Theological Milton: Deity, Discourse and Heresy in the Miltonic Canon

TWO. The Ontological Imperative

TWO The Ontological Imperative  I The discourse on God that occupies the chapter titled “De Deo” in De Doctrina Christiana raises major issues that to a greater or lesser degree inform most of the systematic theologies produced in the early modern period. The chapter is essentially divisible into three sections: (1) concerning the existence of God; (2) concerning the knowledge of God; and (3) concerning the names and attributes of God. One might suggest that the chapter moves from the ontological to the epistemological to the phenomenological modes by means of which God is manifested or made known.1 Categories overlap. If the ontological mode encompasses issues concerning not just the existence of God but the knowledge of God as well, then the epistemological mode encompasses issues concerning not just the knowledge of God but the existence of God. The same may be said of issues concerning the names and attributes of God, which in turn share characteristics with the first two categories. Each mode becomes an aspect of how God is conceived in De 51 52 Part I: The Discourse of Theology Doctrina Christiana. Each represents a means of coming to terms with the faces of God in the construction of that which lies ultimately beyond our ability to construe the absolute in any truly discernible way. The very act of construction, in fact, belies the fact that all such systematic endeavors, including those advanced by the theological treatise under consideration, are incapable of naming the unnamable, construing the inscrutable, setting bounds on that which by its very nature defies all attempts to address matters classified as ontological, epistemological, or phenomenological. Given the nature of De Doctrina Christiana as a “systematic theology,” these modes are in keeping with the rage for order that underlies the fundamental assumptions upon which the methodology of the treatise is grounded. Responsive to those assumptions, I shall accord that methodology its due in my discussion of “De Deo.” Here, we are immediately caught off guard. The first category , ontology, gives rise to issues that strike us as almost a given in any attempt to systematize God. So important is the question of ontology that we are inclined to observe that it is an issue that must have been a matter of urgency for early modern dogmatics. A glance at the theologies most often cited in connection with De Doctrina (namely those of Ames and Wolleb), however, suggests that this is not the case; in fact, quite the opposite is true. As much as De Doctrina may be said to implement a methodology consistent with that found in Ames’s Medulla and Wolleb’s Compendium, neither treatise focuses on the issue of ontological proof.2 Although Ames does address the nature of faith in God in the chapter that precedes his chapter on God and his essence, the actual possibility of not believing in God at all does not appear to fall within the agenda that Ames sets for himself. A corresponding lack of interest is likewise discernible in Wolleb, who never once in his chapter on the essence of God considers the possibility that there are those who would actually disavow belief in God in the first The Ontological Imperative 53 place. For neither Ames nor Wolleb, then, does the question of disbelief emerge as a subject worthy of investigation. Various explanations might be undertaken to explain this omission, but at the very least the existence of God is apparently something Ames and Wolleb took for granted. This is somewhat surprising considering the fact that the subject did resonate throughout the early history of the church and beyond, and the question of ontology was not without its adherents in the early modern period. A brief overview should suggest how and in what form the question arises. In order to address the question of ontology, we must first attend to its place in the discourse of the early church. That place is decidedly philosophical in origin. Grounded in both Platonic and Aristotelian modes of thought, theologians extending back to the early church and forward into the early modern period did not hesitate to consider the fundamental question of ontology. As early as the second century, we find philosophy as a discipline “constantly being pressed into the service of Christian theology.” The idea of wedding philosophy with theology gave rise to what Robert M. Grant calls “philosophical theology.”3 Attesting to this...