[Milton-L] Justify God?

[Campbell, W. Gardner]

Because "many there be that complain of Divine Providence for suffering
Adam to transgress." If God did not create men and women "sufficient to
have stood, though free to fall," and if there's no way to work out that
mystery ("work out" isn't the same as "explaining without remainder"),
then God is not good. 

 

Dennis Danielson covers this ground thoroughly in his "Milton's Good
God," to which I would add that for Milton, God's goodness includes
provocation. But that's more than I can cover here.

 

Gardner

 

 

Dr. Gardner Campbell

Director, Academy for Teaching and Learning

Associate Professor of Literature and Media, Honors College

Baylor University

One Bear Place #97189

Waco, TX 76798

254-710-3412

www.gardnercampbell.net

 

 

 

From: milton-l-bounces at lists.richmond.edu
[mailto:milton-l-bounces at lists.richmond.edu] On Behalf Of Horace Jeffery
Hodges
Sent: Wednesday, October 08, 2008 6:53 AM
To: John Milton Discussion List
Subject: [Milton-L] Justify God?

 

As everyone knows, Milton gives this reason for composing Paradise Lost:

 

	That to the highth of this great Argument
	I may assert Eternal Providence,
	And justifie the wayes of God to men. [PL 1.24-26]

	 

	(Luxon, Thomas H., ed. The Milton Reading Room,
http://www.dartmouth.edu/~milton, October, 2008.)

 

Why does Milton want to justify God's ways to men?

 

Jeffery Hodges

 

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