Throughout the reading of Paradise Lost a reader learns that sin is created out of free choice and the ability of individuals to make their own decisions. Sin is committed in the poem because Satan and Adam and Eve made their own decisions and exercised their free will. This is contrasted at the same time with the idea that is also presented to the reader that God created everything which includes him giving free will to all which he created. The idea of sin in Paradise Lost is located in two parts of the poem: when sin is created and when the original sin is committed by Adam and Eve. Analyzing God’s, and Milton’s, intentions in Paradise Lost by looking at sin in these two places enables us to expose the demonic side of the deity which taints the vision of God that Milton wanted to project.3 John Milton’s Paradise Lost is an epic story of one of the bible’s most important tales of who we are and why we are here, however through religious understanding and Milton’s writing the justice of God is called into question.

Sin, the Original Sin, and the Fall as the Bible Tells It

                Milton, being educated and religious knew and understood the biblical teachings and therefore the understanding of what sin is more technically. While biblical teachings do not have as much weight today as they did in Milton’s time, many of their lessons and beliefs are still held today. The idea of sin is important to those who follow religion and to those who wish to truly understand Milton’s epic. To Calvinists, such as Milton, sin is the “hereditary, depravity, and corruption of our nature”.4 It is born in us, it is evil and immoral, and it is “diffused into all parts of the soul which…makes us liable to God’s wrath”.5 The idea of sin is not something that was created in the outside world but something that exists within every man and women from the beginning of life. Since God created life he therefore created sin; sin is borne in heaven. While sin exists in every human it is the choice to commit sin that is important.

                The idea of the Original Sin in a biblical sense is focused in Genesis III where man is living in a world of abundance and while he has to work, it is neither difficult nor tiresome.6 As will be discussed later this is the world in which God sets Adam and Eve, this is their Paradise. The development of the Original Sin involves the attitudes, orientations, propensities, and tendencies that are contrary to Gods laws, incompatible with his holiness and formed in all people, and in all areas of their lives.7 The Original Sin that was committed by Adam and Eve also exists in man; it is a part of our past, present and future and will always be a part of who we are and how we make decisions. When Adam and Eve sinned in Paradise, humans lost a lot more than the easy lifestyle that they lived. With the fall from grace there was a loss of confident access to God, the loss of innocence and mutual confidence between individuals, and consequently a struggle against evil as well as suffering and death.8 In biblical terms when the concept of Original Sin is presented in Genesis, although a myth, the idea is straightforward and simple which is in contrast to how Milton writes about sin. While the basics of sin are there, it is his artistic flare that in the end might be his downfall.

Sin, the Original Sin, and the Fall as Milton Tells It

                In Paradise Lost, Milton writes about sin through personification, humanizing what was originally an abstract concept. The reader is first introduced to sin in Book II as Satan goes on a journey to discover earth and attempt to discover a way to bring down man, and in the end God. When Satan arrives at the gates of Hell he discovers a beautiful woman:

                Hast thou forgot me then, and do I seem

                Now in thine eye so foul, once deemd so fair

                In Heav'n, when at th' Assembly, and in sight

                Of all the Seraphim with thee combin'd

                In bold conspiracy against Heav'ns King,

                All on a sudden miserable pain

                Surprisd thee, dim thine eyes, and dizzie swumm

                In darkness, while thy head flames thick and fast

                Threw forth, till on the left side op'ning wide,

                Likest to thee in shape and count'nance bright,

                Then shining Heav'nly fair, a Goddess arm'd

                Out of thy head I sprung; amazement seis'd

                All th' Host of Heav'n back they recoild affraid

                At first, and call'd me Sin,and for a Sign9

When Milton created sin he created it from Satan’s own head and makes it the first-born daughter of Satan. Sin is the product of her father’s ignorance, his pride and his disobedience. It comes from Satan’s misdirected love of self. This love of himself and his disobedience was in Satan from the very beginning.10 When God created the angels, who Satan originally was, he gave them free will, the ability to make choices and decisions and, while in creation, they were to be obedient to God, they did have the choice to disobey. What is also taken from the biblical teachings of sin is the idea that sin is evil. Evil is inherent in anything that God creates, and sin is a part of the evil in the world. Attached to the birth of sin from Satan’s head is the birth of death. Milton creates death from the incestuous relationship between Satan and Sin. This results in the fact that death depends on sin, without sin there can be no death. It is later learned that Sin and Death are the guards to the gates of hell, symbolizing the fact that when one commits sin you die from God’s good graces and must enter hell.

                The original sin, the story known in the Bible from Genesis, can be found in Paradise Lost in Book IX. Milton’s telling is the basics of what we learn from Genesis. Eve is tempted, eats from the forbidden Tree of Knowledge and therefore sinned and was disobedient to Gods wishes. The language of Genesis takes the reader into a world of myths in which a man is created from clay; there are trees full of magical fruit, and a talking serpent, signaling a story but not history.11 Milton’s version in Paradise Lost is done in a more creative way and in a way tries to force this story to be history, almost attempting to make the unbelievable parts believable. The basic elements of the creation story are in place however, Milton, forces Eve to shoulder the blame for the fall by making her less knowledgeable than Adam, then to further add insult to the character of Eve writes Adam in such a way that she brings Adam down as well. The character of Eve in Paradise Lost is much more cunning evil than the character of Eve in the story of Genesis. While It is important to mention that the character of Eve, and Milton’s placing of her within the story of the fall is highly contentious and beyond the scope of this paper. What this does show however, is that while Milton sticks closely to Genesis, his changes are what bring contention to his story.

Not-Justifying God’s Justice through Sin

                When one combines the concept of sin that is learned from religious teachings and the ideas that Milton presents throughout Paradise Lost it is difficult to see how, by creating sin in someone that we only see as evil and against God, helps Milton’s arguments. The bible tells us that sin is simple disobedience of God combining the idea of guilt that exists before sin even occurs.12 When God gave Adam and Eve, as well as Satan free will he gave them the opportunity to sin however, because Milton so closely ties the creation of sin to Satan and parallels this creation of sin with the original sin committed by Eve, God looks responsible. Milton created Sin as a beautiful and intelligent woman to contrast the fact of her reality. Sin lives in Hell, which to Milton was an evil reproduction of heaven in which all values were inverted and distorted.13 All that is good in heaven is evil in hell. The reader is also constantly told throughout Paradise Lost that Eve is beautiful, similarly to the personification of Sin, drawing obvious comparisons. In this is Milton implying that a beautiful female is sin? Parallels are also shown in the fact that while Sin is evil and lives in an evil place, Eve is supposed to be good, graceful and pure and she resides in a place that is perfect, a contrast to where Sin lives. In the way that heaven and hell are related Eve and Sin are also related. Furthermore, there is a parallel between what happens when Satan and Sin have a relationship and produce a child, death, and the fact that when Adam and Eve sin their result is also death. It must be stated again that Milton never fully explains Gods reasoning for this, nor his own.

                This is not to say that God is evil or equal to Satan it is simply showing that Milton may not have been as successful in his attempt to bring justice to the fall as it is often believed. It is simply that God created sinful creatures.14 This God is a different from many peoples’ understandings as he sits back and allows sinfulness to happen rather than promoting good. Although a further stretch of the facts, one can almost see that God was acting selfishly when creating Adam and Eve and Paradise to get back at Satan and to prove to him that there are still those who remain loyal to him and those that will be obedient. The problem that can be seen here is that although Adam was created in Gods image and was also given knowledge of Satan and his disobedience, God created Adam and Satan similarly, with the ability to reason and having free will. God knows that Satan exercised his free will to sin and furthermore knows that Adam and Eve will succumb to temptation. In Milton’s telling of the fall God created both Satan and Adam and Eve with the purpose of obedience. However, the question must be raised that if these individuals were created with the same purpose why create them so similarly? Because Satan fell, then there were fairly good odds that Adam and Eve would fall as well. Satan symbolizes sin in all its stages, at first powerful to attract and command, but soon degrading and loathsome.15 The question that can be raised from this idea is why would God would place some of Satan in his finest creations, in what even Satan was jealous of? It would appear obvious that eventually, like Satan, Adam and Eve would sin especially when the considering the parallels between the creation of sin and Eve and Original Sin, which are mentioned above.

                Looking back upon the completion of Paradise Lost a reader may realize that to understand Milton’s justification of God’s actions one has to forget about any preconceived notions about God, sin, the fall of Adam and Even, Satan and the idea of good versus evil. While Milton includes Christian teachings and knowing these teachings they blur the reality as, Milton is too close to the original story without fully explaining all of his actions. This is due to God’s perceived inaction during the Fall of Man and the idea that some see that he created and allowed this situation to occur.16

                There are a few ways that one can look at Paradise Lost and see Milton’s goal as a success, that he managed to prove to man that God’s actions concerning Adam and Eve and the Fall were just, right and fair. C.S. Lewis wrote in A Preface to Paradise Lost that Milton’s goal “only fails if the poem is to be a religious exercise”.17 Interpreting Lewis’ account if we take Milton’s story and his God away from the religious teaching of most people it works. Furthermore, Lewis raises the point that Milton would have received less criticism if he had simply not tried to avoid the fact that deep down God is not entirely without fault, if “he had made God sufficiently awful, mysterious and vague”.18 However, as shown above, Milton tries to hide the fact that God never acted and that it appears that he created the very condition for Man to fall. To most readers, who more often than not have a prior understanding of the biblical teachings this argument holds little weight as Milton had this religious background as well and therefore it can be inferred that he wanted to write his epic poem as a Christian tale, as history, rather than simply a good story in which God has a little Satan in him.

Conclusion

Dubarle Op, Andre Marie. The Biblical Doctrine of Original Sin. Translated By: E.M. Stewart. New York: Herder and Herder, 1964.

Erskine, John. “The Theme of Death in Paradise Lost.” PMLA: Publications of the Modern Language Association of America 32.4 (1917): 573-82.

Lewis, C.S. A Preface to Paradise Lost. New York: Oxford University Press, 1961.

Milton, John. “Paradise Lost.” The Major Works including Paradise Lost. Eds. Stephen Orgel and Jonathan Goldberg. New York: Oxford University Press, 1991. 355-618.

Mitchell, J. Allan. “Reading God Reading ‘Man’: Hereditary Sin and the Narraivization of Deity in Paradise Lost, Book 3.” Milton Quarterly 35.2 (2001): 77-86.