[Milton-L] Knowledge, free will, etc.

Fri Nov 7 21:52:36 EST 2008

With regard to intuitive vs. discursive knowledge, differing in degree but of kind the same, I was trying too quickly to make a nuanced point: Raphael consistently demonstrates both intuitive and discursive strengths and weaknesses, and surely any statement involving degree and an assertion of monism will quickly take us into some of the most fluid and interesting empyreal conceits Milton has to offer. That’s why I don’t read Raphael’s statement as a straightforward normative declaration whose ramifications are obvious. I don’t find many such statements in Milton at all, truth to tell—which is not to say that he didn’t believe in law, for he did, and law has obvious ramifications, though perhaps not as many as one might think.

As for the difficulties Michael presents below, in my view they are at the heart of Milton’s project. I don’t think Empson is right to say that Milton did the best he could with a botched job starring God as Stalin. But I also don’t think Milton shrank from the rigor of confronting the full spectrum of difficulties before him. I think his rigor is everywhere in the poem, and certainly self-aware enough to avoid being hoist quite so immediately on his own petard. To put it another way, Milton’s “sufficient to have stood, though free to fall” does (for me, and I think for Milton) close down the option that God might want Eve to eat the fruit. Yet closing down that option releases *more* interest in the poem, not less, at least in my view, for now instead of a tricksy, sinister, or befuddled God we have the far more various questions arising from authentic (not necessarily the same as straightforward) choice.

Gardner

From: milton-l-bounces at lists.richmond.edu [mailto:milton-l-bounces at lists.richmond.edu] On Behalf Of Michael Bryson
Sent: Friday, November 07, 2008 12:57 PM
To: John Milton Discussion List
Subject: Re: [Milton-L] Knowledge, free will, etc.

"Regarding God’s wanting Satan to succeed, obviously the narrative of Gen. 3 requires that PL’s Satan tempt Eve, so PL’s God must allow Satan to do that. Perhaps PL’s God even wants Satan to do  that. But we need to draw the line there and say that God does not want Eve to eat the fruit."

Interesting. Why need we do so?

The narrative of Genesis 2 and 3 may very well require a number of other things from us. Things that I gather some on this list would not like to have required of a reading of PL. 

Adam and Eve do not die in the day they trangress the prohibition. Adam lives 930 years. Adam and Eve do (if Yahweh is to be credited at 3:22) "become as one of us, to know good and evil"--much as the serpent (who it must be pointed out, is not Satan...such a conflation occurs only much later) promises at 3:5: "God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil." The serpent does not lie about this. If anyone does, it is Yahweh at 2:17, when he says of the forbidden tree: "in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die." They do not die: in fact Yahweh's concern is to prevent them from having access to the tree that would erase the most crucial remaining distinction between humans and the gods (rather after the fashion of the refusal of the gods to grant immortality to Gilgamesh, and the cruel--even fated--way that the plant of restored youth is taken from his grasp as well: humans are not intended to be immortal in any of these NME tales--such is reserved for the gods alone). Yahweh's playing out of this pattern is clear at 3:22-24:

"and now, lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever: Therefore the LORD God sent him forth from the garden of Eden, to till the ground from whence he was taken.So he drove out the man; and he placed at the east of the garden of Eden Cherubims, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to keep the way of the tree of life."

I would argue that it is clear that Yahweh in Genesis does not want mankind to eat from the Tree of Life, as he takes specific and immediate steps to prevent such a possibility (steps notable by their absence in the case of the Tree of Knowledge). Perhaps this is reflected in the Father of PL as well. But why do we "need" to "draw the line" and say--put beyond all possibility of question and or/debate, actually--that the Father in PL does not want Eve to eat of the fruit of the "forbidden" tree? Keeping the option open is far more interesting in my view.

Michael Bryson

---- Original message ----

Date: Fri, 07 Nov 2008 13:16:46 -0500
From: Michael Gillum <mgillum at unca.edu>
Subject: Re: [Milton-L] Knowledge, free will, etc.
To: milton-l <milton-l at lists.richmond.edu>

Regarding Sin’s compulsion to move toward Earth, isn’t this pretty much Aristotelian physics, where things move toward their natural places, just as Dante, once purified at the top of Purgatory, rises spontaneously to Paradise? Like moves toward like because of a “connatural force” analogous to gravity. Then, Death is moved by his own hunger and the scent of prey. Regarding God’s agency (“I called and drew them hither”), is this drawing by means of a special decree, or is it the operation of natural law? It seems to me that, insofar as he can, Milton attributes the consequences of the Fall to the operation of natural law rather than to God’s particular decrees of punishment.

Regarding God’s wanting Satan to succeed, obviously the narrative of Gen. 3 requires that PL’s Satan tempt Eve, so PL’s God must allow Satan to do that. Perhaps PL’s God even wants Satan to do  that. But we need to draw the line there and say that God does not want Eve to eat the fruit.

Michael

On 11/7/08 12:06 PM, "Mitchell M. Harris" <mitchell.harris at augie.edu> wrote:

I'd disagree, Campbell. Raphael does say it is "higher"--"Differing but in degree, of kind the same" (5.490). As for how Satan knows the tree, Jim Rovira's post is spot on. 

I also want to join Marlene and Michael in saying that God clearly compels Satan to do what he does, but I want to qualify that claim by arguing that he compels him by way of his decree regarding free will. Milton best expresses this theological idea in Christian Doctrine--specifically in the nuanced moments of his sections on God's decrees, predestination, and election, and the hardening of hearts. Satan's compelled will (which, according to Christian Doctrine, still is a free will), however, clearly does not negate that Adam and Eve's free will can remain intact so long as they obey God's command.

I think these concepts (God's decrees, predestination, election, etc.) are expressed more cogently in Book 10 when Sin has some sort of inner feeling that compels her to leave Hell and start building the road to earth with Death:

Methinks I feel new strength within me rise,
Wings growing, and dominion giv'n me large

Beyond this deep; whatever draws me on,
Or sympathy, or some connatural force
Powerful at greatest distance to unite 
With secret amity things of like kind 
By secretest conveyance. (10.243-49)

Later, however, God reveals that it is he, in fact, who called them to this work:

And know not that I called and drew them thither
My Hell-hounds, to lick up the draff and filth
Which man's polluting sin with taint hath shed
On what was pure . . . (10.629-32) 

So in this instance, Sin does not have free will, because God had decreed that on the day Adam ate of the fruit, he would sin and die. But, once again, he never decreed that Adam and Eve had to eat the fruit.

Best,
Mitch Harris

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