4 - The Trial of Scripture

Summary

This chapter considers how the theological treatise De Doctrina Christiana, attributed to John Milton, portrays the Bible’s textual history in such a way as to underwrite the political agency of the Holy Spirit-filled Christian. In this work, which directly confronts the putatively corrosive findings of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century historical scholarship on the biblical text, Milton argues in strikingly unequivocal terms that the biblical text is utterly defenseless to corruption and loss in its passage through history. Paradoxically, however, he argues that this condition of total vulnerability to contingency is providentially ordained, and that it has the effect of emphasizing the preeminence of the Holy Spirit within the individual Christian over the external text. I contend that the challenges for the Christian presented by the corruption and loss of the sacred texts in Milton’s account correspond with his theological politics centered on the struggles and ultimate authority of the Spirit-guided, individual believer encountering the fallen world. This politics is given voice in his tracts Areopagitica and Of Civil Power, and most famously in his epic poem Paradise Lost.