Rhetoric and Revelation: Milton's Use of Sermo in "De Doctrina Christiana"

Author(s): Ken Simpson

Reviewed work(s):
Source: Studies in Philology, Vol. 96, No. 3 (Summer, 1999), pp. 334-347
Published by: University of North Carolina Press
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Rhetoric

and

Revelation:

Milton's

Use

of

De

Sermo

in

Christiana

Doctrina

by Ken Simpson
E

_ VEN Erasmus,no strangerto controversy,must have been sur-

prised by the uproar caused by the publication of the second

edition of his New Testament translation in 1519.' In particular,
as Marjorie O'Rourke Boyle notes, the word which his enemies seized
"to crystallize ecclesiastical opposition" was sermo.2 In England, Henry
Standish, bishop of St. Astaph, denounced Erasmus in a sermon outside
St. Paul's, at a court banquet, and before the king and queen, arguing
that Erasmus, in presuming to correct the Vulgate, was undermining
the authority of scripture.? Although Erasmus saw attacks like these
as efforts of entrenched clergymen and theological faculties to rouse
opinion against the reforming humanists, there was more at stake than
I The first edition, Novum Instrumentum,was published by
Froeben in Basel in 1516.
The second, Novum Testamentum,was published, also by Froeben, in 1519. My thanks
to the Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies, Victoria University in the University of Toronto, for making their Erasmus collection available to me, including the
Novum Instrumentum (1516), Apologia De In Principio Erat Sermo (1520), Annotationes in
Novum Testamentum(1522), and ParaphrasisIn EvangeliumJoannis(1523). References in the
text are to Desiderii Erasmi RoterdamiOpera Omnia, ed. J. Leclerc, lo vols. (Leiden: 1705;
reprint, London: Gregg Press, 1962).
2 Marjorie O'Rourke Boyle, Erasmuson Languageand Method in Theology(Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1977), 5. 1 am indebted to Boyle's study throughout this paper,
but especially in this section on Erasmus. On sermo, see also J. Bentley, Humanists and
Holy Writ (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1983), 170; C. A. L. Jarrott, "Erasmus' In Principio Erat Sermo:A Controversial Translation," Studies in Philology 61 (1964):
35-40; Werner Schwartz, Principles of Biblical Translation:Some ReformationControversies
and TheirBackground(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1955), 146; and G. H. Williams, The RadicalReformation(London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1962), 25.
3 Erika Rummel, Erasmusand His CatholicCritics, 2 vols. (Nieuwkoop: De Graaf Publishers, 1989), 1:122-27. See also Boyle, On Languageand Method, 151 n. 34.

334
? 1999 The University of North Carolina Press

Ken Simpson

335

professional jealousy and infighting. As the detailed commentary in

Annotationes in Novum Testamentum,the polemical defence in Apologia
De In Principio Erat Sermo, and the eloquent, theological reflections of
ParaphrasisIn EvangeliumJoannis testify, Erasmus' revision of Jerome's
Vulgate translation of John 1.i from In principio erat verbum to In principio erat sermo reveals both his theological method and his doctrinal
emphasis.
Over and over again Erasmus reminds his readers that there is only
a grammatical, not a doctrinal difference between verbumand sermo as
renderings of the Greek logos in the New Testament: it implies speech
as a whole rather than a single word; it is masculine rather than neutral (verbum) or feminine (oratio) and, therefore, suits the Son of God;
and finally, it is preferred by the majority of Latin authors as well as
patristic authorities.4 Erasmus' rhetorical strategy is clear here since
his opponents cannot attack him without condemning themselves, but
he also demonstrates his theological method: since the Son as sermo is
the eloquence of God speaking to Christians through the sacred text,
philology and rhetoric must be joined to theology.
Erasmus is careful to deny that sermo and his theological method
lead to heresies of any kind, but the theological issues at stake are
worth noting since writers like Milton later use sermo as evidence for
theological ideas that Erasmus specifically rejects.5He insists that sermo
does not diminish the singularity of the Son in the Trinity, nor does it
imply the inequality of the Son and the Father. A speech may consist
of more than one word, but as a whole it reflects the mind of its author, for "there is no object that more fully and clearly expresses the
invisible form of the mind than speech."6 Those who "think that the
word of God is secondary to him who produces it, as with us intention
is prior to utterance," are mistaken; this word is not created in time but
begotten from eternity, "the eternal word of the eternal mind, whereby
the Father forever speaks."7 Despite his disclaimers, then, Erasmus'
view of the logos as "the revealing discourse [sermo]of the Father" did
have doctrinal implications, especially for the Trinity, and his attempts
4 See Boyle, On Languageand Method, 8-12 passim.
5 Erasmus, ParaphrasisIn EvangeliumJoannis, in Opera Omnia, 7:499E. See Boyle, On
Languageand Method, 28-29, 173 n. 171.
6 Erasmus, Paraphrasisin EvangeliumJoannis,in Opera Omnia, 7:499A; English translation taken from Erasmus, Paraphraseon John,trans. and annot. Jane E. Phillips, vol. 46 of
The Collected Worksof Erasmus(Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1991), 15.
7 Erasmus, Paraphrasisin EvangeliumJoannis,in Opera Omnia, 7:499E, 499C; translation
from Erasmus, Paraphraseon John,16.

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Milton's Use of Sermo in De Doctrina Christiana

to align his translation with doctrinal orthodoxy are not always convincing.8 Verbumimplied a more passive sense of revelation than the
immediate, expressive revelation of the Word that Erasmus believed he
found in the scriptures. Verbumreinforces the authority of the church
not only because it is Jerome's translation, but also because if the Word
is passive, only those who have access to a theological method sanctioned by the church can ascend to the Son; sermo, on the other hand,
promises an active revelation to everyone who can read Erasmus' eloquent translation. Nowhere else, Erasmus says in his prefatory letter
to Pope Leo X, is the celestial Word more present or effective than in
the original Gospels and Epistles that he has translated. Rather than
choosing the doctrinally safe verbum, he opted for the philologically
correct though theologically suspect sermo, compromising orthodoxy
for textual rigor and substituting a hierarchy of understanding for a
hierarchy of tradition, despite his insistence that sermo altered nothing
in church doctrine.
When Milton translated logos as sermo rather than verbumin his discussion of the Word of God in De Doctrina Christiana, the controversy
surrounding this translation of John 1.i in Erasmus' 1519 edition of the
New Testament had long since subsided.9 However transitory the controversy, the influence of the rhetorical theology promoted by Erasmus,
of which sermowas the flash point, extended far beyond this occasion."0
8 See Boyle, OniLanguageand Method, 25.
9 Parenthetical references to De Doctrina Christiana in my text cite the translation in
the Yale edition (CPW) followed by the Latin text in the Columbia edition (CE). See the
following: John Milton, The Christian Doctrine, trans. John Carey, vol. 6 of The Complete
Prose Worksof John Milton, 8 vols. (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1973); John
Milton, De Doctrina Christiana, trans. Charles Sumner, vols. 14-17 of The Worksof John
Milton, 20 vols. (New York: Columbia University Press, 1933-34). Other parenthetical
references to Milton's works are cited from JohnMilton: CompletePoems and Major Prose,
ed. Merritt Y. Hughes (Indianapolis: Odyssey Press, 1957).
10Charles Trinkhaus uses "rhetorical theology" to describe the thesis, shared by early
humanists and reformers in their opposition to scholastic methodology, that "since matters of faith cannot be proved by logic, they must be induced by rhetoric-the word of
man in the service of the Word of God." The commitment to the studia humanitatisand
the application of the "new philology" to the Bible led to the emergence of a shared textual practice in which scripture was viewed as the rhetoric and Word of God. As a result,
a new emphasis was placed on evangelical preaching; on the original languages and textual sources of scripture; on the literary merits of the Bible; and on rhetorically effective
as well as grammatically accurate translations. Moreover, in the process of defending
the value of poetry and rhetoric by citing the Word as God's speech to the church, early
humanists such as Ficino elevated the Bible almost to the status of a sacrament by insisting on the immediacy and real presence of the written word: "the entire Holy Scriptures
speaking of Christ through the Holy Spirit, is as if it is Christ Himself, living every-

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Applying techniques learned in their study of ancient literature to

scripture, such diverse figures as Ficino, Erasmus, Luther, and Calvin
guaranteed the rhetorical structure of theology and the textual conditions that made such a theology viable." Freed of textual corruptions,
scholastic glosses, and poor Latin, the biblical text, as God's sermo (conversation, speech), could speak plainly and directly to readers, moving
them to embrace the Christian life. God's self-revelation through the
Word in its pre-existent, incarnate, and scriptural forms is especially
clear in Erasmus's Lingua of 1525, where sermo plays an important role
in the construction of revelation as a series of divine disclosures mediated by speech:
God the Fatherspoke once and gave birth to his EternalWord.He spoke again
and with his almighty word createdthe entire fabricof the universe.And again
he spoke throughhis prophets,by whom he entrusted to us his Holy Writ....
Finallyhe sent his Son, that is the Wordclothed in flesh ... compressingeverything, as it were, into an epilogue.12
Milton's relationship to rhetorical theology has not been explored in
any detail; understandably, scholars have been interested in patristic
or Reformed sources of De Doctrina Christiana, and more recently, the
authorship of the text itself."3Readers who note Milton's use of sermo
where and breathing into all who ever reads, hears, and meditates by a more powerful
affection. Therefore Paul seems secretly to warn that we should approach the Evangel
with the highest reverence, almost as if to the Eucharist." See Charles Trinkhaus, In Our
Image and Likeness:Humanity and Divinity in Italian Humanist Thought, 2 vols. (London:
Constable, 1970), 2:611, 745-46. For Ficino's text, see "In Epistolas Pauli," vol. i, pt. 1 of
Opera Omnia, 2 vols. (Basel, 1576; reprint, Torino: Bottega d'Erasmo, 1959), 435.
11See Trinkaus, In Our Image and Likeness,2:564, 611; Manfred Hoffman, Rhetoricand
Theology (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1994), 5; Peter Matheson, "Humanism
and Reform Movements," in The Impactof Humanism on WesternEurope,ed. A. Goodman
and A. McKay (London: Longman, 1990), 34-38; and William Bouwsma, Calvinism as
TheologicaRhetorica(Berkeley: Center for Hermeneutical Studies in Hellenistic and Modern Culture, 1987), 1-12.
12 Erasmus, Lingua,in OperaOmnia, 4:696; translation from Erasmus, TheTongue,trans.
Elaine Fantham, vol. 29 of The Collected Worksof Erasmus (Toronto: University of Toronto
Press, 1974), 323.
13 For patristic and Reformed contexts respectively, see W. B. Hunter, "Milton's Arianism Reconsidered," in Bright Essence:Studies in Milton's Theology,ed. W. B. Hunter, C. A.
Patrides, and J. H. Adamson (Salt Lake City: Utah University Press, 1971), 29-51, and
Maurice Kelley, "Milton's Debt to Wolleb's CompendiumTheologicaeChristianae,"PMLA
55 (1940): 156-65. Despite intriguing circumstantial evidence, Hunter's view that Milton
did not write De Doctrina Christianais unconvincing; see W. B. Hunter, "The Provenance
of the Christian Doctrine," Studies in English Literature 32 (1992): 129-42. For rebuttals by John Shawcross and Barbara Lewalski, see "Forum: Milton's Christian Doctrine,"
ibid., 143-162. See also W. B. Hunter, "The Provenance of the Christian Doctrine: Ad-

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Milton's Use of Sermo in De Doctrina Christiana

assume that he simply transcribes or adapts the Junius-Tremellius Bible

without giving much thought to the implications of the translation, but
this is unlikely considering his precise attention to philology and etymology throughout both his prose and poetry.14 William Shullenberger,
on the other hand, rightly emphasizes the importance of the sermo or
"speech of God" in the anti-trinitarian doctrine of De Doctrina Christiana, but his suggestion that Milton conceived "the creative structure
of the Deity in the same pattern which Saussure found to obtain between language and speech" ignores a more plausible and historically
concrete analogy that shapes Milton's theology of the Word."5Father
and Son are related not as language (langue) to speech (parole),but as
speaker to speech, author to text, an analogy used throughout scripture to describe God's activity and used by rhetorical theologians to
authorize their own literary activities. According to Erasmus,
the tongue was given to men so that by its agency as messenger one man
might know the mind and intention of another.So it is fitting that the copy
should match the original, as mirrorshonestly reflect the image of the object
before them.... For this reason the Son of God, who came to earth so that we
might know God's will throughhim, wished to be called the Word[Sermo]of
God.... 16
denda from the Bishop of Salisbury," Studies in English Literature33 (1993): 191-207, as
well as rebuttals by Maurice Kelley and Christopher Hill and Hunter's reply to them in
"Forum II: Milton's Christian Doctrine," Studies in English Literature34 (1994): 153-203.
The latest study concludes that De Doctrina Christiana is a "working manuscript under
revision by Milton": see Gordon Campbell, Thomas N. Corns, John K. Hale, David I.
Holmes, and Fiona J.Tweedie, "The Provenance of De Doctrina Christiana,"Milton Quarterly 31.3 (1997): 110.
14 As Kelley notes, Milton adapts but does not transcribe the Junius-Tremellius text
of John 1.1, but Kelley, quoting G. H. Williams, also refers to sermo as "merelythe voice
of God" (CPW 6:239, my emphasis), indicating his failure to fully appreciate the implications of this translation for Milton's later arguments. Williams also refers to sermo
as "theologically neutral" (Radical Reformation,10). Milton used many Bibles during
his career, including a 1612 Authorized Version, a Geneva Bible, a Hebrew Bible, a
Junius-Tremellius Bible, and Brian Walton's Biblia Sacra Polyglotta, but used the JuniusTremellius Latin text most frequently in De Doctrina Christiana.For a brief overview of
the topic, see John Shawcross, "Bibles,"in vol. 1 of A Milton Encyclopedia,ed. W. B. Hunter
et al., 10 vols. (Lewisburg, PA: Bucknell University Press, 1978), 1:163.
15William Shullenberger, "Linguistic and Poetic Theory in Milton's De Doctrina Christiana," English LanguageNotes (X982): 268. See also Shullenberger, "The Omnific Word:
Language in Milton" (Ph.D. diss., University of Massachusetts, 1982).
16 Erasmus, Lingua, in Opera Omnia, 4:691; translation from Erasmus, The Tongue,31415. For language as mediation in Erasmus's rhetorical theology, see Hoffman, Rhetoric
and Theology,6.

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Just as speech mediates the self and the Son mediates the Father in
the rhetorical theology of Erasmus, so the Son mediates the revelation
of the Father in Milton's view of the Trinity. For Milton, however, the
essence or intention of the Father is never fully revealed in his Son any
more than an author's intention is fully revealed in a speech or text. It
is the work of the Holy Spirit to bring together speech and author in
the understanding of the reader.
This coexistence of presence and absence in Milton's view of God's
sermo, a structure implicit in the pre-existent, incarnate, scriptural and
indwelling Word in De Doctrina Christiana,underwrites the ongoing interpretative activity of the church as well. In the Word, God speaks
plainly to the church about all things necessary for salvation. When
there is disagreement, as there must be when the Word is not identical
to the author of the Word, the church should proceed as the prophets
in the mansion house of liberty do, "disputing, reasoning, reading, inventing, discoursing, even to a rarity and admiration" (Areopagitica,
744) until the Second Coming of Christ reveals the truth. De Doctrina Christianais provisional, even polemical in the way that many of
Milton's texts are. Miltonic textuality, inseparable from his theology of
the church, implies a dynamic textual community gathered at a great
religious feast across the ages to discover and unfold the Word of God.
Rhetorical theology in general and the sermo translation in particular
provide Milton with the textual conditions, the ideology of the book
which makes this view of religious community possible.
Milton's rhetorical theology, implicit in his use of sermo, rests on
notions of authorship that have been rejected out of hand by structuralist and post-structuralist theorists over the last thirty years.'7 I will not
attempt a detailed exposition of the critique-this has been provided
in a number of accounts of contemporary theory-but it is important
to distinguish Milton's assumptions from those of prominent theorists
17 My brief overview is based on the following: Roland Barthes, "The Death of the
Author," in Image, Music, Text, trans. Stephen Heath (New York: Hill and Wang, 1977),
142-48; Roland Barthes, "From Work to Text," ibid., 155-64; Roland Barthes, "Theory of
the Text," in Untying the Text:A Post-StructuralistReader,ed. Robert Young and trans. Ian
McLeod (Boston: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1981), 31-47; Jacques Derrida, Of Grammatology, trans. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press,
1976), 6-18; Jacques Derrida, Writing and Difference,trans. Alan Bass (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978); and Ferdinand de Saussure, Course in GeneralLinguistics, ed.
Charles Bally and Albert Sechehaye in collaboration with Albert Riedlinger and Wade
Baskin (New York: McGraw Hill, 1966).

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Milton s Use of Sermo in De Doctrina Christiana

so that textualities can be understood as historical and pragmatic arrangements rather than as abstract concepts such as Barthes' "classical
text."18 Saussure, for example, does not posit a rhetorical triad of author, text, and reader, nor does he assume, as Milton does, that the
source of meaning is what the author intends. For Saussure, the arbitrary and differential relations among signifiers and between signs and
their referents are what produce meaning, not the relationship between
signs and the meaning which an author embodies in them.
Although Milton would agree with these theorists that the author is
never immediately present in his speech, it is not because he is always
mediated in the play of language; rather, it is because a divine author
transcends language. All attempts to represent the author will be limited (though not doomed to failure), because the author has revealed
as much as he wants the reader to know. Though infinitely present,
the divine author is finitely absent since he cannot be identified with
his Son or Word. The theory of textuality which results from this assumption also includes multiple, though not unlimited interpretations:
a text's meaning is limited by the author's intention, by linguistic context, and by the fallible understanding of the reader. Although Milton
retains the structure of revelation implicit in the rhetorical theology
of Erasmus and others, he draws very different conclusions from his
analysis of the biblical image of God speaking.
Before he discusses the Son's generation as God's first act of external
efficiency, Milton has prepared his argument in the first four chapters
of De Doctrina Christiana:the self-existent, ineffable Creator transcends
both human understanding and the Word through which the author is
revealed. "God's decree, or intention," Milton writes, corresponds to
"that idea of all things which, to speak in human terms, he had in mind
before he decreed anything" (CPW 6:154; CE 14:64); that is, as Sidney
explains in a different context, "the skill of each artificer standeth in
that idea, or foreconceit of the work and not in the work itself."19When
18 For Barthes' account of the "classical text," see "Theory of the Text," 33. Overviews
of post-structuralism include the following: Jonathan Culler, On Deconstruction(Ithaca,
NY: Cornell University Press, 1982); Terry Eagleton, LiteraryTheory:An Introduction,2d
ed. (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996); John Ellis, Against Deconstruction
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989); Christopher Norris, Deconstruction:Theory
and Practice (London: Methuen, 1982); and Vincent Leitch, DeconstructiveCriticism (New
York: Columbia University Press, 1983).
19 Sir Philip Sidney, The Defence of Poesy, ed. J. W. Hebel, in Prose of the English Renaissance (New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1952), 271. For the theological use of this

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341

he turns to his interpretation of John i.1 (CPW 6:206; CE 14:180), the

scriptural basis of the orthodox view of the Son's generation from eternity, Milton's translation of the Greek logos into the Latin sermo builds
upon his notion of God as an author and reveals the rhetorical nature
of the Father's relationship to the Son. They are related as a speaker
is to his speech, as the author is to his Word, and as Milton has made
clear in his discussion of the Father, the speech is subordinate to the
speaker.20Except on three occasions, Milton adopts sermo whenever he
cites the pre-existent Word; moreover, he clearly shows that his view
of the Son's subordinate divinity is a result of the rational explication
of the metaphor of God's speech so prominent in the Bible. "TheWord,"
Milton argues, "must be audible, but God is inaudible just as he is invisible, John v. 37; therefore the Word is not of the same essence as
God" (CPW6:238-39;CE 14:252).
The generation, or more precisely, the creation of the Word within
the limits of time following God's internal decree is the logical consequence of Milton's construction of revelation as a speech act, the Word
emerging from the silent presence of God's fullness. When he explains
Renaissance commonplace by a writer who had a tremendous influence on Milton in De
Doctrina Christiana,see William Ames, TheMarrow of SacredDivinity (London, 1642), 27:
In every artificer,or one thatworkesby counselladextra,outwardly,thereis a platformeafore hand
in the mind which when he is about to worke hee lookes into.. . so also in God, seeing he worketh
not naturally,nor rashly,nor by constraint,but with greatestperfectionof reason,such a platforme
is to be conceived to pre-existin his mind as the exemplarycause of all things to be done.... The
platformeof all thingsis the Divine Essence.
20 Implied here is Milton's "Arianism"
or, alternatively, his "subordinationist" view of
the Trinity. Hunter's thesis that Milton's doctrine is not Arian but subordinationist, not
heretical but unorthodox, because he shares a two-stage "logos" theory with some preNicene authors, does not account for the anti-trinitarianism of many parts of the treatise.
Thus, although the term "Arian"is not technically accurate since Milton would not have
known Arius' works, it was used to describe any anti-trinitarian and subordinationist
theory of the Son's relationship to the Father in the seventeenth century and, as a result, can be meaningfully applied to Milton. Hunter's attempt to soften the hard edges
of Milton's radicalism by associating him with the Cambridge Platonists and through
them with the two stage logos theory of pre-Nicene theology is, therefore, unsuccessful. On the other hand, Kelley's derivation of Milton's anti-trinitarianism from strictly
theological sources ignores the possible influence of rhetorical theology on his thought.
See Shullenberger, Omnific Word, 167-85 and John P. Rumrich, Milton Unbound (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 40-47 for concise summaries of the problem
of Milton's Arianism. For extended discussions, see Michael Bauman, Milton's Arianism
(Frankfurt am Main and New York: P. Lung, 1986), and Maurice Kelley, This GreatArgument: A Study of Milton's "De Doctrina Christiana"as a Gloss on "ParadiseLost"(Princeton,
NJ: Princeton University Press, 1941).

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Milton s Use of Sermo in De Doctrina Christiana

the precise way in which the Father and Son are one, Milton again uses
the metaphor of speech: they "areone in that they speak and act as one"
(CPW6:220; CE 14: 210). As I showed earlier, Erasmus argues that sermo
had no doctrinal implications. In the ParaphrasisIn EvangeliumJoannis
he outlines the possible heresies related to sermo, including Milton'sthat the Word follows the Father in time and is, therefore, not equal to
him in essence-but insists that his translation is compatible with the
eternal generation of the Son.2"The possible misuse of logos theology
and the analogy of the pre-existent Word and human speech was also
anticipated by Athanasius and other Nicene theologians long before
Erasmus, but they reached different conclusions: logos language was
excluded from the Nicene Creed (325) to avoid the suggestion, possibly
useful to their enemies, the Arians, that temporality was introduced
into the Trinity by the Word.2 Calvin saw potential problems as well: he
defended Erasmus' translation, but he carefully qualified his approval
so that anti-trinitarians would not jump to the conclusion that the Son
was not equal to the Father just because the Word follows the speaker
of the Word.23Milton was not the only one to ignore the warnings of the
orthodox, either. The RacovianCatechism,published in 1651 and known
by Milton, also capitalizes on the anti-trinitarian implications of the
speech metaphor, taking the central metaphor of rhetorical theology to
its logical conclusion just as Milton does in De Doctrina Christiana.24
When Milton turns to the relationship of the Word to the Spirit,
he repeats that Christ is the medium of revelation. The difference in
divinity between the Son and Spirit is crystallized in his translations:
the Holy Spirit, sometimes called "voice, or word" [verbumi, is "sent
from above, either through Christ, who is the Word of God [qui Dei
sermo est], or through some other channel" (CPW 6:284; CE 14:366). To
show that the inequality of the Son and Spirit is based on the same
principle as the inequality of the Son and Father, Milton reiterates the
earlier argument using the same metaphor of speech: "for the Word
21 Erasmus, ParaphrasisIn EvangeliumJoannis, in Opera Omnia, 7:499E; see Boyle, On
Languageand Method, 28-29,
173 n. 171.
22 See
J. N. D. Kelly, Early Christian Creeds, 3d ed. (London: Longmans, 1950), 21718; H. A. Wolfson, The Philosophyof the ChurchFathers(Cambridge: Hlarvard University
Press, 1956), 227-30.
23 John Calvin, Calvin's Commentaries:the Gospel Accordingto John, i-1o, ed. D. W. Torrance and T. F. Torrance; trans. T. H. L. Parker (Edinburgh: Oliver and Boyd, 1959), 6-7.
24 The RacovianCatechism,ed. and trans. Thomas Rees (London: Longman, i818), 13940. See also H. J. McLachlan, Socinianismin Seventeenth-CenturyEngland(Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1951).

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343

[sermo]is both Son and Christ ... and as he is the image, as it were, by
which God becomes visible, so he is the word [sermo]by which God is
audible. Since this is what he is like he cannot be one in essence with
an invisible and inaudible God. The same thing has been proven above
about the Spirit.. ." (CPW6:297; CE 14:400). In Milton's account of the
generation of the Son and his relationship to the Father and the Spirit
before creation, then, revelation is constructed as a rhetorical act, as
God speaks the Word and the world into existence.
As E. R. Curtius and C. A. Patrides have shown, the book of nature
was a commonplace used in many literary cultures of medieval and
Renaissance Europe to describe God's self-revelation in the created
world.35 For reformers like Calvin, however, the book of nature was
ambiguous at best. The "spectacles" of the scriptures were necessary to
clarify the significance of natural signs. Milton continues this emphasis
on the ambiguity of creation as a guide to God's will. God creates the
world by the "Word and Spirit," but because the Word is an agent or
medium unequal to the speaker, the text remains an uncertain guide
to God's intentions. He argues that texts like Isaiah 44.24, where God
is identified as "Jehovah that maketh all things," "preclude[s] the possibility not only of there being any other God, but also of there being
any person . .. equal to him" (CPW 6:300; CE 15:4). The preposition
per, translated as "by" or "through" in texts such as 2 Peter 3.5, indicates that the Father is the primary cause and author of creation while
the Word is an instrumental cause. More importantly, from expressions like "through the Word of God" (per Dei sermonem)that describe
how God created the world, Jesus derived his 'title of the Word" (sermo
dicitur) (CPW 6:301; CE 15:6). The use of sermo in these examples links
the generation of the Son with the Word as the instrument of God's
creative will. When he uses forms of verbum to describe God's act of
revelation in creation, the same metaphor of speech is generated: to
show that God creates by speaking his Word, he refers to Genesis 1,
Psalm 33.9, and Psalm 33.6: "By the word of the Lord were the heavens
made; and all the host of them by the breath of his mouth" (CPW
6:301; CE 15:6). Even though Milton alternates between forms of verbum and sermo here, the metaphor of speech used to describe God's act
of revelation in creation is consistent and shapes the theological rela25 E. R. Curtius, EuropeanLiteratureand the LatinMiddle Ages, trans. W. R. Trask (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983; reprint with afterword by Peter Godman, 1990),
302-47; C. A. Patrides, Milton and the Christian Tradition(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1966),
68-69.

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tionship of Father and Son, author and Word. Since the Word logically
and chronologically follows from the Father, and since the Word is the
Son, the Son cannot be equal to the Father; consequently, the Word is
"first born" but not "begotten from eternity," and creation, though it
"speak[s] / The Maker's high magnificence" (ParadiseLost, 8.ioo), cannot be identified with the Word any more than the Word can be identified with the Father. God's providence, however, has provided the
incarnate, scriptural and indwelling Word through which the divine
will can be understood more easily.
Occupying Milton from chapter ten to the end of the first book of
De Doctrina Christiana,general and special providence are the last examples of external efficiency through which God is revealed, and they
too share the rhetorical structure which governs generation and creation. The postlapsarian and restored phases of special providence are
especially important because they are accomplished through a specific
instrument of redemption: the incarnate Christ, the Word made flesh.
I have already demonstrated how, by adopting the metaphor of the
sermo of God, Milton was led to subordinate the Son's divinity to the
Father's. To emphasize that both forms of Christ's redemptive officethe sacrifice of the cross and the preaching of the Word-are linked to
the divinity of the pre-existent Word, Milton adopts the same translation of logos in John 1.14 as he did in John 1.i: et sermo factus est
caro (CPW 6:418; CE 15:258). In the cross and the words of the Word,
then, God speaks clearly. For Milton, however, Christ's prophetic office
receives more attention than his priestly one, for Jesus' divine and
human natures are identified in his office as the prophet of the Word
in words. Milton consistently uses sermo to refer to the gospel and
to the "preached word" of the apostles. Moreover, since the incarnate
Word is the God-man who proclaims God's Word in human speech,
the authority of his preaching ministry is of the first order. Jesus is "primarily and properly, the Word of God [sermoDeil, and the Prophet of
the Church" (CPW 6:285; CE 15:368). It is an office which includes the
external revelation of divine truth, subsequently written down by the
church, and the internal illumination of the mind, both of which, when
taken together, form the double scripture of the Word and Spirit. The
incarnate Word will continue to be revealed in the scriptural Word by
the Spirit who writes the inner Word on the hearts of believers.
The words of Christ are the last forms of revelation that began when
the Word was spoken and then used to create the universe. Although
the Son is subordinate to the Father, since the Word is not identical

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to the essence or intentions of the author, his divinity is still included

in his nature as incarnate Word. To be accommodated to human limitations, however, the Word had to become words. This act of divine
rhetorical decorum, in which the Father adjusts his speech to the scope
and understanding of a human audience, underlies Milton's view of
the scriptural Word, the primary means by which God continues to
be revealed to the church after the Ascension.26 Each reader is capable
of receiving "the word [verbol of God"-that is, the textual presence
of Christ-by being "scrupulously faithful to the text" (CPW 6:120;
CE 14:6). Even though God is "always described or outlined not as he
really is, . . . they understand best what God is like who adjust their
understanding to the word of God [Dei verbol, for he has adjusted his
word [verbolto our understanding, and has shown what kind of an idea
of him he wishes us to have" (CPW 6:133, 136; CE 14:30, 36). The text
itself, then, cannot be identified with the author of the text, words with
the Word, any more than the pre-existent or incarnate Word can be.
Not only is scripture an accommodated text and human understanding
fallible, but no "indisputable word of God" [Dei verbo], no autograph
copy of the New Testament, exists (CPW 6:589; CE 15:278).
Illumination by the Holy Spirit of the "internal scripture" written
on the hearts of believers (CPW 6:521; CE i6: ii6) enables the external
scripture to become the Word of God in the act of reading. Milton asand right reason
signs many names to the unwritten Word -conscience
(CPW6:132; CE 14:28), the ingrafted word (insititium sermonem)and the
image of God (CPW 6:524, 353; CE 16: ii8; 15:114), the indwelling word
(sermo Christi inhabitet)and the internal law (CPW 6:478, 536; CE 16:6,
148), the mind of Christ and the Spirit of truth (CPW 6:583, 534; CE
:66:264, 149) are all used at different times-but

each expression

con-

veys the authority of each individual in the reading of scripture. Since

everyone has access to this revelation through the interpretation of the
vernacular scriptures with the guidance of the Holy Spirit, the church,
as the textual community of believers, consists of individuals united
by the Word and Spirit rather than the objective efficacy of the sacraments, the laws of church tradition, or the professional clergy. Because
the author's eternal presence always supersedes the limited forms of
26 For the doctrine of rhetorical decorum, see the following: Aristotle, Rhetoric,trans.
W. R. Roberts, in The Rhetoricand Poetics of Aristotle (New York: Modern Library, 1984),
178; Quintillian, The Institutio Oratoria of Quintillian, trans. H. E. Butler, 4 vols. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1980), 4:155-87; and Cicero, On the Orator,trans. E. W.
Sutton and H. Rackam, 2 vols. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1979), 2:31-211.

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self-revelation, no one can claim infallible authority in matters of interpretation, opening the church to a staggering variety of doctrines and
disciplines, as well as a dynamic process of Christian liberty based on
the authority of the inner Word. As long as a doctrine or discipline is in
the spirit of scripture, Christians "should tolerate each other until God
reveals the truth to all" (CPW 6:584; CE 16:266). As a result, according to Milton "it is not the visible church but the hearts of believers
which, since Christ's ascension, have continually constituted the pillar
and ground of truth. They are the real house and churchof the living God,
1 Tim. iii. 15" (CPW 6:589; CE 16:278). Since everyone has, by virtue
of the inner Word, the ability to hear God speak in the external Word,
every person participates in the church's sacramental life through literary activity broadly defined. The difference between the Father and
Son, the author and the text, that results from Milton's rational explication of God's speech is reiterated, then, in the doctrine of the inner
Word. The Father is not identical to the Word and the Word is not identical to the words of scripture, but the Spirit encourages the unity of
Father and Son, not in personhood or essence, but in divine utterance
as the Father speaks through his Word to believers who understand
and return the gift in words with the guidance of the Holy Spirit.
Milton's rhetorical theology is evident in his use of sermoto account
for the pre-existent, incarnate, scriptural and indwelling Word and in
his structuring of revelation as a rhetorical relationship between author, speech, and audience. This indicates the extent to which the literary and the theological Milton are impossible to separate: literary and
textual practices shape his theological thinking as much as his theology informs his poetry and prose. In keeping with his doctrine of
scriptural accommodation, Milton presents the biblical God as an author and creator who reveals infinite goodness by speaking the Word
in the creation of the Son, the scriptures, and the incarnate Word. God's
unity parallels the self-presence of a speaker since, when the Father
speaks in scripture, he speaks as one character, not three at the same
time, while his internal decrees correspond to the internal ideas which
precede speech, limiting the extent to which the speech ever conveys
the complete intentions of the author.
The texts themselves also reflect a rhetorical structure. The Son is
not equal to the Father because the Word is temporally and essentially
subordinate to the speaker. Scripture, although a more reliable form
of God's self-revelation than the created world, is not identical to the
Word, since the Son sits at the right hand of the Father. Nor is the

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text identified with the author since God's nature needs to be accommodated to the limited capacities of his creatures. Finally, the incarnate Word, although fulfilling the words of the prophets, is limited in
divinity since he must take on human syllables and letters to express
the unlimited glory of the author of the Word. In each case, the absence
and presence of the Father in his texts authorizes the continuing, progressive revelation of the Word in the literary activities of the church.
Despite Erasmus's attempts to control its scope of reference by insisting on its orthodoxy, sermo appears to have had a metaphoric life of
its own. For a radical like Milton, the logical outcome of the rhetorical
relationship between Father and Son implied in sermo is the inequality
of Father and Son, whether we want to call the doctrine Arian or not. In
1522 Erasmus retracted his suggestion in the Paraclesisof the first edition of his New Testament (1516) that every plowman could interpret
scripture because Christ speaks there with power, but Milton was not
so cautious: for him, if God speaks in the Word, the sacerdotal function and hierarchy of the priesthood are dispensible. Instead, the Holy
Spirit in Milton's literary Trinity illuminates and persuades readers
according to their gifts, transforming the church into a textual community progressively unfolding the Word, a convivium religiosummade
possible by the conditions of reading and the agency of the book.

UniversityCollegeof theCariboo