[Milton-L] Justify God?

[Larry Isitt]

Carol Barton writes:
The Yahweh of the Old Testament was a very harsh, very unforgiving deity, who (like his Greco-Roman predecessors) often seemed to behave in arbitrary ways . . . which didn't square at all with the New Testament's perception of a benevolent and merciful Logos.

What does not square is this description of God whose loving and forgiving character is the same in both testaments. There are multitudes of passages in the OT speaking of God's love and forgiveness for Israel's sins.

Larry Isitt
College of the Ozarks

From: milton-l-bounces at lists.richmond.edu [mailto:milton-l-bounces at lists.richmond.edu] On Behalf Of Carol Barton
Sent: Wednesday, October 08, 2008 9:53 AM
To: John Milton Discussion List
Subject: Re: [Milton-L] Justify God?

Jeffery Hodges asks:

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.)

For one reason, Jeffery, because, as Empson would much later, people then were questioning why a just and benevolent God would have made Lucifer and the reprobate angels and Adam and Eve susceptible of falling in the first place--in Empson's terminology, why God was in effect "playing with a stacked deck"? Theological issues were to the 1640s what politics and the economy are to today's world--topics of vital importance, over which people tortured and maimed and burned one another at the stake. The Yahweh of the Old Testament was a very harsh, very unforgiving deity, who (like his Greco-Roman predecessors) often seemed to behave in arbitrary ways . . . which didn't square at all with the New Testament's perception of a benevolent and merciful Logos. Milton could not accept the notion of God's culpability in human frailty or sinfulness . . . so on one level, the purpose of PL is to debunk such concepts.

Hope that quick, superficial response is helpful. The full answer is a much deeper one, of course, and a subject large enough for a full doctoral dissertation. (Believe me . . . I know!)

Best to all,

Carol Barton
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