Robert Mousseau

100072925

Dr. Richard Cunningham

ENGL 2283

April 5, 2006

Protection through Naivety: Justifying God’s Outlawing of Experience

John Milton’s Paradise Lost is a beguiling work. The poem is simultaneously both endlessly important and infinitely frustrating in its explorations of God and his intentions with creating humanity. The poem offers a profound fictionalized account of God’s motivations for the creation of Adam and Eve, attempting to provide reason for his decision to make man as he did. Similarly, Milton attempts to provide reason for God’s desire to keep man from eating the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge and why, as a result, God prevents humanity from learning independently. Through God’s laws concerning the prevention of knowledge through self-discovery, Milton suggests that God’s adamancy that man should be forbidden from eating the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge, effectively keeping Adam and Eve from wisdom, demonstrates that God actually strives to prevent humanity from experience in the pre-Laps Arian utopia of Eden. Considering that Milton was devoutly religious, his exploration of this idea raises question in the hearts of the less faithful concerning God’s justification for preventing man from the joys of learning, suggesting a potentially atheistic mentality in Milton’s poem. However, upon closer examination it becomes clear that Milton uses God’s prohibition of the Tree of Knowledge as a means of keeping man from the self imposed mental corruption that results from the experience of learning, as is evident in Satan. As a result, Milton uses God’s desire to prevent man from experience much like how he uses various other aspects of the poem: as a means of justifying the Creator’s ways to man.

Throughout the poem Milton makes it clear that God does not wish to prevent man from knowledge itself. He repeatedly provides Adam with opportunity to converse with heavenly figures and to learn from their divine teachings. Indeed, it is within Adam’s right to learn of the actions of God and the events of Heaven so long as he pursues knowledge as a means of expanding his love of the Lord. When asking Raphael to teach him of God’s works, Adam iterates this sentiment, stating “… if unforbid thou mayst unfold / What we, not to explore the secrets ask / Of his eternal empire, but the more / To magnify his works, the more we know.”[1] Adam feels it necessary to explain that his curiosity is not bred from a desire for personal gain but as a means to find more glory in God. That Adam needs to outline his intentions in learning implies that God has placed a negative stigma on the act of education for education’s sake; in other words, the experience of education. As a result, Adam, who until his fall does his best to please his Creator, never considers venturing outside the parameters of the suitable means of education outlined by God. Adam is never prevented from knowledge. He is simply limited to sources provided by God as means of acquiring it.

Indeed, when Adam asks about the workings of the universe, Raphael responds that Adam should “… dream not of other world.”[2] Raphael insists that it is not necessary for Adam to understand how the universe functions for him to find glory in its existence. According to Larry L. Langford’s essay “Adam and the Subversion of Paradise” Raphael’s response to Adam’s curiosity suggests that God has placed “… an inner prohibition on thought and desire rather than simply the policing of actions and responses.”[3] Langford suggests that God “polices” man’s thoughts as well as their actions in an attempt to keep humanity focused exclusively on the divine. As such, God attempts to control what man learns, namely keeping Adam and Eve from eating the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge, as a means of ensuring their endless praise.

That God feels it necessary to keep man from experiencing learning so that Adam and Eve remain dedicated to his will implies that a self-imposed experience of knowledge leads to a corruption of faith. This corruption is the result of a loss of dedication to God. That is to say, the experience of self-pursued knowledge is outside of God’s mandate. Adam echoes this sentiment when he says “Evil into the mind of god or man / may come and go, so unapproved, and leave / no spot of blame behind.”[4] He says that so long as man does not actually act out the evil in their minds they are guilty of no sin. This sort of evil thought is accepted in God’s kingdom. If this concept is applied to the acquiring of “knowledge” independent from God, whenever God reveals truths to man through his angelic messengers, humanity commits no sin in learning. This knowledge has been approved by God and, as a result, it leaves “no spot of blame behind.” However, as soon as Adam or Eve attempt to learn of their own free will, specifically through the experience of eating the apple, man turns away from God’s will. Elbert N. S. Thompson writes in his essay “The Theme of Paradise Lost” that “… God has seen fit to reveal heavenly things to man in terms that his own experience can comprehend,”[5] suggesting that God doles out knowledge to man in pieces because he feels that pieces are all that man is capable of understanding. When Adam and Eve experience the acquisition of knowledge on their own they turn away from God, implying that they disagree with God’s decisions. If man disagrees with God’s decision, they effectively revolt in ways similar to Satan and his attempted revolution in heaven.

The similarities between humanity’s experiencing of knowledge and Satan’s insurrection in heaven continue in that both demonstrate a loss of innocence in God’s creations. In heaven, Satan was “… of the first, / If not the first archangel, great in power, / In favour and pre-eminence.”[6] As such, he was one of God’s most cherished creations, an angel that the Lord respected and held dear. However, once Satan begins to feel envious of the Son he loses the purity previously inherent to his status as an archangel. Satan feels “… deep malice”[7] towards God and the Son, demonstrating that he has experienced a loss of faith in God’s decisions. This lack of faith taints Satan’s angelic innocence. Similarly, when the humans acquire knowledge independent of God for the first time, effectively experiencing it, Milton writes that:

… innocence, that as a veil

Had shadowed them from knowing ill, was gone,

Just confidence, and native righteousness

And honour from about them, naked left

To guilty shame he covered… [8]

Much like how Satan experiences malice for the first time when he turns away from God, Adam and Eve experience shame. By turning from God and, as Thompson states, learning of things that the Creator did not feel humanity was capable of comprehending; Adam and Eve are led to know of the bad aspects of the world that they were previously protected from through dedication to God’s law. Through experience humanity is left open to sin because man chooses what they learn for themselves rather than being safely dictated to by God. That both Satan and the humans “experience” as a result of turning from God’s teachings illustrates that God keeps humanity from knowledge because through independent experience, something outside of man’s capability, he knows that man will fall.

John C. Ulreich Jr. writes in his essay “A Paradise Within: The Fortunate Fall in Paradise Lost” that “… to deny God’s providence destroys the basis of man’s freedom.”[9] That Adam and Eve turn from God’s providence, or guidance, by experiencing knowledge and, as a result, lose the freedoms of existence in Eden demonstrates that God does not try to keep Adam and Eve from learning. He merely prevents the humans from compromising their ability to remain faithful subjects in his kingdom. God’s prohibition of the Tree of Knowledge demonstrates that the Creator felt independent experience of knowledge was beyond the capability of Adam and Eve. God knew that if humans experienced knowledge they would no longer be able to naively submit to his divine will. As such, God outlawed such experience in Eden. In Paradise Lost Milton shows that God did not prevent man from experience to keep man from learning. His law was created to keep man devout without worrying about the negative discoveries that come with knowledge: discoveries such as sin, doubt, and anger. Indeed, Milton succeeds in justifying the ways of god to man. After all, by preventing man from experience God is protecting his creations from the negative aspects of the world. He is simply acting with man’s best wishes at heart.

Works Cited

Langford, Larry L.. “Adam and the Subversion of Paradise.” Studies in English

Literature, 1500-1900 34, no 1 (1994): 119-134. Retrieved from J-STOR

03/31/06.

Milton, John. “Paradise Lost.” In The Major Works – Including Paradise Lost, edited by Stephen Orgel and Jonathan Goldberg, 355-618. New York: Oxford, 2003.

Thompson, Elbert N. S.. “The Theme of Paradise Lost.” PMLA 28, no 1 (1913):

106-120. Retrieved from J-STOR 03/31/06.

Ulreich Jr., John C.. “A Paradise Within: The Fortunate Fall in Paradise Lost.” Journal of

the History of Ideas 32, no 3 (1971): 351-366. Retrieved from J-STOR

03/31/06.

[1] John Milton, “Paradise Lost.” In The Major Works – including Paradise Lost, eds. Stephen Orgel and Johnathan Goldberg, 355-618 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003):s VII 94-97.

[3] Larry L. Langford. “Adam and the Subversion of Paradise.” Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900 34, no 1 (1994): 119.

[5] Elbert N. S. Thompson. “The Theme of Paradise Lost.” PMLA 28, no 1 (1913): 107.

[9] John C. Ulreich, Jr.. “A Paradise Within: The Fortunate Fall in Paradise Lost.” Journal of the History of Ideas 32, no 3 (1971): 351.