John Milton, part 3: does Paradise Lost really attempt to justify God’s ways?

Within 30 lines of his opening, Milton states the boldest possible intention: he plans to "justifie the
ways of God to men". So it is hardly surprising that his theodicy has undergone disproportionate
scrutiny by his readers. There are two hostile positions to take on it. One, that it's a piece of poetical
trespassing on divine ground, a hubris that fails and deserves to fail. Two, that whether he intends to
or not his argument indicts God as careless and cruel. Sometimes these positions are combined.
Either way, the accusation only has force if the reader believes Milton has actually carried out his
plan. The whole poem really has to be a justification (successful or not) of God's ways. But is it? Is
Milton really putting himself where he can vindicate God's perspective on things? Milton says not –
though we have to wait a bit for the denial. He writes as he sees, "standing on Earth, not rapt above
the Pole … with mortal voice". But he has a sacred charge, and to do justice to it he needs help. So,
true to his epic vocation, he invokes his "Heav'nly Muse" (I.6).

He had precedent. There was a classical tradition called furor, which meant a divine rage, or
possession. Originally it had been the pagan gods who used it to visit both art and prophecy upon
mortals. But an adaptation of furor had made it Judaeo-Christian by turning possession into
inspiration, the breath of the Holy Spirit which vivified everything. It was neat, beguiling and
practical; there was even a Muse exclusively dedicated to Christian verse called Urania. Paradise Lost
invokes the muse three times: at the very beginning, at the opening to Book III and at the opening to
Book VII. These are places where the poet is attempting something especially godlike. At the
opening he advertises the whole enterprise, at Book III he is about to introduce God as a character
and have him explain his purposes, at Book VII he is about to recreate the making of the world.

Milton's opening invocation has the vaunting boldness common to mission statements. He uses his
first lines to summarise his subject, calls on his Muse to sing it, then spends a line or two reminding
people that the Muse in question isn't some pagan floozy but the voice of God. So far so epic – but
there is then a mood change. He speaks personally to his inspirer, and for the first time the poet
enters on to the stage of his own poem:

"And chiefly Thou O Spirit, that dost prefer

Before all Temples the upright heart and pure,

Instruct me, for Thou knows't …

… What in me is dark

Illumine, what is low raise and support

That to the highth of this great Argument

I may assert Eternal Providence

And justifie the wayes of God to men."

This poem is going to be worked out of the grain of the poet's nature. Milton is its raw material, with
all his defects – with a heart neither as pure nor as upright as he would like, an eye both literally and
figuratively for the dark. This, he tells God, is what he has got to work with; he is reliant upon him for
light and for height.
As he brings us into Book III we get some sense of how this is working out for the poet in practice.
We've been weltering in the "Stygian Pool" of hell for two books so far and he has been fairly
comfortable with singing "Chaos and Eternal Night". Now, though, he must write about light as he
introduces his heavenly characters, and he's worried. "May I express thee unblam'd?" he asks,

"since God is light,

And never but in unapproached light

Dwelt from Eternitie, dwelt then in thee,

Bright effluence of bright essence increate."

What, asks Milton, have I to do with light? He is blind. Of the 55 lines of this invocation, more than
half are a lament for a life spent in the dark.

"Thus with the Year

Seasons return, but not to me returns

Day, or the sweet approach of Ev'n or Morn,

Or sight of vernal bloom, or Summers Rose,

Or flocks, or herds, or human face divine." (III.41-3)

Lightless, Milton must delineate the celestial. His capacities are against him. Even in literal terms, he
points out, he is deprived of witnesses to God's goodness in "Natures works" which he cannot see:
"wisdome at one entrance quite shut out". The physical incapacity stands for spiritual incapacity,
and the sheer length of his diversion into blindness lets us know how serious that is. He finishes his
invocation in a passionate prayer for enlightenment, for spiritual reversal. "Shine inward," he begs
God,

"and the mind through all her powers

Irradiate, there plant eyes, all mist from thence

Purge and disperse, that I may see and tell

Of things invisible to mortal sight."

But he has cast his own shadow on his coming delineation of God. The prayer is spoken, but he does
not tell us whether it is answered. For Milton, this is a serious uncertainty, not just a way of sounding
modest.

By the time Milton reaches Book VII he has come to a kind of accord with his own frustration. All
right, he says: I can't get up to heaven, and if I try I "fall/Erroneous". Writing purely about God, he
comments, is like being an amateur rider on a particularly frisky winged horse. Humanity is the
proper perspective for poetic endeavour; so he asks the Christian muse, Urania, to carry him
downwards and deposit him safe in his "Native Element". He will write now about the earth: about
its nature, its making; about its creatures; about relationships and sex and intellectual curiosity and
mistakes and sorrow and "the human face divine".
This is most deeply God's place to speak through his poet, he points out; singing amid violence;
taking love into hell; readying himself for sacrifice, to be destroyed by the blind desires of an angry
mob. The figure with whom he identifies in connection with this role is Orpheus, the prototype poet
of myth. But, of course, he is thinking about Christ too, who in Christian theology is God suffering all
that humans inflict on each other. There won't be much explicit scope for Christ in Paradise Lost. But
Milton sees his own position – surrounded by rabid Royalists, "fall'n on evil dayes", slandered by
"evil tongues" – as Christlike. In the face of violence, Milton too will sing.