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Some Problems in John Milton's Theological Vocabulary

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 August 2011

William B. Hunter Jr.
William B. Hunter Jr.
Affiliation:
University of Idaho
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Extract

Throughout the history of western Christianity, a major stumbling block has been agreement upon the definition of certain terms. Milton and his critics have shared in the difficulty of communication which lack of a common terminology has caused. Nowhere is this more evident than in his discussion of the Son of God in the Christian Doctrine, where his employment of “substance,” “subsistence,” “essence,” and “hypostasis” has confused students who were attempting to understand the complex meanings which lie back of these words. Milton has often not followed the interpretations of these words usually held in Christianity; rather, he has adopted meanings which were very early associated with them but which lost currency centuries ago, even though they have never been completely forgotten.

Type
Research Article
Information
Harvard Theological Review , Volume 57 , Issue 4 , October 1964 , pp. 353 - 365
Copyright
Copyright © President and Fellows of Harvard College 1964

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References

1 All quotations from Milton are taken from the Columbia Edition (New York, 1931–1938).

2 A Study in Milton's Christian Doctrine (London, 1939), p. 88.

3 This Great Argument (Princeton, 1941), pp. 29–30.

4 “Milton's Arianism Again Considered,” HTR 54 (1961), 195–205CrossRefGoogle Scholar, in part addressed as an answer to my own study, “Milton's Arianism Reconsidered,” HTR 52 (1959), 9–35CrossRefGoogle Scholar, in which I tried to show that Milton was not an Arian.

5 In his 1961 study, n. 4, Professor Kelley criticizes an anonymous writer in the Eclectic Review of 1826 who quoted, quite correctly, Milton's statement given above that God “was properly the Father of the Son made of his own substance” (XIV, 187) as proof that Milton differed from Arius “most essentially in this point” — as he did, indeed. Professor Kelley thinks that this unknown author “fails to distinguish, as Milton does, between essence and substance, and he consequently misinterprets the Latin passage.” I hate to disagree again with my friend Professor Kelley, but it is he who fails to make this distinction.

6 Of the Lawes of Ecclesiastical Politie (London, 1666), V, 51.

7 On the Trinity, V. viii. 10, in A Select Library of the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers (First Series), III, 92. See also his argument (VII. v. 10) as to why “God is improperly called substance.”

8 G. L. Prestige, God in Patristic Thought (London, 1952), p. 193. See also Harry Wolfson, Philosophy of the Church Fathers (Cambridge, Mass., 1956), I, 325.

9 De Oratione, 15; Wolfson, p. 318.

10 E.g., Contra Celsum, viii. 12; cf. Prestige, p. 179, and Wolfson, p. 319.

11 Prestige, p. 167.

12 P. 168.

13 Prestige, p. 174.

14 Against Praxeas, vii, in The Ante-Nicene Fathers, III, 602. See also Prestige, p. 220, and Wolfson, pp. 323ff.

15 Against Praxeas, xxv.

16 Wolfson, p. 326.

17 Against Praxeas, ix; Wolfson, p. 326.

18 Against Praxeas, iv; Wolfson, p. 326.

19 Against Praxeas, ii; Wolfson, p. 328; Prestige, p. 220.

20 Against Praxeas, xii.

21 See Wolfson, p. 327. In the Christian Doctrine, Milton, like many other Protestants, tends to avoid using nonbiblical terms like this one.

22 In the article from HTR noted above.

23 “… the Son of God, begotten from the Father …, that is, from the ousia of the Father.” Cf. Wolfson, pp. 334f., but Prestige speculates that “the anathema … against those who asserted that the Son came into existence … from another hypostasis or ousia, means by these last two expressions, not generic substance, but individual objective source” (p. 177).

24 Wolfson, p. 353.

25 The True Intellectual System of the Universe (London, 1845), II, 431–32.

26 See my discussion in “Milton on the Incarnation: Some More Heresies,” Journal of the History of Ideas 21 (1960), 349–69CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

27 Professor Kelley believes (“Milton's Arianism Again Considered,” p. 197) that Milton would have been anathematized by the Nicene Creed for not confessing the eternity of the Son. For Milton says that “the Son was begotten of the Father in consequence of his decree, and therefore within the limits of time” (XIV, 189) and thus disagrees in a second test with the Nicene statement which in 325 anathematized those who say that there was a time when the Son was not. But this is to ignore the theory of a two-stage Logos (argued in my article cited above in HTR). Here it is only necessary to observe that in this passage Milton is discussing the metaphorical generation of the Son, as he says on the next page (XIV, 191). For an excellent discussion of the distinction, see This Great Argument, pp. 94ft., and my own study, “Milton's Urania,” in Studies in English Literature 4 (1964), 35–42. Professor Kelley also thinks (n. 8) that Milton would have been anathematized because he believes that the Son “has undergone a certain change at some time or other, and is therefore mutable” (XIV, 309) and the Creed anathematized those who say that the Son of God “is subject to alteration or change.” But this anathema is directed at those who believed that the Son was morally changeable: that He might sin. See J. N. D. Kelley, Early Christian Creeds (London, i960), p. 242.

28 See Wolfson's discussion of unity of rule, pp. 321ff.

29 Hooker so names it, Ecclesiastical Politie, V, 52; see also DNB s.v. Confession II. 7.