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Milton's Arianism Again Considered

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 August 2011

Maurice Kelley
Maurice Kelley
Affiliation:
Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey
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Extract

Since 1825, when Bishop Sumner issued the first edition of John Milton's De Doctrina Christiana, the Arianism of that treatise has become an all but unanimously accepted fact. Although reviewers of Sumner's two quarto volumes divided in praising or lamenting Milton's tenets on the Trinity, they united in pronouncing them unorthodox and Arian; and later scholars have generally accepted this nineteenth-century verdict. In 1959, consequently, students of Milton were surprised when William B. Hunter, Jr., under the title “Milton's Arianism Reconsidered,” devoted some twenty-five pages to the argument that “we may assert positively that Milton was not an Arian” even though “modern judges are unanimous in branding him one.” And more recently, Roland M. Frye, praising Mr. Hunter's work, has gone on to state that “Milton could never be convicted, before a fair and competent theological court, of trinitarian heresy in Paradise Lost.” With these assertions of the orthodoxy of Milton and his epic I cannot agree; and at the cost of controversy with two close friends, I must argue 1) that Mr. Hunter is wrong in believing that Milton's view of the Son accords with that stated in the Nicene Creed; and 2) that Mr. Frye violates an established principle of textual interpretation when he denies the Arianism of Paradise Lost.

Type
Research Article
Information
Harvard Theological Review , Volume 54 , Issue 3 , July 1961 , pp. 195 - 205
Copyright
Copyright © President and Fellows of Harvard College 1961

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References

1 An extended survey of the 1825–1826 reviews of Milton's treatise appears in Mineka's, Francis E. “The Critical Reception of Milton's De Doctrina Christiana,” Studies in English, The University of Texas, 1943, pp. 115–147Google Scholar.

2 The Harvard Theological Review, LII, 9–35.

3 God, Man, and Satan, Princeton, N.J., 1960, pp. 75–76.

4 Mr. Hunter's belief is not new; it appears earlier in The Eclectic Review, N. S. XXV, 1826, 16Google Scholar: “But, though symbolizing thus far with Arius, he differs most essentially from him in maintaining that the Son is consubstantial with the Father — ‘Filii autem ex substantial ejus producti proprius erat Pater.’ Hence it will be seen, that he held literally and entirely the Nicene Creed.” Here, the reviewer fails to distinguish, as Milton does, between essence and substance, and he consequently misinterprets the Latin passage quoted from Milton.

5 My text of the Nicene Creed comes from Kelly, J. N. D., Early Christian Creeds, London, 1950Google Scholar. My discussion of this creed is likewise indebted to Kelly and also to Burton, Edward, Testimonies of the Ante-Nicene Fathers, Oxford, 1829Google Scholar.

6 Like Mr. Hunter, I cite and quote Sumner's translation from the Columbia edition of Milton's Works, New York, 1931–1938.

7 See, for instance, p. 25, where Mr. Hunter asserts: “This and only this point [that the Logos had been created ex nihilo] was condemned as heresy at Nicaea.” The Nicene Creed also anathematized four other Arian errors: that the Son was begotten in time, that he is of a different essence, that he is created, and that he is subject to alteration and change.

8 Equally unsatisfactory is Mr. Hunter's further argument (pp. 20, 33–34) for Milton's orthodoxy: that Milton's view of the Son is a return to Philo's concept of a Logos existing in two stages: “a first one, uncreated and from eternity, when it exists only as God's thought (not as a person), and a second one when it is generated as God externalizes his thought into an intelligible world.” By Milton's reasoning, however, this concept could not lead to the orthodox view of the Son; “If he is the Son, either he must have been originally in the Father, and have proceeded from him, or he must always have been as he is now, separate from the Father, self-existent and independent. If he was originally in the Father, but now exists separately, he has undergone a certain change at some time or other, and is therefore mutable” (XIV, 309). And those “who assert that the Son of God … is subject to alteration or change,” runs the Nicene Creed, “the Catholic Church anathematizes.”

9 Of True Religion, Works, VI, 169.

10 A Farther Vindication of Christ's Divinity, London, sig. B.

11 Testimonies of the Ante-Nicene Fathers, p. 473, quoting Lindsey's Apology.

12 The Evangelical Magazine, N. S., IV, 51.

13 II, 287.

14 XXXII, 452–453.

15 The Nineteenth Century, LXXI, 908.

16 Studies of Arianism, Cambridge, 1900, p. 49Google Scholar.

17 This is not a hypothetical case. For controversy on the proper interpretation of this verse passage, see Sewell, Arthur, A Study in Milton's Christian Doctrine, London, 1939, pp. 86–88Google Scholar, and Kelley, Maurice, This Great Argument, Princeton, N. J., 1941, pp. 30–31Google Scholar.

18 See, for instance, the close similarity existing between the treatise and the epic in their discussions of free will and predestination (This Great Argument, pp. 16–19).

19 Compare, for instance, the following accounts in the treatise and the epic: “Seven of these [angels], in particular, are described as traversing the earth in the execution of their ministry. Zech. iv. 10. ‘those seven are the eyes of Jehovah which run to and fro through the whole earth.’ Rev. v. 6. ‘which are the seven Spirits of God sent forth into all the earth.’ See also i. 4. [‘and from the seven Spirits which are before his throne.’] and iv. 5. [‘and there were seven lamps of fire burning before the throne, which are the seven Spirits of God’”] (XV, 103).

“Th’ Arch-Angel Uriel, one of the seav'n

Who in God's presence, neerest to his Throne

Stand ready at command, and are his Eyes

That run through all the Heav'ns, or down to th' Earth

Bear his swift errands over moist and dry,

O're Sea and Land; him Satan thus accostes.

Uriel, for thou of those seav'n Spirits that stand

In sight of Gods high Throne, gloriously bright (III, 648–655).”

20 For instance: “it [renovation] is sometimes spoken of under the metaphor … of tasting” (XV, 355) with “This my long sufferance and my day of grace / They who neglect and scorn, shall never taste” (III, 198–199). And “in profluentem aquam immerguntur” (XVI, 168) compared with “Baptizing in the profluent streame” (XII, 442).

21 Wolfson, Harry A., The Philosophy of the Church Fathers, Cambridge, Mass., 1956, 1, 217–232Google Scholar.

22 Summa contra Gentiles, IV, xi.

23 Of the Lawes of Ecclesiastical Polity, I, 2.

24 Berkhof, L., Reformed Dogmatics, Grand Rapids, Mich., 1932, I, 74Google Scholar.

25 Further indication of the presence of this anti-Trinitarian belief in Paradise Lost appears in a related parallel between Paradise Lost and the De Doctrina. In the treatise Milton writes: “nor did the Father beget him from any natural necessity, but of his own free will, a mode more … agreeable to the paternal dignity” (XIV, 187). This distinction Adam repeats in commenting on the relation in which his future sons will stand to him: “what if thy Son / Prove disobedient, and reprov'd, retort, / Wherefore didst thou beget me? I sought it not: / Wouldst thou admit for his contempt of thee / That proud excuse ? Yet him not thy election, / But Natural necessity begot” (X, 760–765).

26 See, for instance, Barber, A. D., Bibliotheca Sacra, XVII, 1860, 28–34Google Scholar; Larsen, Martin, PMLA, xli, 1926, 891–934CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Woodhouse, A. S. P., University of Toronto Quarterly, V, 1935–1936, 138–139Google Scholar; and Sewell, A Study, pp. 85–108.

27 The Eclectic Review, N. S. xxv, 1826, 114Google Scholar.