Order and Progress in Paradise Lost

Extract

We do not grow less certain, as time goes on, that Milton's idea of the divine nature fails to satisfy some of our deepest religious feelings. We require of theology that it be logical; we require also that it be humane. It may become mystical; but when reason fails, theology must not become illogical; and when reason demands, it must not become inhumane. Milton's God is either inconsistent or cruel or both, but he is not a mystery. Hence Professor Erskine, desiring to find the poet humane, can well argue that the idea of death in Paradise Lost undergoes a distinct change, but hence on the other hand Professor Stoll, desiring to find him consistent, can just as well argue, falling back upon the convenient notion of predestination, that there is no change where the change was intended from the beginning. Yet however we argue, Milton fails as a theologian by attempting to reduce the whole mystery of human nature to a formula and arriving at a dilemma. Pain is in itself an evil which it is the ineffable hope of mankind to destroy. The experience of pain may be used for its elimination, and the end is good, but pain is none the less evil. Man's supreme experience is not in causing but in destroying it. What spiritual satisfaction we could find without this experience is a mystery, but we arrive only at confusion when we say that evil and the cause of it, without ceasing to be evil, are good because without them we should be without the experience. Man at his best seeks to accomplish bis ends with as little pain as possible; God should be nothing short of infinitely more humane than man. Milton's omnipotent beneficence can not or will not do for man what man would do for himself if he were Milton's God. The trouble is, of course, with the whole Calvinistic system of thought. The asserter of eternal providence proves more than we wish to believe. He sinks the ship to dampen the sails. He starts up a snake in order to gain credit for killing it. He blackens the moral character of God in order to dispose of the problem of evil.