Mystery in The Temple

What is it about?

This chapter situates Herbert’s The Temple in relation to shifting interpretations of St. Paul’s concept of mysterion. In St. Augustine’s influential reading of this concept, the mysteries of scripture constitute a dynamic spiritual context more than static a set of messages; they are more a spiritual environment that is experienced in the first person than a set of divine statements that can be abstracted into a third-person standpoint or possessed once-and-for-all in the form of a message or statement. Many of Herbert’s key poetic strategies only become fully intelligible when they are seen as part of a broader effort to sustain this relatively open-ended view of scripture at an historical moment when it began to decline.

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