[Milton-L] Reading Samson Agonistes

[James Rovira]

Derek:

Thanks for the response.  Hopefully this will be a productive
conversation for both of us.

You may have missed it, but I made an argument to this effect in a
previous email.  I argued that Samson was listed as a "hero of faith"
because of his moral failings, yes.  But I defined these moral
failings in terms of his violation of all three terms of his Nazirite
vow (his hair being cut was the last one).  Despite the fact that he
was no longer obedient to the terms of his vow, he prayed to God for
strength and was heard.  So he didn't fulfill the requirements of the
law but did receive his strength -- justification by faith.  I think I
also mentioned Rahab in this context.  So our disagreement is in our
location of Samson's moral failings, and what seems to me to be your
uncritical assumption that Samson's killing of the three thousand is
the moral failing that qualifies him for being a hero of faith to the
author of Hebrews.

First, as I said previously, Christian thought is hardly uniform in
its judgment of actions such as Samson's.  From a pacifist perspective
they are immoral, yes.  From a Just War theory perspective, probably
not, because he was acting in resistance to an invading and occupying
force.  In the thought of the latter not all killing is murder.  You
may disagree, of course, but you still need to acknowledge the
presence of a significant tradition along these lines within
Christianity rather than assume that -the- Christian judgment on
Samson's killing of the 3000 would be uniform.

Part of my response to you was that you're judging Samson's acts by NT
standards (love your enemies), and I don't think that's valid
reasoning.  I gave the reasons in a previous post.  However, I don't
think you're even reasoning properly from Hebrews 11.  Samson is
listed as a hero of faith along with a number of other people in Heb.
11:32-38.  One difficulty in interpreting this passage in Hebrews is
that there's a list of people followed by a list of deeds,  and it's
very difficult to line the two up, but the listed deeds that seem most
applicable to Samson are "administering justice" (really, many listed
could be said to have done that) and having his "weakness turned to
strength" (in physical terms, only Samson) as well as being in prison
and in chains (could also apply to several).

I think we should see that Samson is a "hero of faith" to the author
of Hebrews not -in spite of- the fact that he killed 3000 people, but
-because of- the fact that he killed 3000 people.  Samson prayed to
God for strength to pull down the pillars to kill all those people,
his prayer -was answered by God-, so he is a hero of faith.  At no
point do any NT authors explicitly condemn Samson on this point and
the pertinent passage in Hebrews seems to praise him, never mind the
narrative of Judges.  His moral failings should be defined only in
terms of OT law, and those would be marrying a Philistine woman and
breaking the terms of his vow.  His manner of delivering Israel from
the Philistines was not a moral failing (at least on his own terms),
as this act was in accordance with Jewish law (see the terms of the
covenant in Deut. 27).

I think killing all the Philistine nobility and other leadership
probably did qualify for beginning the deliverance of Israel --
because the terms of the Mosaic covenant have to do primarily with
God's blessing on their land and with maintaining sovereignty over
it-- and because it would be very difficult for the Philistines to
maintain an occupation of Israel without a government.

At any rate, given both OT and NT justification for Samson's act of
killing, it seems that the verbal ambiguity about Samson's prayer in
Milton's text is a striking deviation on Milton's part.  There is no
ambiguity in the source text -- Samson clearly prays, and Samson's
prayer is clearly heard and answered by God, so that Samson's killing
of 3000 Philistines is clearly an act of Divine retribution.  Milton's
verbal ambiguity seems to me to indicate a personal ambiguity toward
Samson's act, an ambiguity that may have come from parallels Milton
saw in Samson's story with his own situation -- perhaps, the very
reasons he chose to retell Samson's story to begin with.

Jim R

On Sun, Mar 2, 2008 at 3:06 PM, Derek Wood <dwood at stfx.ca> wrote:
>  Jim,
>  You clearly have an expectation about how a 'hero of faith' should behave. Where does it come from? Does the Bible tell us? Should he be a nice Jewish boy who obeys his mother, doesn't get drunk, pick fights and kill people he doesn't like? You're in good company because most Milton scholars in the 20th C. did just that. Assuming the hero of faith must be good, they constructed one, ignoring Milton's text where it was awkward. But does the Bible present the morality of the hero of faith? It does: in the story of Samson, of Rahab the harlot etc. Isn't the murder of 3000 people homicide? Samson was saved by faith not works. Of course we don't expect him to behave like Christ.  Christ brought a New Covenant better than the Old one. In PR Christ refuses Satan's offer of legions, military power,  dominion etc. PR. echoes many moments in SA (e.g. the motions) but only to contrast the new Christian ethic with the OT consciousness and morality. Christ dies as does Samson but how differsntly! Remember, Milton, unlike many Protestants, disagreed with Luther and Calvin in abrogating the Old Testament rules and morality. Samson did the best he could, but he was 'exiled from light.' Remember the angelic promise before his birth, that he would begin the deliverance of Israel? There isn't much evidence that it waas fulfilled.
>  Best wishes,
>  Derek Wood.
>