[Milton-L] Justify God?

[Dennis Danielson]

Dear Miltonists,

Sometimes "justify" means exculpate. Sometimes it just means "make sense 
of." It's something most aware people try to do in some measure, I would 
think. I first pondered theodicy in a serious intellectual way while 
reading Albert Camus. But then a year later, when I was 22, my only 
sister was killed in a traffic accident, and "making sense of things" 
(God, the world, my own life) took on a new urgency. Milton helped me 
work through some of that, for which I was and still am humbly grateful. 
He didn't solve the problem in any comprehensive or thoroughgoing way. 
But within the capacity of an amazing story that intersects with various 
genres, theologies, cosmologies, and historical currents--and conveys 
penetrating sights and tastes of evil and good, horror and beauty--I'd 
still say he does an impressive job.

I haven't reread Milton's Good God in quite some time. I think it's 
quite plausible, however, that the rather uppity thirty-year-old who 
wrote it may have sounded more cock-sure that was warranted. Still, 
that's sometimes how one gets a good argument going. I could name a 
couple of other, much more recent books engaging Milton's theodicy whose 
authors likewise sound more cock-sure that the strength of their cases 
warrants.

But let that pass. If anyone wants anything more long-winded from me, 
you're welcome to contact me off-line and I'll send you a Word-file of 
MGG, Chapter 1, which offers a conceptual framework within which to 
consider Milton's justification of the ways of God.

Shalom,
Dennis D

-- 
Dennis Danielson
Professor and Head
Department of English
University of British Columbia
#397 - 1873 East Mall
Vancouver, BC, Canada V6T 1Z1
telephone: 604-822-3174
Author: The First Copernican
WEB: http://faculty.arts.ubc.ca/ddaniels/