To “justify the ways of God to men”: these words famously describe John Milton’s intent in writing Paradise Lost, the epic poem he completed in 1667 (1.26).[1] Like his muses, the ancient poets Homer and Virgil, Milton created a work of art that became a classic and is still studied today. Components of a classic include the presence of enduring truths, the fragility of the human condition, the role of fate, and the tension between good and evil, among others. Milton touches on each of these components, and more, in his poem. Of particular interest to this author is the manner in which Milton depicts the tension between good and evil through his portrayal of two telling falls from grace – Satan’s banishment from heaven, and mankind’s dismissal from paradise. These “falls” shaped human destiny through the triangular relationship among God, Adam and Eve, and Satan, with the first man and woman’s being the fulcrum in the shifting balance between the other two.
In his epic poem, Milton brings to life the being of Satan in powerful and dramatic ways that rival the omnipotence of the Supreme Being that is God, Satan’s creator. Writers in the Hebrew Bible portray Satan as a separate entity that is both a compatriot of God who tests the faith of a certain subject such as Job (Job 27:6)[2] and a counter spirit that challenges God’s authority through characters such as Eve (Gen 3:6).[3] These writers depict Satan neither as a fallen angel nor as a presence, and they do not accuse him of bringing evil into the world. Instead, they blame the fallen angels who take human beings as wives and procreate giants that become the source of evil (Gen 6:1-2; 5-6).[4] Milton, by stark contrast, vividly brings Satan to the fore as a fallen angel in all his dark and furious glory. Using blank verse as his poetic medium, and echoing Virgil by designating twelve chapters within the epic, Milton portrays the army of rebellious angels that surrounds Satan and discusses their fall from heaven alongside their notorious leader. In parallel fashion, Milton uses the angels’ physical fall to foretell mankind’s spiritual fall. In both instances, there are three characteristics that define the tension between good and evil: pride and punishment; the blessing and curse of free will; and heavenly and hellish paradoxes.
Pride and Punishment
Milton introduces pride as a motivating factor of Satan’s malevolent behavior through the poet’s description of the heavenly wars between the righteous angels and those who become rebellious as they attempt to assume the mantle of God. God ensures the victory of the righteous angels and casts the rebellious angels out of heaven and into hell. Even from hell, Satan’s desire for power governs his existence, and he placates himself and his followers when he says, “Here we may reign secure, and in my choice / To reign is worth ambition, though in Hell: Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven” (1.261-263). Though Satan is a powerful, wingéd [MH3] creature, he bemoans his fearsome travels; the flight path Milton creates for him is dark and loathsome. By contrast, light is present only in the creation, wherein “this pendent [sic] world” (2.1052) hangs by a golden chain from the gate of heaven, an entrance that is forbidden to Satan. Surrounding heaven, earth, and hell is a hard, opaque shell that encases an endless void called “chaos,” a dark and foreboding chasm that “can provide God ‘His dark materials to create more worlds’” (2.915-916). Yet, in the picture Milton creates of the cosmos, there is an aperture in the protective shell that allows Satan to penetrate the atmosphere and fly toward the Garden of Eden.
After invading Eden, Satan views God’s noblest creation, man and woman, in their natural state and plots a way to destroy their perfection and bring them down with him. He disguises himself as a serpent, as described in Chapter 9:
In every bush and brake[PR4] where hap may find
The serpent sleeping in whose mazy folds
To hide me and the dark intent I bring.
O foul descent! That I who erst contended
With gods to sit the high’st am now constrained
Into a beast and mixed with bestial slime
This essence to incarnate and imbrute
That to the heighth [sic] of deity aspired! (9.160-167)
In the form of a serpent, Satan now moves to tempt God’s perfect creatures by appealing to the vanity – or pride – of Eve. In a departure from their usual waking routine, Adam and Eve go to their labors, but not as before: they go separately instead of together, even though the angel Raphael has warned them of pending evil. Despite Adam’s protest, Eve asserts her independence from him and proceeds toward a different location in the garden. It is here that she encounters the serpent, which beguiles her with his charming conversation. The serpent continues to disarm Eve’s sense of righteousness and ultimately replaces it with temptation, at which time he asks Eve why she cannot eat from the tree in the center of the garden. Eve responds:
But of this tree we may not taste nor touch; God so commanded, and left that command Sole daughter of his voice. The rest, we live Law to our selves, our reason is our law.
To whom the Tempter guilefully replied: [9.655]
Indeed: Hath God then said that of the fruit
Of all these garden trees ye shall not eat,
Yet Lords declared of all in earth or air?
To whom thus Eve yet sinless: Of the Fruit
Of each tree in the garden we may eat, [9.660]
But of the fruit of this fair tree amidst
The garden, God hath said, “Ye shall not eat
Thereof nor shall ye touch it, lest ye die.”
(the Serpent speaks) Ye eat thereof your eyes, that seem so clear [9.706] Yet are but dim, shall perfectly be then Open’d and cleared and ye shall be as gods, Knowing both good and evil as they know.
So saying, her rash hand in evil hour [9.780] Forth reaching to the fruit, she plucked, she eat…
Milton uses these verses to develop the reader’s affection for Adam and Eve and an appreciation of their innocence; simultaneously, he exposes their sinful human nature that can neither resist temptation nor follow God’s law. These passages in Paradise Lost include not only God’s death threat that accompanies eating the forbidden fruit but also the serpent’s misleading promise that, by eating the fruit, Adam and Eve “…shall be as gods / Knowing both good and evil as they [God and angels] know” (9.708-709). Pridefully, Adam and Eve believe that they can know good and evil; foolishly, they believe they can be like God. Their banishment from paradise proves them wrong.
The Blessing and Curse of Free Will
Eve’s choice to eat the fruit and "know good and evil" represents her exercising free will; Adam follows suit when he submits to her urging and partakes of the fruit, as well. Though both have been warned of pending disaster, neither one heeds the words. The serpent has succeeded at eroding Eve’s unconditional love of God and her loyalty to His law. When she succumbs to temptation, what began as a weakness evolves into a strength when she convinces Adam to follow suit. Both Adam and Eve fear the consequences of their action: although they do not die from eating the fruit, they know that a severe punishment will follow. What could have become a triumph becomes a tragedy when Eve makes her choice. [5] By exercising her God-given gift of free will, Eve abnegates her other God-given gift – eternal life spent in Paradise – and takes Adam down with her. Satan, the fallen angel, awaits them and their progeny at every subsequent turn in history.
Unlike the fallen angels and first human beings, the heavenly angels that have remained righteous have a glorified role in the poem: that of God’s blessed emissaries. God sends the archangel Michael to reveal the future to Adam before Adam is dismissed from paradise. The angel informs the first man that he will see “…all earth’s kingdoms and their glory” (11.384) and, on a different plane, a more damning look at the real cost of exercising his free will:
Adam, now ope thine eyes and first behold
Th’effects which thy original crime hath wrought
In some to spring from thee who never touched
Th’excepted tree nor with the snake conspired
Nor sinned thy sin, yet from that sin derive
Corruption to bring forth more violent deeds. (11:423-428)
Standing atop a mountain peak in the Garden of Eden, Adam sees history unfold before him. Michael stands by his side and tells him of the great misfortunes that humanity will suffer because of his and Eve’s original sin. Filled with regret, Adam rues his sin as he watches events such as his son Cain’s killing his twin brother Abel, the nation’s exile to Egypt, the annihilating flood, the persistence of evil following the flood, and the panoply of tragedies that spread across the horizon of history.
The culmination of Adam’s experience is his final view, in which he learns of Christ’s redemptive sacrifice. As Adam’s journey draws to a close, he relates a message that raises a core issue in the poem and in humankind as well:
O goodness infinite, goodness immense!
That all this good of evil shall produce
And evil turn to good more wonderful…
Full of doubt I stand,
Whether I should repent me now of sin
By me done and occasioned or rejoice
Much more that much more good thereof shall spring
To God more glory, more good will to men
From God, and over wrath grace shall abound! (12.469-478)
Adam has made a statement that has dual meaning: “Whether I should repent me now of sin/…or rejoice / Much more that much more good thereof shall spring” (12:474-476). On the one hand, he expresses uncertainty about whether to regret his sin and its result; on the other hand, he exults in the fact that good can come from evil and that his own sin has engendered that possibility. Historically, this complex situation is called felix culpa, or the “fortunate fall.” Milton hearkens back to Augustine’s introduction of the concept in Sermones.[6] For Milton’s purposes, felix culpa is a way to justify God’s salvation of his sinful children. God creates His first children, Adam and Eve, to live without sin. Once they succumb to evil and break their vow of obedience to God, He punishes them with expulsion from paradise. Christian writers such as Milton and Augustine knew that the pair’s expulsion from paradise was the initial punishment for legions of sins that would follow and characterize humanity, beginning with the couple’s own progeny’s committing murder in order to grab the birthright and gain power[MH6] .
Both authors also believe that God cannot be both good and evil, so there has to be some other explanation for the presence of evil in the world. Milton, who drew on biblical writers and other ancient authors, places the source of evil in Satan as leader of the fallen angels. Augustine describes evil not as a presence in nature but rather as an absence of nature—the nature of good.[7] Another of Milton’s works, Christian Doctrine, replicates Augustine’s concept by stating that God created mankind to be inherently good and that Satan and the fallen angels are no different from humanity in that God also created them to be good. When Satan and his followers instigate evil, though, they become non-beings—they are no longer functioning within God’s created nature.[8] Unlike fallen mankind, which ultimately receives salvation, the fallen angels are condemned forever to suffer a fiery death at the end time.
Heavenly and Hellish Paradoxes
Uncertain as to whether their end time will be immediate or sometime in the future, Adam and Eve become the focus of three important paradoxes that Milton introduces in the poem—paradoxes that mankind has been contemplating since the first couple’s sojourn in paradise. These three paradoxes include the proliferation of evil after God has brought the great flood, the use of fallen angels to tempt or test humankind, and the blessing—or curse—of free will.
According to Genesis, the proliferation of the angelic-human offspring and their unholy deeds is so great, and the resulting evil is so pervasive, that God declares his intention to punish humankind by eradicating people from the face of the earth with an all-encompassing flood. He selects Noah to survive the flood along with his family so that a new generation may populate the earth following the annihilation. Yet, once the flood has passed and the earth has dried, Noah and his family encounter more evil spirits and plea with God for mercy. From where do the evil spirits arise? God drowns the bodies of the evil offspring, but He does not drown their spirits. Thus, it is God who allows the evil spirits to persist, and He does not annihilate them. The persistence of evil is the first paradox.
The second paradox is God’s using fallen angels either to tempt or test humankind. In Paradise Lost, the fallen angel Satan does both. In the guise of a serpent, he tempts Eve to eat the forbidden fruit. After he succeeds in seducing Eve, he tests Adam’s obedience to God through the tainted Eve. Though God has warned the first children that they will die if they partake of the Tree of Knowledge—without making it clear whether the death is now or in the future—He allows them to live after they sin but punishes them with expulsion from the garden. In addition, He shows Adam, through the archangel Michael, all the misfortune that Adam and Eve’s progeny will suffer throughout the ages because of the original sin. Milton, who is a Christian poet, describes humankind’s redemption through the sacrifice of God’s son. For human beings to be redeemed at the end time, they must walk in the paths of righteousness and keep God’s holy commandments. For the fallen angels, there is no luxury of redemption; because they turned their backs on God, they must suffer interminably in hell.
The final paradox is God’s gift of free will to His perfect creations, the angels and Adam and Eve. God speaks about Satan’s choice to rebel when he says, “…Whose fault? / …Ingrate! He had of Me / All he could have. I made him just and right, / Sufficient to have stood though free to fall” (3.96-99). The angel that was Lucifer becomes Satan through a devilish choice, seeking power that he will never gain but earning, instead, the wrath of God and destruction of humanity through the ages. Adam and Eve are no different from Satan. Eve warily responds to the serpent’s wiles but eventually chooses to succumb to temptation and eat from the Tree of Knowledge; she then convinces Adam to do the same. Because of his love of Eve, Adam follows suit, and both he and Eve stumble and fall through their own volition. God explains His creation: “…for so / I formed them free and free they must remain / Till they enthrall themselves. … / They themselves ordained their Fall” (3.123-125, 128). Just as God allows evil spirits to persist after the great flood, He allows the rebel angels and the first couple to disobey Him and make their own choices. The price of free will is expulsion from paradise—forever.
Conclusion
Paradise Lost, the greatest poem written in the English language, is a complex work of art that contains the components of a classic. Formed on the model of epic poets such as Homer and Virgil, and written in blank verse, the poem recounts the presence of angels in Chaos before God creates the universe, how rebellious angels engage in battle with righteous angels to overtake the throne of God, and the former’s efforts to propagate evil in the world. God hand-selected Lucifer, the “angel of light,” to be a leader of the heavenly host. When Lucifer rebels and leads his band against the heavenly angels, God extinguishes the evil angel’s light and casts him into darkness. The sin that causes Lucifer to fall from grace, descend to hell, and suffer eternal damnation is pride. When Lucifer’s troops fail to win the war in heaven, God ensures that they suffer harsh punishment. Lucifer, now known as “Satan,” is not the only being that is punished.
Even though fearing God’s punishment, the perfect beings whom God creates in His own image allow their pride to separate them from their creator through their sin of disobedience, thinking they do not need to obey God in the conduct of their lives. The well-known story of the serpent, Eve, and the forbidden fruit is retold in glorious detail in the poem, yet the outcome is the same: God punishes Adam and Eve by dismissing them from paradise, the Garden of Eden. Before the couple departs, the archangel Michael offers Adam a view of the world and all the misfortunes that befall his progeny because of his and Eve’s disobedience to God.
God allows the sin of pride to proliferate by using fallen angels to spawn evil through intercourse with human women, tempt human beings such as Eve through the wiles of a tainted serpent, and test the devotion of men such as Adam through seemingly inviolate choices. In none of these instances does evil succeed in supplanting good but only in diminishing it, and not permanently. As both Milton and Augustine agree, human beings enjoy the liberation of felix culpa—the “fortunate fall”—that purports evil’s lack of existence without the counter-balancing presence of good. For the fallen angels, there is nothing fortunate about their fall, as they are doomed to suffer interminably in hell.
The suffering visited upon God’s angels and children was promulgated by His gift of free will to both. The innate presence of free will has made humankind the most complex organism on earth because free will can replace rational thinking and lead either to glorification or condemnation. In the case of Satan, Adam, and Eve, their irrational thinking leads to condemnation by their creator. God acknowledges that He has blessed His creatures with the ability to choose, regardless of their inclination to make bad choices. Punishment for the angels’ fall will last in perpetuity. By contrast, humanity’s fall will defy gravity, for their punishment will be exonerated through God’s sacrifice of His only son. By personifying Satan and the fallen angels that accompany him, and by presenting the nature of mankind both in horrific and heartening tones, Milton succeeds in his objective of ‘justifying the ways of God to men.’
End Notes
1. John Milton, Paradise Lost, Gordon Teskey, ed. (New York, London: W. W. Norton & Company, 2005).
2. “I hold fast my righteousness, and will not let it go; / my heart does not reproach me for any of my days.” New Interpreters Study Bible, New Revised Standard Version (Nashville, Tennessee: 1989), 730.
3. “So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate; and she also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate.” Ibid., 12.
4. “When people began to multiply on the face of the ground, and daughters were born to them, the sons of God saw that they were fair; and they took wives for themselves of all that they chose” (Gen. 6:1-2). …“The Lord saw the wickedness of humankind was great upon the earth, and that every inclination of the thoughts of their hearts was only evil continually. And the Lord was sorry that he had made humankind on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart. So the Lord said, ‘I will blot out from the earth the human beings I have created…’” (Gen 6: 5-7). Ibid., 17-18.
5. Stella Purce Revard, The War in Heaven, (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1980), 29.
6. Augustine, Sermones, 344.a131, footnote 32. Peter A. Fiore, “The Angelic Fall,” Milton and Augustine, (University Park and London: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1981), 20.
7. Op. cit., “The Angelic Fall,” 14.
8. Ibid., 16.
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