Read Online Paradise Lost (Modern Library Classics) by John Milton, William Kerrigan, John Rumrich, Stephen M. Fallon - Free Book Online
of Christianity and the “whole dispensation of Providence with respect to man” are defined with admirable clarity and concision (Shawcross 1:178). Some have maintained that Milton went wrong in the very decision to assign speech to deity, since this procedure will inevitably bring God down to a human level (Wilkie in Shawcross 2:240–43).
But the deeper issue here is not whether God should speak at all and if he must in what vocabulary. Milton’s God, foreseeing the development of human philosophy and theology, anticipates being held responsible for the sins of Adam and Eve. This forethought irritates him:
so will fall
He and his faithless progeny: whose fault?
Whose but his own? Ingrate, he had of me
All he could have; I made him just and right,
Sufficient to have stood, though free to fall. (3.95–99)
The speech implies that man’s theodical attacks continue the faithlessness of the Fall itself. If someone maintains that God did not make him in such a way that he could be responsible for the Fall, he manifests ingratitude. He wants to have been given more from God than mere freedom. He deems his divine endowment not “sufficient.” With regard to the poem’s readers, God is provocative and ill-tempered. “Go on,” he seems to be saying, “blame me. Doing so can only show your fallenness, your faithlessness, your ingratitude, and your utter lack of responsibility.”
The same sort of provocation, daring his audience to disagree or disobey, marks the Father’s words when he is exalting the Son in Heaven. He demands that the angels kneel and “confess him [the Son] Lord”:
Him who disobeys
Me disobeys, breaks union, and that day
Cast out from God and blessed union, falls
Into utter darkness, deep engulfed, his place
Ordained without redemption, without end. (5.611–15)
It is difficult not to be reminded, as we contemplate such a passage, that Milton hated the bullying ways of earthly monarchs. Why did he make the Father, at times, into a threatening king?
Milton would probably have replied that because God is a king, almighty and eternal, no one else can be. For all others sit in God-like imitated state, aspiring to godhead like Satan himself. God’s legitimacy through merit, not birthright, renders all other monarchies illegitimate, all other monarchs pretenders. This helps to explain why a republican like Milton can have a king for a God, but not why his God should be angry and threatening. God is not always that, to be sure, and at one point amuses the Son by acting the role of some chronicle-history Henry IV worried about usurping northern lords (5.721–32). His aims are merciful, and he praises the Son for seizing upon those aimsand guaranteeing their future realization (3.274–343). When pretending that Adam does not need a mate, God seems playful, and appreciative of a creature whose freedom and rational self-confidence permit him to disagree with his creator (8.357–448). But as we have seen, Milton’s God has a tough side.
This much can be said. Today we are somewhat embarrassed to think about God in terms of human emotions, unless the emotion in question is love. But the idea of God having in any sense a character—with exasperation, anger, jealousy, and wrath to go along with his love, mercy, and playfulness—probably seems childish or simplistic or even (though we have grown suspicious of this word) primitive. As Milton saw things, however, the portrait of God in the Bible was full of anthropomorphism. No form of divine symbolism can represent God as he is. But in the Bible, God delivered the metaphors through which he wished us to know him. There can be no shame in taking him at his word. “Why does our imagination shy away from a notion of God which he himself does not hesitate to promulgate in unambiguous terms?” (
CD
1.2 in
MLM
1148). Milton had little interest in the sort of God we sometimes associate with philosophers and mystics,
But the deeper issue here is not whether God should speak at all and if he must in what vocabulary. Milton’s God, foreseeing the development of human philosophy and theology, anticipates being held responsible for the sins of Adam and Eve. This forethought irritates him:
so will fall
He and his faithless progeny: whose fault?
Whose but his own? Ingrate, he had of me
All he could have; I made him just and right,
Sufficient to have stood, though free to fall. (3.95–99)
The speech implies that man’s theodical attacks continue the faithlessness of the Fall itself. If someone maintains that God did not make him in such a way that he could be responsible for the Fall, he manifests ingratitude. He wants to have been given more from God than mere freedom. He deems his divine endowment not “sufficient.” With regard to the poem’s readers, God is provocative and ill-tempered. “Go on,” he seems to be saying, “blame me. Doing so can only show your fallenness, your faithlessness, your ingratitude, and your utter lack of responsibility.”
The same sort of provocation, daring his audience to disagree or disobey, marks the Father’s words when he is exalting the Son in Heaven. He demands that the angels kneel and “confess him [the Son] Lord”:
Him who disobeys
Me disobeys, breaks union, and that day
Cast out from God and blessed union, falls
Into utter darkness, deep engulfed, his place
Ordained without redemption, without end. (5.611–15)
It is difficult not to be reminded, as we contemplate such a passage, that Milton hated the bullying ways of earthly monarchs. Why did he make the Father, at times, into a threatening king?
Milton would probably have replied that because God is a king, almighty and eternal, no one else can be. For all others sit in God-like imitated state, aspiring to godhead like Satan himself. God’s legitimacy through merit, not birthright, renders all other monarchies illegitimate, all other monarchs pretenders. This helps to explain why a republican like Milton can have a king for a God, but not why his God should be angry and threatening. God is not always that, to be sure, and at one point amuses the Son by acting the role of some chronicle-history Henry IV worried about usurping northern lords (5.721–32). His aims are merciful, and he praises the Son for seizing upon those aimsand guaranteeing their future realization (3.274–343). When pretending that Adam does not need a mate, God seems playful, and appreciative of a creature whose freedom and rational self-confidence permit him to disagree with his creator (8.357–448). But as we have seen, Milton’s God has a tough side.
This much can be said. Today we are somewhat embarrassed to think about God in terms of human emotions, unless the emotion in question is love. But the idea of God having in any sense a character—with exasperation, anger, jealousy, and wrath to go along with his love, mercy, and playfulness—probably seems childish or simplistic or even (though we have grown suspicious of this word) primitive. As Milton saw things, however, the portrait of God in the Bible was full of anthropomorphism. No form of divine symbolism can represent God as he is. But in the Bible, God delivered the metaphors through which he wished us to know him. There can be no shame in taking him at his word. “Why does our imagination shy away from a notion of God which he himself does not hesitate to promulgate in unambiguous terms?” (
CD
1.2 in
MLM
1148). Milton had little interest in the sort of God we sometimes associate with philosophers and mystics,
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