On Paradise Lost

In Isaiah 55:8-9 God says to the prophet:

     8“For My thoughts are not your thoughts

      Nor are your ways My ways,” ...

     9 “For as the heavens are higher than the earth,

     So are My ways higher than your ways,

     And My thoughts than your thoughts

                                                 New King James Version (NKJV)

While this statement perhaps justifies the ambiguity of the story of the Fall in Genesis, it is not really very helpful to Fallen man. It suggests that the thoughts and ways of God are so different from those of man that His ways, as communicated through the priests and the prophets, must simply be accepted without explanation or justification. Unfortunately for ever-curious Fallen man, this demand is a pill hard to swallow. It is like the father who tells the child to eat his vegetable. The child asks “Why do I have to eat vegetables?” and the parent answers “Because I say so. I’m your father and I know what is best.” The father may in fact know that the vegetables are good for the child, but by forcing the child to accept the demand with so little explanation will not encourage the child to conform except under duress.

It was perhaps for this reason that the 17th century Puritan poet, John Milton undertook to "justify the ways of God to men" in the grandest epic poems produced in the English language. First published in 1667 and revised and reissued in 1672, Milton’s Paradise Lost is an imaginative retelling of the story of Eden that expands on the Genesis account, making God appear less arbitrary and tyrannical, and explaining how the Fall came to pass. The poem, mimicking the epic classics of Homer and Virgil, tells its’ story in in twelve “books” of blank verse. It has two dramatic arcs, one telling the story of Satan, the arch-enemy of God and man, and the other telling the story of Adam and Eve. The first 4 books focus on Satan. His story begins in Hell where he and his minions have been banished after their rebellion against God. Satan. Satan, beaten, but not bowed determines to continue his war against God by subterfuge rather than direct assault. He determines to ruin God’s great work by finding a way to subvert it and to this end, he undertakes a hazardous journey to the newly formed Earth. There he finds Adam and Eve in a state of bliss, and he plans to bring them down by persuading them to disobey God’s single command: to refrain from eating of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil.

One of the conclusions drawn from the Eden story is that God stands in opposition to man obtaining knowledge, that he wants man to remain in a blissful state of ignorance, guided by faith rather than reason. To this conclusion, Milton objects and focuses a considerable portion of his poem to exploring the nature of appropriate knowledge. In an earlier essay, “Of Education” Milton wrote: “The end then of Learning is to repair the ruines [sp] of our first Parents by regaining to know God aright, and out of that knowledge to love him." Milton devotes nearly a third of the poem to demonstrating that God does not oppose knowledge and makes provisions to see that Adam’s natural curiosity is satisfied in full. Books 5 through 8 presents a dialogue between Adam and the archangel Raphael covering a range of topics including the creation of the world, the war in Heaven, and the appropriate acquisition and application of knowledge.

God, aware of Satan’s intention to launch an assault on Adam’s idyllic existence, instructs Raphael to explicitly warn Adam of the imminent attack by Satan, that the attack will take the form of deceit and that Adam should resist the temptations of Satan for his own continued happiness:

     Go …Converse with Adam, …and such discourse bring on,

     As may advise him of his happie state,

     Happiness in his power left free to will,

     Left to his own free Will, his Will though free,

     Yet mutable; whence warne him to beware

     He swerve not too secure: tell him withall

     His danger, and from whom, what enemie

     Late falln himself from Heav'n, is plotting now

     The fall of others from like state of bliss;

     By violence, no, for that shall be withstood,

     But by deceit and lies; this let him know,

     Lest wilfully transgressing he pretend

     Surprisal, unadmonisht, unforewarnd. [5: 228-245]

God tells Raphael to give Adam “to know/ Of things above his World, and of thir being/ Who dwell in Heav’n [5: 454-6]. Raphael uses this platform to explain that angels and man share the power of “reason,” i.e., to know and understand, and that they differ only in how they obtain and apply knowledge.

      the Soule (says Raphael)

      Reason receives, and reason is her being,

      Discursive, or Intuitive; discourse

      Is oftest yours, the latter most is ours,

     Differing but in degree, of kind the same. [5: 486-90]

Raphael then explains the responsibility that comes with the gift of free will and again warns Adam that his continued happiness rests in his own hands.

     … That thou art happie, owe to God;

      That thou continu'st such, owe to thy self,

      That is, to thy obedience; therein stand.

      This was that caution giv'n thee; be advis'd.

      God made thee perfet, not immutable;

      And good he made thee, but to persevere

      He left it in thy power, ordaind thy will

      By nature free, not over-rul'd by Fate [5: 520-27]

Adam turns the conversation to cosmology, a matter of supreme importance to Milton’s contemporaries. Since the publication of Nicolaus Copernicus’ De revolutionibus orbium coelestium (On the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres) in 1543, the controversy of whether the sun revolved around the Earth or the Earth revolved around the sun had raged across Renaissance Europe. His heliocentric hypothesis represented the first major scientific assault on the teaching of the Catholic Church that the Earth was the absolute center of the universe. The intellectual climate of the time was dominated by Aristotelian philosophy and the corresponding Ptolemaic astronomy which placed the Earth as the center of the Earth, thereby elevating the importance of Man in the vast in the vast universe. Further, the heliocentric hypothesis denied the literal interpretation of the Bible, contradicting numerous Biblical references that supported Ptolemaic astronomy (see Psalm 93:1, 96:10, Psalm 104:5, 1 Chronicles 16:30 Ecclesiastes 1:5 ). When the famed Italian astronomer Galileo defended the Copernican theory in Rome in 1616, he fell under the full weight of censure from the Church and though he was suppressed for several years, in 1632, he published Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems with formal authorization from the Inquisition and papal permission. Nevertheless, a year later he was placed on trial for heresy and was required to "abjure, curse and detest" the heliocentric opinions he supported in Dialogue. Further, he was placed under house arrest and remained so until his death in 1642. Both De revolutionibus and Dialogue were placed in the Church’s Index of Prohibited Books and remained there until 1835. And least one think that the Copernican controversy was confined to the Catholic Church, both Martin Luther and John Calvin rejected heliocentric theory in favor of a literal interpretation of the Bible. It is the “Galileo affair” that gave rise to claims of anti-intellectualism on the part of the Catholic Church specifically and Christianity generally.

Milton cleverly side-steps the Copernican controversy in Paradise Lost by having Adam explicitly ask Raphael about the movement of the stars, Instead of answering him directly (and thus forcing Milton to come down on one side or the other of the conflict, Raphael takes this opportunity to parrot Milton’s final opinion on the pursuit of knowledge:

     To ask or search I blame thee not, for Heav'n

     Is as the Book of God before thee set,

     Wherein to read his wondrous Works, and learne

     His Seasons, Hours, or Dayes, or Months, or Yeares:

     This to attain, whether Heav'n move or Earth,

     Imports not, if thou reck'n right, the rest

     From Man or Angel the great Architect

     Did wisely to conceal, and not divulge

     His secrets to be scann'd by them who ought

     Rather admire; [ 8: 66-75]

Raphael does not condemn Adam for his curiosity, but he dismisses the question as superfluous; rather than asking about how the universe works, man would do better to just stand back and admire the wonder of it. He continues:

     Sollicit not thy thoughts with matters hid,

     Leave them to God above, him serve and feare;

     Of other Creatures, as him pleases best,

     Wherever plac't, let him dispose: joy thou

     In what he gives to thee, this Paradise

     And thy faire Eve; Heav'n is for thee too high

     To know what passes there; be lowlie wise:

     Think onely what concernes thee and thy being; [8: 167-174]

Raphael shows Adam that the only knowledge he needs pursue is the knowledge that concerns his day-to-day existence. He is encouraged to be “lowlie wise,” meaning that he is to study those things appropriate to his state and station, those things that will make his happy and a more perfect creature of God. There is knowledge that God withholds from man, not because God opposes knowledgeable man, but because man’s limited intellectual capacity is unable to comprehend the knowledge that is withheld. He need not ponder the imponderable or reach for things beyond his grasp because such things can never serve a good or useful purpose. And ultimately, to pursue such elevated knowledge is a waste of man’s time; time that could be more profitably spent in simply appreciating the wonders of the universe and worshiping God for the wonders.

So thoroughly is Adam prepared for Satan’s assault, one wonders how Satan could be successful; however one important event occurs during the conversation: Eve grows bored and leaves to tend her Garden, thus she is not privy to the sundry explanations and warnings of Raphael. It is she who becomes Satan’s target and although she is warned by Adam to be on guard, she falls to his temptation. Significantly, the serpent inhabited by Satan calls the Tree “Mother of Science” and persuades Eve that he gained the power of speech by eating of the fruit of the Tree. Eve is moved more by the indignity of being denied the fruit than by a desire for the forbidden knowledge. That the lowly snake would be able to eat the fruit with impunity offends her pride and in an act of self-assertion, Eve takes the fruit and eats it. The first change is that she immediately praises the Tree in words previously reserved for God:

    O Sovran, vertuous, precious of all Trees

     In Paradise, of operation blest

     To Sapience, hitherto obscur'd, infam'd,

     And thy fair Fruit let hang, as to no end

     Created; but henceforth my early care,

     Not without Song, each Morning, and due praise

     Shall tend thee, [9: 795-801]

She comments that “dieted by thee [the Tree] I grow mature/ In knowledge, as the Gods who all things know” but what specifically has been learned is not articulated. [9: 801-4]  Finally, she begins to feel pangs of guilt, hoping that her transgression has escaped Heaven’s notice and that as a result of her defiant act, she may lose her beloved Adam.

Eve goes to Adam and confesses her crime and Adam, knowing Eve is now doomed to death, resolves to join her rather than lose her and be left alone. Adam’s transgression then is an act of love and not an act of prideful defiance.

    I with thee have fixt my Lot,

     Certain to undergoe like doom, if Death

     Consort with thee, Death is to mee as Life [9: 952-4]

So Adam eats the fruit and

     As with new Wine intoxicated both

     They swim in mirth, and fansie that they feel

     Divinitie within them breeding wings [9: 1008-1010 ]

Adam is then enflamed with carnal lust and the couple fall to “amorous play.” In this scene, Milton endorses the hypothesis of St. Augustine that carnal lust is a product of the Fall. Sated, they sleep and upon awakening, Adam feels the first pangs of guilt. He says to Eve, “we know/ Both Good and Evil, Good lost, and Evil got.” [9: 1071-2] They sew fig leaves together to hide their shame and then “sate them down to weep.” The poignancy of this sad scene is short lived, because they couple immediately fall to blaming each other for their fallen state.

Having discovered man’s crime, the angels charged with guarding Eden rush to God, but instead of chastising them for their failure to protect Adam, God explains:

     When first this Tempter cross'd the Gulf from Hell.

     I told ye then he should prevail and speed

     On his bad Errand, Man should be seduc't

     And flatter'd out of all [10: 39- 42]

God sends his Son, “mild Judge and Intercessor,” to sentence Adam and Eve. The judgment is well known and consistent with that in the Genesis account, but Milton adds on an epilogue to the banishment from Eden. God has the archangel Michael take Adam up to a high mountaintop and there the future of mankind is unveiled. Adam learns of the redemptive life, death and resurrection of the Son of God and he “is greatly satisfied and recomforted by these Relations and Promises.” [12: The Argument]

Milton’s Paradise Lost is rich in imagery and ideas, but Milton’s reflection on knowledge argues eloquently against the charges that God is opposed to the intellect. Milton’s God encourages man’s understanding of the world around him. He sends his angels to enlighten man and satisfy his natural curiosity. And even after the Fall, God sends Michael to show Adam the future of his descendants. God only seems to discourage the pursuit of knowledge that can offer no immediate benefit to man; such knowledge is discouraged not because it is dangerous, but because it is a distraction from what man should be about: the enjoyment of life and the worship of God.