastoral ministry and friendship, I believe its sentiment offers a compelling theology of poetry.
Poetry becomes a place of encounter. When done well and with prayerful consideration, poetry can and should be a place where far more is communicated than ideas, a place where the poet not only gives of themselves, but sits with the reader as a friend in the midst of an encounter with what is really Good, True, and Beautiful. This is a deeply sacramental vision of the world in which poetry participates in its small but necessary way in the Church’s life. Words on a page become vehicles for encounter and disclosure, ultimately pointing us back to the supreme example of God’s self-disclosure in the Incarnation.
On a final note, I would like to briefly look at the connection between poetry and mysticism. Mysticism, like poetry, is often greatly misunderstood. Some regard it as simply an overly sentimental response or fervor linked to one’s emotional experience of God. Instead, Evelyn Underhill argues that mysticism is an act of love whereby the individual is moved towards union with “Reality” or God, who is the ultimate object of our desire.[4] Mysticism is all about communion. If we reduce mysticism to being about vagueness, esotericism, or ecstatic utterances, apart from the transforming life of grace and growth in holiness, we destroy it.
Poetry possesses a unique capacity in theological communication because it refuses premature closure. Its meanings deepen through contemplation, and its symbols remain open, unfolding, and expansive. Dante’s Paradiso repeatedly strains at the confines of language. The poem's final vision concludes not with Dante explaining God or grasping the fullness of His Being, but with a silence wrapped in the beauty and poetry of mysticism. Beatrice, Dante’s guide and deeply connected to the discipline of theology proper, steps aside as Saint Bernard assumes the role of guide. Dante is deliberately tipping his hat to the idea that what will be conveyed in The Empyrean (the poem’s final experience of God) goes beyond the limits of language itself. Yet, paradoxically, the poem is itself language trying to express the inexpressible. Poetry takes up the mantle of theological communication as Saint Bernard does from Beatrice. It moves us, shapes us, and inspires us towards a deeper union with God. Poetry inhabits a space where the sacramental logic of God’s plan is viewed and experienced without the need to define in absolute terms. The soul, when awakened to the beauty of God, is lifted up by the wings of poetry into a realm of thoughtful contemplation. This is the wonder of poetry. This is its genius.
References
Hans Urs von Balthasar, The Glory of the Lord: A Theological Aesthetics, Vol. I (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1982), 18–35.
ibid
David Bentley Hart, The Beauty of the Infinite (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003), 1–28.
Evelyn Underhill, Mysticism: A Study in the Nature and Development of Spiritual Consciousness (Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, 2002), 79.
