HI: I’M ELOHIM: THE TROUBLE WITH GOD (COLLECTED ESSAYS 2025)
CHAPTER 5: MILTON MATTERS
John Milton’s praiseworthy epic poem Paradise Lost presents English heroic verse without rhyme comparable to that of Homer in Greek or Virgil in Latin.
‘Rime being no necessary Adjunct or true Ornament of Poem or good Verse, in longer Works especially, but the Invention of a barbarous Age’ (S Simmons — printer’s note to reader).
The Roman poet Ovid raises the standard with the battle cry that the author kick off the drama in media rem, or middle of the action.
Meet Satan. Morning Star of the Show.
Picture yourself in a private box for a London production of Paradise Lost: The Musical, and the curtains part — with Satan kepslat! on a lake of fire, and chained to the gang: ‘Driv’n headlong from the Pitch of Heaven’ (II:772)
‘Had cast him out from Heav’n, with all his Host
Of Rebel Angels, by whose aid aspiring
To set himself in Glory above his Peers,
He trusted to have equal’d the most High,
If he oppos’d; and with ambitious aim
Against the Throne and Monarchy of God
Rais’d impious War in Heav’n and Battel proud
With vain attempt. Him the Almighty Power
Hurld headlong flaming from th’ Ethereal Skie
With hideous ruine and combustion down
To bottomless perdition, there to dwell
In Adamantine Chains and penal Fire,
Who durst defie th’ Omnipotent to Arms’ (I:37-49)
Picture yourself in a private box for the Hollywood blockbuster, Paradise Lost: Star Wars Rebels. The AI-generated War-in-Heaven scene will be aiming its arrows high to capture the jaw-gasping impact of Olivier’s Henry V.
Milton’s panoramic epic Paradise Lost (published 1667) pioneers ye olde technique of flashback, from the Mad Misadventures of Satan back to the source of our troubles, Heaven. In days of dispute. In days of war. In Books V & VI we’re flashing back big-time to Heaven, so buckle up with Satan under the floodlights in ‘dubious battle’.
‘His count’nance, as the Morning Starr that guides
The starrie flock, allur’d them, and with lyes
Drew after him the third part of Heav’ns Host’ (V:705-707)
The validity of the Great Dispute that cleft Heaven in twain is the beating heart of the matter:
[Satan]: ‘That we were formd then sayest thou? & the work
Of secondarie hands, by task transferd
From Father to his Son? strange point and new!
Doctrin which we would know whence learnt: who saw
When this creation was? rememberst thou
Thy making, while the Maker gave thee being?
We know no time when we were not as now;
Knew none before us, self-begot, self-rais’d
By our own quick’ning power’ (V: 850-858)
Here lies one of a handful of textual ambiguities: Did God keep any kind of harmony for his oh-so-many kin before the Grand Dictat of dynastic dictatorship?
[Satan]: ‘The supple knee? ye will not, if I trust
To know ye right, or if ye know your selves
Natives and Sons of Heav’n possest before
By none, and if not equal all, yet free,
Equally free; for Orders and Decrees
Jarr not with liberty, but well consist’ (V:785-790)
We wonder whether discontent has long been a-rumbling. Did the Don ‘mad-dog’ God allow fair debate, the tabling of alternatives, and fair vote? This text impresses like the imposition of fascism.
Here lies the God of the Old Testament, a proud fascist intergalactic empire-builder with a penchant for genocide, and hardly a promoter of democracy, equality, and solidarity with the Amalekites, Amorites and Ammonites.
Shakespeare’s Hamlet would be a whittle less the nihilist masterpiece without the ambiguities of the Witnesses, the Ghost, the Vision, the Mission.
What thinkest thou then of Satan? Brave or bravado to protest new match rules, and the imposition of a North-Korean-style dynastic dictatorship?
Milton scholar John Leonard comments on the outstanding metaphysic ambiguities of the text: ‘Paradise Lost is, among other things, a poem about civil war. Satan raises ‘impious war in Heav'n’ (i 43) by leading a third of the angels in revolt against God. The term ‘impious war’ implies that civil war is impious. But Milton applauded the English people for having the courage to depose and execute King Charles I. In his poem, however, he takes the side of ‘Heav’n’s awful Monarch’ (IV 960). Critics have long wrestled with the question of why an antimonarchist and defender of regicide should have chosen a subject that obliged him to defend monarchical authority. John Leonard, Paradise Lost, Penguin 2000
We uncover ‘Heav’n’s awful Monarch’ in Book III chilling with the right-wing Jesus, both spectators of the War in Heaven as if engrossed in a football match on a giant wide-screen television:
‘Onely begotten Son, seest thou what rage
Transports our adversarie, whom no bounds
Prescrib’d, no barrs of Hell, nor all the chains
Heapt on him there, nor yet the main Abyss
Wide interrupt can hold; so bent he seems
On desperat revenge, that shall redound
Upon his rebellious head’ (III: 80-86)
But a reasonable parent does not sit idly by while a kiddies’ squabble degenerates into a cannon-shoot with engines of war.
‘... whose fault?
Whose but his own? ingrate, he had of mee
All he could have; I made him just and right,
Sufficient to have stood, though free to fall’ (III:96-99)
God’s claim ‘I made him just and right’ may or may not include education and supervision sufficient to enable these free-roaming kiddies to make an informed decision.
‘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’ (III: 112-118)
The Manson Family were a soft-hearted bunch of flower-power charmers compared to this our dysfunctional family:
‘They trespass, Authors to themselves in all
Both what they judge and what they choose; for so
I formed them free, and free they must remain,
Till they enthrall themselves’ (III:122-125)
Satan steaming and snorting and sporting the latest fighting fashions to take Heaven by storm:
‘High in the midst exalted as a God
Th’ Apostate in his Sun-bright Chariot sate
Idol of Majestie Divine, enclos’d
With Flaming Cherubim, and golden Shields;
Then lighted from his gorgeous Thone’ (VI: 99-103)
Fair is foul, and foul is fair. For Satan as for Macbeth: ‘I am in blood. Stepped in so far that, should I wade no more, Returning were as tedious as go oe’er’ (Macbeth III iv 142-144).
For readers intending to wade the XII Books of Paradise Lost (and the IV of Paradise Regained), fair spoiler-alert here applies. The reader has ‘stepped in so far’ that should the reader ‘wade no more’, returning were as tedious as tonight’s television.
The two sides of Heaven face off as befits our fixated, pay-over-twenty-five-years, sci-fi-junkie patrons, free bucket of popcorn, and as much cherry-bit blood-n-guts of battle as any consenting adult can handle:
‘A dreadful interval, and Front to Front
Presented stood in terrible array
Of hideous length: before the cloudy Van
On the rough edge of battel ere it joyn’d,
Satan with vast and haughtie strides advanc’t
Came towring, armd in Adamant and Gold’ (VI: 104-109),