Godly Fear, Sanctification, and Calvinist Theology in the Sermons and "Holy Sonnets" of John Donne

I N an influential interpretation of John Donne's religious poetry, John Stachniewski suggests that doctrinal Calvinism underwrites the expressions of passivity, fear, and resentment in the "Holy Sonnets." After tracing the influence of the Calvinist emphasis on total depravity, double predestination, and prevenient grace in the sonnets, Stachniewski concludes that "the sonnets reveal that Donne experienced tormented doubt of his salvation in a way not dissimilar to [the] Calvinist despairers."' In response to such a one-sidedly Calvinist reading of the sonnets-a reading that Stachniewski shares with John Carey and, with certain qualifications, Barbara Lewalski-Richard Strier has argued provocatively that Donne's "Holy Sonnets" are not consistently Calvinist in theology, and that throughout the "Holy Sonnets" Donne alternates between on the one hand an Erasmian belief in repentance as a means to salvation, and on the other hand a Reformation belief in passively received, justified righteousness.2 In advancing his argument, Strier suggests that Stachniewski and others have mistakenly linked the "Holy Sonnets" and Calvinism because Donne's evident preoccupation with religious fear, broadly defined, is a preoccupation that runs throughout Reformation theology and Puritan sermons. Strier questions such an affiliation by pointing out that Calvinist theology, particularly the doctrine of justification by