Religious Interpretations in his poem
nov. 4th, 2010 by jobasfer
Website 1
I found in this web page: http://www.k-state.edu/english/baker/english233/Browning-JAM.htm , all this information about the poem of Johannes Agricola. As the web says it was a time where there were many beliefes to God and I think that this information could help us to interpret better the poem and the social situation that Robert lived.
Robert Browning’s “Johannes Agricola in Meditation”
One of the greatest English poets of the Victorian Era, Robert Browning (1812-1889) began experimenting early in a genre of poetry that has since become almost identified with his name, the dramatic monologue. His poem “Johannes Agricola in Meditation” (first published in 1836) is an oblique example of this genre, bordering upon dramatic soliloquy, and illustrates as well how the technique can be used for effects of humor and purposes of satire. In the speaker of the poem we encounter the poet’s unsympathetic imagination of the kind of mentality he believed was fostered by the teachings of the tradition known as Protestant Antinomianism.
The antinomians maintained that, with the coming of Christ, God had revealed his true plan for salvation. This of course is a point agreed upon by all those who declare themselves Christian, following Paul, who claimed (Galatians 3:15-18) that God had instituted a “New Covenant” (“covenant” = Latin testamentum, Gkdiatheke) to replace the “Old Covenant” of the Mosaic law. The details, however, about what this new covenant consists in are a major site of disagreement among the various Christian denominations.
Following the Augustinian tradition stressed by Luther and Calvin, the antinomians held that God chooses from eternity those whom he will save, and those who will be cast into everlasting damnation, and that those whom he saves – the saints – He saves by freely (i.e., arbitrarily) suspending the execution of His justice upon them. The antinomians maintained, further, that the saints are no longer subject to the law. (Hence the name “antinomian,” from Greek anti- [against-] and nomos[law].) On this account, true believers (their faith being another product of divine grace, not an achievement of human effort) thus could in effect “do no wrong.” As for everyone else, whatever they might attempt to do to earn God’s approval could only have the effect of intensifying his wrath, no matter what their own sense of their own intentions. This is a special version, then, of the general Protestant tenet that salvation is by faith alone (and that works contribute nothing on their own to salvation).
Johannes Agricola (1494-1566) was a Protestant theologian and friend of Luther who fell into the latter’s disfavor for developing a version of antinomianism. He saw insistence on the Law – for example the Ten Commandments (aka the “Decalog”) – as a case of the Catholic emphasis on good works. “The Decalog belongs in the courthouse, not the pulpit…. To the gallows with Moses!” he once declared. Following Luther’s treatise “Against the Antinomians” (1536), Agricola eventually recanted, but the position he gave up has repeatedly been taken up by minority voices. The view that the salvation of the saints will not be affected by their doing what, for others, would count as a damnable sin can be coupled or not, depending on the thinker in question, with the view that the civil power should abstain from punishing such acts, or some of them. Some antinomians have attempted to set up communities (restricted of course to the presumably redeemed) in which, for example, freedom of sexual congress was legally permissible. Others have held that (“Old Testament”) prohibitions – for example, against adultery or sodomy – should be enforced in the civil (i.e., “temporal”) realm, against everyone, saved and unsaved alike, insisting still that salvation (one’s destiny in the eternal realm) cannot be lost by saints who indulge in such behavior, just as it cannot be gained by conformity to the Law on these points. How orthodox Calvinists understand their doctrine of “the perseverance of the saints” (according to which once one is saved, one cannot lose salvation) without affirmation antinomianism is a point that may interest some.
But on to the poem. As becomes immediately clear, we are listening to the speaker engaged in religious meditation, a pious exercise much practiced during the 16th Century (and before and later). But the assumptions, values and attitudes of the meditator will rather quickly start to give us pause.
Website 2
In this other website: http://www.online-literature.com/robert-browning/men-and-women/4/. I found another website where I read another explanation of the poem and the religion beliefs. It says that the poem presents the doctrine of predestination.
“Johannes Agricola in Meditation” presents the doctrine of predestination as it appears to a devout and poetic soul whose conviction of the truth of such a doctrine has the strength of a divine revelation. Those elected for God’s love can do nothing to
weaken it, those not elected can do nothing to gain it, but it is not his to reason why; indeed, he could not praise a god whose ways he could understand or for whose love he had to bargain.
Johannes Agricola: (1492-1566), Luther’s secretary, 1519, afterward in conflict with him, and author of the doctrine called by Luther antinomian, because it rejected the Law of the Old Testament as of no use under the Gospel dispensation. In a note accompanying the first publication of this poem, Browning quotes from “The Dictionary of All Religions” (1704): “They say that good works do not further, nor evil works hinder salvation; that the child of God cannot sin, that God never chastiseth him, that murder, drunkenness, etc., are sins in the wicked but not in him, that the child of grace being once assured of salvation, afterwards never doubteth . . . that God
doth not love any man for his holiness, that sanctification is no evidence of justification.” Though many antinomians taught thus, says George Willis Cooke in his “Browning Guide Book,” it does not correctly represent the position of Agricola, who in reality held moral obligations to be incumbent upon the Christian, but for
guidance in these he found in the New Testament all the principles and motives necessary.
My interpretation.
I think that Robert Browning in this poem shows his beliefs about God; he says that for God our speed is so fast. With this verse I think that the life that God gives us is so fast and when we don’t know it ends. When I continue reading I note some verses where Browning talks about the predestination, that is, we are as God wants. So I think if everything is the grace of God, why there are many people with many imperfections?
Browning says that with love, with God’s love everything is good and it was a need. I like this verse “unexhausted power to bless” I interpreted it like some imaginary power or maybe unimaginable power but in this religion everyone have it and must to use it.
Browning says too that he doesn’t have the same love to God that God has to him. And this is true, how we can love God over everything? The last verse is a question that Browning does to us and it is if we have to paid a price.