An Epic Defense: Miltonian Dialectic in Paradise Lost

AN EPIC DEFENSE: MILTONIAN DIALECTIC IN PARADISE LOST

by CHRISTOPHER JOHN DONATO

A PAPER Submitted to Dr. Thomas H. McCall in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the course CH 9000 Arminius and Arminianism at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School

Deerfield, Illinois December 2013

About twenty years ago, John T. Shawcross, in the course of digging deeply into some of the less explored areas of John Milton’s career, wisely warned against the sloppiness of scholars that think “all Reformed Protestants of the early seventeenth century were to be categorized as Calvinist or Arminian only.”1 His caution has taken some time to filter down into the rest of Milton criticism. Nicholas Tyacke’s seminal 1973 essay “Puritanism, Arminianism & Counter-Revolution” had gone a long way into perpetuating this myth, but after considerable (if not immediate) pushback from various scholars over the years, Tyacke himself picks up the critique in his Aspects of English Protestantism, c. 1530–1700.2 The truth of the matter when it comes to discussing Milton’s theology is that it is difficult and controversial to locate him on the seventeenth-century theological map with any conviction. Surveying just a smattering of current Milton criticism on this score exposes this problem. While the past decade has seen progression to the contrary,3 prior criticism often seemed to fail to recognize the varied nuances within early 1

John Milton: The Self and the World (University Press of Kentucky, 1993), 138. “Puritanism, Arminianism & Counter-Revolution” was published in The Origins of the English Civil War, ed. Conrad Russell (Macmillan, 1973), 119–43. Tyacke had adjusted his own thinking on this score by the time of Aspects . . . (Manchester University Press, 2001), 9–11. Cf. Jonathan D. Moore, English Hypothetical Universalism: John Preston and the Softening of Reformed Theology (Eerdmans, 2007), 224–27. 3 Usually in conjunction with discussing the authorship of de doctrina Christiana. See Campbell, et al., 168–76, for an extensive bibliography of the great number of studies, articles, and symposium panels dedicated to the matter. The issue of predestination alone has spilt considerable ink: see “Forum II: Milton’s Christian Doctrine,” SEL 34 (1994), with essays by Christopher Hill, “Professor William B. Hunter, Bishop Burgess, and John Milton” (165–94), and William B. Hunter, “Animadversions upon the Remonstrants’ Defenses against Burgess and Hunter” (195–203); Stephen M. Fallon, “‘Elect above the Rest’: Theology as Selfrepresentation in Milton,” Stephen Dobranski and John P. Rumrich, eds. Milton and Heresy (Cambridge University Press, 1998), 93–116; Fallon, “Milton’s Arminianism and the Authorship of De Doctrina Christiana,” Texas Studies in Literature and Language 41 (1999): 103–27; Larisa Kocic, “Predestination in Milton's Paradise Lost and De Doctrina Christiana: reply to Paul R. Sellin,” The AnaChronisT 9 (2003): 65–84; Barbara K. Lewalski, “Milton and De Doctrina Christiana: Evidences of Authorship,” Milton Studies 36 (1998): 203–28; Lewalski, The Life of John Milton: A Critical Biography (Blackwell, 2000), 420–24; Paul R. Sellin, “John Milton’s Paradise Lost and De Doctrina Christiana on Predestination,” Milton Studies 34 (1997): 45–60; Sellin, “‘If Not Milton, Who Did Write the DDC?’: The Amyraldian Connection.” Kristin A. Pruitt and Charles W. Durham, eds. Living Texts: Interpreting Milton (Susquehanna Univ. Press, 2000), 237–63; Sellin, “Some Musings on Alexander Morus and the Authorship of DDC,” Milton Quarterly, 35 (May 2001): 63–71. 2

1

2 modern Reformed (and Remonstrant) thought. Starting from the supposedly static or fixed point of puritan-Calvinist scholastic consensus, many critics quickly proceed to shuffle Milton outside the fence into the Arminian camp. But this notion of a monolithic “Arminianism” can be no less static (not to mention historically inaccurate), and at any rate it serves to stifle the poettheologian’s attempt at ingenuity. Up to about ten years ago, Paul R. Sellin had been one of the few scholars continuing to push for a more theologically nuanced and middle-way approach to Milton’s soteriology (though actually in the service of questioning Miltonic authorship of de doctrina Christiana), even if his conclusions remain questionable. One of his last works on this subject produced the following challenge: “I doubt that proving Milton an Amyraldian [a supposed cross between a Calvinist and Arminian] from the rest of the canon [beyond de doctrina] is possible, although who knows until someone actually takes the problem under consideration and makes a determination.”4 In another work, Sellin refers to three authors that made mention of Moïse Amyraut (1596–1664) but did not draw any connections between his theology and any of Milton’s works.5 One of them, Dennis Danielson, in Milton’s Good God, does mention the “founder” of Amyraut’s thought, the Scot John Cameron of Saumur Academy (1580?–1625), but only in connection with John Owen as churchmen who sought to reclaim the reformational tradition from the clutches of hyper-Calvinism.6 He goes on to posit, however, the possibility that Milton’s soteriology ought to be taken as a middle position between the two major competing systems of his day. He cites Richard Baxter (1651–91) as an example, with whom Milton certainly has his corollaries, but given the chronology, the better choice when 4

Sellin, “Some Musings . . .,” 68. Sellin, “‘If Not Milton . . .’,” 254, n. 7. 6 Dennis Danielson, Milton’s Good God: A Study in Literary Theodicy (CUP, 1982), 79. 5

3 discussing possible influences on Milton’s doctrine may be the older and more established Salmurian and British via media. Independently of Sellin, I had not gone with the crowd on Milton’s supposed Arminianism. Milton’s theological thoughts line up with Arminius in so many ways, true, but other parts simply cannot be forced into that paradigm. As invoking Sellin’s challenge above may portend, I intend to show not that Milton was a bona fide Amyraldian (I have serious questions regarding Sellin’s assessment of de doctrina’s doctrine of predestination), but that, particularly with respect to the doctrine of predestination poetically portrayed in Paradise Lost, the poet had already adopted (if not already thinking along these lines since his days at St. Paul’s starting back in 1620) many of the theological elements in agreement with the more idiosyncratic views of the School of Saumur—though not so much in the Calvinian hypothetical universalist sense (and thus ultimately particularist) as in the actual universalist sense (with a particularist element). And Milton need not have come into direct contact with those Salmurian views, either (though Cameron had been reading private lectures in London between 1620–22).7 Why is this? Precisely because England had its own storied tradition of middle-way theologizing, not least with respect to issues revolving around universal and particular redemption, as well as God’s sovereignty and human responsibility.8 We ought not find ourselves surprised to learn that Milton imbibed at some point from many of them. Seldom, however, have these continental or 7

For a few further observations on the possible influence of Cameron on Milton, see my article “Against the Law: Milton's (Anti?)Nomianism in De Doctrina Christiana,” Harvard Theological Review 104.1 (Jan. 2011): 69–91, at 76–80. 8 And they ran the continuum between Calvinist and Arminian—for example, John Davenant (1572–1641) in A Dissertation on the Death of Christ, Richard Hooker (1554–1600) in Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity, and John Overall (1559–1619) in “The Opinion of the Church of England Concerning Predestination.”

4 British moderate figures found their way into Milton criticism. A few notable exceptions exist,9 but they are largely ignored as possible influences on Milton’s theology. Discussion will focus almost entirely on portions of the oft-debated Book 3 of Paradise Lost, in which Milton’s stated aim to offer a defense advances in earnest. It will be, in brief, an examination of God’s theologizing about foreknowledge and predestination as presented in this part of the poem. The argument is simple: Milton’s articulation of the matter, while decidedly not Calvinist, is not quite Arminian; it instead cuts a not-unheard of middle-way. Typical criticism treats the poem as presenting an essentially Arminian argument, but then Milton’s use of a particular “elect” and his insistence on gratuitous, divine pleasure (rather than foreknowledge) to that elected end often create for the critic the temptation to suggest he was attempting to graft a Calvinian “super-elect” on to an otherwise Arminian framework. Some might say it was slapped in there to appease his puritan compatriots; others might offer a more sophisticated notion that it tells “us more about Milton’s self-conception, and about his need to be outstanding, than about his theology.”10 Indeed, some may say, it cannot be that “Milton as theologian (or as theological poet) is undecided between Calvin and Arminius. And not even that 9

See, e.g., as noted above, Danielson, Milton’s Good God; Benjamin Myers, Milton’s Theology of Freedom (Walter de Gruyter, 2006); Debora Shuger, “Milton Über Alles: The School Divinity of Paradise Lost 3.183–202,” Studies in Philology 103.3 (Summer 2010): 401–15; and Sellin, “‘If Not Milton . . . .’” 10 Fallon, “‘Elect above the rest’ . . .,” 100.

5 he is trying to find a compromise or hybrid form . . . .”11 But as I will argue, it is precisely a hybrid form upon which Milton constructs the Father’s speech in Book 3 of Paradise Lost. Far beyond merely trying to find a compromise, he has adopted and constructed one, at least by the time of the epic’s final publishing (1674). Neither Calvinist nor Arminian, Milton had adapted a middle way to suit his need in the deterministic milieu of puritan Independency—the need to “justifie the wayes of God to men” (1.26).12

An Epic Defense For Milton, the highest good of intelligent, rational beings is to adhere freely to God in love, and to love in other creations the intentions of God in them. Thus the angel Raphael says, “freely we serve / Because we freely love, as in our will / To love or not; in this we stand or fall” (5.538–40). Given the early modern understanding of God’s cosmos as hierarchical in nature, it makes sense that the sin of both angels and humankind was deemed to have resulted from pride in their own natures—a rebellion against that hierarchy. Satan is literally a dunce, an idiot, in the seventeenth-century mind (as opposed to certain Romantic expressions as a “Noble 11

Ibid., 110. To be fair, Fallon’s helpful work in this regard attempts to cast Milton as a puritan Arminius, and, as more recent Arminius scholarship has ably shown, Arminius himself was “much more ‘Calvinian’ than either side has typically been willing to allow. Perhaps Arminius wasn’t even Arminian” (W. Stephen Gunter, Arminius and His Declaration of Sentiments: An Annotated Translation with Introduction and Theological Commentary (Baylor University Press, 2012), 8. Nevertheless, I think Fallon ultimately fails to account theologically for the idiosyncratic predestinarian nuances of Paradise Lost. Moreover, a closer puritan-style Arminius can be found in Milton’s comrade John Goodwin (1594–1665). On the relative overlap of Milton’s and Goodwin’s lives, see John Coffey, John Goodwin and the Puritan Revolution (Boydell Press, 2008), 97–98, 159–60, 268. 12 All parenthesized references to Paradise Lost are from The Milton Reading Room edition at Dartmouth College: http://www.dartmouth.edu/~milton/reading_room/pl/book_1/index.shtml (last accessed 12 December 2013).

6 Outlaw”13). Like a dull-witted student, he has missed the hierarchical point. The whole picture of Satan in Paradise Lost becomes a situational irony: by throwing off God, he enslaves himself; by cursing his love, he hates himself; with every attempt to re-ascend, he plummets deeper into his own inner hell. He himself is hell (4.75). In other words, pride lies at the root of the fall for both humans and angels. Indeed, according to Augustine (whose trajectory Milton’s epic follows in significant ways), Satan was the “proud and therefore envious angel . . . [who preferred] to rule with a kind of pomp of empire rather than to be another’s subject.”14 Satan in Paradise Lost embodies this exactly: He revolted because he “thought himself impaired” (5.665); he usurps his dependence on God, thinking himself to be “self-begot, self-rais’d / By [his] own quick’ning power” (5.860– 61). In this we see the paradox of the poem: Satan and his minions repudiate the Son when he is presented to the heavenly court as her head (5.600–16), revealing an inordinate desire for their own natures in preference to a higher perfection. “Strange freedom, this . . . the paradox that free will is most active in its own annihilation.”15 All of this points us in the direction of defense—to deal with the issues revolving around the sovereignty of God and its relationship to free will. One of the great tensions of this problem Milton resolves by upholding the ancient apologetic of divine permission and the 13

For a creative attempt to bridge the gap between the so-called “neo-Christian” critics (e.g., C.S. Lewis in Preface to Paradise Lost or Stanley Fish in How Milton Works) and the “Romantic” or “Satanist” critics (e.g., P. B. Shelley in A Defence of Poetry or Wm. Empson in Milton’s God), see Michael Bryson, The Tyranny of Heaven: Milton’s Rejection of God as King (University of Delaware Press, 2004). Though ultimately implausible for the simple reason that it makes him too much of a postmodern cynic, Bryson argues that Milton was engaged in a complex defense that rejects kingship as a proper way of imagining the divine. 14 City of God 14.11 (NPNF1 2). 15 John Savoie, “Justifying the Ways of God and Man: Theodicy in Augustine and Milton,” in Robert P. Kennedy, Kim Paffenroth, and John Doody, eds., Augustine and Literature (Lanham, Md.: Lexington Books, 2006: 139–154), 145.

7 greater good (though ambivalent to the notion of a felix culpa, he nevertheless affirms it after some qualification in 12.469–78): “God created humans upright but they freely chose to disobey, which God knew—though did not determine—that they would, but God allowed this evil knowing that from it He could bring forth a greater good, including justice and mercy united in grace.”16 Milton would applaud the old, hardened, and slightly acerbic anti-Pelagian Augustine when he wrote that “evil has no other origin than in the free choice of the will.”17 But, as we will see, he pushes that line as far as it can go while still holding on to the classical concept of God. Also important to this apologetic are Milton’s arguments that (1) enabling grace visits all of creation (3.227–31); (2) humans can never seek the aid of grace (i.e., total inability) being dead in sins and lost (3.231–33)—which amounts to an explicit rejection of any semi-Pelagian claim for the role of human initiative in preparing for grace; and (3) the atonement is substitutionary and universal in nature (3.234–37).18

Foreknowledge and Free Will Milton’s epic unfolds initially in a prelapsarian world, a world in which the human will was considered to operate most freely (posse peccare). Having noted the important principle that lies beneath this particular type of defense—the freedom to love God (see 5.538– 16 17

Ibid., 144. Retractions 1.9.1 (On Free Will). Quoted from J. H. S. Burleigh’s Augustine: Earlier Writings

(WJK, 1953), 102.

18

All of which can be found in Arminius: On universal grace, see Apology, art. 16, in Works 2:18; on the total inability of humankind to make even the first step toward God apart from grace, see Pub. Disp. 33.4, Oration V, in Works 1:454–55, Certain Articles, 12.2, in Works 2:717; on the substitutionary and universal nature of the atonement, see F. Junius 20, in Works 3:214–15 and Exam. Perk., in Works 3:326, 423–24. As well as in Amyraut (page numbers refer to Brian G. Armstrong, Calvinism and the Amyraut Heresy, Wipf & Stock, 2004): On universal grace, see 213–14; on total inability, see 245–48; on the substitutionary and universal nature of the atonement, see 167–68, 174, 210–14.

8 40), we now turn to the failure of carrying out this love, this obedience: Man will fall, “Hee and his faithless Progenie” (3.96). But whose fault is it? Whose but his own? ingrate, he had of mee All he could have; I made him just and right, Sufficient to have stood, though free to fall. (3.97–99) This is the ultimate perfection, not a defect—the intrinsic possibility to sin in the garden.19 We must not underappreciate this point: the fact that a thing can be created very good without being absolutely or immutably good. The absence of the ability to sin would be a defect itself, and the entire defense would begin to crumble toward a dark determinism. In this manner, then, we come to a major tension in classical Christianity: if God is sovereign, how could man be free? How is it possible that humankind’s first parents freely will to perform certain actions and that God foreknows and thus actualized the world in which they shall will to perform these actions? The argument (which is, incidentally, a modal fallacy) that leads directly to this question Milton assumes in Book 3 of Paradise Lost when he has God theologize about his foreknowledge: whatever he foreknows must necessarily happen. But the God of Paradise Lost rejects this proposition outright:20 Foreknowledge had no influence on their fault, Which had no less prov’d certain unforeknown. So without least impulse or shadow of Fate, Or aught by me immutablie foreseen, They trespass, Authors to themselves in all Both what they judge and what they choose; for so I form’d them free, and free they must remain, Till they enthrall themselves: I else must change Thir nature, and revoke the high Decree 19

See Peter A. Fiore, Milton and Augustine: Patters of Augustinian Thought in Paradise Lost. Pennsylvania State University Press, 1981, 38–41. 20 See Augustine’s On Free Will 2.4, where through the mouth of Evodius a similar argument is set up and then knocked down. See also William L. Rowe’s clear and succinct discussion of this problem (and its shortcomings) in “Augustine on Foreknowledge and Free Will,” The Review of Metaphysics 18.2 (Dec. 1964): 356– 63, at 356–57.

9 Unchangeable, Eternal, which ordain’d Thir freedom, they themselves ordain’d thir fall. (3.118–28) So, we see that just because God foreknew that Adam and Eve will disobey, it does not follow that they did not freely do so. The well-known standard Boethian reply pertains: the bare fact of divine foreknowledge in the “eternal present” does not entail necessity: if things going to happen are free not to happen, then, obviously, “there are some things destined to happen in the future whose outcome is free of any necessity.”21 Thus, in terms of the setting of Paradise Lost, the conclusion that just because God knows everything that can be known means that Adam and Eve did not have free will simply does not follow.22 God’s exhaustive foreknowledge, Milton writes, is, in a manner of speaking, beside the point (it has no causal relationship to the original sin). Whether it was foreknown or not makes no difference at all to the fact that the willful act of disobedience occurred, not least because, assuming that this underlies Milton’s lines here, God foresees all sorts of things that he does not foreordain, like what might have been and is not, including what is or shall be. Without the least bit of necessity, the transgression of Adam and Eve was an act of their desires, in their power, and totally free. And the conditional fall itself, while foreseen by God, could not have been foreknown immutably, because not only would that be a contradiction in terms, it would imply causation (albeit indirect) of the now necessary act and would undo human responsibility (3.121). Put another way, even from God’s perspective (which this poem purports to give) free choice—which includes both the liberty of spontaneity and of indifference—is no illusion; indeed, it must not be if God wants to avoid the charge laid at his feet throughout this entire defense, namely, that he is the author of sin. But lest we pass by it too quickly, notice how Milton pushes the point even further: To recognize that God simply has exhaustive knowledge of all future events that free 21

From Book 5, Prose 4 of Ancius Boethius, The Consolation of Philosophy (trans. Richard Green; Bobbs-Merrill, 1962), 110. 22 See Burleigh, 174–76.

10 agents nevertheless enact on their own brings its own set of tensions. An unconditional determination on God’s part is still in play. Either that can be jettisoned entirely (after the manner of Sozzini23), or an account of providence can be offered in accord with classical theism that creates space for radical human freedom (of the sort that reflects the creator’s). So, perhaps (I have no hard proof to connect the two), this is where we see Milton’s defense drift from the Augustinian (or Boethian or Thomist) tradition toward Luis de Molina’s (1535–1600) scientia media.24 God’s free knowledge, that is, his scientia visionis through which he knows definitively what in fact an agent will choose in the circumstances he has actualized is distinct from God’s scientia simplicis intelligentiae, or such knowledge containing all truths that are necessarily true in the world as it is, as well as all necessary truths in all possible worlds. God knows these latter kinds of things “before” he knows or sees those things that belong to the realm of divinely willed existence.25 If, then, the disobedience of Adam and Eve was ultimately dependent upon the divine will (and thus “immutablie foreseen”), how can their choice to transgress be genuinely free, rather than determined in some sense by God (a point that many supralapsarian Calvinists 23

Fausto Sozzini (1539–1604) argued that while God knows all things that are knowable, he does not know future contingent events. By denying the divine foreknowledge of future contingencies, he and his followers believed they overturned the Calvinistic doctrine of God’s foreordaining whatsoever comes to pass; while they, at the same time, conceded to the Calvinists, in opposition to the Arminian view, that God’s certain foreknowledge of the actions of men means that he has necessarily in some sense foreordained them. 24 Which Arminius himself employed. Cf. Keith D. Stanglin and Thomas H. McCall, Jacob Arminius: Theologian of Grace (OUP, 2012), 65–69; Eef Dekker, “Was Arminius a Molinist?” Sixteenth Century Journal 27.2 (1996): 337–52. Apparently, so did Richard Hooker, but perhaps “without parallel” among other late Elizabethan English divines (see Nigel Voak, “English Molinism in the late 1590s: Richard Hooker on Free Will, Predestination, and Divine Foreknowledge,” Journal of Theological Studies, 60.1, [2009]: 130–77, at 176). Only a few scholars have recognized this possible Molinist move in Milton and put it down in writing: See, e.g., Charles F. Kruger, “Milton and Molinism,” The Modern School Man 4.5 (Feb. 1928): 78–79; Myers, 90. Others simply note a few similarities between the two in passing on their way to discussing other subjects: See, e.g., Michael St. A. Miller, Freedom in Resistance and Creative Transformation (Lexington Books, 2013), 148. Still others see possible similarities but then go on to reject Milton’s adoption of it because (so the argument goes) the counterfactual truths of Molina’s scientia media rule out libertarian free will of the kind that Milton favors: See, e.g., Harold Skulsky, Milton and the Death of Man (University of Delaware Press, 2000), 56–113. 25 See Richard A. Muller, PRRD, vol. 3 (Baker Academic, 2003), 407.

11 had no qualms with positing)? Contra the Socinians,26 Milton clearly lyricizes about God’s exhaustive free knowledge of what he will actualize (see 3.116–18; 6.673–74; 10.1–7). But this knowledge still begs the question regarding the freedom that Milton’s God declares has been granted to his creatures by “high Decree” (3.126). How, then, does God know of the fall in such a way as to protect the creaturely freedom of Adam and Eve? Maybe Milton is pushing us further still to fill in the middle with God’s definite, though pre-volitional, knowledge of those scenarios that would result in Adam’s and Eve’s freely responding in a way that fulfills his purpose—“much more good thereof shall spring [from Adam’s sin], / To God more glory, more good will to Men / From God, and over wrauth grace shall abound” (12.476–78). The fall, which “had no less prov’d certain unforeknown” (3.119), is in this construct beyond any determination of the divine will, even though God knows with complete certainty, before he has made any choices about which possibles to actualize in a particular world order, what Adam and Eve will in fact choose with respect to his command in any given circumstance.27 In this way, Milton secures the free decisions of creatures. Per his defense, “this is what a robust concept of permission entails,” which must needs hold “that God has granted at least some type of libertarian choice to the moral causal agents he created.”28 From all the numerous possibilities of life in the garden that God saw with (conditional rather than immutable or absolute) certainty via his middle knowledge, he then freely and sovereignly 26

And contra Myers’s suggestion that here “the poem leans toward Socinianism” (91). It is important to note that the poem isn’t denying divine immutable knowledge as such; rather, with respect to those events that are contingent and in the power of free agents to determine, God’s knowledge of all the possible outcomes is certain or infallible but cannot be immutable (given the plurality of conditional future contingents). In the “moment” of scientia media, the concept of immutable foreknowledge fails to fit. 27 Compare with Hooker on this score: “Soe noe man will denie butt that God is able to foresee and foretell what sinne, as what righteousnes eyther may be, or will be in men [Sap. 4:II.], and that consequently there are many things in his sight certaine to be brought to passe, which himselfe did never forordaine.” Quoted from Voak, 168. 28 Ken Keathley, “A Molinist View of Election, or, How to Be a Consistent Infralapsarian,” in Calvinism: A Southern Baptist Dialogue (ed. E. Ray Clendenden and B. Waggoner; Nashville: B&H Academic, 2008), 206, 208.

12 chose which one to permit, which of course resulted in his free knowledge of what will occur, as well as pave the way for his triumph over his enemies—Satan, Sin, and Death (“Had not the Almighty Father . . . / . . . foreseen / This tumult, and permitted all, . . . / That his great purpose he might so fulfill,” 6.671–75). Thus, for Milton (again, if I’m reading between the lines correctly), God has definite pre-volitional knowledge of how Adam and Eve will in fact act in the hypothetical future circumstance of facing temptation, more than merely a knowledge of how they might act (i.e., only a knowledge of the possibilities open to them). And as such, the fall was not determined by the divine will or immutable foreknowledge, but by the freedom of human agents: “they themselves decreed / Thir own revolt, not I” (3.116–17). The only way humans can “decree” their own revolt, without spinning off toward Socinianism (which, again, the poem clearly denies in its articulation of God’s exhaustive foreknowledge), is through the employment of divine omniscience, the middle “moment” of which creates the space for genuine human freedom while retaining divine sovereign providence. So, in 3.121 Milton’s God says in no uncertain terms that his foreknowledge of the transgression that led to the fall of humankind was not of the immutable sort stemming from either his natural or free knowledge. This defense admits the position of classical theology, and then goes on to posit that when referring to the actions of free agents, God doesn’t know of them beforehand immutably as things that exist in themselves (i.e., as actualized events), even if he does know of them infallibly as they exist in the divine knower, that is, pre-volitionally, according to the middle logical “moment” of his knowledge. That the disobedience of Adam and Eve in the garden “shall be” (certain), which God knows freely as result of his middle knowledge, is not the same as “must be” (necessary). Milton would argue that no doubt some events are necessary, that is, they are inevitably caused by a prior influence. But others, he would say, are contingent, that is, they are free, capable of more than one possibility depending on an unforced choice. But both kinds are equally certain, as known to

13 God. Without the least “shadow of Fate” (3.120), despite God’s foreknowledge and permitting of the fall (again, see 6.671–74), our first parents disobeyed the command of their creator, freely willing and acting in response to the serpent’s lies, “Authors to themselves in all / Both what they judge and what they choose” (3.122–23). As we have seen, God created humanity with a nature including a freedom of the will, and prelapsarian man, according to Milton, “must remain” free “Till they enthrall themselves” (3.124–25), which enthrallment implies a strong doctrine of the postlapsarian depravity of man. If God were to block man’s freedom, no matter how much he might want to in order to save them from their forthcoming misery, he would betray himself. In creating humankind, God eternally and unchangeably decreed to establish their freedom, and to take that away would be to take away their humanity (3.127–28), as well as act against his own nature. Therefore, Adam and Eve “themselves ordain’d thir fall” (3.128). God has foreseen it, but Adam and Eve determine it. That is, the fall did not have to happen; but Milton’s God knew it was coming, and yet he was not its cause, not insofar as he chose to actualize a world in which his free creatures could choose to love him freely or not.

The ‘Elect’ and the ‘Rest’ Nicholas Tyacke in Aspects of English Protestantism, c. 1530–1700 spends a brief moment adding clarity to the historical discussion revolving around English predestinarian controversies of that era, “since the whole topic of Calvinism and Arminianism has in recent years become bedeviled by disagreement over terminology.”29 He then offers a few contemporary definitions on the subject from the likes of the reluctant Archbishop of Canterbury John Tillotson (1630–94), and goes on to highlight a couple of important developments firmly in place by the time and through the lens of Tillotson. Without using labels, the archbishop describes the Calvinist and Arminian options: The former teach that all who are “converted and 29

Tyacke, 3.

14 regenerate are wrought upon in an irresistible manner, and are merely passive in it; and that those who are not thus wrought upon, their repentance and conversion is impossible.” Conversely the latter hold that “sufficient grace is offered to all one time or another who live under the gospel, which they may comply with or resist”; in consequence, “if they be not brought to repentance their impenitency and ruin is the effect of their own choice, and God is free from the blood of all men.”30 Between these “extremes,” Tyacke notes, Tillotson goes on to describe “two middle opinions.” The first maintains that “irresistible grace is afforded to all the elect, and sufficient grace to all others who live under the gospel . . .; but then they say that none of those to whom this sufficient grace is afforded shall effectually comply with it, and be saved,” due to the depths of their depravity. The second such hybrid position, and, according to Tyacke, the one personally endorsed by Tillotson, is that “some are converted in an irresistible manner when God pleaseth, and whom he designs to be extraordinary examples and instruments for the good of others, and that sufficient grace is afforded to others which is effectual to the salvation of many.”31 With respect to these middle ways, the first finds itself often labeled “hypothetical universalism,” and was promoted notably among some members of the British delegation to the Synod of Dort (1618–19).32 That second strain endorsed by Tillotson, however, hasn’t received as much attention, probably because (1) it wasn’t nearly as common, and (2) it has often been lumped in with hypothetical universalism. Tyacke associates this latter opinion with Bishop John Overall 30

Ibid., 4. Ibid. Tyacke is quoting from J. Tillotson, Works (London, 1820), v, 393–97. Note that if this is all Fallon (for example) intends to say about Milton’s position, then of course I must retract my criticism. Nevertheless, continuing to call this framework “Arminian” without qualification does not add clarity to the discussion. 32 As well as on the floor of the Westminster Assembly. See, A.G. Troxel, “Amyraut ‘at’ the Assembly: The Westminster Confession of Faith and the Extent of the Atonement,” Presbyterion 22 (1996): 43–55. Troxel, however, makes the mistake of conflating all forms of “hypothetical universalism” and “Amyraldianism.” On that score, see Moore, 217–20. 31

15 (see n. 8) and stresses that it “certainly was well established by the middle of the seventeenth century.”33 Around the same time as Tillotson, the Dutch Remonstrant Philip van Limborch also mentions approvingly in passing the view of Overall. In his Compleat System (published in 1686), Limborch turns (from the supra- and infralapsarian Calvinists) to consider those who “own an Absolute Election of some Persons, but disown Absolute Reprobation.”34 The two views he examines are the two “middle opinions” Tillotson highlights in his work. After disagreeing with the hypothetical universalist position as ultimately laden with similar burdens of the majority infralapsarian Calvinist view,35 Limborch commends those who, being aware of the difficulty introduced by the hypothetical universalists (that their sufficient grace is really in the end insufficient), do allow that there are some (though few) who do put their trust in Christ through the enabling power of prevenient grace. God, however, out of his “free, boundless and unmerited Goodness,” that more might be saved, bestows “a greater Assistance on some who are peculiarly elected,” whereby they may be irresistibly converted. “This,” Limborch notes, “seems to be the opinion of Bishop Overall,” when he says . . . We own that there are different Degrees of Divine Grace: And if it be allowed that some are saved by common Grace, then it must be granted, that irresistible Grace is not necessarily requisite to Conversion, but only for the rendering it the more easy.36 Invoking Overall here (and Hooker earlier) intends to serve one purpose: this predestinarian 33

Tyacke, 4. A Compleat System, or, Body of Divinity, both Speculative and Practical, founded on Scripture and Reason (London: William Jones, 1702), 404. 35 Despite it being “more tolerable, and labours under less Difficulties than the two former, since it offers no Injury to the Justice, Mercy and Philanthropy of God,” the opinion nevertheless seems to say “that God would not have all Men to be saved” (ibid., 404–405). 36 Ibid., 406. William Jones, the editor of Compleat System, cites Overall’s “Epist. Ecclesiast. Ep. 210” as the source. 34

16 model appears to be the point made in Milton’s epic poem, to which we shall now return.37 Were Paradise Lost an entirely Arminian enterprise, one should expect Book 3, when it turns to the issue of predestination, somewhere at some time to hinge God’s election of specific individuals on his foreknowledge.38 At the precise point, however, where we would expect to see particular election to be explained as a function of God’s foreseeing the faith and perseverance of believers, instead we see that . . . Some I have chosen of peculiar grace Elect above the rest; so is my will: (3.183–84) Despite the universal call, enabled by a universal grace (itself a mode of divine intervention), there exists an elect particularly chosen with a specific and irresistible grace. They are pulled out of the massa perditionis without any reference to foreseen trust or continuing obedience (though 37

This is by no means an original sentiment; Shuger argues for the same idea (see n. 9). But where Shuger desires to draw a more clear connection between Milton and Overall—“the Overallian moments in Paradise Lost do not present . . . a schema that Milton happened upon independently, but bespeak direct influence” with Overall’s tracts (409)—I’m not so sure that is necessary, not least if, according Tyacke, this schema “certainly was well established by the middle of the seventeenth century” (4). While Overall’s tracts on predestination circulated widely in manuscript from before 1618 into the 1640s, they did not find their way in print until the early 1650s. Books 1–5 of Hooker’s Lawes had been published by 1599. Books 6 and 8 were first published posthumously in 1648, and book 7 in 1662. The School of Saumur had also seen its foremost theologians—Cameron, Louis Cappel (1585–1658), Amyraut, and Josua Placaeus (1596– 1665?)—in print prior to the 1640s. We also see direct influence by way of invocation of both Placaeus and (with deference) Cameron in de doctrina, the latter of whom also receives mention in Tetrachordan (see n. 7 above). I was first alerted to Overall via Limborch, as noted above, and began drawing the connections between what is known of his thoughts on the subject and Milton’s presentation in the poem. It was during that subsequent research that I happened upon Shuger’s article. 38 The order is, of course, important, and it constitutes the locus of the reaction against the (anachronistically named) supralapsarians for Arminius. In his Declaration of Sentiments, the fourth and last decree to salvation or condemnation of specific individuals necessarily proceeds from the prior three. “This decree has its foundation in divine foreknowledge, through which God has known from all eternity those individuals who through the established means of his prevenient grace would come to faith and believe, and through his subsequent sustaining grace would persevere in the faith. Likewise, in divine foreknowledge, God knows those who would not believe and persevere” (Gunter, 135).

17 note that the objects of this election are considered to be both created and fallen39). But before the reader throws up her hands at all the problems (and internal contradictions) this would introduce for the defense of Paradise Lost, the remainder of the passage leads us back in the other direction: The rest shall hear me call, and oft be warn’d Thir sinful state, and to appease betimes Th’ incensed Deitie, while offer’d grace Invites; for I will clear thir senses dark, What may suffice, and soft’n stony hearts To pray, repent, and bring obedience due. To Prayer, repentance, and obedience due, Though but endeavor’d with sincere intent, Mine ear shall not be slow, mine eye not shut. And I will place within them as a guide My Umpire Conscience, whom if they will hear, Light after light well us’d they shall attain, And to the end persisting, safe arrive. (3.185–97) In this excerpt thus far (3.183–97), one thing at the very least is clear: two types of people as well as two types of grace are presented. The one, a specific elect and peculiar grace; the other, a general group that only faces the opportunity to become a part of the elect through the good use of the grace on offer. In Overall’s words, “people are stirred and moved by grace such that they are able to obey the grace that calls and moves them if they heed it”; yet, “by an act of their own free will, they can also resist such offered grace, and too often do resist 39

In “John Milton’s Paradise Lost and De Doctrina Christiana on Predestination,” Sellin makes the odd mistake of locating parts of the ordo decretorum of the epic poem in created time: “while Paradise Lost sets the decree after the creation, it is even more remarkable for presenting it as antecedent to the Fall” (52; emphasis original). He labels this a “prelapsarian” position. The reality is that all parties of the seventeenth-century ordo decretorum debates considered the decrees to be formal, mental, or logical distinctions (rational, though not real or ontological) in God made in eternity “past,” prior to any of his external acts (like creation), i.e., not made in created time. Kocic notes that the mistake Sellin makes lies in his failure to see that predestination is only being pronounced at the time of Book 3, but it reaches back into God’s “eternal purpose” (see 3.172): “it is not the decree itself that is positioned thus, but its utterance” (73).

18 it.”40 Given this depraved propensity to resist such grace, God therefore seeks to render it “more easy” (see above quote in Limborch). But while it is true that the “rest” are not a part of the absolute elect for Milton, it does not follow necessarily that they are reprobate, as some have suggested.41 Further comparison to Overall on this point is worth noting: although the elect alone receive the more abundant and efficacious grace that leads “absolutely, certainly, and infallibly” to their salvation, this peculiar grace implies “no prejudgment of the rest nor any diminution of the will [of God to save them] or of common and sufficient grace.”42 In like manner, Milton would have us see that everyone receives sufficient grace to be persuaded to answer the gospel call, but only a select group receive it unconditionally. Thus both groups are the objects of the decreed eternal purpose (3.172) that “Man shall not quite be lost, but sav’d who will, / Yet not of will in him, but grace in me / Freely vouchsaf’t” (3.173–75). The beginning of the Father’s speech about this eternal purpose in Book 3 describes a redemption applied by his freely given grace alone, in answer to his Son’s concern (“So should thy goodness and thy greatness both / Be question’d and blasphem’d without defence,” 3.165–66). He then continues by depicting man’s nature as “forfeit and enthralled by sin to foul exorbitant desires” (3.176–77), and maintains once again that redemption is due to no one other than himself (3.180–82). It is no secret that Milton held sin to be a deeply permeating and intractable bane upon humanity. He had not held human nature in the highest esteem, and 40

Quoted from Shuger, 406, who notes that the Latin originals of Overall’s tracts on predestination (with an English synopsis) are reprinted in The British Delegation and the Synod of Dort (1618– 1619), ed. Anthony Milton (Boydell Press, 2005), 66–70, 74–84. 41 Alisdair Fowler, ed., John Milton: Paradise Lost (Longman, 1968), 153; Maurice Kelley, “The Theological Dogma of Paradise Lost, III, 173–202,” PMLA 52.1 (1937): 75–79; and Sellin, “John Milton’s Paradise Lost . . .,” 47, 52–53. 42 Shuger, 406.

19 these excerpts show well his belief the slavery sin exacts on humankind. While it could be argued that Milton’s account of humanity’s corruption in Paradise Lost is more “pessimistic” than Arminius’s own view,43 nothing here mitigates against a generally Arminian paradigm44; indeed, on the Calvinist side, Milton’s previously articulated notion that all humans are granted the ability preveniently to “stand / On even ground against his mortal foe” (3.178–79) would be most unwelcome (insofar as it’s construed as enabling and resistible grace paving the way for salvation). Nevertheless, the entire epic places much more emphasis on the Father’s gratuitous rescue than on humankind’s renewed abilities. The equity and mercy of God’s universal gift— made possible by a universal atonement45—that reestablishes humanity’s natural and moral ability to turn toward him is part and parcel of Milton’s defense. This particular discourse, along with the Father’s speech about foreknowledge discussed above, comprises one of the most important passages in the epic regarding the justification of God’s ways. Here he provides a genuine attempt to defend the goodness and greatness of the creator’s actions—far more than a “palpable desire to have his merit recognized.”46 Milton, through the Father, wants us to perceive the mind of God in these matters. 43

“[Adam’s] crime makes guilty all his sons,” writes Milton in 3.290. Being a poem, it’s of course ambiguous, but it is clear that guilt for Adam’s progeny attends his disobedience. Was that the basis for his progeny’s condemnation (immediate imputation), or is the inherent depravity received by virtue of each man’s association in a corrupted race the basis for its guilt (mediate imputation)? As an aside, but not totally unrelated, the epic appears to affirm in as Reformed a sense as possible the doctrine of double imputation, including the imputation of Christ’s passive and active obedience (cf., 3.290–92; 12.292–97, 402–409). 44 “I ascribe to God’s grace the origin, the continuance, and the fulfillment of all good,” Arminius declared in his Sentiments. Gunter, 141. 45 Compare this to the similar sentiments of John Goodwin: “Christ, by his death, procured for all men, a sufficiency of grace to enable them to repent . . . to believe the gospel, and to persevere in both to the end.” Quoted from Redemption Redeemed: A Puritan Defense of Unlimited Atonement. John D. Wagner, ed. (Wipf & Stock, 2001), 159. 46 Fallon, “Elect above the rest . . .,” 108. I don’t mean to imply that Fallon is arguing against Milton’s sincere engagement in defense here; I’m questioning the validity of this point in the discussion.

20 By qualifying the first grace as “peculiar,” the Father affirms his sovereignty over the elect. He has chosen them above the rest. His words are sure, and he then moves on to discuss what the others face. It is, again, emphatically not a subtle move to establish an asymmetrical but absolute decree of reprobation (à la Calvinian infralapsarians). Inviting them to pray and repent, God offers the rest enough grace to obey his call. This latter lot is benevolently given the opportunity if they use offered grace, having had their dark senses cleared,47 if they hear God’s “umpire Conscience,” and if well used shall to the end persist and safely arrive. In this passage God’s express intent is that all men be given the opportunity of salvation, and the Son’s substitutionary atonement (3.234–37) brings this into reality. It is also equally clear that the grace of lines 185– 97 (and by implication the atonement) is not ipso facto effectual unto salvation—only if the offer of grace is accepted by man in repentance and faith (i.e., meeting the conditions of the covenant) will salvation follow. Unlike the Arminian ordo decretorum, Milton in Paradise Lost places the decision made about the atonement (3.227–65) after the Father’s expressed intentions to save (3.168–97). The order, in other words, resembles that of the Calvinists. We know, however, that Milton makes the exact opposite point than they do with respect to the scope of God’s gospel and the means thereunto. The reason why this occurs is simple: we are not looking at an order of decrees (see n. 39 above); rather, we are looking at a series of pronouncements (“now only articulated and confirmed by the Son’s reassurance of this purpose”48), one of which has to do 47

As with Milton’s previous description of human depravity, here we see another important clue as to where Milton primarily locates that depravity: in the noetic faculties. Moreover, in this passage, we see that conversion starts with a persuaded mind, and, while beyond the scope of this essay, this feature is strikingly similar to Amyraut and the School of Saumur (see Armstrong, 243–45, 253–59). 48 Kocic, 72.

21 directly with God’s secret will (those whom he has elected above the rest, 3.183). During Milton’s day, for many the secret will had become the starting point from which all understanding of God’s predestination was mediated. But at no point is the setting of the poem eternity past (prior to created time),49 nor is its narrative ever concerned with the logical order of God’s decrees. Perhaps Milton wants his readers to locate the ground of their knowledge of predestination (and, by extension, the plan of salvation) in the revealed will. In this line of reasoning, which was shared across the continuum among those who sought a middle predestinarian way, the revealed should mediate human knowledge of the secret will, not vice versa. To put it another way, the narrative of the epic focuses on the divine heilsgeschichte—the history of God’s saving acts with Christ Jesus as the center. Paradise Lost, in other words, is a kind of primeval ordo historia salutis, entirely concerned with the redemptive plan as perceived from the narrator’s point of view in time, as opposed to esoteric speculation about God’s secret, eternal will (such stuff as poems are decidedly not made on).50 To reiterate, and not unlike Overall, we see two types of people as well as two degrees of grace presented in the Father’s response to his Son’s call for a defense in Book 3.183– 49

Indeed, it starts in media res, per the classical epic style, with Satan and the rest of the rebel angels sprawled unconscious in the burning lake of hell immediately after having been cast out of heaven. 50 Nowhere in the poem does Milton express contempt for the concept of an ordo decretorum, but de doctrina is another matter. Not only does it not assert an order of divine decrees anywhere in a chapter on that subject, its author quips in passing that “there is an absurdity, therefore, in separating the decrees or will of the Deity from his eternal counsel and foreknowledge, or in giving them priority of order” (A Treatise on Christian Doctrine, Compiled from the Holy Scriptures Alone, trans. Charles R. Sumner, [CUP, 1825], 31). Compare with Amyraut: Order in the decrees is a matter in which the “secrets are so profound, and the abyss so impossible to explore, that whoever will undertake to know them would necessarily be swallowed up by them or will necessarily remain eternally deluded as being in a completely inexplicable labyrinth” (quoted in Armstrong, 164); and with John Davenant (speaking of the puritans): “He has a crazed brain that will draw practical conclusions or logical sequels from decrees or antecedents, whereof he knows not the particular tenor, or how in singular they concern himself” (Animadversions Written by the Right Reverend Father in God, John Lord Bishop of Salisbury, upon the Treatise Intitled, God’s Love to Mankinde [London: Printed for John Partridge, 1641], 339).

22 97. Note now in lines 185–97 the implications in the way the “rest” are introduced and then described: In the first place, the “rest” are not absolutely elected, but they are, in a certain sense, elected, for we see that they are described as receiving all the benefits that saving grace provides—just generally or corporately and without the absolute certainty. In other words, God extends election to all of humanity (and we could use the word predestination interchangeably here, since for Milton in Paradise Lost there is no decree of reprobation), but some are more elect than others. All human beings are corporately predestined for this glory, and yet particular individuals out of that group are “Elect above the rest.” As noted in passing above, the special elect were chosen as individuals in some kind of eternity past, a part of God’s secret will and thus objects of an ordo decretorum; but not so for the rest, their not being the objects of any eternal decree, except as considered in Christ corporately. Their number is unfixed. This, then, establishes their ability to actually, rather than merely hypothetically, persist to the end and “safe arrive” (3.197). And while the “rest” are never explicitly said to arrive safely, it is most certainly implied that at least a few will make it. Therefore, taken as a whole (3.183–97), this passage is an example of authentic single predestination.51 That is to say, reprobation is only a consequential and temporal corollary to the Father’s universal call to the “rest,” and as such is not properly located in any absolute decree. In contrast to Arminius’s fourth decree as described in his Declaration of Sentiments,52 which posits “God elected those he foreknew would enter Christ by faith to be his people and damned those he foreknew would reject Christ as not his people,”53 51

Or “consistent infralapsarianism,” as Keathley would describe it, 215. See Gunter, 135. One could say that Milton’s description of the “rest” stops at the first half of Arminius’s “second precise and absolute decree.” 53 Roger E. Olson, Arminian Theology: Myths and Realities (IVP Academic, 2006), 185. 52

23 there is (alongside a category of unconditionally elect) only a corporate conditional promise that those of a certain class, whose meeting of certain conditions or not (i.e., those who “pray, repent, and bring obedience . . . and to the end persisting,” 3.190, 197) can cause their election or condemnation. Having seen the conditional nature of the gospel call in lines 185–97, we now see the Father with respect to the “rest” make clear that . . . This my long sufferance and my day of grace They who neglect and scorn, shall never taste; But hard be hard’nd, blind be blinded more, That they may stumble on, and deeper fall; And none but such from mercy I exclude. (3.198–202) As election is for the “rest,” rather than being a part of any absolute secret will driven by divine agency that negates human freedom, reprobation remains a class distinction: those who might not with the assistance of God’s grace achieve salvation are those who “shall never taste” God’s “day of grace.”54 Whereas in the previous lines regarding the “rest,” God is the subject who clears their dark senses and softens their stony hearts (3.188–89), in this section we see that “the subjects of ‘hard’nd’ and ‘blinded’ are simply the ‘hard’ and the ‘blind.’ . . . Divine action is thus grammatically excluded from this account of reprobation.”55 In light of the special elect of lines 183–84, the question about differing degrees of grace is inevitably raised. Why do some make good use of the grace on offer, while others continually refuse it? Indeed, why is there even an “Elect above the rest”? Recognizing the reality of these degrees is one thing; extrapolating schemas based on that reality by rationalizing 54

Another passage of import is found in Book 3.300–302, where “. . . hellish hate / So easily destroyed, and still destroys / In those who, when they may, accept not grace” (emphasis added). This is the very same grace offered to the “rest” in 3.187 because it faces the possibility of rejection; there is no certainty like that found in 3.183–84. 55 Myers, 84.

24 backward to God’s eternal decrees is quite another (recall Davenant’s criticism in n. 47). Theologians from the time of the early church accepted the former; wherever attempts are made to accomplish the latter, we see a pattern of division and condemnation.56 Even Augustine, who in the end does posit a notion of an absolute rather than conditional elect, warned that “wherefore he draws this one and not that one, seek not to decide if you wish not to err.”57 (Aquinas quotes this exact line when discussing this very issue.58) Anselm also had written that God “does not have mercy equally on all those to whom he shows mercy.”59 In like manner, Arminius argued that God “does not equally effect the conversion and salvation of all,” even though he “seriously will[s] the conversion and salvation of all.”60 His immediate successor, Simon Episcopius, spoke of “a very great disparity of Grace according . . . to the most free dispensation of the divine will.”61 His great-nephew, Limborch, equally affirmed that while God’s general decree of 56

From as early as AD 529 at the Council of Orange: “We not only do not believe that any are foreordained to evil by the power of God, but even state with utter abhorrence that if there are those who want to believe so evil a thing, they are anathema.” 57 Augustine, Tractates on the Gospel of John, 26.2 (NPNF1 7). In Enchiridion 61–63 (NPNF1 3), Augustine speaks of restoring the balance of the inhabitants of heaven and earth (because of the angelic apostasy as well as the fall of man) with the elect from humanity: “The part in heaven is indeed restored when the number lost from the angelic apostasy are replaced from the ranks of mankind. The part on earth is restored when those men predestined to eternal life are redeemed from the old state of corruption.” Milton incorporates this idea in 7.139–61, where Raphael tells Adam of Satan’s failure; despite his having “dispeopl’d Heav’n,” God chose to create “Another World, out of one man a Race / Of men innumerable, there to dwell” (7.151, 155–56). 58 Thomas Aquinas, ST, I, Q. 23, Art. 5, Reply Obj. 3. Quoted from Summa Theologica, “God’s Will and Providence” (1a. 19–26), eds. Thomas Gilby and T. C. O’Brien, Blackfriars, vol. 5 (New York: McGrawHill, 1967), 129. With respect to differing degrees of grace, Aquinas eventually rests his case by way of analogy on the parable of the workers in the vineyard (Matt. 20:1–16): “We cannot complain of unfairness if God prepares unequal lots for equals. . . . He who grants by grace can give freely as he wills, be it more be it less, without prejudice to justice, provided he deprives no one of what is owing.” 59 Anselm, De concordia, 3.8; from the text in Opera omnia, 6 vols. (Thomas Nelson, 1938–61), 2:243–88. Quoted in Myers, 80. 60 Arminius, Exam. Perk., in Works 3:442. 61 Episcopius, The confession or declaration of the ministers or pastors, which in the United Provinces are called Remonstrants, concerning the chief points of Christian religion (London, 1676), 207. Quoted in Myers, 80.

25 salvation and damnation is not unclear, the other special decree regarding the means thereunto is mysterious, “upon the account of that disproportion wherein God is pleas’d to communicate the means of salvation to men. For he does not bestow an equal share of grace every where at all times and upon all men.” This depends “on the mere good pleasure of God,” and is unsearchable.62 Amyraut as well wrote that all grace is sufficient “to bring salvation,” but that grace may nevertheless “also differ in degrees.”63 His recourse in this, like even that of the Remonstrant Limborch, is nothing “other than the divine good pleasure: the kind that, when one comes to examine why some believe, and others do not believe, why God has given faith to some and not to others, one must halt, as if at the edge of an abyss.”64 We have already seen Overall’s acknowledgment “that there are different Degrees of Divine Grace,” and, just like Paradise Lost, the actual possibility of those not specially elected to finally enter God’s kingdom leads to Overall’s corresponding admission (assumption on the part of Milton in the epic) that the irresistible grace given to some to ensure their salvation is not itself necessary for salvation. Milton’s hesitation to speculate about why some believe and not others also reflects the various sentiments laid out in the above paragraph. Proof of this is seen in the fact that he gives a mere two lines over to the divine secret will in electing some (on the occasion of the fall) and then quickly moves on to continue his amplification of the super abundant grace of his God, which he has been putting on display from the beginning of Book 3 62

Limborch, 347. Amyraut, A discourse concerning the divine dreams mention’d in Scripture (London, 1676), 20. Quoted in Myers, 80. 64 Amyraut, Sermon sur les paroles du Prophete Ezechiel, 63–64. Quoted in Richard A. Muller, “A Tale of Two Wills? Calvin and Amyraut on Ezekiel 18:23,” Calvin Theological Journal 44.2 (2009): 211–225, at 216. 63

26 (in contrast to the tyrannical, fatalistic, and miserly God theologized about by Satan and his minions in, e.g., Book 2.58–59, 160–61, 197–99, 334, 359–60, 732–33 ). Nevertheless, one final question remains: How can one like Milton who holds such a robust libertarian view of the will also affirm an unconditional election and not contradict himself? Perhaps in the same way Hooker did, whose affirmation of both those poles “appear not as contradictory, but as complementary parts of the same doctrinal system.”65 While the reprobate exist because this is the world God sovereignly actualized as a result of his definite pre-volitional knowledge of conditional future contingents (such as the fall), people become reprobate because of persistent unbelief—themselves hardening, blinding, stumbling on, and falling deeper into sin (3.200–202). When God made the sovereign choice to bring into existence this particular world, he rendered certain—but did not cause—the destruction of certain ones who would reject God’s “day of grace” (3.198). Accordingly, free choices determine how God’s free creatures would respond in any given setting, a point that Milton presupposes throughout the poem; but it is also a given that God decides the setting in which his creatures actually find themselves. Thus, beholding humanity in light of their fall as a corrupt mass, God out of mercy provides efficacious grace unconditionally to predestine certain persons to salvation, without any regard to foresight of their future merits, for (presumably) the purpose of being “extraordinary examples and instruments for the good of others” (see n. 31). The “rest” he is constrained out of mercy to enable sufficiently to attain salvation, and “out of justice to reprobate to damnation, through foresight” of their future perseverance or sinfulness. “He then decides to actualize a possible world order in which he 65

Voak, 158.

27 knows, again through his definite pre-volitional knowledge of conditional future contingents, that these decrees will be freely but infallibly accomplished.”66 In this way, England’s great epic justifies the ways of God to men by declaring that while humankind determined their fall, grace shall nevertheless be extended to all, and shall indeed effectually and irresistibly create an “Elect above the rest” for the sake of that “rest.” At the same time, that universal grace is sufficient to actually, not merely hypothetically, effect salvation, making reprobation entirely conditional, dependent upon the lifelong refusal of free agents. Contra Arminius and the generations following his trajectory, in which God employs only a passive foreknowledge when it comes to election, Milton contends in Paradise Lost that God uses his exhaustive foreknowledge in an active, sovereign way for the sake of both an unconditional “elect” and whichever of the “rest” do “to the end persisting, safe arrive” (3.197).67 God determines the world in which these characters live. Whether or not they exist at all, or they have the opportunity to respond to the gospel, or are placed in a setting where they would be graciously enabled to believe—these are all sovereign and merciful decisions made by 66

Ibid., 173. The significant difference between Hooker and Milton on this score is that a nonelect who nevertheless actually may become a part of the elect are, as far as I know, not postulated by Hooker. This may be the case because, on a strictly Molinist account, there is no intrinsic difference between efficacious grace and merely sufficient grace. The usual implication of upholding such a difference is that the reprobate therefore are simply not given efficacious grace (e.g., Calvinists, Lutherans, Jansenists, and perhaps Thomists of the Domingo Báñez stripe). Such divine withholding, however, will not fit into Milton’s account, thereby suggesting that he posited an intrinsic difference between the two graces, but the difference is not one that, to use Overall’s words, makes efficacious grace “requisite to Conversion, but only for the rendering it the more easy” (see n. 36). 67 It’s important to remember that reconciling the sovereignty of God and the freedom with which humans were endowed is only a part of Milton’s “great Argument” (1.24). “For Milton . . . the human initiative to scan and justify God’s ways through Jesus’s life, death, and resurrection is the criterion of a resourceful, Miltonic Christian with an explicit faith.” As such, it is “a stirring reminder of the Christian example of humiliation before exaltation, descent before ascension, and kenosis as requisite to theosis, all of which the poem enacts and memorializes in its justification by faith in God’s ways through His redeemer” (Russell M. Hillier, Milton’s Messiah: The Son of God in the Works of John Milton [OUP, 2011], 39, 54).

28 God.68 Milton everywhere affirms in his epic defense of God’s ways that people are saved by divine good pleasure rather than as a result of foreseen faith and perseverance, and that others become reprobate on account of their foreseen persistent refusal of the grace on offer rather than as a result of some absolute decree or prior divine withholding of sufficient grace, thus representing, at least to not a few seventeenth-century minds, the quintessential via media. . . . in Mercy and Justice both, Through Heav’n and Earth, so shall my glorie excel, But Mercy first and last shall brightest shine. (3.132–34) 68

Paraphrase of Keathley, 210–11.

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