[Milton-L] Justify God?

[richard strier]

I'm afraid that I think that Carol Barton has a very stereotyped and poorly 
informed (and supersessionist) view of what Christians call the "Old Testament," 
but should be called the Hebrew bible.

---- Original message ----
>Date: Wed, 08 Oct 2008 09:10:27 -0700
>From: "Peter C. Herman" <herman2 at mail.sdsu.edu>  
>Subject: Re: [Milton-L] Justify God?  
>To: John Milton Discussion List <milton-l at lists.richmond.edu>
>
>   At 07:52 AM 10/8/2008, you wrote:
>
>     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.
>
>   I have to quibble with Carol Barton's statement
>   above. Theological issues in the 1640s (and earlier)
>   were not like politics, they were politics. To
>   paraphrase Clauswitz, religion was politics by other
>   means, and politics was religion by other means.
>   Thus King James VI/I could say,"No bishop, no king,"
>   and he was right. Attacking church hierarchy was the
>   same as attacking political hierarchy.
>
>   Milton's assertion that he intends to "justifie the
>   wayes of God to men" also needs to be seen in the
>   context of the Revolution's collapse, which Milton
>   and many others previously regarded as enjoying
>   divine approval.
>
>   One further point. Prof. Gardner is of course right
>   to bring up Dennis Danielson's work, but as Prof.
>   Hodges (and others on this list) know, there have
>   been challenges to Danielson's sense that Milton
>   conducts an entirely successful theodicy in PL. See
>   for example Michael Bryson's work.
>
>   Peter C. Herman
>
>     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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Richard Strier
Department of English
University of Chicago
1115 East 58th Street
Chicago, IL 60637