Katie Arthur

The word “holy” has been used throughout time to mean many different things, but I will be using it in a very specific sense that has very little to do with the halos around the apostles’ heads in those flat early paintings.  When we see the gold words pressed into the kind crinkly black leather, “The Holy Bible,” the word “holy” takes on two important implications.  Because it is holy, it is first separate.  It is on its own level high above all other teaching, in authority, trustworthiness, and power because it is not from human minds, but from the mind of God.  Second, it is sufficient.  Because it is the highest, most ideal form of teaching, it is necessarily the most comprehensive.  None other is needed.  God, being by nature perfect, would not create something incomplete if it needed to be complete.

In 17^th-century Europe, the Renaissance was reintroducing a general appreciation for academia in the ancient manner, for classical ideals and thoughts.  Living among the upheaval of traditional thought patterns was John Milton, a Puritan, not a Catholic, and beyond that, not an Anglican.  He was a very independent man in his views on everything in life.  The Renaissance gave him leave to use his mind as he wished, and his Puritanism gave him leave to use his beliefs as he wished.

In this setting of classicism, of noble and high estimations of the intellectual mind of man, paired with his fierce independence, Milton goes into creating the greatest poetic work in the English language.  With the general intellectual interest shifting back to the classical period, naturally the literary structures of the Renaissance were also informed by the classical modes, and most specifically by the ancients’ mythology.  Guibbory points out because the themes and patterns of the ancients’ writings had been instilled in him since the beginning of his education, Milton must necessarily be influenced in the way he thinks and writes, even about Christianity, by this classical mythology.  I would argue, based on the personal freedom he exercised, and that freedom seen especially in his doctrine of Written Scripture, it is clear Milton did not consider the written Word of God to be “holy,” and this is the reason for his rampant use of the styles and themes from classical mythology in Paradise Lost.  For Milton, the Bible was not separate, for he used mythology and scripture together.  For Milton, neither was it sufficient, for he found he could not write about Ultimate Truths completely without the use of his classical mythology.

Milton wrote a giant treatise outlining all his beliefs on all things Christianity, and within it, we find he believed some things about the Scriptures that are key to understanding the way he wrote Paradise Lost.  He says in his De Doctrina Christiana the Scriptures are “divinely inspired” and “an ideal instrument for educating even unlearned readers in those matters which have most to do with salvation” (Kerrigan 1296).  Milton says the written word is sufficient for salvation, but he goes on to say “we have, particularly under the gospel, a double scripture.  There is the external scripture of the written word and the internal scripture of the Holy Spirit which he, according to God’s promise, has engraved upon the hearts of the believers, and which is certainly not to be neglected.…  The pre-eminent and supreme authority, however, is the authority of the Spirit, which is internal, and the individual possession of each man.…  The external scripture, particularly the New Testament, has often been liable to corruption and is, in fact, corrupt.…  But no one can corrupt the Spirit which guides man to truth” (1300).

This brings up a valid concern in the mind of a careful reader who would like to believe Milton was trustworthy in his handling of the written Word.  If we take this idea to its fullest, albeit, most cynical, conclusions, this looks like an excuse for the Christian to interpret the written Word, and even further, to live his life, taking whatever licenses he desires, all with the assumption of the Holy Spirit working in him the internal scripture.  The only thing keeping him in line is the power of the Holy Spirit, about which Milton is strangely silent in De Doctrina Christiana.  He does not mention anything at all about the Spirit’s day-to-day work in the believer.  He only presents his thoughts on the Spirit’s nature.  It seems Milton believes in the Spirit’s presence and working in the Christian’s life, but decides not to deal with how or to what extent He works.  By ignoring it, Milton leaves himself free to simply live his life, again, however he chooses, assuming the Spirit is working somehow in it.

Peggy Samuels talks in her article “Dueling Erasers” about Milton’s view of the Holy Spirit and the reader of the Scriptures.  She says there is a triadic relationship among the reader, the text, and the Holy Spirit, and the text and the reader deal with each other in the reading process while the Holy Spirit works as mediator.  The reader, of course, comes to the text with his own set of preconceived ideas, simply because he has lived a life before setting these words before his eyes.  Those preconceived ideas that make up the mind of the reader will of course shape the meaning of the text as it enters his mind, but the text, too, shapes the reader, Samuels says, by discovering things in the reader’s mind he may have not known were there.  In this way, Samuels says Milton understood the Christian and the Scriptures to work together.  It sounds to me, even from Samuels’s kindly clarifying explanation, it is much more feasible for the mind of the reader to discover from the text what he himself chooses than for the text to force its way into the places of the reader’s mind he does not want it to go.  The text is static.  It is laid bare in all its vulnerable, unchanging meaning.  But the mind of the reader is actively defensive of meanings and beliefs it does not want exposed.  When this fear of exposure by the fixed moral standard of a written Scripture is paired with the security of an authorized individualism such as the Holy Spirit, it is understandably concerning Milton might be condoning a radical subjectivity in the life of the Christian.  Milton has once again given a blanket permission to the believer to read the Scripture however he chooses by affirming the text will do its powerful work to shape the believer, even though the reality of experience shows the text is simply not more powerful than its reader.

The question now becomes, can Milton take on his Paradise Lost project the way he does?  He is dealing with huge, important truths here, and based on his double scripture doctrine, it is concerning he may present Biblical truths untruly, and even more concerning as he comes at them with his classical mythological background.  In theory, it is feasible for him to combine mythology and scripture into one piece of writing and do it correctly.  In fact, many authors have done it with skill and success.  C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien are prime examples.  They set the truths found in the Bible down as their template, and set out to make much of Biblical truth.  They understood with cheerful and freeing clarity that as the Ultimate Truth, the truth found in the Bible is at the top of the hierarchy, and the pagan myths flow from and are subservient to it.  As they get further and further away from the source, the myths contain lessening degrees of truth, but they still contain it, with the purpose of pointing back to the Ultimate Truth.  Thus, for example, Lewis came to love the dying and resurrecting god archetype from pagan mythology long before he knew Jesus as even a historical figure.  His discovery of Jesus as the origin of the archetype was that much sweeter, knowing the idea he loved for so long was a true and relatable human being in the same realm as himself.  The myth did not lose any of its excitement for turning out to be true, and the truth did not lose any of its weight for turning out to be a good story.  The myth simply served to make the heart love subjectively what the mind knew to be objectively true.  Michael Nelson says this when he says Christianity is simply the pagan myths fulfilled.  He quotes Lewis, saying, “Christianity [answers] two vital questions: ‘Where has religion reached it true maturity?  Where, if anywhere, have the hints of all Paganism been fulfilled?’” (628).

Mythology is useful and good when we use it as a pointer to the Ultimate Truth found in the Bible, and Guibbory makes the claim Milton does indeed use it this way.  He says Milton uses mythology traditions appropriately within the hierarchy of Christianity, knowing these pagan explanation stories in reality present a theology rivaling his own and being careful in how he uses them.  The allusions he makes to classical nature descriptions, for example, are very carefully chosen to never present anything opposing the Christian God’s supremacy, but only those which still allow him to be the Ultimate within the hierarchy, and which magnify Him as such, according to Guiborry (196-198).

This may be the way Milton appears to use mythology in Paradise Lost, but I would bring you once more to his De Doctrina Christiana description of the Scriptures.  Lewis and Tolkien begin with the assumption the written Word of God is at the top of the hierarchy, and, to a degree, simply allow mythology to come into subordination to it.  Milton does not start with the Word of God the way they do.  He begins with the Holy Spirit theoretically in each believer at the top of the hierarchy of truth and allows everything else to come into subordination to it, even the written Scripture.  Let’s return for a moment to the definition of “holy” we were looking at in the beginning.  The Scriptures Lewis and Tolkien held as their Ultimate were separate and sufficient — on a different level than every other writing because of a weightiness that comes from truth, and absolutely complete in the fullness of their truth.  Milton, though,  believed, although they were divinely inspired (which could mean “separate”), they have not been kept so because of the imperfect human hands that have preserved it (so it does not mean “separate”).  He believed, although they are an ideal instrument to illuminate salvation to humanity (which could mean “sufficient”), their authority lies only over salvation and does not extend into the rest of life (so it does not mean “sufficient”).  Therefore, he feels he needs to “justify the ways of God to men” (PL, line 26).  From the very beginning of Paradise Lost, his entire purpose for taking up this giant undertaking is bound up in his belief the written Scripture has not done enough to satisfactorily explain to mankind God’s actions.  This is where mythology comes in.  Since written Scripture, according to Milton, is simply a tool used to support the individual believer’s faith, guided by the Holy Spirit, and since mythology, like we’ve said, is a tool for pointing the believer to Truth, written Scripture and mythology play the same role in Milton’s writing.  They are both simply support for the Ultimate Truth found in the individual believer’s revelation from the Holy Spirit.  John Milton has just essentially said the Word of God and the word of Homer are on the same playing field.

This affects, then, the way we read Paradise Lost.  It calls into the question the degree to which we have made it such a significant cornerstone of English literature.  It mistakenly combines two separate literary traditions.  It should make us wonder whether we have been wrong to make it a cornerstone of Christian literature.  It is misleading to the Christian.  As we read the poem, each allusion he makes must be careful and prayerfully considered and lined up against the measure of the Scripture because we cannot be entirely sure Milton himself lined it up and measured.  It might be possible to read Paradise Lost and see it as simply another clever combination like Lewis’s or Tolkien’s.  Although the written Scriptures seem to be supported in Paradise Lost by the mythological literary tools, understanding from his De Doctrina Christiana he did not believe the written Scriptures to be holy forces us to come to the conclusion the mythology within the poem is not placed below the Scripture but beside.  Perhaps he took his notion of free will a little too far, and as a consequence, produced a massively beautiful, massively successful, massively mistaken contribution to literary tradition.

Works Cited