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The Theology of TS Eliot

Johan Bergström-Allen profiles the poet

Artists and writers have often had much to teach Christians about the world around them. They express the mysteries of faith in a more concise and beautiful way than many traditional theologians. One prime example is the poet, critic, and playwright Thomas Stearns Eliot (1888–1965).

Eliot had a keen interest in matters of faith and theology. American by birth, Eliot was a student at Harvard, and wrote his thesis on the nineteenth-century philosopher F. H. Bradley. He also studied in Germany, and at the Sorbonne, before coming to Merton College, Oxford, where he settled. He won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1948.

Eliot turned to Christianity in 1927. Specifically, he rejected the Unitarianism of his upbringing, and embraced Anglo-Catholicism, in a public and controversial conversion. He wrote his best-known conversion poem, Ash Wednesday the following year.

Eliot was interested in the writings of previous critics of ethics and commentators on faith, such as Matthew Arnold and Walter Pater. As a scholar of English, he was keen not to confuse theology and literature, but he acknowledged that the two approaches need not conflict with each other. Indeed, he believed that writing was a way of approaching the great mysteries of human life.

Eliot was a well-known celebrity and cultural commentator during his own lifetime. Eliot posited that culture was, in fact, simply the expression of a nation's religion, in various diverse forms. Because of his interest in civilization and society, much of his study was interested in the ritual, rubric, iconography, and cult of religion, be it pagan simplicity or Christian hierarchy.

Eliot was well aware that literature has often had an impact on religion, and vice-versa. In a lot of his work he explored how society encouraged or prohibited religion and literature. He was also preoccupied with the ways in which writers before him had approached questions of faith, such as Dante, Virgil, Shakespeare and Baudelaire.

Eliot also believed that a lot of the most remarkable achievements of culture had arisen out of discord and disunity. He thought that society in his own age had broken down to a large extent, as expressed in his great modernist poem The Waste Land. Writing after the Great War, he felt that modern life was rife with futility and anarchy. It was his interest in the institutions of society that led him to see the importance of communal worship, and the significance of religious practice for entire nations, as well as for individual souls.

Eliot was always interested in the potentials and limitations of other religions, as well as of Christianity. Buddhism attracted him for everything it has to say about the pain of human life and desire, and sunyata (divine emptiness). He had a great interest in the Bhagavad-Gita, and a fascination with the occult and with the mysticism of eastern religions. Yet he advocated the need for systematic belief structures, and did not fully embrace the Confucianism of his friend Ezra Pound. Eliot was very interested in mysticism, but felt the need to commit vivid sensations of mystical moments to paper, some of which are the most profound pieces of Christian creativity of the last century.

The force and insight of Eliot's work often arose from his personal experience. Eliot's personal life was not without its periods of faith and doubt. He often suffered financial difficulties, was of an anxious disposition, and his marriage to his first wife, Vivien, broke down partially as a result of a nervous illness she was suffering.

Eliot wrote poetry partly as a means of escaping from the trials of his life, but he also died saying that his creativity had caused him great personal suffering. He wrote several plays: Murder in the Cathedral , The Family Reunion, The Cocktail Party, and Four Quartets. These all dealt with the religious aspects of time and redemption. Even when writing about the suffering of individual people, Eliot maintained a sense of hope, and he was not given over to despair.

His theology was complex, and orthodox. Often he treated Biblical themes in a new light. For example, his description of the “third who walks always beside you” in The Waste Land allows a deep reflection upon the Emmaus story.

Indeed, that is why Eliot is influential for today's Christian. He offers a new way of looking at age-old questions. He uses his God-given gift of writing to approach the mysteries of God. His poetry and plays can give today's follower of Jesus a fresh awareness of the startling nature of the universe.

For some of Eliot's own writings on the relationship between religion and society, I recommend his Clark Lectures, After Strange Gods, “Thoughts after Lambeth”, and “Notes Towards the Definition of Culture”. Some of his greatest reflections on religion include the poems “Mr. Eliot's Sunday Morning Service”, “Whispers of Immortality” and “The Hippopotamus”.

With the drawing of this Love and the voice of this Calling …
All shall be well and
All manner of thing shall be well

“Little Gidding”, v. 5

Johan Bergström-Allen will graduate this summer in English Literature.

Last modified: 25th November 2005