The “Pierless” Faith of Emily Dickinson
William Egginton’s excellent book In Defense of Religious Moderation succinctly
describes how agnosticism is necessary in a world dominated by fundamentalist voices. He
begins by contextualizing the problem of fundamentalism as “having to do not with what one
believes, but with how one believes,” which reveals “how all sorts of beliefs, and not just
religious ones, can be affected by fundamentalist thinking” (xiv). He uses this perspective to
argue that the New Atheists, such as Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris, are attractive precisely
because the how of their atheism generates a fervor equal to the how of religious zealotry.
i
Despite the “religious” what, Egginton points out that Jewish and Christian theologies
“emphasize the ineffability of God’s ultimate knowledge,” and that the Koran “insists that God
communicates through symbols because thought cannot contain him” (85). Agnosticism serves
as a how that works with atheist and religious contexts as it “decides to believe in—not to
know—something that it knows it cannot know” (137)—such as the Absolute Truth.
As Egginton suggests, theologians have respected this limit at the heart of belief. In
particular, two Christian theologians define faith in terms of doubt, resulting in a faith that
persists in the seeming absence of God. Paul Tillich describes this as an Absolute Faith, arguing
that this kind of faith points to “the God above the God of theism,” which “is without the safety
of words and concepts, it is without a name, a church, a cult, a theology. But it is moving in the
depth of all of them” (189). Tillich argues that moving past a theistic conception of God is
necessary, as such a view sees “God as a being, not being-itself” and thus is limited (184). Soren
Kierkegaard, writing in the 19th century, argues that faith is a passion generated in response to a
paradox that one must accept without attempting to understand. He writes, “If I am able to
apprehend God objectively, I do not have faith; but because I cannot do this, I must have faith. If
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I want to keep myself in faith, I must continually see to it that I hold fast the objective
uncertainty” (204). Both theologians protect faith from a fundamentalist knowing that requires
certainty, and both argue that humans require faith for fulfilling, integrated lives.
Uncertainty is uncomfortable, though, and a desire for security often causes religious
traditions to exchange awe-producing mysteries for what is more certain and less spectacular.
We lose faith, gain knowledge, but are impoverished in the exchange. Restoring mystery (and
faith) into religion may require supplementing it with an outside source, a site where we still
permit—even hunger—for what is unknown. In this paper, I hold that literature can be a
secondary space for theological thinking, especially thinking about faith, for it is within literary
confines that we remain willing to suspend our disbelief and need for certainty. Additionally,
literature concretizes theological insights into everyday situations, making them more accessible
and practicable than what sometimes emerges out from the books of academic theologians.
My paper tests both whether literature can adequately communicate theological truth to
those untrained in the discipline, and also whether Emily Dickinson’s poetry presents a model of
non-theistic faith that invites readers to become religious moderates. My thesis is that her poems
summon readers from a faith that provides security through God to an uncertain faith that rests
on nothing. My choice of Dickinson is not accidental, as many critics have explored the
importance of faith in Dickinson’s poetry. For example, Linda Freedman writes, “Dickinson’s
poetry allows for a particular structuring of thought which can help us negotiate theological
problems” (3) and Roger Lundin states that “Dickinson’s poetry was an ‘art of belief’” (3).
Problematically, neither Lundin’s biographical study of the role religion played in Dickinson’s
life nor Freedman’s focus on how Dickinson’s poems conflict with traditional religious imagery
reveal the theological implications of her poems or analyze the faith they enable.
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James McIntosh, who focuses on Dickinson’s “nimble believing,” offers the closest
extant argument to the line of thinking I pursue. He defines “nimble believing” as “believing for
intense moments in a spiritual life without permanently subscribing to any received system of
belief” (1). The appeal of this line of thought is reflected in Patrick Keane’s description of the
dialectic of belief and unbelief in Dickinson, which is indebted to McIntosh’s analysis.
Problematically, this analysis does not fully grapple with Dickinson’s innovations. As I will
show, the faith that Dickinson articulates transcends particular “intense moments” and embodies
a way of seeing the world. Also, Dickinson’s poetry goes beyond ignoring “any received system
of belief”; instead, she gently mocks simple theistic conceptions of God, and presents the power
of a faith willing to remain uncertain, a faith glad to exchange a secure what for a better how.
With these goals in mind, I turn to Dickinson’s poems about faith to show how Dickinson
contrasts her objectless faith against both the fundamentalist “blind faith” that refuses to trust
reason and a blind faith content to ignore the senses. Her alternative faith exists sola fides—on
faith alone. To support this claim, I interpret three poems in detail, drawing forth the intertwined
implications of her verses. I begin by showing how her poems about faith challenge theistic
notions of God. After this, I comment on the theological sophistication of her decision to use a
contentless “how” faith as the key to a re-enchanted world. I then test the sense of faith
Dickinson describes against current theological scholarship, revealing the continued relevance of
her insights. I conclude by articulating how Dickinson’s poetry provides a deep resource for
agnosticism and religious moderation in the 21st century.ii
Dickinson’s first definition of faith appears in an early poem (Fr202), which hints at her
later method of negating simple theisms with humor, depriving faith of “God” without offering a
replacement. She characterizes “Faith,” as “a fine invention / For Gentlemen who see!,” before
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adding that “Microscopes are prudent / In an Emergency!” The quotation marks around “Faith”
limit her attack to what only poses as faith. Her target is a faith whose how emphasizes certain
sight (see!) at the expense of prudence. Additionally, she indicates that faith ought not to come at
the expense of reason or one’s senses.iii The critique quickly exposes the flaw of a faith that
desires certainty, and she is careful not to clarify the nature of a superior Faith in its stead.
Dickinson’s only other poem that begins with the word faith provides a positive but
complex definition. This more mature work, Fr978, begins “Faith – is the Pierless Bridge,” a
phrase open to several definitions.iv Most concretely, the 1844 Webster’s dictionary used often
by Dickinson defines “Pier” as “A mass of solid stone work for supporting an arch or the timbers
of a bridge or other building.” A pierless bridge thus offers support that itself is unsupported:
understood theologically, a pierless faith operates without regard to a theistic God. The pierless
bridge is also “peerless,” or, as Webster’s defines it, “Unequaled.” As a verb, Webster’s
Dictionary hints at an even more radical sense of peerless: to peer is “to come just in sight; to
appear; a poetic word,” and “To look narrowly; to peep.” Merging these senses, a “peerless”
bridge, like a pierless faith, goes beyond language, never quite appears, escapes even a narrow
glance—does not require a theistic God. The poem points to a human capacity for faith that
transcends the certainties assumed by religion, art, or science.
Dickinson clarifies the function of this faith in lines 2-4: “Supporting what We see / Unto
the Scene that We do not – / Too slender for the eye”. The importance of the second line ought
not to be overlooked: without faith that our senses do not lie to us, we could not “see” anything
at all. As Hegel argued, knowledge—what we “see” or understand—arises out of what we “see”
and sense.v Line two thus indicates how a pierless faith underlies and supports both our
perceptions and our intuitions. Not only this, but line three has faith serve as a bridge capable of
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transporting us beyond the perceived reality, “unto the Scene that We do not.” Dickinson here
plays on the homonyms “Scene” as a place or context and “seen” as what one beheld in order to
account for the negative, a sacralized world that becomes the “Scene/seen that We do not.” This
extends the function of faith from supporting a reality that we can perceive visually to upholding
realities “too slender” for the eye (or I) to access. This pierless faith is set both above and beyond
a “Faith” that requires the confidence of vision and the prudence of the microscope.
Faith is not an end in itself, however: Dickinson concludes her poem by stating “The
Bridge would cease to be / To Our far, vacillating Feet / A first Necessity”. Faith’s end requires
neither movement nor words—a foot, as Webster’s indicates, is also “a certain number of
syllables, constituting part of a verse.” At its far point “behind the Vail,” faith no longer supports
us and what does support us extends beyond what faith can reveal. Accordingly, Dickinson takes
care that her rhetoric distances itself from any certainty (contextualizing the end in terms of what
“We presume”). Keeping the focus on what she can know—faith—Dickinson establishes that
faith works to support us, move us, transport us, and guide us to the point where it exhausts itself
in a Scene that neither word nor eye can know. What is crucial to note is that the “object” of faith
is not God—instead, it is a goal, or a method, a way of inhabiting and moving through our world.
By the end of the poem, the reader is invited to understand both that the function of faith is to
persist, indifferent to the felt “presence” or “absence” of God or other forms of certain support,
and that this faith reveals the possibility of a scene/seen that we do not.
Having established how Dickinson avoids the perils of certainty and blind faith, and
redirects her reader toward a “pierless” faith that exists without the regard to a theistically
conceived God, I will now investigate a poem that discloses the importance of this faith at a
practical level. I emphasize how Dickinson uses faith to restore the sacred in a world where a
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theistic conception of God seems a poor fit. In her poem, “By my Window have I for Scenery”
(Fr849), Dickinson demonstrates how seeing the tree outside her window anchors an experience
of truth through faith. The first stanzas gather perspectives on what the tree might mean to
others. After her initial description of the scene as “Just a Sea – with a Stem –” (invoking an
instant connection with “See”), she writes that “If the Bird and the Farmer – deem it a ‘Pine’ - /
The Opinion will do – for them –”. She then contemplates how the tree allows a Squirrel to reach
its “giddy Peninsula,” and how the tree has its own “Commerce…Of Spice” that she “infer[s]
from the Odors borne –”. The first two stanzas reveal how faith embraces the evidence of the
senses, projects likely but uncertain possibilities for others (Bird, Farmer, Squirrel), and allows
deductions based on non-visual senses—such as smell. Each thought relies upon an unsupported,
pierless faith that persists without reference to God, the type of faith that Dickinson clung to in
the face of the more conventional, doctrinal, fundamentalist attitudes of her friends and family.vi
The third stanza moves past inference of what is unknown but likely into an affirmation
of what is unseen and unevidenced: this step resacralizes the world. Still discussing the “Pine” as
the “It” in question, Dickinson writes, “Of it’s Voice – to affirm – when the Wind is within - /
Can the Dumb – define the Divine?” The “Divine” emerges here in that which can be
paradoxically intuited and gathered by that which remains unpoetic, wordless—“peerless,”
perhaps. The use of a question to invoke the Divine keeps its presence uncertain and undefined,
but the context of the question—the ability for the tree to bear witness to the presence of an
invisible wind—pushes the reader to affirm the possibility. By suggesting that the tree is a
possible site for divine visitation in the form of a question, Dickinson refuses to treat the tree as
either sacred or profane,vii as idol or as icon;viii instead of presuming that the tree is special,
sacred, or set apart, Dickinson invokes the possibility that the Divine might be communicated
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through the mundane. The verse works to reveal the miraculous possibilities of nature that we
apathetically ignore or overlook through our overlimiting drive toward certainty.
In the fourth stanza, Dickinson articulates a moment of openness, inviting the possibility
of Divine presence by using a sense of faith that surpasses a traditional theistic use of the term.
The first four lines state, “It – suggests to our Faith - / They – suggest to our Sight - / When the
latter – is put away / I shall meet with Conviction I somewhere met”. On the one hand, and as we
have seen, Dickinson relocates Paul’s admonition to live “by faith, not by sight” into the space of
the commonplace and the normal. This obviates the assumption that faith is appropriate only
when particular thoughts or situations (scripture or church) confront us, and expands the domain
of faith to include all moments. The move here is a radical one: by eliminating a theistic
conception of God, one no longer needs to subscribe to the binaries (such as “sacred” and
“profane”) that feed into its system. If the Dumb can define the Divine, then we might encounter
God in “silent” places as well as churches. Moreover, Dickinson pushes her reader to consider
that an experience of God’s absence might be due to our own lack of attention. We feel the
absence of God in our obdurate refusal to consider that trees themselves may prophesy.ix The
work of the first four lines of this stanza is to gather the terms “they,” “sight,” and “Conviction”
in ways that conflict with her own experience of the tree, especially as she identifies the tree as a
possible “somewhere” where Conviction could be found.
The final line of this stanza draws attention to itself as the only “fifth line” in the entire
poem: the other five stanzas are quatrains. A short line, it adds “That Immortality—” to indicate
the irrelevance of doctrines such as the immortality of the soul. Because the fourth line
completes a thought, the supplement of the fifth line seems extraneous. Even if one could be
convinced of immortality, Dickinson’s dash indicates that no more can be said about it. Unlike
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the tree, which gave birth to a number of different interpretations, “Immortality” offers very little
beyond itself. Dickinson’s faith focuses on expanding what life means now, and not in theorizing
about the possibility of an afterlife. There is enough on Earth, perhaps, that remains unseen.
The contrast of what the tree gives—as opposed to what “They suggest to our Sight”—is
developed finally in the last stanza, when Dickinson wonders, “Was the Pine at my Window a
‘Fellow / Of the Royal’ Infinity?” The line break at “Fellow” puts Dickinson on equal terms with
the pine at that moment. The final lines confirm this sense of a faith that develops by including
and surpassing one’s vision: “Apprehensions – are God’s introductions - / To be hallowed –
accordingly –”. Sacralizing perceptions, Dickinson shows that the scenery outside the window
contains as much God as one is willing to see—and that a willingness to see vigilantly, a
willingness to gather the Divine dumbly, is what qualifies a believer as a fellow of the royal
infinity. The truth of this possibility—a “seen/Scene” that both conceals and reveals the
infinite—is contained or gathered within Dickinson’s poem, which, like the tree’s branches,
gives witness to the infinite Disregarding both immortality and “God” as objects of faith,
Dickinson’s vigilance becomes the agency by which intimations of the infinite are drawn out of
hiding and hallowed. The poem ignores “facts,” or things that “they” might say in order to gather
a truth built on the work of vigilance: our mode, the how, of looking invites the appearance of the
“Scene that we do not,” which relies on faith as its sole support.
The poem contains a variant, which expands the possibilities for the reader’s faith on two
levels. First, the content of the variant would replace the final line “To be hallowed –
accordingly” with “Extended inscrutably.” Beyond hallowing what we sense in the world, in
faith, Dickinson implies that “God’s introductions” are meant to be “extended inscrutably”—that
we should continue to push past what is given in the anticipation of the unseen beyond. In his
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reading of the poem, McIntosh wants to “embrace both implications,” arguing that
“apprehensions…are offered to human beings in such a way that they remain unknowable.” He
further argues that “The whole poem illustrates the inscrutability and indefinability of things we
apprehend …The poem has a structure of nimble believing, beginning with a whimsical doubt
concerning the pine, ending with a qualified faith in it, but all along insisting that the pine this
speaker sees is a spiritual subject ‘of which we know nothing’” (144). The faith projected in the
poem invites us to treat the world with a holy awe, to assume that appearances are introductions
to a divine who might appear—if we look with a pierless, unsupported faith.
Scholarly interest in Dickinson’s variants, the alternative words penciled near those they
supplement, has persisted in spite of (or because of) the fact that her variants force readers to
question what a poem “is.” Susan Cameron argues that variants allow Dickinson to choose “not
choosing,” leaving the poems in a state of indeterminacy that requires the reader’s intervention
and affirmation. Cameron writes, “the problem [of what to choose] is not solved by having more
evidence, because the problem is not raised as a question of evidence” (145). Which variant to
read—or choosing both—becomes a matter of pierless faith, a second moment of unsupported
affirmation, a final way the poems allow readers to experience faith without God.
Because Dickinson discloses a sacred that does not depend on traditional religious texts,
her faith remains open to all—even New Atheists. Sam Harris asserts that there is “a sacred
dimension in our existence, and coming to terms with it might well be the highest purpose of
human life,” but that faith is problematic when grounded on “untestable propositions—Jesus was
born of a virgin; the Koran is the word of God” (16). Dickinson would likely see such
propositions as occasions to engage in belief;x as such, she would more likely cling to the
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uncertainty such possibilities invite. Neither affirming nor negating the truth of such
propositions, Dickinson’s faith revels in uncertainty, avoiding the security of knowledge.
This attitude toward uncertainty also aligns Dickinson with post-modern theologians;
Dickinson’s poetry concretizes concepts that theologians struggle to clarify, fulfilling the final
element of my thesis. Jean-Luc Nancy, for example, argues that, “The greatest spiritual and
theological analyses of the Christian faith show that faith is…the adhesion to itself of an aim
without other…the adhesion to itself of an aim without a correlative object, or with no
fulfillment of sense but that of the aim itself.” (152-153). Faith provides its own support,
rendering a theistic object unnecessary. Nancy also argues that faith might well be responsible
for “saturated phenomena” in the world, moving beyond Jean-Luc Marion’s conception of
saturation as a “divine” phenomenon that gives itself abundantly in the world. Indicating that
faith itself saturates objects, Nancy implies that relics are “holy” only after we believe they are
sacred. Dickinson’s line that apprehensions are “God’s introductions” anticipates Nancy nicely.
More than atheism or theology, however, Dickinson’s poetry and her sense of a pierless
faith inspires us to replace fundamentalism with moderation, advises us to embrace the beauty of
uncertainty, exhorts us to a gracious hospitality that invites the “Scene that we do not.” Avoiding
particular propositions and focusing on the miraculous within the mundane, Dickinson pushes
the reader to examine faith as a how instead of a what. The how of a pierless faith exchanges the
predictable world of certainty for a marvelous realm of possibility. Emphasizing our sight
without limiting reality to mere appearance, Dickinson encourages us to view the ordinary with a
perspective that deems all things worthy of divine visitation. One who embraces a pierless faith
remains humble, for nothing that is seen can be certain. The sacred rests not in a particular
proposition or a “what,” but in how we peer toward what is possible instead of what is known.
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Figure One: The Poems
“Faith” is a fine invention
For Gentlemen who see!
But Microscopes are prudent
In an Emergency!
(Fr202)
Faith – is the Pierless Bridge
Supporting what We see
Unto the Scene that We do not –
Too slender for the eye
It bears the Soul as bold
As it were rocked in Steel
With Arms of steel at either side –
It joins – behind the Vail
To what, could We presume
The Bridge would cease to be
To Our far, vacillating Feet
A first Necessity.
(Fr. 978)
By my Window have I for Scenery
Just a Sea – with a Stem –
If the Bird and the Farmer – deem it a “Pine” –
The Opinion will do – for them –
It has no Port, nor a “Line” – but the Jays –
That split their route to the Sky –
Or a Squirrel, whose giddy Peninsula
May be easier reached – this way –
For Inlands – the Earth is the under side –
And the upper side – is the Sun –
And it’s Commerce – if Commerce it have –
Of Spice – I infer from the Odors borne –
Of it’s Voice – to affirm – when the Wind is within –
Can the Dumb – Define the Divine?
The Definition of Melody – is –
That Definition is none –
It – suggests to our Faith –
They – suggest to our Sight –
When the latter – is put away
I shall meet with Conviction I somewhere met
That Immortality –
Was the Pine at my Window a “Fellow
Of the Royal” Infinity?
Apprehensions – are God’s introductions –
To be hallowed – accordingly (Extended inscrutably)
(Fr849)
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University of Massachusetts Press, 1998. Electronic.
Dawkins, Richard. The God Delusion. New York, Houghton Mifflin Company, 2008. Print.
Derrida, Jacques. Acts of Religion. Edited by G. Andijar. New York: Routledge, 2002. Print.
Eagleton, Terry. Reason, Faith & Revolution: Reflections on the God Debate. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009. Print.
Egginton, William. In Defense of Religious Moderation. New York: Columbia University Press, 2011. Print.
Eliade, Mircea. The Sacred and the Profane: The Nature of Religion, trans. Willard R. Trask. NewYork: Harcourt, Inc., 1959.
Print.
Emily Dickinson Lexicon. http://edl.byu.edu/webster. Electronic.
Franklin, R. W. The Poems of Emily Dickinson. Cambridge: The Belknap Press, 1998. Print.
Freedman, Linda. Emily Dickinson and the Religious Imagination. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011. Print.
Habegger, Alfred. My Wars are Laid Away in Books: The Life of Emily Dickinson. New York: The Modern Library, 2001.
Print.
Harris, Sam. The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason. New York: W.W. Norton and Co., 2004. Print.
Hegel, G.W. F. The Phenomenology of Spirit. Trans, A. V. Miller. New York: Oxford University Press, 1977. Print.
Keane, Patrick J. Emily Dickinson’s Approving God: Divine Design and the Problem of Suffering. Columbia: University of
Missouri Press, 2008. Print.
Kierkegaard, Soren. Concluding Unscientific Postscript to Philosophical Fragments, trans. Howard V. Hong. Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1992. Print.
Lundin, Roger. Emily Dickinson and the Art of Belief. Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1998. Print.
Marion, Jean-Luc. God Without Being, trans. Thomas A. Carlson. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991. Print.
McIntosh, James. Nimble Believing: Dickinson and the Unknown. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2000. Print.
Nancy, Jean-Luc. Dis-Enclosure: The Deconstruction of Christianity. Trans. Bettina Bergo, Gabriel Malenfant, Michael B.
Smith.
New York: Fordham University Press, 2008. Print.
New, Eliza. The Regenerate Lyric. New York: Press Syndicate of the University of Cambridge, 1993. Print.
Robinson, Marilynne. Absence of Mind: The Dispelling of Inwardness from the Modern Myth of the Self. New Haven: Yale
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Tillich, Paul. The Courage to Be. New York: Vail-Ballou Press, 1980. Print.
i
Terry Eagleton and Marilynn Robinson also argue that the New Atheists should be seen as fundamentalists in their recent
work.
ii
For the reader’s convenience, I attach her poems in entirety at the end of this document as Figure One. Also, I keep
Dickinson’s idiosyncratic spelling, capitalization, and punctuation, including “it’s” (Fr849) and “Vail” (Fr978). In citing lines that
do not end with punctuation, I place the period ending the sentence after the quotation marks.
iii
Keane, the only critic who examines this poem, briefly mentions that the poem works to demolish “complacent gentility” and
make “us realize the paradoxical lack of any need for so-called faith when one can actually ‘see’” (178).
iv
Surprisingly, of all of the critics interested in Dickinson’s discussion of faith—including Eliza New—only Freedman mentions
this poem. Freedman does not dwell on it, however, mentioning it in passing as an example of how “Dickinson had become
skeptical about the ‘Conviction’ of both science and religion” (162). This absence suggests both that Dickinson has an
abundance of poems suitable for a discussion of faith, and also that a theological interpretation of Dickinson’s “faith” is far from
complete.
v
The first two chapters of Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit deal with the importance of sense-certainty and perception as the
ground or foundation for consciousness.
vi
Alfred Habegger’s biography describes how Dickinson—even at a young age—was assured of her religious uncertainty in
contrast to her classmates. See especially pages 199-205 of his My Wars are Laid Away in Books.
vii
See Mircea Eliade, The Sacred and the Profane. Although later scholars have critiqued this type of binary thinking, Eliade’s
phenomenological account of the importance of the sacred in the mundane or profane remains important. Dickinson’s pierless
faith, ignoring the support of the “Sacred,” upsets the binary by presupposing that everything has sacred potential.
viii
Jean-Luc Marion’s groundbreaking God Without Being contrasts the function of idols and icons, arguing that while idols
dazzle the viewer in the splendor of the visible (7), icons provoke the vision of the viewer toward the invisible (17). Because the
tree “defines the Divine” in the event of a sound, Dickinson refuses to focus on the “sight” of the tree as it persists and instead
acknowledges the temporality of God’s possible visitation.
ix
The notion that nature testifies to the presence of the Divine is not foreign to the Christian tradition. In Luke 19:40, Jesus is
quoted as saying, “if these should hold their peace, the stones would immediately cry out” (KJV).
x
Dickinson frequently uses Biblical images in her poems to unsettle the reader’s understanding of the mundane,
often viewing the natural world as “Eden” or “Paradise.” For example, see Fr1734: “Eden is that old fashioned
House / We dwell in every day “.
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