Milton and Figurative Interpretation of the Bible
- Milton and Figurative Interpretation of the Bible
Assistant Professor of English, University College, University of Toronto
notes
1. The Works of … Augustine, ed. M. Dods (Edinburgh, 1892), IX, 86.
2. Later Works, trans, and ed. John Burnaby (London, 1955), 199.
3. Luther’s Correspondence and Other Contemporary Letters, trans. and ed. Preserved Smith (Philadelphia, 1913), I, 44.
4. Ibid., 43.
5. Commentary on … Corinthians, trans. John Pringle, Calvin Translation Society (Edinburgh, 1848–9), I, 175.
6. Citations in the text from Milton’s prose are from The Works of John Milton, ed. Frank Allen Patterson (New York: Columbia University Press, 1931–8), 18 vols.
7. See George N. Conklin, Biblical Criticism and Heresy in Milton (New York, 1949), ch. 2, and A.J.A. Waldock, Paradise Lost and its Critics (Cambridge, 1947), 19–20.
Both passages are most relevant to the presentation of deity in the poem. M. M. Ross—Poetry and Dogma (Rutgers University Press, 1954), 225—suggests that Raphael’s titillating question “gives to metaphor a nervous life by making it reach even when it cannot, must not, touch.” Although this may be the aesthetic effect of placing Raphael’s observation at the opening of his narrative, I suggest that Milton’s intention was the opposite of that attributed to him by Ross. Raphael is saying that Adam (and the reader) need not seek a highly figurative interpretation of his story, since the likening of spiritual to corporeal forms is a perfectly adequate way of revealing his moral and theological lessons. Milton’s conception of scriptural accommodation contrasts sharply both with the philosophical view which approaches God through analogies and with the mystical view which maintains that an apprehension of divine mysteries is achieved through a transcendence of the ordinary categories of the understanding. As well as opposing scholastic philosophy, he was antagonistic to the kind of speculation epitomized in the following observation by Plotinus: “He that would speak exactly must not name it [the One] by this name or that; we can but circle, as it were, about its circumference, seeking to interpret in speech our experience of it, now shooting near the mark, and again disappointed of our aim by reason of the antinomies we find in it” (Enn, VI, ix, 3, trans. E. R. Dodds, Select Passages Illustrating Neoplatonism [London, 1923], 57). Milton’s doctrine appears designed to suppress just such probing of mysteries, so popular among the Renaissance followers of Plotinus. On the Italian Platonist as mystagogue, see Edgar Wind, Pagan Mysteries in the Renaissance (New Haven, 1958), Introduction and ch. I.
9. Letters to Radulphus on the first chapter of Genesis, as quoted by F. Seebohm, The Oxford Reformers (London, 1887), 51–7.
10. Benedictus Spinoza, Tractatus Theologico-Politius, in The Chief Works of Benedict de Spinoza, trans, and ed. R. H. M. Elwes (London, 1887), I, 28.
11. Many analogues to Milton’s doctrine of accommodation can be found in Reformation writing. Thus Luther in his commentary on Genesis asserts that anthropomorphic terms provide the only means of talking about God: “It is absolutely necessary that when God reveals himself to us, He should do so under some veil of representation” (Commentary on … Genesis, trans. Henry Cole [Edinburgh, 1858], 37). Yet in his commentary Luther shows a strong tendency to pass by means of allegory from the concrete imagery of Genesis, the veils, to abstract theological generalization.
12. See, for example, Augustine’s De Civitate Dei, I, ii, “Of the knowledge of God, which none can attain but through the mediator between God and man, Christ Jesus.” In the same vein, Dante’s final vision in the Paradiso is of the second person of the Trinity.
13. On patristic and mediaeval attitudes to allegorical interpretation, see particularly the following works: Jean Danièlou, Origine (Paris, 1948), and Sacramentum futuri (Paris, 1950); R. M. Grant, The Letter and the Spirit (London, 1957); R. P. C. Hanson, Allegory and Event (Loudon, 1959); Henri de Lubac, Exégèse Médiévale: Les Quatre Sens de l’Ecriture (Paris, 1959), 2 vols.; Beryl Smalley, The Study of the Bible in the Middle Ages, rev. ed. (New York, 1952...
