by Frank Thornsbury
Phillis Wheatley was a culturally confident believer[1] who wielded considerable influence as a poetess in early America. In a previous installment of this brief biographical sketch, we considered the spirited war poetry that won her the admiration of George Washington, as well as that of his officers and of the American public. From there we asked, “What brought Phillis Wheatley to the point of becoming the poetess of the War for Independence?” The answer began with her enslavement. Now we turn to her education, worldview, and poetry, all of which testify to her notable ability to reconcile faith and culture.
Education
After being brought from Africa to America, the eight-year-old girl who would come to be known as Phillis[2] was purchased by John Wheatley, a somewhat well-to-do Boston tailor. Susanna Wheatley, John’s wife, had asked him to purchase a young girl who could eventually perform menial household tasks. However, not long after she had been taken into the Wheatley home, Phillis evinced a precocious nature that led the Wheatleys to tutor her. It’s unclear exactly why and how this transpired, but the education was a boon for Phillis and for her future role as poetess. Not long after she had mastered English, she began to read Latin—all by the age of twelve. She was exposed to the greats of Greece and Rome such as Homer, Ovid, Horace, and Virgil,[3] and read more contemporaneous poets and playwrights such as Alexander Pope, Thomas Gray, and Joseph Addison.[4]
The most important component of Phillis’s education, though, was her exposure to the Bible and orthodox Christian doctrine. The Wheatleys were, after all, Congregationalists who had drunk deeply from the cup of the Great Awakening. They emphasized the importance of literacy as a means to knowing God more. But Phillis’s education in all things Christian and all things classical produced a worldview much older than the Great Awakening.
Worldview
Phillis Wheatley’s worldview was indicative of what Dr. Darrell Holley has called “the Renaissance-Reformation consensus,” a worldview that runs through the works of William Shakespeare, John Milton, John Bunyan, Anne Bradstreet, and many other culturally confident believers. It is a worldview with the Logos at the center and the bests of Judeo-Christian and pagan[5] civilization attending it. Wheatley understood the divine design of every aspect of life. She took the Bible and Christian doctrine seriously. And—as Francis Schaefer said of Rembrandt, another exemplar of the Renaissance-Reformation consensus—Phillis Wheatley’s art “neither idealized nature nor demeaned it,”[6] avoiding the prevailing extremes of Enlightenment rationalism and Romantic emotionalism.
Her poem “On Atheism” is a clear statement of how she saw the world, specifically of how she knew truth.
If there’s no God from whom did all this Spring
He made the greatest and minutest Thing
Angelic ranks no less his Power display
Than the least mite scarce visible to Day
With vast astonishment my soul is struck
Have Reason’g powers thy darken’d breast forsook?[7]
Nature is shot through with meaning that is there and that is knowable due to the common grace of God. Not recognizing this relationship of nature and grace, according to Wheatley, is to forsake Reason! She continues:
The Laws deep Graven by the hand of God,
Seal’d with Immanuel’s all-redeeming blood:
This second point my folly dares deny
On thy devoted head for vengeance cry —
Turn then I pray thee from the dangerous road
Rise from the dust and seek the mighty God.[8]
Immediately, one is struck by the zealousness of her evangelical appeal. On further inspection, the poem reveals perhaps the most important supposition of her worldview. Of the two books of revelation, the “book” of nature and the Bible, Phillis Wheatley obviously held Scripture to be the more important.[9] She warns atheists that it’s one thing to jettison reason by not seeing God’s grace in nature, but it’s another and wholly more terrifying thing to deny God’s Laws that are sealed in Christ’s blood. Wheatley echoes David’s sentiment that “the heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims his handy work”; yet “the law of the Lord is perfect, reviving the soul” (Psalm 19:1, 7).
Phillis Wheatley sought to understand the whole of life in the light of God’s abundant revelation. She accepted that the knowledge we gain from nature and the knowledge we gain from Scripture are consistent. They don’t contradict one another. Because one God made them both, they are complementary. For this reason, her sense of piety and devotion to God was characterized by intellectual renewal through regularly taking in the truth, beauty, and goodness found most importantly in Scripture but also in nature and culture.
The greatest manifestation of her devotion to God was, of course, her poetry.
Poetry
The year 1773 was one of the most important years of Phillis Wheatley’s life. After an unsuccessful attempt at publishing her poems in Boston, Phillis, Susannah, and Nathaniel (the Wheatley son) eventually obtained the help of an evangelical bookseller in England named Archibald Bell; he, in turn approached Selina Hastings, the Countess of Huntingdon, for financial help. Huntingdon agreed to finance the initial pressing of Wheatley’s Poems on Various Subjects,[10] and with that Wheatley became the first African American ever published, a feat made possible by a trans-Atlantic network of evangelicals. What’s more: The publishing of Poems on Various Subjects was instrumental in securing Wheatley’s manumission.
“Thoughts on the Works of Providence,” Wheatley’s greatest poem, is, in many ways, the centerpiece of the 1773 collection. Over the course of its 130 lines, we gain a total picture of Wheatly’s view of God, man, and nature, all compiled with the scruples of a systematic theologian.
ARISE, my soul, on wings enraptur’d, rise
To praise the monarch of the earth and skies,
Whose goodness and beneficence appear
As round its centre moves the rolling year,
Or when the morning glows with rosy charms,
Or the sun slumbers in the ocean’s arms:
Of light divine be a rich portion lent
To guide my soul, and favour my intent.
Celestial muse, my arduous flight sustain,
And raise my mind to a seraphic strain!
……………………………………….
Almighty, in these wond’rous works of thine,
What Pow’r, what Wisdom, and what Goodness shine?[11]
For Wheatley, a proper consideration of nature leads to the worship of God. In this way, she is no Romantic who worships nature because it’s nature. She’s a Christian who values nature because it’s God’s good creation.
Creation smiles in various beauty gay,
While day to night, and night succeeds to day:
That Wisdom, which attends Jehovah’s ways,
Shines most conspicuous in the solar rays:
Without them, destitute of heat and light,
This world would be the reign of endless night:
In their excess how would our race complain,
Abhorring life! how hate its length’ned chain!
From air a-dust what num’rous ills would rise?
What dire contagion taint the burning skies?
What pest-il-ential vapours, fraught with death,
Would rise, and overspread the lands beneath?[12]
God extends His providence, His care for us, through nature. Indeed, God’s providence is so profuse that we often overlook it. He cares for us even in the most minute aspects of His creation, even in the rays of sunshine that are perfectly tuned to sustain life. According to Wheatley, such common things are sacred things because they are elements of God’s provision. And we would do well to notice them.
But see the sons of vegetation rise,
And spread their leafy banners to the skies.
All-wise Almighty Providence we trace
In trees, and plants, and all the flow’ry race;
As clear as in the nobler frame of man,
All lovely copies of the Maker’s plan.
The pow’r the same that forms a ray of light,
That call’d creation from eternal night.
“Let there be light,” he said: from his profound
Old Chaos heard, and trembled at the sound:
Swift as the word, inspir’d by pow’r divine,
Behold the light around its maker shine,
The first fair product of th’ omnific God,
And now through all his works diffus’d abroad.
As reason’s pow’rs by day our God disclose,
So we may trace him in the night’s repose[.][13]
The end of the matter is this:
From, thee, O man, what gratitude should rise!
And, when from balmy sleep thou op’st thine eyes,
Let thy first thoughts be praises to the skies.
How merciful our God who thus imparts
O’erflowing tides of joy to human hearts[.][14]
Conclusion
A thorough understanding of God and His revelation propelled Phillis Wheatley to an energetic life of creation. Because her cultural activity was an aspect of her obedience of God, she didn’t take a slap-dash approach that appealed to the lowest common denominator. She thought about it. She sought theological precision. She actively pursued the true, the beautiful, and the good, because these things are a part of God’s grace.
Let us take up this intentional approach to culture from our sister, Phillis Wheatley, so that we can with her and with all the saints live up to the purpose of our very lives, which is to worship God and to enjoy Him forever.
About the Author: Frank Thornsbury
is a native of eastern Kentucky but now resides in Gallatin, TN, with his wife
Christa Thornsbury, a regular HSF contributor. Frank holds a bachelor’s
degree in history from Welch College and a master’s degree in English from
Valparaiso University. The end of the 2018–19 academic year marked the
completion of his fifth year as Welch’s English program coordinator.
[1]Culturally confident believer as a term to describe Christian literary lights originates from John Mark Reynolds, The Great Books Reader: Excerpts and Essays on the Most Influential Books in Western Civilization (Bloomington, MN: Bethany House, 2011).
[2]At certain points in this essay, I refer to Phillis Wheatley only by her first name in order to distinguish her from the other members of the Wheatley family.
[3]Vincent Carretta, Phillis Wheatley: Biography of a Genius in Bondage (Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 2011), 51.
[4]Ibid. Carretta includes an interview with Wheatley wherein she expresses particular interest in Joseph Addison’s play Cato, an appreciation she shared with George Washington. Wheatley was a colonial through and through.
[5]For the Renaissance-Reformation position on learning from pagan works, see John Milton’s speech to parliament entitled “Areopagitica,” from which is taken his famous defense of promiscuous (or “broad”) reading.
[6]Francis A. Schaefer, How Should We Then Live? (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2005), 30.
[7]Phillis Wheatley, The Collected Works of Phillis Wheatley, ed. John Shields (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988), 129–31.
[8]Ibid.
[9]Carretta, 55.
[10]“On the Death of Rev. George Whitfield” was also featured in the 1773 collection and played a major role in making Wheatley famous in the American colonies. Without this poem in particular, it’s likely that she wouldn’t have reached the level of influence that she did during the Revolution.
[11]Phillis Wheatley, “Thoughts on the Works of Providence,” in The Norton Anthology of American Literature, vol. A, Beginnings to 1820, gen. ed. Nina Baym (New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 2007), 757–58.
[12]Ibid., 758.
[13]Ibid., 759.
[14]Ibid., 760.
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