Milton and Monotheism

SEVEN Revelation and Samson’s Sense of Heaven’s Desertion

264 SEVEN Revelation and Samson’s Sense of Heaven’s Desertion In the preface to book 5 of De doctrina Christiana, Milton insists that in contemporary debates the Trinity is defended without the support of divine revelation: “Of course, if my opponents could show that the doctrine they defend was revealed to them by a voice from heaven, he would be an impious wretch who dared to raise so much as a murmur against it, let alone a sustained protest” (YP 6:204). It is worth recognizing Milton’s tone. As he imagines the kind of revelation that would give clarity to the contentious issue of the Trinity, he imagines nothing less than a voice from heaven. Rhetorically, it is clear that such an authoritative revelation, though heard on Sinai, is not likely to be heard in seventeenth century England. Direct, external revelation of doctrine feels improbable and enters De doctrina as a piece of irony. The preface continues: “But in fact they can lay claim to nothing more than human powers and that spiritual illumination which is common to all men” (YP 6:204). The Holy Spirit is a powerful force in Milton’s doctrine, being an inward illumination necessary to interpret the Bible.1 But it is insignificant compared to a voice from heaven, which, as an external revelation, could enforce consent beyond the individual. The voice from heaven Samson’s Sense of Heaven’s Desertion 265 is irresistibly powerful—but it remains unattainable, an ironic marker of how far away such doctrinal certainty is. Paradise Regained is equally remote from such miraculous revelation. The poem’s many versions of the baptism of the Son undermine the authority of the “voice” that “From heaven pronounced him his beloved Son” (PR 1.32). And the identity motif, with the related question of Socinian Christology, remains ambiguous in the prolonged absence of divine revelation. The companion piece to Paradise Regained, Samson Agonistes, continues the engagement with the problem of divine revelation and continues to delve into the difficulties of understanding divine will in the absence of irrefutable revelation. Milton’s tragedy pushes further: while Paradise Regained eventually brings in angels to answer our doubts, Samson Agonistes never allows angelic revelation, leaving us without the full understanding that miraculous revelation can provide. Without a voice or an angel, Samson is left with the opaque phenomenon of internal revelation. While the Son briefly feels “some strong motion” (PR 1.290), Samson feels a whole panoply of inward events—what the poem calls intimate impulses, divine impulsions, divine instincts, and rousing motions. These stirrings in Samson, particularly the famous rousing motions, have long been an interpretive crux, providing the key, it seems to many readers, to understanding the poem. As a last chance at divine revelation, these impulses, instincts, and motions would indeed shed light on Samson’s actions and God’s will, if only they were as clearly interpretable as a voice from heaven or a visiting angel. But, as this chapter will suggest by comparison with the Common Notions of Lord Herbert of Cherbury, they are not. Samson Agonistes goes further than Paradise Regained by experimenting with a world entirely devoid of divine revelation, a world unhappily caught in the verisimilar conditions predicated by the natural religion of Cherbury and his successors in deism. As an experiment in a world without revelation, Samson Agonistes marks the skeptical extreme of Milton’s monotheism. 266 Milton and Monotheism The chapters of this book have recorded how monotheism, with its structural need to exclude all other divine beings, and with its resistance to representations of the divine, has made Milton’s poetry profoundly uncomfortable with revelation. The narrative presence of polytheistic gods, the personal presence of God, the actions of angels and the Son are all forms of revelation and all challenges to monotheistic narrative. In Samson Agonistes, these external revelations are eliminated, and revelation dwindles to an invisible, inaudible, inward event. Samson’s impulses, instincts, and motions, like the fully abstract godhead of monotheism, cannot be narrated, and so can never be adequately interpreted. As local revelation disappears, so does the poem’s ability to narrate revelation in its greater sense, the Judeo-Christian revelation . Samson’s despairing “sense of heaven’s desertion” (SA 632) goes unremedied, and the possibility of theodicy, the poem’s ability to claim with the Chorus that “Just are the ways of God...