Milton on Knowing Good from Evil

John Milton ◽  
2010 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher Tilmouth
Keyword(s):  
Free Choice ◽  
Paradise Lost ◽  
Moral Imagination ◽  
Moral Knowledge ◽  
Self Determination ◽  
Adam And Eve ◽  
Rational Choices ◽  
Good And Evil ◽  
The Church ◽  
Church Government

Although poetry's morally instructive purpose was a Renaissance commonplace, Milton developed a detailed conception of what it meant. He argued that poems have the power to ‘inbreed in the great people the seeds of virtue and public civility, to allay the perturbation of mind, and set the affections in right tune’. Milton was a moralizing poet who was sensitive to the challenge of knowing oneself and staying true to the proper rational ideas. His epics and poems were pegged on the ethic of rational choosing. This chapter examines the kinds of moral knowledge upon which free choice must hang and the capacity of Milton's Adam and Eve to make rational choices. It examines Milton's theodicy, which argued that possession of rational powers enables people to choose between good and evil. The chapter assesses how experience influences the capacity of man for self-determination and choice according to Milton's theodicy. In it, three of Milton's poems, which sum up his moral imagination, are examined: Paradise Lost, Reason of the Church Government, and Areopagitica.

Milton: Literature and Life

John Milton ◽  
2010 ◽  
Author(s):  
Blair Worden
Keyword(s):  
John Milton ◽  
Free Choice ◽  
Paradise Lost ◽  
The Public ◽  
Public Execution ◽  
History Of ◽  
Good And Evil ◽  
The Ideal ◽  
Church Government

In 1660, upon the Restoration of Charles to the English throne, John Milton went into hiding. His treatises Eikonoklastes and Defensio were condemned and burned. Milton faced the prospect of public execution, but escaped with a brief imprisonment. Three-quarters of a century later, the Milton once vilified for his political polemics was embraced by the public for his verses, which had risen high in England's favour. This chapter discusses Milton's purposes and priorities. The ideal of teaching is, according to Milton, through the ‘delight’ of poetry; for him poetry must function to deplore the general Relapses of Kingdoms and States from justice and God's true worship. Just as with poetry, he looked at prose to instruct the readers by affording them delight, and by calming the perturbation of mind that can impede their reception of truth. Milton believed that just as poetry can impart virtue through charm and smoothness of sounds, prose draws on eloquence to charm the multitude to love what is truly good. In his writings, he pursued the conception of liberty, the strife between good and evil, the principle of free choice, and the sinfulness of the popery. Milton tailored his Restoration poems as bulwarks against the wickedness of the court and nation. His poems served as sharp checks and sour instructions, in the absence of which, many people would have been lost if they were not speedily reclaimed. Some of Milton's works of enlightenment and corrections were Paradise Lost, The Reason of Church Government, and History of Britain.

Leaving Eden

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Quint
Keyword(s):  
Paradise Lost ◽  
The Moment ◽  
The Church

This concluding chapter examines the structure of the composite books 11 and 12, in which the prophesied destruction of Eden corresponds, antithetically, to the building of Pandaemonium at the beginning of Paradise Lost in book 1. After the Fall, Eden might become a temple, oracle site, a grove of pagan rites, goal of pilgrimage—it has already, at the moment that Satan invades it in book 4, been compared to the sheepfold of the Church, prey to thieves, a Church too rich to escape corruption. In books that predict the rise of empires, God dissociates his cult from power and wealth, closing down and eventually washing away Eden, lest it become another Pandaemonium—a haunt of foul spirits.

The Sin of Abbé Mouret

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Émile Zola
Keyword(s):  
Serious Illness ◽  
Adam And Eve ◽  
The Church

‘I really don't understand how people can blame a priest so much, when he strays from the path.’ The Sin of Abbé Mouret tells the compelling story of the young priest Serge Mouret. Striving after spiritual purity and sanctity, he lives a life of constant prayer, but his neglect of all physical needs leads to serious illness, followed by amnesia. No longer knowing he is a priest, he falls in love with his nurse Albine. Together, like a latter-day Adam and Eve, they roam through an Eden-like garden called the ‘Paradou’, seeking a forbidden tree in whose shade they will make love. Zola memorably shows their gradual awakening to sexuality, and his poetic descriptions of the luxuriant and beautiful Paradou create a lyrical celebration of Nature. When Serge regains his memory and recalls his priestly vows, anguish inevitably follows. The whole story, with its numerous biblical parallels, becomes a poetic reworking of the Fall of Man and a questioning of the very meaning of innocence and sin. Zola explores the conflict between Church and Nature, the sterility of the Church and the fertility of Nature. This new translation includes a wide-ranging and helpful introduction and explanatory notes.

scholarly journals Marriage in the theology of Martin Luther – worldly yet sacred: An option between secularism and clericalism

2007 ◽  
Vol 63 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Johan Buitendag
Keyword(s):  
Sexual Intercourse ◽  
Martin Luther ◽  
Human Race ◽  
Adam And Eve ◽  
The Creation ◽  
To Come ◽  
The Church ◽  
Law And Gospel

Marriage, according to Martin Luther, is an institution both secular and sacred. It is secular because it is an order of this earthly life. But its institution goes back to the beginning of the human race and that makes marriage sacred, a divine and holy order. It does not – like the sacraments – nourish and strengthen faith or prepare people for the life to come; but it is a secular order in which people can prove faith and love, even though they are apt to fail without the help of the Word and the sacrament. The author applies this view of Luther in terms of two unacceptable extremes: the creation ordinances of Brunner and the analogy of relation of Barth. The dialectic of Law and Gospel should never be dispensed. Marriage is necessary as a remedy for lust, and through marriage God permits sexual intercourse. Similar is the allegory which Paul employs: that Adam and Eve, or marriage itself, is a type of Christ and the church.

Kastom, Syncretism and Self-Determination: the Reconciliation of Bipotaim and Pastaim in the Church of Torres Strait

2001 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 21-30
Author(s):  
Steve Mullins
Keyword(s):  
Self Determination ◽  
Anglican Church ◽  
Colonial Era ◽  
Torres Strait ◽  
The Church

Late in 1997 the Anglican Church in Torres Strait, for more than eighty years the bastion of Torres Strait Christianity, split, and in the following year the new Church of Torres Strait came into being, its congregations aligned with the traditional Anglican communion. What follows is an attempt to unravel the complex political, communal and doctrinal issues that caused the split, considering them in the light of an ongoing assertion of indigenous self-determination which can be traced back to the colonial era. The article also briefly traces the emergence since the early 1980s of a potentially liberating syncretic theology in the Torres Strait Anglican tradition which may hold within it the possibility of a reconciliation between bipotaim and pastaim, darkness and light, and tries to assess the implications of the split for this nascent theology.

scholarly journals Church as a factor in the self-determination of a nation in a cultural and civilized environment

1999 ◽  
pp. 43-52
Author(s):  
Olga Nedavnya
Keyword(s):  
The Self ◽  
Self Determination ◽  
Christian Life ◽  
Biblical Texts ◽  
The Church

At the end of the second Christian millennium, Christians united in the church of different denominations and ceremonies. The most devoted ones are looking for ecumenical paths, "that all be one." However, every person is free in his own way to build ties with the Lord. But, as emphasized by the first Metropolitan Rusich Ilarion in the "Word of Law and Grace," every person and the whole people are responsible before God. This statement is based on the authority of biblical texts. Therefore, Christians must worry not only about their own salvation, but also about the best, most natural and most useful arrangement of the Christian life of their nation.

scholarly journals "Sufficient to Have Stood, Though Free to Fall": Free Will in John Milton's Paradise Lost

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Martineau
Keyword(s):  
Free Will ◽  
Human Nature ◽  
John Milton ◽  
Paradise Lost ◽  
Problem Of Evil ◽  
Garden Of Eden ◽  
Adam And Eve ◽  
The Problem Of Evil ◽  
Book Of Genesis ◽  
The Way

In Book I of Paradise Lost, John Milton (1608-1674) asserts his intent to “justifie the wayes of God to men” (Paradise Lost1 I 26), paving the way for a revolutionary discussion of human nature, divinity, and the problem of evil, all couched in an epic retelling of Satan’s fall from grace, his temptation of Adam and Eve, and their expulsion from the Garden of Eden, as recounted in the Book of Genesis. In his treatment of the biblical account, Milton necessarily broaches a variety of subjects which were both relevant during his time and remain relevant in ours. Among these topics, and certainly one of the most compelling, is the matter of human free will.

scholarly journals Depictions of Christ’s ancestors in the altar of Markov Manastir. A contribution to research

Zograf ◽  
2018 ◽  
pp. 89-106
Author(s):  
Marka Tomic-Djuric
Keyword(s):  
Human Nature ◽  
Old Testament ◽  
Adam And Eve ◽  
The Church

The paper discusses the figures on the bema of the altar apse in the Church of St. Demetrios of Markov Manastir (Marko?s Monastery) painted in 1376/1377. It offers a more detailed overview of the programmatic and iconographic characteristics of previously known depictions of the Virgin?s ancestors and identifies the second ancestral couple. Following a reexamination of hypotheses that have been suggested so far, the paper concludes that the second pair of Old Testament personages should be identified as representing the original ancestors of humanity - Adam and Eve. The visual solution incorporating Sts. Joachim and Anne as well as Adam and Eve is highly unusual. The paper also discusses the peculiar thematic concept in the central apse of Markov Manastir, which was conceived so as to draw attention of the faithful to the human nature of Christ, while the choice of ancestors underlines the role of the Virgin?s parents in the economy of salvation and emphasizes the theological idea of absolution from ancestral sin and the rebirth of humanity beginning with the incarnation of God-Man.

scholarly journals Milton's Manly Angels

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Thomas Lissington
Keyword(s):  
Paradise Lost ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Comprehensive Understanding ◽  
Complete Understanding ◽  
Adam And Eve ◽  
Sexuality And Gender ◽  
Book Viii ◽  
Close Study ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Learning Institutions

<p>The masculine nature of the angels in Paradise Lost, in conjunction with their sexuality as revealed in Book VIII, prompted C. S. Lewis to try and explain away, not entirely convincingly, any potential “homosexual promiscuity” in his Preface to the epic. But other critics are unconcerned about the angels’ sexuality, probably because, unlike Lewis, they see them as essentially immaterial beings.  In what follows I argue that a complete understanding of the angels’ sexuality must rest on Milton’s gradual revelation of the angels’ morphic substance, critical to their sexuality and gender identity. Milton’s use of the conventions associated with classical pastoral in depicting the angels suggests a male homosocial model analogous with the learning institutions of Milton’s own historical context – helpful when it comes to establishing the type of society, and relationships, in the heaven of Paradise Lost. Similarly, an exploration of bi-erotic elements occurring elsewhere within the Miltonic canon helps contextualise the bisexual potential of angelic desire.  With these things in mind, a comprehensive understanding of the angelic sexuality can be achieved through close study of instances of desire, and sexuality, in Paradise Lost. The strong parallel between the angels, and Adam and Eve infers the potential for their descendants to evolve into a similar state of intimacy free of “Of membrane, joynt, or limb, exclusive barrs”.</p>

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