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Critica Paradisul pierdut, John Milton
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87 views17 pagesDennis Danielson - Milton's Theodicy
Critica Paradisul pierdut, John Milton
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© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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/ 17
The Cambridge Companion
to Milton
Edited by Dennis Danielson
University of British Columbia
CAMBRIDGE
UNIVERSITY PRESS DENNIS DANIELSON
8 The Fall of Man.and Milton’s theodicy
Milton’s presentation of his various literary characters can be controversial
‘because so many people still believe in, or worry about, the actual existence
‘of some of his most important ones: Adam, Eve, Satan, Jesus. But Milton’s
God is especially controversial. For all Milton's ‘language of accommo.
dation’ (see PL 5.5724, 6.893, 7.176-9), Milton never presents his God as
if he is not really God, the eternal and almighty Being who created the
heavens and the earth, who reveals himself in the Bible and in the life and
person of Jesus Christ, and t0 whom all beings owe thanks and worship for
his goodness and greatness. Moreover, to believe or not to believe in this
God is such a fundamental thing that one cannot realistically join the conver-
sation created by Paradise Lost and expect one’s belief or unbelief to g0
unaddressed. Nevertheless, Milton does not force the issue concerning
belief in God's mere existence, for that is something he simply assumes; for
him God’s existence is a premise much more than a conclusion (see YP
6: 130-2). In spite of the radical polarities of belief about God in Paradise
Lost, its humans and devils and angels are united in this; they all believe that
heis.
‘The theological apologetic that Paradise Lost does undertake concerns not
God's existence but his nature, or character. Milton ends the first paragraph
of his epic by asking the Muse to raise him ‘to the highth of this great argu-
‘ment’ so that he may ‘assert eternal providence, / And justify the ways of
God 10 men’ (1.24-6). Milton thus announces that he will attempt a theodicy,
a defence of God's justice. This attempt, in the course of the epic, requires
that Milton perform a series of balancing acts. The so-called theological
problem of evil--the problem thata theodicy sets out in some degree to solve
can itself be seen as a problem concerning how to balance three funda-
‘mental propositions to which virtually all Christians, and perhaps others,
assent
1 God is all powerful (or omnipotent).
3 1d Dennis Danielon
Albrecht Der (1471-1528), Adam and Boe ‘The Fall of Man and Milton's theodiey us
2 God is wholly good.
3 There is evil in the world
‘The question, some of whose formulations date from antiquity, is: if we
assert any two of these three propositions, how can the remaining one make
any sense? If God is all powerful and wholly good, how can there be evil in
the world he created? But we know there is evil in the world, so how can we
believe God to be both all powerful and wholly good? Is he able to remove
evil but unwilling? Or is he willing but unable?
Historically there have been those who have ‘solved’ the theological prob-
lem of evil by tacitly abandoning its premises. Some ‘dualists’ have so
defined and straitened God's power as to deprive omnipotence of its mean-
ing. Some ‘voluntarists’ have defined God’s goodness merely as a function
of God’s will, or power, so that a thing is good merely by virtue of the fact
‘that God wills it —a manoeuvre whereby goodness as predicated of God loses
its ordinary meaning. And still others, like the eighteenth-century
‘optimists’ mocked by Voltaire and Samuel Johnson, have defined evil in the
world in such a way that itis not to be seen truly as evil after all but rather
a8 a necessary part of some universal good. None of these wafflings, how-
ever, is acceptable to Milton, and it is a measure of his theodical courage
that he sets out to tell the story of ‘all our woe’ in a way that none the less
asserts God’s power (his ‘eternal providence’) and justifies God's ways.
This philosophical balancing act that Milton knows he must perform also
entails a rhetorical balancing act. For if God’s ways are justifiable not only
inthe abstract but also to actual human beings ‘justifiable to men’; SA 294),
then part of Milton’s job is to respect, and to avoid alienating, readers whom
hhe must at the same time accuse of being sinful and limited in their under-
standings. To undertake a theodicy at all presupposes that we have some
right or ability to arrive at judgments concerning God's nature and charac-
ter. Yet no religious theodicist may ever forget that the God thus being
‘judged! is himself the Author and Judge of all Things. Without the first
assumption, an attempt to explain God’s ways to human beings would be
ridiculous. Without the second, it would be blasphemous. So Milton begins
Paradise Lost by declaring our and his solidarity in the Fall of Man, in its
effects, and in the need to be redeemed from its effects (1.1-5). He also con-
fesses his own ‘darkness’ and ‘lowness’ and his need to be illuminated,
‘d, and supported before he can adequately tell his story and present his
theodicy (1.22-6). Yet throughout his epic he not only provides us with
repeated reminders that we are fallen creatures ourselves, but also pre-
supposes and appeals to our ability truly to recognize that which is good. I 16 Denis Danielson
will return to some of the ways in which Milton, by appealing to that recog-
nition of good, draws his readers into his conversation. For now, itisenough
merely to recognize how Paradise Lost as a theodicy demands of both its
author and its reader a delicate balance between chutzpah and humility.
Now the Fall, or more precisely the Fall of Man, refers tothe first human.
transgression of the divine command. It can be conceived narratively,
embodied in an account ofthe transgression, including both the events lead-
ing up to it, and its consequences; or conceived in doctrinal terms concern-
ing the cause and nature of humanity's wickedness, suffering, and estrange-
ment from God. Although the narrative and the doctrinal may obviously
{influence each other, historically they have often not been particularly
integrated, and Paradise Lost is remarkable forthe extent to which Milton
seeks to establish a balance between the interests of narrative and those of
doctrine, with each enriching the other.
jiblically, the Fall narrative appears in Genesis 2 and 3: the Lord God,
having created man (Adam) and placed him in the garden of Eden, com-
‘mands him, ‘thou shalt not eat’ ofthe tree ofthe knowledge of good and evil,
adding, ‘for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die’ (2: 17).
‘After woman is created, the serpent speaks to her, denies that if they eat of
the forbidden fruit they shall surely die, and ascribes to God a jealous motive
for his interdiction: ‘God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your
eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods’ (3: 5). The woman then eats
of the fruit and gives some also to her husband, who likewise eats. This eat-
ing is followed immediately by their knowing themselves to be naked (3:7),
and not long after by the Lord God’s arriving to curse the serpent with craw!-
‘ng upon its belly, the woman with sorrow in bearing children and in being
dominated by her husband, and the man with sorrow and sweat in his
‘obtaining food from the ground (3: 14-19)
Some modernist critics have viewed this story ‘as a straightforward
aetiological myth, designed to explain why aman cleaves to his wife and why
he is the senior partner in the union, why he has to labour in the fields and
she in childbirth, why we wear clothes, why we dislike snakes, and why they
crawl on their bellies’ (Evans 1968, 9), and, ofcourse, also why we must die.
In any case, the rest of the Old Testament makes no clear mention of the
story of Adam and Eve, and its only biblical interpretation is given in the
‘New Testament by St Paul, who reads it rypologically, thus amplifying and
‘universalizing the significance of Adam and of his transgression by seeing
them as the backdrop for Jesus Christ's acts of redemption. Adam’s sin and.
its effects are symmetrical with the non-sin and life-giving sacrifice of
‘Christ, whom Paul calls ‘the last Adam’ (1 Cor. 15: 45): For since by man ‘The Fall of Man and Milton’s theodicy "7
‘came death, by man came also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam
all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive’ (1 Cor. 15: 21-2; see also
Rom. 5:19),
Although such doctrine, and siich typology, play an important role in
Milton's works, for him the narrative also informs doctrine. His epic
_medium is itself narrative; it must respect the details ofits ur-narrative, and
also inevitably impose some concrete, literary limitations of its own upon
doctrine. Particularly because Paradise Lost vastly expands the biblical story
of Adam and Eve, it brings into view narrative details which, when seen only
from afar, might not even appear doctrinally significant. Milton's magnify
ing lens, however, focuses attention on a whole series of questions about the
Fall story: How can we talk about she Fall when there really were two falls,
Adam’s and Eve's? How can we talk about Adam being tempted by Satan
‘when Satan tempted only Eve? What motivations operated in each of their
falls? How did it come about that they were tempted separately? Was Eve's
fall inevitable? Once Eve had fallen, was Adam’s fall inevitable? Ifthey were
ignorant of good and evil, how could they have been expected to avoid evil?
If God knew they were going to be tempted, could he not have forewarned
them? Why would the serpent have wanted to have Adam and Eve disobey
God anyhow? These and many other questions which Genesis leaves in the
background are brought by Milton’s detailed narrative into the foreground.
where their answers can be inspected for both literary and doctrinal
coherence.
One of the most notable difficulties Milton encounters in thus seeking 10
‘meld things narrative and doctrinal is the issue of divine foreknowledge and
human free will. A vital component of Milton’s theodicy is the “Free Will
Defence’, the model or argument according to which God, for reasons con-
sistent with his wisdom and goodness, created angels and human beings
with freedom either t0 obey or disobey his commands. Such an act of
creation represents a self-limitation on God’s part: it means that he cannot
‘manipulate the free choices of angels and humans, though this claim is no
‘mark against his omnipotence, because the ‘cannot’ isa logical entailment of
his own exercise of power. The Free Will Defence, furthermore, claims
that, although innumerable such free creatures have in fact disobeyed Gods,
‘commands and so created an immense amount of evil, the amount of good-
ness that presupposes the exercise of freedom ultimately ourocighs the total
amount of evil. For without freedom, what value would things such as
honesty, loyalty, and love possess? From Tertullian on, freedom has been
valued also theologically as an indication in human beings ‘of God’s image
and similitude . . . the outward expression of God’s own dignity’, freedom 118 Dewnis Danielon
being the ‘primary postulate of goodness and reason’ (Adversus Marcionem
2.6, 2.5). Milton himself stresses in Areopagitica that freedom is an essential
quality for any moral or rational creature:
“Many there be that complain of divin Providence for suffering Adam to transgresse,
foolish tongues! when God gave him reason, he gave him freedom to choose, for
reason is but choosing; he had bin els a meer ertificiall Adam, such an Adam as he
isin the motions [puppet shows]. We ou selves este not ofthat obedience, or
love, or gift, which sof force. (YP 2: 527)
God of course could merely have created automata, puppets, But except in
1 depreciated, mechanical way, no honesty or loyalty or love could ever have
been predicated of such beings. Therefore, itis at least plausible to claim
that free will, though itis also the necessary condition of a huge amount of
‘moral evil, is worth it — and therefore, too, that God's choosing to make
creatures with that potential for going wrong is consistent with his being
both all powerful and wholly good.
Accordingly, in Paradise Lost Milton's God declares:
1 made [man] just and right,
Sufficient to have stood, though fre to fl.
‘Such I created all the ethereal powers
‘And spirits, both them who stood and them who failed
Freely they stood who stood, and fell who fll.
Not ree, what proof could they have given sincere
(Of true allegiance, constant faith or love,
‘Where only what they needs must do, appeared,
‘Not what they would? What praise could they receive?
‘What pleasure I from such obedience paid,
‘When will and reason (reason also is choice)
Useless and vain, of freedom both despoiled,
‘Made passive both, had served necessity,
‘Not me. 9s),
‘Most readers of Paradise Lost, I think, can accept, provisionally atleast, the
logic of the Free Will Defence —can accept it, in other words, asa reasonable
doctrine. However, Milton has the doctrine appear in a speech delivered by
God, as part ofa larger scene, which in turn forms part of a narrative. The
‘most obvious problem that results is that of anthropomorphism, of God
sounding like a human being vociferously defending his own actions. The
doctrine’s dramatic context thus makes it very difficult for us not to feel the
scepticism regarding the speaker's motivations that we would fee! in any
analogous human situation. ‘The Fall of Man and Milton's theodicy no
But even ignoring what might be called the dramatic problem —even ifwe
can take God's words simply at face value — we encounter a more serious
clash as we read on: a clash between doctrine and narrative. In Book 3, God
carries on to say that angels and human beings were thus created truly free,
0 that if they fall, they cannot blame
‘Their maker, or their making, or their fate,
As predestination overruled
‘Their will, disposed by absolute decree
(Or high foreknowledge; they themselves decreed
Their own revolt, not I: if I foreknew,
Foreknonoledge had no influence om ther fault
Which had no kiss proved certain unforeknown.
So without least impulse or shadow of fate,
‘Oraught by me immurably foreseen,
‘They trespass, authors to themselves in all
Both what they judge and what they choose. (3.113-23; italics added)
‘The doctrinal or philosophical question of whether God's foreknowledge
and human free will can coexist remains an interesting and keenly debated
‘one ~ as it was in Milton's day. For Milton and for many of his contem-
poraries, toaccept any kind of determinism was to abandon free will, and to
abandon free will was to abandon theodicy. One must conclude, says Milton
in Christian Doctrine, that ‘neither God’s decree nor his foreknowledge can
shackle free causes with any kind of necessity’. For otherwise, God himself
is made ‘the cause and author of sin’; and to refute this conclusion ‘would be
like inventing a long argument to prove that God is not the Devil (YP
6: 166).
In so defending free will, however, Milton was not prepared to restrict
God's omniscience, In the seventeenth century the Socinians, for example,
argued that just as omnipotence can do only that which itis logically possible
to do, so omniscience can know only that which it is logically possible to
know; future free actions are in principle not knowable; and what is not
knowable is therefore not foreknowable, even by God. By contrast, orthodox
Calvinists saw God's foreknowledge as based on his decrees, so that if any-
thing is said to be divinely foreknown, one can infer that it is also divinely
decreed, and thus predetermined. Milton denies both of these extremes:
‘We should feel certain that God has not decreed that everything must
happen inevitably. Otherwise we should make him responsible for all the
sins ever committed, and should make demons and wicked men blameless,
‘Butwe should feel certain also that God really does foreknow everything that,
is going to happen’ (YP 6: 164-5; CM 14: 84). 120 Dennis Danielson
However, if God’s foreknowledge implies no determinism, why does God
in Book 3 of Paradise Lost say that humankind’s fault ‘had no less proved
certain unforeknown’ (119)? Seventeenth-century theologians carefully
distinguished certainty from necessity, the latter relating to events in them-
selves, the former relating to knowledge of the events, Thomas Pierce
complains about those writers who, failing ‘to distinguish necessity from
certainty of events... call that necessary which is but certain and infallible’
(1657, 60; see YP 6: 165 and CM 11: 48-50). ‘What God decreed to ofec’,
says Pierce, ‘will come to pass unavoidably, and by necesstation... But what
he only decreed to permit, will contingently come to pass; yet . . . with a
certainty of event, because his foreknocledge is infallible’ (1658, 128). ‘What
is contingently come to pass’, says Henry Hammond, ‘being done, is
certain, and cannot be undone, and God sees it, as itis, therefore he sees it
as done, and so certain, vet as done contingently, and so as that which might
not have been’ (Works (1674), 586).
In this way, for Milton and some of his contemporaries, God's foreknow-
edge is no more indicative of any kind of determinism than is that certainty
‘hich an event proves to have once it becomes a fait accompli. That ve know
an event with certainty does not preclude its having occurred as a result of
free choice. Boethius's Consolation of Philosophy, which contains whatis till
probably the most famous and influential treatment of divine foreknow!-
edge, declares that indeed all of God’s knowledge is analogous to our know!-
edge of things present — itis properly scentia rather than praescientia, since
God dwells in an eternal present that transcends our categories of time and
tense, ‘Divine knowledge’, says Boethius, ‘resides above all inferior things
and looks out on all things from their summit’ (116). And in Paradise Lost
Milton tells us that God looks down on the world, ‘beholding from his
prospect high, / Wherein past, present, future he beholds’(3.77-8).
‘One can thus recognize a Boethian element in Milton’s presentation of
divine foreknowledge, and one can accept the possible coherence of
Hammond's and Pierce's and Milton’s insistence that God foreknows with
certainty human choices that are nevertheless genuinely free ~ and yet still
have profound misgivings as one reads, in Book 3 of Paradise Lost, God's
words about the Fall. For as Martin Evans points out, ‘the abstract idea of
‘an “eternal present” is simply not translatable into narrative terms” (Evans
1973, 178). The ‘mistranslation’ Milton thus has to settle for renders a view
‘of things as temporally present or past and hence already accomplished. In
‘Book 3, where we ‘see God foreseeing’, God's speech very quickly shifts into
the past tense. We are told that man ‘ell fll’ (95), but then that he had
sufficient means to avoid falling (97), that ‘foreknowledge had no influence ‘The Fall of Man and Milton's theodicy Pay
‘on their fault’ (118), and so on, Accordingly, the notion of free will upon
which Milton's theodicy is based takes on an ambiguity that it would not
have possessed had God uttered his judgment only after the Fall, epic time.
Because narrative is a time-bourid medium, a God thus narratively pre-
sented cannot help but sound prejudiced when he speaks of the supposedly
‘unnecessary’ future Fall as iit were a fait accompli. Although the difficulty
may be literary and not ultimately doctrinal, one cannot readily justify
Milton for placing God in what appears such a doctrinally awkward
situation,
Yet overall, Milton’s intrepidity in trying to fuse narrative and doctrine
produces much more clarity than confusion. Quite apart from the issue of
foreknowledge, Milton in justifying God's ways must also render credible
the claim that theologically, psychologically, sexually, and environmentally
the Fall was not necessary. But he must also make credible the Fall's
possibilty. Though the latter claim may appear obvious, historically within
Christianity there has been a tendency to glorify the prelapsarian condition
in such superlative terms that oneis made to wonder how the Fall could have
happened at all. Clearly, if Adam and Eve's perfection before the Fall were
defined in such a way that they appeared supremely and immutably good,
then the Fall ~ especially when one tried to imagine it concretely and
narratively ~ would appear utterly inexplicable, Yet historically within
Christianity there has also been a separate, somewhat lesser tendency to see
the Fall as inevitable (perhaps because of some innate, unavoidable flaw in
bbuman nature), or else as necessary to the greater glory of God and the fuller
development of humankind. For Milton none ofthese alternatives is accept-
able. Ifthe Fal is in principte inexplicable, then a narrative account fit will
Jack credibility, and Milton’s reader will either give up hope of hearing any
rational theodicy, or even perhaps cultivate a suspicion that humankind
did not fall but was somehow pushed. Similarly, if the Fall appears as
inevitable, then Milton’s reader, in spite of God’s disclaimers, will indeed
blame humankind’s ‘maker, or their making, or their fate’ (3.113) — with
similarly disastrous results for theodicy. Finally, of course, if the Fall
appears desirable, then it will not be seen or lamented as fall at all
‘To put the matter technically, Milton had to build into his narrative both
the necessary conditions for Adam and Eve's falling, and the necessary con-
ditions for their standing. One of the main ways he does this is to expose
Adam and Eve to some kind of trial or temptation before they must face the
tempiation. Eve, for example, almost becomes infatuated, Narcissus-like,
‘with her own image in the lake; but she hears and responds to the Voice that
leads her to Adam, and she moves from being attracted to two-dimensional 122, Dennis Danielson
image to loving a real person whose image she shares (4.449-91). Some
critics have thought that this episode and others like it~such as Eve's dream.
‘and Adam’s flutterings of infatuation for Eve ~are evidence that Adam and,
Eveare fallen before the Fall’. But what Milton is doing i presenting Adam
and Eve's potential for falling, their falibilty, not their fallenness. Without
that potential, nothing in the poem would make sense. And yet even given
that potential, the Fall is not inevitable. Indeed, the discipline and moral
‘exercise occasioned by that potential for evil are themselves good and help
constitute Adam and Eve's potential for not falling. As Milton puts it in
Areopagitica:
‘Wherefore did [God] creat passions within us, pleasures round about us, but that
these rightly temper'd are the very ingredients of vertu? They are not skilfull
cconsiderers of human things, who imagin to remove sin by removing the matter of,
sin... This justifies the high providence of God, who though he command us temper-
ance, justice, continence, yet powrs out before us ev'n toa profuseness all desirable
things, and gives us minds that can wander beyond all limit and satiety. Why should
we then affect a igor contrary to the manner of God and of nature, by abridging or
seanting those means, which books freely permitted are, both tothe tall of vertue,
and the exercise of truth... Were I the chooser, a dram of well
