A whole forceful and eloquent chapter of The Bible and Poetry is devoted to the futility of theological efforts to construct a consistent theory of the Lord’s Supper and of Jesus’s words, “This is my body”. Theologians, says Edwards, need a prior education in literature that just might save them from this kind of intrusion between the text and the community of readers and worshippers who are (or should be) aware primarily of their being summoned to change their lives. His chapters on the Psalms and on that unexpected masterpiece of erotic and spiritual imagination, the “Song of Songs”, demonstrate how a reading looks when fully informed by a proper literary formation; the chapter on the Song in particular is a brilliant piece of interpretation.
I confess, however, to a little (self-interested) hesitation about the dismissal of theological exploration. The passion for systematism may be seductive, but any good and lively reading of a text looks for connections, untangles consistencies beneath the profusion of images and voices, and, for that matter, notices jarring and conflicted moments in what a lazy reader might think smoothly continuous. Poetic texts make us think, and a theology that knows its business will try to balance the urge to think with the imperative to listen, to be pushed back to the raw directness and “presence” of the original words. It doesn’t have to be such a stark either-or as we’re encouraged to think.
But Edwards’s book is nothing if not a passionate taking-of-sides, and all the better for it. The side he takes is ultimately the side of a faith that demands not obedience to human pressure – fundamentalist or ecclesiastical – but the imaginative delivery of the reader’s or hearer’s self to the new world of the Scriptural text, terrifyingly alien and also a place to find yourself at home as never before, with every corner of your humanity recognised and transfigured. Don’t make faith easy and familiar, says Edwards, but don’t make it difficult either, if that means the difficulty of elite, in-group elaboration. Let the poetry do its work and make you stranger to yourself. “The Bible does not call upon our intelligence alone,” he writes, “but, like all poetry, on everything that we are.”
Rowan Williams is the former Archbishop of Canterbury
The Bible and Poetry by Michael Edwards, tr Stephen E Lewis, is published by NYRB at £15.99. To order your copy for £13.99, call 0844 871 1514 or visit Books