Detachment from Divinity: The Origins of Evil and Milton's Fallibility in Paradise Lost

Published in Boston University's Core Journal Issue XXXI

As Europe entered the Age of Enlightenment, many preeminent writers engaged in an intellectual movement to understand the world through reason. However, memories of the bloody Wars of Religion and violence in the New World nipped at the heels of progress, posing a paradoxical question: where does evil come from if the universe is commanded by a benevolent, omnipotent God? Scholars like Alexander Pope expressed an optimistic view of divine judgement while Voltaire, in his “Poème sur le désastre de Lisbonne,” disparaged theodicies as inherently fatalistic. In his epic poem Paradise Lost, John Milton attempts to “justify the ways of God to men” yet his explanation of how evil originates from man’s imperfection describes his own literary shortcomings (1.26). The poet successfully proves why God permits the existence of evil, as his subjects must be independent to create true goodness, but Milton ultimately fails to explain how the Lord knows, but does not control, fate as the writer is also removed from divine knowledge, forced by language to describe God in human terms.

Milton confirms that evil thoughts derive from the Lord’s creations because they are begot and removed from the initial perfection of the divine. Following Platonic metaphysics and St. Augustine’s theory in Concerning the Good, Against the Manichaeans, the poet illustrates that not everything from God is actually of him (Faulds 23). The writer emphasizes his own separation from the divine when he invokes the holy spirit to disclose knowledge “invisible to mortal sight” (3.55). Petitioning supernatural aid, he acknowledges his and all human beings’ division from godly omniscience, attempting to represent the Father “unblam’d” but recognizing that men are naturally prone to misinterpreting the divine (3.3). Just like the poet, Adam and Eve are “godlike” yet only in the sense they are derived from “the image of their glorious Maker” (4.292). By admitting man’s estrangement from divinity, Milton effectively presents a “theodicy from below,” proposing the source of all evil is the defective nature of human beings (Danielson 157). The Lord cannot reasonably be blamed for the existence of sin when he is the embodiment of perfection and his creations derive from him in inferior form.

The poet proves that the Lord has gifted mankind the free will to reason independently by juxtaposing Satan’s and man’s perceptions of God, but man’s detachment from divine knowledge enables him to misinterpret divine intentions and become the creator of evil. While God has given all rational beings the potential to reason right and love the Lord, he announces that “reason is also a choice” encompassed under free will and subject to man’s flawed judgement (3.108). In his political treatise “Areopagitica,” Milton expands on the idea of potential while championing for freedom of speech, describing that God has made man “sufficient both to judge aright and to examine each matter” (par. 23). Scholar Dennis Danielson at the University of British Columbia argues that Milton’s inclusion of characters with antagonistic perceptions of God proves that the way to determine if the Lord is good is by personally judging whether “the object of our worship is wholly worthy of being worshipped” (Danielson 157). When God places Adam and Eve in Paradise, he tells them “Do this and you shall remain happy,” leaving the pair with the right to discern “what doing this (obeying the will of God) requires'' (Fish 45). Although they interpret the Lord as good and choose peace, Satan’s hatred demonstrates how the reasoning of an imperfect mind can easily spoil the potential for good. Milton crafts the figure of the devil who, like human beings, is endowed with the capability to reason well, but does not reason right. In book four of the epic, Satan introspects on his miserable state, intelligently admitting he is a harbinger of evil and not a heroic rebel (4.73-75). But free will also allows him to reason askew and distort God’s throne into “the Tyranny of Heaven'' (1.124). Satan’s fall is a mirror for the initial obedience of man, emphasizing that, like all of God's rational creatures, human beings maintain the “capacity to make the right choice and therefore the wrong one” (Fish 29). In response to the question “how can anything sinful have come from God?” Milton provides a clear answer: it does not. Evil is the creation of “free agents,” entities separate from divine command with the ability to think independently (22). By exercising this right, man is free to label God a divine Lord, or mistake him for an unhinged tyrant.

The writer reveals that God’s creations are only privy to the outward appearance of divinity; therefore, they can extrapolate evil intentions from the Lord’s empirical goodness. While Genesis provides a blunt portrayal of man’s fall, Milton foregrounds the psychological capabilities of God’s creatures to construct false realities out of his perfection (Danielson 152). The devil is unaware of the ideal form of divinity; in turn, he is free to pervert the appearance of heaven from a divine realm to an oppressive kingdom. His ability to conceive an image of “God as a paternal tyrant” confirms that the Lord’s imperfect subjects can form opinions of their external environments based on their own subjective reasoning (Fish 29). Satan’s perception of persecution becomes linked to his identity, influencing “his understanding of everything” and causing him to view all heavenly landscapes as miserable reminders of his defeat (29). Like the devil, Eve can only speculate about the superficial environment of Eden. Upon her creation, she is enraptured by her appearance in a river, incapable of locating a living, breathing entity beyond her watery reflection. Her idea of the Lord is malleable because she does not possess knowledge of his true form; the devil is able to manipulate Eve’s similar psychology, convincing her that God desires to keep human beings “low and ignorant” in forbidding the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge (Milton 9.704). As her focus shifts from glorifying her extreme closeness to the Lord towards her separation from him, she mentally transforms Eden into an enclosure, barring her from divine knowledge. Although she is deceived, Eve’s ignorance of the divine is what allows her to construct a prison out of paradise, accepting Satan’s lies. Milton’s characters become encased in the evil “which wells up from within” their inferior minds, distorting God’s grace with their flawed reasoning (Fish 30). When Eve actually tastes the fruit, or Sin literally springs forth from Satan’s head, the evils these characters imagine become their realities— and “this then is the world” in their eyes (33). Their perceptions of their external surroundings are effectively changed, influencing them to act immorally. Once they perceive the Lord in a particular fashion, their opinions become powerful enough to create personal evils out of objective perfection.

            If God is good because men perceive him thus, they may also denounce him. Would it not be easier for the Lord, in all his omnipotence, to create a brigade of automatons willing to obey his commands within the realms of heaven and earth?

While Milton admits that man’s imperfect reasoning creates evil, he elucidates that choice also lets him express true love; therefore, God allows human beings to act independent of divine command so that they may create real goodness. The Lord permits the possibility of evil because he desires “true allegiance,” or love borne of independent thinking (Milton 3.104). God could have easily constructed “an artificiall Adam” whose admiration is ensured by divine force (Danielson 149). But he discerns that in order for any good, or evil, to exist, it must be willed outside of his control. Although man’s liberated state is precarious, he can always misapply his freedom, the Father must let him exist beyond divine constraint or he cannot act in any meaningful way (149). If evil outweighs automation in God’s divine balancing act, then Milton sufficiently justifies the lack of heavenly intervention. The Lord must permit Satan and his army of defeated angels to rise up from their loosened chains because “the possible good which presupposes freedom” eclipses the potential evil predestination could prevent (153). The poet verifies that for God, man’s detachment from divine control is a necessary risk in the formation of honest, adoring subjects.

Confirming that the Lord does not force his creations to be good, Milton demonstrates that when goodness emerges in spite of man’s ability to produce evil, it is all the more impressive. The Father includes the fatal Tree of Knowledge in Eden as a trial for man because “merely declaring the goodness of God is one thing,” but affirming it “in the face of evil” is far more challenging (157). Author Stanley Fish quotes Professor Christopher Ricks as saying that if men are free to fall, “were they not already in some sense fallen?” (30). Man enters the world already impure because of his inherent capability to sin yet what purifies him is “trial by what is contrary” (“Areopagitica” par. 40). By constantly reminding himself that God’s commands are just, man actively chooses morality in spite of being able to sin. Ultimately, the writer explains that God allows Mulciber to construct Pandemonium, Satan to rally his troops, and the snake to beguile Eve because these sins create the opportunity for the greatest good of all; his Son may “willingly” volunteer to redeem mankind and rescue it from spiritual death (Milton 3.211). When God asks his council of angels for someone to assume bodily form and give their life for man’s salvation, heaven falls silent and “Intercessor none appear’d” (3.219). But he does not force any of his heavenly attendants to step forward, nor does he preclude the fall of man himself. Instead, Milton justifies God’s choice to let goodness take shape as the Son organically offers himself in a pure act of humility— a grand gesture of redemption that can only emerge from the possibility of man’s destruction.

While the poet effectively explains why God allows man to create evil, Milton is also separated from divine knowledge and restricted to the time-driven terminology of language; he cannot clearly depict a being as both a deterministic deity, aware of man’s fate, and a timeless spectator, removed from its execution. The poet’s literary theodicy describes the Lord only somewhat successfully because his work is beholden to a medium which “cannot break out of the world of language” (Stocker 78). Milton has already proved that man is removed from God’s omniscience. Therefore, all literary theodicies can merely “construct a linguistic speculation” of an unknowable, divine reality (78). While the writer indicates that the Lord’s foreknowledge “had no influence” on human beings’ fall, they would have acted the same even if God did not possess premonitory power, he contradicts himself (3.118). Because the poet must choose a discreet verb tense, he cannot properly voice a being who “dwells in an eternal present” far beyond “our categories of time and tense” (Danielson 151). The past form of “had” portrays God, or the force of Providence, as having already sealed man’s fate; the Lord appears to remember a predestined outcome that has since occurred, a memory of how Adam and Eve already “ordain’d their [own] fall” (Milton 3.128). Struggling to categorize God’s grasp of past, present, and future without necessarily enforcing fate, the poet’s dialogue depicts a confusing entity. While Milton justifies the Lord’s decision to allow the creation of evil, the actual intricacies of his knowledge of but exclusion from man’s fate exceed the temporal limits of language (Fish 60). Whether God is the Deist spectator or Calvinist scripter of man’s fall, the writer’s explanation of mortal autonomy cannot describe the Father’s inexpressible multi-dimensionality.

Acknowledging this paradox, Milton includes rhetorical uncertainties to leave some space for man to dictate his own fate; but ultimately his contradictory language leaves the reader unsure of the extent to which mortal agency can determine the future. When God portends Satan’s infiltration of Paradise, he expresses some doubt. The poet voices a deity who is unsure whether the rebel angel will attack man with violence “or worse” design (3.91). The inclusion of “or” implies that auxiliary possibilities may engender the same fatalistic outcome. Although man will fall, God does not know exactly how. Perhaps Satan will employ deception over physical violence and “By some false guile pervert” mankind (3.92). Milton’s choice diction of “some” insinuates that while the ultimate fall of man is necessarily going to occur, the steps leading to his disobedience can only be “known certainly after the fact” (Danielson 151). At the very least, the poet’s rhetorical ambiguity leaves room for Adam and Eve to freely decide their own behavior leading to a prescribed end, serving as “Authors to themselves” in the rising action of their epic story (Milton 3.122). But despite these caveats, the writer’s explanation of the ultimate fate of man is, once again, contradictory. At the end of his speech to the Son, God reveals the redemption of man will derive from “grace in me” (3.174). Now man’s earlier autonomy seems insufficient to override Providence. Milton struggles to balance mortal and divine will as he works within a medium that is “textually determined,” demanding definite plot parameters and a clear source of blame for man’s fall from grace (Stocker 80). While he does contradict himself, the poet’s pitfalls are expected, especially after he proves man’s inherent separation from providential knowledge.

Even if Milton fails to explain God’s role in man’s fate, he still endows humanity with an important responsibility. Although human beings are to blame for any and all evil in the world, to the extent that they are capable of dictating their individual actions within the plan of Providence, let them not squander it. He implores man to reason right and use his freedom for good, striving for righteousness despite his eternal separation from the divine.

Works Cited

Danielson, Dennis. “The Fall and Milton's Theodicy.” The Cambridge Companion to Milton, 1999, pp. 144–159.

Faulds, Joseph Merkle. “The Son and Satan in ‘Paradise Lost’: An Inquiry Into the Poetic Theodicy of John Milton in the Western Tradition (Anti-Trinitarian,

Thematic Christology, Dualism, Monism, ‘Aeneid’).” University of Dallas, 1986.

Fish, Stanley Eugene. Surprised by Sin: The Reader in Paradise Lost. 2nd ed., Harvard University Press, 2001.

Stanley Eugene Fish’s Surprised by Sin: The Reader in Paradise Lost was an invaluable resource for proving the main tenet of my thesis: man’s position, separate from the ideal of the divine, is the true origin of evil because human beings’ limited knowledge allows them to misinterpret God. I mostly relied on the “Preface to the Second Edition '' because, in addressing critiques of the first version of his book, Fish implores his peers to avoid distorting Milton’s main objective in writing his epic theodicy. He reiterates that the poet aims to teach his readers that they possess true agency through their ability to think independently, for better or for worse. I paid close attention to Fish’s preface for my third body paragraph, in which I compare Satan and Eve’s similar psychological tendencies, as the author highlights these characters’ abilities to completely reimagine God’s intentions within their very own minds. They are incapable of understanding the true form of the divine so they can only speculate about the appearance of God’s actions. Therefore, I employ his exploration of their fixation on external appearance to prove that human beings are the sole creators of evil when they reshape the external world to align with their own personal beliefs. 

Milton, John. “Areopagitica Speech for the Liberty of Unlicensed Printing to the Parliament of England.” Edited by Judith Boss and David Widger, The Project Gutenberg EBook of Areopagitica, 1 Dec. 2021.

Milton, John. Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained. Signet Classics, 2010. 

Stocker, Margarita. “God in Theory: Milton, Literature and Theodicy.” Literature and Theology, vol. 1, no. 1, 1987, pp. 70–88.

Margarita Stocker’s Literature and Theology aided the establishment of my argument concerning “John Milton the man” and his inherent incapability to transcend the limitations of language. I relied on an article excerpt of Stocker’s book entitled “God in Theory: Milton, Literature and Theodicy” to help formulate my two final body paragraphs in which I argue that the writer’s own separation from divine knowledge hinders his explanation of mortal fate. The article selection I chose mainly focuses on the obligatory limitations of literary theodicies as writers are eternally beholden to a form of expression that requires distinct verb tenses and a determined sense of time. Stocker writes that Milton can never sufficiently voice a timeless entity because the poet does not possess the necessary tools to categorize the divine (i.e., a transient verb tense which could represent multiple temporal dimensions). With this focus on the grammatical restraints of the poet’s project, this author’s chapter on Paradise Lost allowed me to connect Milton’s explanation of the origins of evil, man’s separation from divine knowledge, to his own literary failings and contradictions.