Nick Hodge
Sympathy for the Devil:
The Clash of Absolutes in Milton’s Paradise Lost
The real struggle is not between East and West, capitalism
and communism but between education and propaganda.
Martin Buber
In The Origin of Satan, Elaine Pagels traces the evolving story of Satan and how that
story continues to reverberate through our culture. Situating Isaiah as one of three groups of
stories accounting for the origin of Satan, Pagels mentions Milton and Paradise Lost only once:
One group tells how one of the angels, himself in the heavenly hierarchy, proved
insubordinate to his commander in chief and so was thrown out of heaven,
demoted, and disgraced, an echo of Isaiah’s account of the fall of a great prince:
“How are you fallen from heaven, day star, son of dawn! How are you fallen to
earth, conqueror of the nations! You said in your heart, ‘I will ascend to heaven,
above the stars of God; I will set my throne on high . . . I will ascend upon the
high clouds . . .’ But you are brought down to darkness . . . to the depths of the
pit” (Isa. 14:12-15). Nearly two and a half thousand years after Isaiah wrote, this
luminous falling star, his name translated into Latin as Lucifer (“light-bearer”)
was transformed by Milton into the protagonist of Paradise Lost.1
Pagels’ reading Satan as the “protagonist” of Paradise Lost strikes me as strange even though
she is by no means the first to read him as such. Indeed, many have read Satan as Paradise
Lost’s protagonist, a group as diverse as the Romantics to Harold Bloom,2 but such a reading
necessarily ignores Milton’s stated purpose for writing the poem:
That to the highth of this great Argument
I may assert Eternal Providence,
And justifie the wayes of God to men. (I:24-6)
158-61.
1
Elaine Pagels. The Origin of Satan (New York: Random House, 1995) 48.
2
Harold Bloom. The Western Canon: The Books and School of the Ages. (New York: Riverhead, 1994).
2
At least, such a reading must assume Milton failed in his stated project, and quite accidentally, or
subconsciously, produced the opposite effect: rather than showing God as “justified” and Satan
as His “antagonist,” readers must adopt a sympathetic stance toward Satan. In “Milton’s Satan,”
John Carey argues:
Finally, the relation of Satan to Milton’s intentions (was Milton of the Devil’s
party? or not? or only subconsciously so?) has interested critics. Such questions
are all clearly unanswerable since we have no access to Milton’s mind, let alone
his subconscious, at the time of writing. That does not, of course, prevent
speculation about them.3
This paper hopes to illuminate why this tension between Milton and many of his readers arises
and propose a novel solution for that tension.
In Gilbert and Gubar’s chapter on Milton, “Milton’s Bogey: Patriarchal Poetry and
Women Readers,” they argue: “ . . . Milton’s bogey, whatever else it may be, is ultimately his
cosmology, his vision of ‘what men thought’ and his powerful rendering of the culture myth that
Woolf, like most other literary women, sensed at the heart of Western literary patriarchy.”4
Pointing to Milton’s representation of “Sin” as half-woman and half-serpent, Gilbert and Gubar
hold that representation is the most convincing evidence of Milton’s “misogyny.” Problematic
for their argument is, of course, the fact that Milton’s personification of absolute evil, Satan, is
male. That Milton is “sexist,” I should not like to dispute; although many women and men have
disputed the charge,5 I give, quite willingly, that Milton is sexist. However, Milton is not
3
John Carey, “Milton’s Satan” in The Cambridge Companion to Milton, Dennis Danielson, editor, (New
York: CUP, 1989) 143.
4
Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar. The Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth
Century Literary Imagination. Yale UP, 1978. 191.
5
For a reasonably in depth discussion see Diane McColley, “Milton and the Sexes” in The Cambridge
Companion to Milton, Dennis Danielson, editor, (New York: CUP, 1989) 147-166.
3
particularly “misogynistic,” and instead he should be read as misanthropic, anti-humanist--he is
what he has been taught: an “equal opportunity hater.” To call Milton a misogynist, in my view,
does damage to the word itself, and begs the question: If Milton is a misogynist, what is Ted
Bundy? Western culture is indisputably “sexist;” however, “sexist” and “misogynist” should not
be held as synonyms. That Western culture’s ideological sexism may interpellate some
individuals as misogynists may very well be true, and I should not like to be understood as one in
any way defending nor ameliorating sexism; rather, I think there is a distinction between the
terms “misogynist” and “sexist,” and if the terms are conflated then a trivializing of genuine
“misogyny” is a necessary consequence.
Men and women share a common enemy in Milton’s cosmology, his “bogey,” and
Gilbert and Gubar’s argument elides that fact. That is not to argue that “patriarchy” and
“sexism” are not equally the enemy of men and women; rather, Gilbert and Gubar see Milton’s
cosmology as a problem for women, primarily women writers, while it is clear to me Milton’s
cosmology is a relatively accurate representation of Western cosmology, a cosmology equally
harmful to women and men. Therefore, if what we do as critics has any importance to our
culture, if there really is something important at stake in the work we do, then as critics we must
confront Milton’s cosmology. Confronting Milton’s sexism, and if one insists his “misogyny,” is
a worthy endeavor; however, Milton’s sexism is grounded in his cosmology, a cosmology that is
itself threatening to men and women quite aside from its privileging of gender. If all we
managed to confront in Milton is his sexism, then we have left the grounding cosmology intact;
rather than having addressed the more pressing problem, which in itself would have
consequences for Milton’s and our culture’s sexism, we would have merely pulled a weed from
the briar patch of Western culture’s, and Milton’s, cosmological garden of nightmares.
4
Gilbert and Gubar entirely miss the radical disruption that takes place when Sin makes
her pledge of allegiance to Satan:
Thou art my Father, Thou my Author, thou
My being gav’st me; whom should I obey
But Thee, whom follow? (II: 864-66)
The gratitude Sin shows her progenitor, Satan, is precisely what Satan is accused of not having
for his Father, God. Indeed, God calls Satan and Adam both, “ingrate,” and their ingratitude is
demonstrated precisely in their refusal to “obey,” their transgression against God’s “will.” “Sin”
is analogous to “Christ,” the “Begotten Son,” in that both are absolute emanations of their
progenitors, and both, as at least a partial result, subsume “the wills” from whom they emanate.
However, if the quality of absolute “obedience” is contingent upon absolute emanation, then only
those who are absolute emanations can be expected to have the quality of “absolute obedience.”
The fact that “Sin” springs from Satan’s head indicates two conclusions: 1) Satan makes
an intellectual error, and 2) Sin is the emanation born of that error. Clearly, Eve makes a similar
error as William Empson points out. After Eve experiences dreams sent to her from Satan, then
God’s messenger to Eve, Raphael, gives Eve similar advice and, Empson shows, uses the same
rhetorical devices:
We may be sure Raphael does not know what Satan has whispered, because he is
not wicked enough to cheat Eve in such a way; but it is merely a matter of
theology that Milton’s God has arranged the correspondence--all such accidents
lie within his Providence. He has thus made it baffling for her to gauge his
intentions. 6
6
William Empson. Milton’s God. London: Chatto & Windus, 1965. 150.
5
Eve is “baffled,” in an epistemological condition absolutely ignorant and innocent, causing
confusion. Furthermore, she, like Satan and Adam, is not made of the same “stuff” as God
which prevents her from “knowing” His will. Fascinatingly, Raphael is in a similar condition,
and he does not know how much he can tell without violating God’s will; at one point, for
example, Raphael tells Adam:
. . . how last unfould
The secrets of another world, perhaps
Not lawful to reveal (V: 658-70)
If Raphael does not know the extent of what is “lawful to reveal,” then it seems to me very
unlikely any human could ever be expected to “know the law.” Therefore, the rupture of
disobedience is a necessary consequence of the act of creation from “that which the Creator is
not” and which, therefore, lacks an absolute knowledge of the will of the source of emanation.
One may wish to object that, “Raphael and two thirds of heaven’s angels do not fall,” and to that
I would simply respond: true enough, but given time, and Raphael’s own acknowledging that he
does not perfectly know the will of God, his fall and theirs is more likely than not. Raphael tells
Adam:
God made thee perfect, not immutable
And good he made thee, but to persevere
He left in thy power, ordained thy will
By nature free, not over-rul’d by Fate
Inextricable, or strict necessity;
Our voluntary service he requires (V: 524-29)
Even Milton’s enjambment reads against the free-will Raphael claims for Adam: “ordained thy
will,” refers to God’s construction of Adam’s, obviously, imperfect will. If Adam cannot know
precisely what is lawful and what is not lawful, then the situation begs the question: In what
respect can an uninformed will really be free? Furthermore, when Raphael tells Adam he is not
6
“immutable,” we know that only the Father and his “Begotten” are “immutable” which calls
attention to the ontological difference of all other “created” beings from “the Begotten.”
As Beings who are inscribed with the knowledge of the will of their respective source
(for example, Sin’s “my Author”) Sin and Christ have a distinct epistemological advantage;
however, their epistemological advantage is contingent upon an ontological condition, a
condition predicated upon the fact that both are made of the same “stuff” as their progenitors.
Indeed, as Carey points out, Sin even knows part of Satan’s own forgotten history:
The episode with Sin and Death at the gate between Hell and Chaos (2.648-870)
is one of the most puzzling in the poem, and the one that seems to carry us
furthest into the half-light of Satan’s subconscious. As he talks to Sin she reveals
a buried phase of his life, and one which, even when she has recounted it, it seems
he has no recollection of. He is, she tells him, her father, but also her mother. He
went through birth pangs in heaven, and she sprang from an opening in the side of
his head. She became his accomplice against God, but she was also his image, as
the Son is the image of the Father.7
While I do think one could object that surely Milton does not intend such a consequence from his
representation of Sin’s pledge, Paradise Lost belongs to us at least as much as it belongs to
Milton, and, likewise, the cosmology Milton wishes to justify belongs to us, affects us; therefore,
we have an obligation to understand it and explain it--and confront it. One may wish to object
that: “reading ‘disobedience’ as a necessary consequence of an epistemological lack predicated
upon an ontological condition of ‘difference’ is a result of ‘fallen consciousness;’” however,
such an objection would be special pleading and a circular argument because I enter into the
investigation with the same “metaphysical condition of consciousness” as Milton; that is simply
to say: in as much as my “consciousness is fallen,” so was Milton’s.
7
John Carey, “Milton’s Satan” in The Cambridge Companion to Milton, Dennis Danielson, editor, (New
York: CUP, 1989) 142.
7
Milton’s God requires from Adam and Eve what cannot be expected: obedience which
must be predicated upon knowing that “to obey is good.” The one “forbidden fruit” gives
“knowledge:” the knowledge of “good and evil,” which we know Adam and Eve do not have
prior to their act of disobedience. If one does not know some hypothetical act is “evil,” or
“good” for that matter, then “justifying,” which is Milton’s stated goal, punishment or reward for
that act is unintelligible within a system of “justice.” One might wish to object, “ignorance of
the law is no excuse;” however, if we are to consistently function within Western cosmology,
then we shall find compelling evidence to the contrary. For example, in the evolving Judaic idea
of “justice” and responsibility for knowing the law, Jeremiah’s late development of the “new
covenant,” which Christians have traditionally held that “Christ cut” through his crucifixion,
implies that “not knowing the law” necessarily causes one to sin:
The days are surely coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with
the house of Israel and the house of Judah. It will not be like the covenant that I
made with their ancestors when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the
land of Egypt — a covenant that they broke, though I was their husband, says the
Lord. But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those
days, says the Lord: I will put my law within them, and I will write it in their
hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. No longer shall they
teach one another, or say to each other, “Know the Lord,” for they shall know me,
from the least of them to the greatest. Says the Lord; for I will forgive their
iniquity, and remember their sin no more. 8
The God who speaks through Jeremiah is the God Milton does not know and Western cosmology
ignores. Whatever else we can say of God, in the Western tradition, this particular passage in
Jeremiah is extraordinary in its implications. If God “. . . will put my law within them, and I will
write it in their hearts,” then we can safely infer that the law is not so inscribed. If the
8
Jeremiah 31: 33-34.
8
ontological condition of lacking the inscription is also an epistemological condition necessary to
“Know the Lord,” then we can safely infer that we have no such knowledge. If after God has
acted in His own creation, by putting His law within the beings of His creation, He will “ . . .
forgive their iniquity, and remember their sin no more,” then it necessarily follows that God is
responsible for bringing about an ontological state of being and, as a consequence, an
epistemological state of knowing, and upon doing so, we will, as a necessary consequence, be
“forgiven” for what we could not have been and what we could not possibly have known
otherwise. The fundamental idea emerging in Jeremiah is: the fruition of the law is an “at-onement” with God, obliging God to love his creation unconditionally because the creation is itself a
manifestation of God and God’s law. Whatever we might think of the Western God in general,
this promise in Jeremiah seems one worth reminding Him to keep.
Even though, perhaps quite accidentally or subconsciously, he repeatedly calls attention
to the ontological condition of God’s creation, Milton attempts to avoid the consequences of
Adam’s, Eve’s and Satan’s ontological lack of having the law inscribed into their being by
changing the subject to God’s “foreknowledge:”
They therefore as to right belonged,
So were created, nor can justly accuse
Thir maker, or thir making, or thir Fate
As if predestination over-rul’d
Thir will, dispos’d by absolute Decree
Or high foreknowledge; they themselves decreed
Thir own revolt, not I: if I foreknew,
Foreknowledge had no influence on their fault,
Which had no less prov’d certain unforeknown. (III: 111-9)
Even Milton is not positive his argument holds water because there is the very disturbing, “if I
foreknew,” which implies God might not have foreknown the Fall; therefore, the argument
Milton constructs has a backdoor: if one successfully manages to show God’s foreknowledge
9
mitigates against Satan’s, Adam’s and Eve’s guilt (which I think is true prima facie), then Milton
always has open the claim that God actually did not foreknow after all. Much more damaging,
however, is God’s “So were created” because it calls attention to the fact that there is only one
child “Begotten by God, not created,” and that child is Christ. Therefore, the speechifying by
Milton’s God here calls attention to Satan’s, Adam’s and Eve’s ontological lack, their
“difference.” Additionally, we have Milton’s “Argument” introducing Book V:
God to render man inexcusable sends Raphael to admonish him of his obedience,
of his free estate, of his enemy near at hand; who he is, and why his enemy and
whatever else may avail Adam to know.
Here God’s intention is not ambiguous: God intends to “render man inexcusable.” It is also clear
that God does foreknow the Fall at this point, leaving open, still, the question of whether or not
He foreknew the Fall at or about the time of creation, once again recalling “if I foreknew.” We
know that Adam does not know “good from evil,” and Raphael is limited in what he can actually
tell Adam: he tells Adam “to obey.” However, we are forced to recall Eve’s “bafflement,” her
confusion concerning what God would actually want her to do: she is ignorant of what God’s
will actually is, what it would actually mean “to obey.” Eve does disobey, but her disobedience
is an intellectual error brought about by her confusion. She actually wants to do God’s will. If
God has the power to create the universe, surely he has the power to explain exactly why Adam
and Eve are required not to eat of the Tree.
My quarrel with Milton and his God, as well as Western cosmology, has thus far focused
on mitigating circumstances in favor of Satan, Adam and Eve, and I have shown God’s
complicity in their Fall by not inscribing into their beings His law. Their “difference” from the
“Begotten Son,” that they are “created,” indicates a fundamental lack of having an “informed
will.” Furthermore, I have shown the distinction I point to between Satan, Adam and Eve (the
10
created) as opposed to Christ (the Begotten) is Milton’s not mine. However, now I should like to
focus on Milton’s solution to the catastrophe.
The consequences of the Fall are: Humanity is driven from Paradise, eventually dies and
is damned to Hell for eternity which Humanity must then spend with God’s other “fallen son,”
Satan. For Milton, as well as traditional Western cosmology, those consequences are “God’s
justice.” By transgressing the law, Humanity incurs a debt, a debt which must be paid but which
can never be paid off by any human act. The holder of the debt, God, provides a way to defer
collection: “sacrifice,” and then finally, His “Begotten,” the emanation of and from Himself,
pays the debt in full--if and only if we accept payment. Michael recounts exactly this sequence:
Law can discover sin, but not remove,
Save by those shadowie expiations weak,
The bloud of Bulls and Goats, they may conclude
Some bloud more precious must be paid for Man,
Just for unjust, that in some righteousness
To them by Faith imputed, they may finde
Justification towards God, (XII: 291-6)
Earlier, Milton has Christ say:
Now therefore bend thine ear
To supplication, hear his sighs though mute;
Unskillful with what words to pray, let mee
Interpret for him, mee his Advocate
And propitiation, all his works on mee
Good or not good ingraft, my Merit those
Shall perfect, and for these my Death shall pay. (XI: 30-6)
Nietzsche makes a remarkable comment on this system of debt in The Genealogy of Morals:
[s]uddenly we stand before the paradoxical and horrifying expedient that afforded
temporary relief for tormented humanity, that stroke of genius on the part of
Christianity: God himself sacrifices himself for the guilt of mankind, God himself
makes payment to himself, God as the only being who can redeem man for what
11
has become unredeemable for man himself — the creditor sacrifices himself for
his debtor, out of love (can one credit that?), out of love for his debtor! 9
9
Friedrich Nietzsche. On the Genealogy of Morals and Ecce Homo. Walter Kaufman, trans. New York:
Vintage, 1889. 92.
12
Like a laughing lion, Nietzsche calls attention to what Kierkegaard called, but believed out of
fear, “absurdity” and laughs in indignation and, one can be sure, nausea as well. God the Son is
required by God the Father, if redemption is going to be possible, to suffer and die because His,
that is Christ’s, blood is “precious,” unlike the blood of “Bulls and Goats,” because Christ is
“just.” If we allow that Christ is talking to His Father, and not merely the Father speaking
Himself through the Son, then God the Son asks, “all his works on mee/Good or not good
ingraft.” When Christ asks to be “his Advocate,” however, a radical new possibility asserts
itself: the redemption of all, and in particular not just those who believe, but all. After all, “an
Advocate” must represent the client, plead the client’s case, with absolute commitment, and
should Christ perform His Advocacy, one finds it difficult to imagine how the Father could
refuse Him. What necessarily follows is, of course: if one is going to be “Christ-like,” the
demand of Christianity, then one assumes Christ’s Advocacy; that is to say, “I am my brother
and sister’s Advocate.” When Michael says, “Law can discover sin, but not remove,” the
expected inference is: Christ, through his personal sacrifice, pleads for “mercy” rather than
“justice,” and that “mercy” “removes the sin.” It is not much of a leap to argue that when Christ
asks “all his works on mee/Good or not good ingraft,” the request covers every possible act.
Derrida comes close to this provocative suggestion but falls a little short:
The trembling of the formula ‘every other (one) is every (bit) other’ can also be
reproduced. It can do so to the extent of replacing one of the ‘every others’ by
God: ‘Every other (one) is God,’ or ‘God is every (bit) other.’ Such a formulation
in no way alters the ‘extent’ of the original formulation, whatever grammatical
function is assigned to the various words. In one case God is defined as infinitely
other, as wholly other, every bit other. In the other case it is declared that every
other one, each of the others, is God in as much as he or she is, like God, wholly
other. Are we just playing here? If this were a game then it would need to be
13
kept safe and untouched, like the game that must be kept alive between humans
and God. 10
Derrida comes up with this particular formulation after exploring modern geopolitics and
considering the influence of religion, particularly Islam, Judaism and Christianity and their
respective understanding of Abraham’s sacrifice.11 He is seeking some possibility for a new way
of looking at the problem while acknowledging an implacable rift between us. While attempting
to explain his concept of “universal relatedness,” process philosopher Alfred North Whitehead
argues something very similar:
The principle of universal relativity directly traverses Aristotle’s dictum, ‘a
substance is not present in a subject.’ On the contrary, according to this principle
an actual entity is present in other actual entities. In fact, if we allow for degrees
of relevance, and for negligible relevance, we must say that every actual entity is
present in every other actual entity.12
10
11
12
Jacques Derrida. The Gift of Death. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995. 87.
Ibidem. 85-6.
Alfred North Whitehead. Process and Reality (New York: The Free Press, 1978) 50.
14
Fascinatingly, Derrida is always interested in “absences” while Whitehead is always interested in
“that which is present.” Different as their interests are, they often come to similar conclusions.
Of course, the point I, Derrida and Whitehead all make is: we are all related and have a common
interest in each other’s well-being. To put it more simply, in as much as any suffer, we all do.
If what we do is important, and if the grounding ideology of our cosmology contributes to
the continual suffering, death and destruction the world is bombarded by everyday, then we must
confront that ideology. However, we cannot dismiss it, cannot claim simply, “God is dead,”
because that claim is so far removed from the reality of the lives of people living within that
ideology, our voices will be as tinkling brass. If September 11, 2001 taught us nothing else, it
should have taught us: God is alive and still kicking.13 On September 13, 2001, the following
discussion between Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson took place on Robertson’s television show:
Falwell said, ‘What we saw on Tuesday, as terrible as it is, could be minuscule if,
in fact, God continues to lift the curtain and allow the enemies of America to give
us probably what we deserve.’
Robertson replied, ‘Well, Jerry, that's my feeling. I think we've just seen the
antechamber to terror, we haven't begun to see what they can do to the major
population.’
Falwell said, ‘The ACLU has got to take a lot of blame for this. And I know I'll
hear from them for this, but throwing God...successfully with the help of the
federal court system...throwing God out of the public square, out of the schools,
the abortionists have got to bear some burden for this because God will not be
mocked and when we destroy 40 million little innocent babies, we make God
mad...I really believe that the pagans and the abortionists and the feminists and
the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative
lifestyle, the ACLU, People for the American Way, all of them who try to
secularize America...I point the thing in their face and say you helped this
happen.’
13
Perhaps in bad taste, but the pun is intentional.
15
Robertson said, ‘I totally concur, and the problem is we've adopted that agenda at
the highest levels of our government, and so we're responsible as a free society for
what the top people do, and the top people, of course, is the court system.’
Falwell added, ‘Pat, did you notice yesterday that the ACLU and all the Christhaters, the People for the American Way, NOW, etc., were totally disregarded by
the Democrats and the Republicans in both houses of Congress, as they went out
on the steps and called out to God in prayer and sang “God bless America” and
said, let the ACLU be hanged. In other words, when the nation is on its knees, the
only normal and natural and spiritual thing to do is what we ought to be doing all
the time, calling on God.’ 14
Falwell and Robertson, and their ilk, are today’s advocates of Milton’s ideology, his cosmology,
his “bogey.” We cannot confront Falwell and his ilk outside of his text: it is the only text he and
his followers know. The texts our ideology is grounded in belong to us as much as anyone else,
as much as the purveyors of hatred and fear. Therefore, it remains for us to wrest those texts
from the grinding forces of ignorance, hatred and fear.
Much has been made of Milton’s “correcting” the Greco-Roman myths and
“Cristianizing” them to fit his ideology. 15 However, perhaps modern critics could bring about a
re-reading of Milton’s primary source, The Bible, and in so doing, establish a novel but
compelling argument. Aside from Jeremiah’s promise of the “new covenant,” Luke 23: 46 says,
“Then Jesus said, ‘Father forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing.’” Of course,
given what I have argued thus far, two issues are immediately relevant: 1) who does “them” refer
to, and 2) Christ’s “they do not know.” One assumes, I think correctly and indisputably, “them”
refers to the Romans who crucified Jesus and, by extension, all of Humanity, extending back to
14
15
See: http://www.floridaradioactive.com/issues/terror/Falwell_Roberson_comments.htm
For example, see Charles Osgood, “Milton’s Classical Mythology” (MLN 16.5 [1901]). Phillip
Gallagher, “‘Real or Allegoric’: The Ontology of Sin and Death in Paradise Lost” (ELR 6.2 [1976]). And, Merrit
Hughes, “Milton’s Celestial Battle and the Theogonies” (in Ten Perspectives on Milton, M. Y. Hughes, editor [New
Haven: Yale Univeristy Press, 1965]).
16
Adam and forward infinitely; problematic for traditional dogma, one could hardly argue that the
Romans asked for that forgiveness. If Milton is correct in his ontological description of Jesus,
then one can safely infer that it necessarily follows that it is God’s will Jesus’ murderers be
forgiven whether they ask for that forgiveness or not. We can quite easily extend the argument
to include even Satan, for ultimately, Satan is also responsible for Jesus’ murder. Therefore,
there is no special logical, nor theological, ground for Milton’s required “if and only if one
accepts forgiveness” because “mercy” and “justice” are absolute concepts in themselves, and
Christ’s plea gives precedence to “absolute mercy.” Therefore, perhaps Christians have been
correct, and Jesus did “cut the new covenant,” but in doing so, Humanity’s salvation becomes
God’s responsibility, indeed, His obligation. Furthermore, Jesus’ “they do not know” calls
attention to both the ontological and epistemological lack I have shown Milton, and Western
cosmology, holds as a matter of dogma; however, as I have argued, Jesus pleads for Humanity’s
forgiveness precisely because of that ontological and epistemological lack: we do not have “the
law inscribed in our hearts;” therefore, we do not know the law, nor the “Lord.” If we managed
to successfully make the argument, then perhaps we could remind God and His advocates what it
really means to be a “Father,” and even, perhaps, secure forgiveness for Satan, God’s most
unruly Son, our brother.
17
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Nineteenth Century Literary Imagination (New Haven: Yale UP, 1978).
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