Milton’s Strange God: Theology and Narrative Form in Paradise Lost

John Milton sought in the narrative of Paradise Lost a solution to a theological problem that defied the normal modes of theological analysis: the difficulty of conceiving how an infinite, timeless God could interact with his finite and time-bound creation. In examining the poem’s attempt to bring God into narrative--a form that, because it simulates existence in time, offers itself as a particularly useful way to approach this problem--this essay proposes a new approach to the complaints readers since William Empson have lodged against the poem’s God and reconsiders the relationship between philosophical thought and poetic expression in Milton’s work.