Free to have Fortunately Fallen

An essay on the felix culpa in John Milton’s Paradise Lost

By:  Jennifer Surette

The purpose of John Milton’s Paradise Lost is to “justify the ways of God to men” (Milton, I. 25).  The purpose of my essay is to explore the idea of the felix culpa; what it is, how does it exist within Paradise Lost, and how does Milton portray it to his readers.  Growing up I was taught about the Christian faith.  One question that I have always had is why Adam and Eve would ever eat of the forbidden fruit when God has told them not to.  Would I have done the same thing had I have been in the Garden of Eden?  It is easy to say that I never would have done so, but it is impossible to actually know what one will do until they are really in the situation.  Milton’s explanation of the fall makes it seem very probable as to why it happened. “Milton saw in the Fall no single temptation, but the loosening of Man’s nature to include all varieties of corruption” (Bell, 868).

If Satan essentially looks the way he is portrayed on television it would be easy to avoid him, but we know that Satan is actually an angel.  He is difficult to resist because he is beautiful, smart, cunning and tempting.  Temptation would have no effect on us if it did not look, sound, smell, taste and feel as if it were something we wanted to obtain.  When Satan, in the form of the serpent, speaks to Eve in book IX he is adhering to her vanity and also another form of sin.  “…with its talk of the alluring odor and taste of the fruit, the smell of fruit itself, Eve’s eager appetite, and the very fact that the conversation takes place at lunch time, all suggest that her temptation is one of ‘gluttony’” (Bell, 868).

When Adam is watching a scene from the future with Michael he sees people killing each other and the other ways in which people will die.  He also sees people dancing, singing and enjoying amorous courting.  He feels that these images are of people having fun and being happy, when in actuality, what he is viewing is sin.   “Those tents thou saw’st so pleasant, were the tents / Of wickedness” (Milton, XI. 107-8).  After sin has come into the world, what these people are doing is seen as lust, greed, gluttony, murder and many other horrendous things. 

These visions shown by Michael in book XI contain a careful emotional balance between grief at the corruption of sin and joy at the redemption of the moral soul.  He does not want Adam to give up hope so it is therefore important to show Adam that one man can make a difference.  By showing Adam images of Enoch and Noah this is symbolic of Christ-like love.  One man can stand up for his moral beliefs, even if he is persecuted by others for his integrity, just as Jesus was.  What Adam fails to understand is that humankind is forever going to be depraved as a result of the fall and Adam and Eve’s children are going to sin like their parents in the same ways over and over again.  What he did take out of the conversation, however, is that he is not despaired in the same way that Satan is.  The whole world was given to Adam and Eve by God, so in their fall, not all is bad.  They now have a chance to show God that they love him.  “Adam also had the obligation to learn self-discipline, if not by accepting instruction, then by painful experience.  That human nature is subject to temptation of all kinds does not lessen our responsibility to strive for virtue, and the vulnerability of Adam and Eve likewise did not diminish their duty or their Free Will” (Bell, 874).

In choosing to ask for forgiveness at the end of book X; “Before him reverent, and both confessed / Humbly their faults, and pardon begged, with tears / Watering the ground, and with their eyes the air / Frequenting, sent from hearts contrite, in sign / Of sorrow unfeigned, and humiliation meek” (Milton, X 1100-4) they show their true love for God.  Previous to their sin they worshipped God because there really wasn’t anything else to do but now that they have knowledge of good through evil it can be seen that they have chosen to love God and try to obey Him to the best of their ability. “To be of value, to God or himself, man’s love must be voluntary” (Ulreich, 352). 

“…[T]he basic assumption of the poem [is] that the ‘loss of Eden’ is the source of ‘all our woe’” (Ulreich, 351).  In Paradise Lost God accounts for this paradox by saying “Happier, had it have sufficed him to have known / Good by itself, and evil not at all” (Milton, XI. 88-9).  What we must realize is that good can only be defined by what it is not.  It is impossible to know good without knowing evil because, on its own, good is a meaningless term.  Adam and Eve do know evil before the Fall through the example of Satan’s pride and his expulsion from Heaven.  The problem lies within; “[Adam and Eve have] a knowledge of good and evil and the possibility of doing evil.  What they lack is the experience of evil within themselves” (Ulreich, 356).  It does not seem that the Fall was predetermined in any way because, even though God knows that they will disobey Him, He hopes that they will not.  Obedience to God is a recurring theme throughout Paradise Lost and we know that it is disobedience which brings sin to the world.  “…[O]bedience to the will of God makes men happy and disobedience makes them miserable” (Spectator, qtd. in Bell, 866).

It seems that the Fall was a necessary instrument in the evolution of man.  Without the choice to sin Man would not hold the ability to have free will.  “The essence of being rational is free choice.  Hence Man must be able to fall.  He can be confirmed in grace only after the opportunity to sin has been met” (The Common Expositor, qtd. in Bell, 875).  Though it can be argued that they never should have disobeyed God it is because of this disobedience that has gotten Mankind to where we are today.  Living in Eden there was no room for growth and exploration, life there was static and there was no possibility for improvement “Eden is limited… there is no room to choose” (Ulreich, 360).  Now that Adam and Eve have been expelled from Eden we are given the chance to learn and grow.  We still have free choice and the ability to reason so therefore this is the ultimate test from God.  We are given the choice to obey or disobey and the outcome rests on the individuals shoulders.  This has been made possible because the Son has taken our sins and held them on his shoulders.  “Because of the Fall, Madsen argues, the Son will be incarnate; man will thus be given the hope of union with God, a higher possibility than the association of angels which was the best that Adam could hope for in Eden” (Ulreich, 360).  As previous stated this ratifies the ability to grow once we have left Eden. 

It is of extreme importance to recognize that without the sin of Man, the Son would never have come to earth in a bodily form and ultimately we would have no option for Heaven and Earth to exist as one, as it was promised by God.  “If [the Fall] had never occurred the Incarnation and Redemption could never have occurred… Thus Adam’s sin was of immeasurably greater benefits for man that could conceivable have been otherwise obtained” (Lovejoy, 162-3).  It is imperative that we recognize the Fall as fortunate, or as a felix culpa, because without it we would not have the return of the Messiah to look forward to, and we would have nothing to strive for.  We now have a purpose in life which is to live obediently to God.  “The Angels, the Savior tells us, ‘have more joy over one simmer that repenteth than over ninety-and-nine just persons that need no repentance’” (Lovejoy, 178).  Without sin in the world, we would be living in a static state in Eden with nothing to strive for.  Life would have no struggle and we would be living in innocence which is also a form a naivety. 

“If the Fall is only the climax of self-realization reached by humankind already fallen, then it was not only inevitable, but necessary… this redemption is not merely a release from sin, but the acquired moral ability which enables Man to vanquish Evil” (Bell, 878).  It is ignorant to believe that we were already fallen when Adam and Eve were living in the Garden of Eden.  It was only after Satan tempted them that they had fallen into a sinful world.  But it is due to the Fall that we can overcome evil and choose to obey God by living a God-like life in a world full of sin.  “In turn this ‘New made World’ becomes the seat of the new evil, the Fall, which by the system of cosmic balances will necessarily be fortunate, for it results in the coming of the Messiah” (Bell, 882).  Without the Fall we could not be saved through the love of God.  “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish but have everlasting life” (The New King James Version, John 3:16). 

Works Cited

Bell, Millicent.  “The Fallacy of the Fall in Paradise Lost” PMLA 68:4 (1953):  863-883.

Lovejoy, Arthur.  “Milton and the Paradox of the Fortunate Fall.”  ELH 4:3 (1937):  161-179.

Marshall, William H.  “Paradise Lost: Felix Culpa and the Problem of Structure.” Modern Language Notes 76:1 (1961):  15-20.

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

The Holy Bible, The New King James Version.  Republic of Korea:  Thomas Nelson,  Inc., 1982.

Ulreich, John C. Jr.  “A Paradise Within:  The Fortunate Fall in Paradise Lost” Journal of the History of Ideas. 32:3 (1971):  351-366.

White, Hugh.  “Langland, Milton, and the Felix Culpa” The Review of English Studies. 45:179 (1994):  336-357.