The official web site of A.H. Lloyd

I have not yet decided on my next writing project, but for the past few months have been mulling over a story set before the Deluge and incorporating yet another of the obsessions of my youth: Atlantis.

To that end, I’ve been reading up on various mythologies as well as various elements of scripture to get a feel for the background, and as part of that I decided it would be good to read John Milton’s Paradise Lost.

This was one of those literary classics that I managed to avoid in school, and most of what I knew came down to what Donald Sutherland’s professor said in Animal House:

Don’t write this down, but I find Milton probably as boring as you find Milton. Mrs. Milton found him boring too. He’s a little bit long-winded, he doesn’t translate very well into our generation, and his jokes are terrible.

He’s not wrong. Milton set himself to the task of retelling Genesis in poetic verse, trying to make it relatable to a contemporary audience and humanizing not just Adam and Eve but the angels, Satan, Jesus and God. That was no mean feat for his era.

Alas, he takes some wild liberties with the theology, which to me undermined much of the effort. It’s like putting anachronisms in a historical novel. The Nicene Creed tells us that Jesus was created by God before all ages and that through Him all things were made. According to Milton, God made the angels first, and Lucifer was his Number Two until the Son of Man was created.

This doesn’t make much sense because among immortal beings, there is no real “succession.” God reigns forever and Jesus is not of like kind with the angels. Satan being jealous of Adam makes more sense, because here is a created being that is on some ways greater than angels insofar as it is living, can reproduce but also can obtain entrance in heaven.

Another problem is that near the end of the poem, the Archangel Michael shows Adam a brief glimpse of salvation history to reassure him that his line will not be forever tainted with Original Sin, and of course since Milton is a Protestant, we have the strained notion that the Church created when He ascended into heaven was immediately corrupted and stayed that way for 1,500 years until Henry VIII fixed it in order to divorce and remarry. Again and again.

The form of the poem is also trying for the modern reader. There is no dialogue, just contending long-winded monologues, which get pretty tedious as they tend to veer off into extended classical Greek references that feel more than a bit out of place in a Christian work. Milton follows St. Augustine insofar as the pagan gods are among the fallen angels in Satan’s infernal court, and he is the one who conceived of “Pandemonium” as the anti-City of God.

Indeed, probably the enduring legacy of the poem is the notion that Satan is a creature of sympathy, that his rebellion was in some way justified using the rallying cry of “freedom” and that he subsequently experienced remorse for his actions and a desire to return to God, but pride (and the ridicule of his peers) prevented true repentance. This is harmful because it gives the impression that the Arch-fiend might actually be capable of kindness and mercy.

The whole “better to rule in hell and serve in heaven” also really downplays the scope of both evil and divine punishment. Evil constantly turns upon itself, and there is no discipline or loyalty among its followers. The notion that lying traitors can somehow make a solemn league is absurd on the face of it. Once one has abandoned God (which is also abandoning truth, trust and love), there is only violence, lies and betrayal.

Back in the day, The Lord of Spirits podcast highlighted the many theological errors in the poem and how they have suffused Anglophone theology and while the revisionist take was popular during The Enlightenment, it is clearly past its expiration date.

I am glad to have read it, because if I proceed with the project, not having this information would have created a glaring blind spot. I may not accept Milton’s concepts, but at least I need to know what they are.

Much of my reading these days is about filling gaps in the Western Canon and parts of history. It’s not only informative, but often pretty enjoyable. Milton was something of a chore, but worth the effort. I supposed that’s the difference between reading some contemporary fiction vs something classical – even if you hate it, you learn something.