The Christian faith and religious beliefs in Robert Frost Poems – An Analysis

Frost’s poetry reflects the orthodox Christian belief that God’s ways are inscrutable. Frost once said, “For the believer, the surest thing one knows is indeed that one will never understand God’s purpose even though they may be reflected cryptically in nature and in human nature” (Thompson, Years of Triumph 672), “The Secret Sits”, a very short poem with no more than two lines, reinforces Frost’ statement: “We pretend to dance in a ring, while the secret sits in the centre and knows everything”. The poem is an echo of the Bible: “touching the Almighty, we cannot find Him out...” (Job 37:23); “...how unsearchable are His judgements, and His ways past findings out! (Romans 11:33). The fundamental Christian doctrine is that the world is a trial ground for man. This derives from the story of creation. Adam and Eve were created by God and placed in the Garden of Eden. He created the human will free. He gave man reason, the faculty to distinguish between good and evil, So that it might guide the will. The Garden of Eden was an earthly paradise where man could live law unto himself, except for one restraint. He must not eat of the tree of knowledge. God created the tree of knowledge and forbade man to eat its fruit so that he might test man’s obedience. In the same way, after the fall, is a spiritual trial ground for man. It is up to man to choose between God and Satan. This doctrine finds expression in “Trial by Existence”:  it is of the essence of life here.... That life has thrown us for a loop / nothing but what we've chosen to do”.