William kerrigan addresses this element of the poem by pointing out that John Donne could only imagine God from a human perspective. An argument could be created that "Batter my heart" has nothing to do with Christian principles. However, this type of anthropomorphism is common in Christian teachings (360). Anthropomorphism is the ascribing of human characteristics to things that are not human, such as a deity. Since language has no other way of describing a realm that is completely unknown to humans, God's actions often resemble those of humans. For example, "As a father God raises his son to a position of full equality. But as a father God also requires the sacrificial murder of his son to atone for our disobedience" (Kerrigan 360).
Some words may have a variety of connotations which could be sexual, violent, or even moral. Line four contains several examples of words that could have a variety of secondary meanings such as, "break," "blow," and "burn." Many ideas have been expressed about the use of these word. "Repeatedly invoking analogies between human and divine love, Donne's Divine poems suggest that erotic love is our only means, experientially, for apprehending our relation with God" (Guibbory 142). This critic has made the "erotic" aspect of the poem of equal importance with the "divine." It is words such as these that contribute to a repeated need to connect their secondary meanings to the explication of the poem. On the other hand, another critic has discussed the language of the poem as ornamentation for the religious theme. "In style and manner, then, Donne expressed his basic conflict between assertation and submission, alternately sharing deep spiritual experience with his readers and assaulting them aesthetically by various means" (Marotti 90). Still another critic discovers a completely different meaning behind the language of the poem. "In the octave, dominated by images of war.
