Spiritual Architecture and Paradise Regained: Milton's Literary Ecclesiology

TWO: Silence and the Word

TWO Silence and the Word
Like many Protestant reformers before him, Milton claimed that the Word of God alone was the clear and sufficient source of salvation. For Luther, Calvin, and Zwingli, Scripture was the only external authority capable of replacing the medieval church, but it was also much more. God is accommodated to human understanding in the incarnate Word and in the clarity and certainty of the scriptural text; as a result, everyone can be saved by hearing God’s voice in the Word: “just as in men speech is called the expression of thought, so . . . He expresses Himself to us through His Speech or Word.”1 The reformers adapted principles of humanist scholarship — the study of original languages, the preference for rhetoric rather than logic, the use of historical contexts, and the location of interpretive authority in the author’s intentions embodied in the authoritative texts — to a theology of God’s sovereignty in all areas of life. By inward illumination, however, Protestants could return ad fontes in a way not foreseen in humanist methodology. The authority of classical texts is established by restoring the author’s intentions, but the authority of Scripture was placed on the most certain foundation possible: the internal witness of the writer of Scripture, the Holy Spirit. 27 Even within the Protestant tradition, however, the meaning of “the Word of God” was challenged in a variety of ways throughout the seventeenth century in England, especially from 1643 to 1660 as Presbyterians and then Independents tried to formulate religious policy for the nation. John Goodwin, defending himself against the charge that he denied the divine authority of Scripture, argued that textual corruptions, different translations, and varieties of interpretations often obscure “the sense of the originals”; as a result, the Word of God, to be available to each reader and not just readers of Hebrew and Greek, must refer to what is contained in the letters of the Bible, rather than the letters themselves. The “glorious Truth” of the translated Scriptures “asserts their royal Parentage,” but the Word itself “is not inke and paper, not any book, or books.” Even if “a writing, or book, [is] a part, yea the most material part” of meaning, the material text holds the Word as a cup holds wine.2 In this way, Goodwin resolves the conflict between the corruption of the biblical text, the immediate inspiration of the biblical authors, and the Protestant claim that the Word of God is sufficient in all matters of salvation for all members of the church. Even though the biblical authors and subsequent translations may have erred in some details, the Word of God is still authoritative because it survives intact. John Owen, the most prominent Independent clergyman of the Commonwealth period, argued differently. Unlike Goodwin , Owen insisted upon the divine authority of the written word. The prophets and apostles “invented not words themselves . . . but only expressed the words that they received.”3 He defends the literal infallibility of Scripture in two ways. On the one hand, in Of the Integrity and Purity of the Hebrew and Greek Text of the Scripture (1659), Owen defends his view that the Word of God “is preserved unto us entire in the original languages . . . as also in all translations” against the suggestions of Goodwin, and especially Brian Walton.4 According to Owen, by publishing parallel texts of Scripture in his Biblia Sacra 28 Spiritual Architecture and Paradise Regained Polyglotta (1655–57), especially in the appendix of volume 6 where numerous textual variants from 15 authoritative texts are collected, Walton implies that “the same fate attended the Scripture in its transcription as hath done other bookes.” Walton unwittingly supports “the Papists” claims Owen, since the multiplication of textual corruptions encourages the dependence of individuals upon the infallibility of the church rather than the Bible.5 On the other hand, in Pro Sacris Scripturis Exer-citationes Adversus Fanaticos (1658), Owen attacks the Quakers — the other critics of the authority of the Word — who claim that “the word of God” should not be applied to Scripture since Scripture is neither Christ himself nor the light from Christ. Owen argues that both are called the Word because Scripture derives from Christ, reveals his will, and records his words.6 Samuel Fisher answered Owen by suggesting that what Owen meant by “the word of God” was vague. Does he refer to the manuscripts of...