Freely they stood who stood

Video Freely they stood who stood“That to the height of this great argument / I may assert eternal providence, / And justify the ways of God to men” (1.24 – 1.26). In the very early publications of Milton’s Heaven Lost, he explains the objectives of this impressive. However where does divine superintendence require insisting and also what means of God need reason? This essay is a reconstruction of Milton’s theodicy.

Two Species of Freedom

To understand what may require justification in this retelling of humanity’s expulsion out of Eden, it is fruitful to distinguish between two species of freedom, one offered by Satan and also the other, God.Reading: Freely they stood who stoodSatanic freedom, is a negative species of freedom: to be free of external restraint. Without this specific definition in mind, it is hard for us to make sense of Satan’s first remarks upon being cast out of heaven and into hell: “Here at least / We shall be free” (1.258 – 1.259). Not only is Satan deprived of a desirable existence in heaven but also a position of power as the most powerful Archangel. Satan becomes free in hell only in this limited, negative sense: “Free, and to none accountable, preferring / Hard liberty before the easy yoke / Of servile pomp” (2.257). What Satan gains is a freedom from external restraint, in this case, service and obedience to God.There is a degree of irony here that should not be overlooked. Readers should question whether Satan’s declaration of achieving freedom – a freedom he had mustered one-third of God’s angels to fight for – really is compatible with the gloomy, ugly, and undesirable circumstance he finds himself in. The drastic difference between Satan’s cheerful declaration and the, literally, hellish circumstance is a reason for suspicion that there must be a degree of resentment and, therefore, facetiousness in claiming this “victory”. If you can’t win a real war you can at least declare to have achieved your original aim. Behind this suspicion lies a moral intuition that will be confirmed in the following books: Satan’s negative conception of freedom is not a desirable end to aim for. Despite his rhetoric, Satan reveals, upon observing the beauty of Eden, what appears to be deep regret in his choices albeit too little, too late.But we must also caution not to interpret these first remarks, by which we are introduced both to Satan as well as this first conception of freedom, as resulting merely out of spite. It is a consistent ideal that Satan has continuously aimed for in his struggle, even if it proves to be flawed in its obtainment. In fact, this negative freedom is precisely one of the key rhetorical moves which Satan uses to trick Eve. Through the lens of this species of freedom, Satan transforms the very idea of eating the fruit from being an unthinkable crime to an act of “dauntless virtue” that God will respect if not applaud (4.694). Under this light, virtue is defiance and vice is obedience.

God’s Freedom

Heavenly freedom is, unsurprisingly, an exact reversal of Satanic freedom. It is a positive conception of freedom; that is to say, you are free in so far as you live up to a substantive ideal. “God left free the will, for what obeys / Reason, is free, and reason he made right” (9.352). Virtue and vice reverse: what characterizes freedom is no longer defiance but obedience. Specifically, it is obedience to that which is right, the natural order of things, that makes the will free. This idea, that restraint is paradoxically what makes one free, is expressed also in Adam’s conversation with the Archangel Michael. Adam poses grand cosmological questions about God’s universe. Michael diffuses this attempt by warning Adam, as in the case with the forbidden fruit, to not let his thoughts wander where they are not meant to. God carved a sphere out for Adam which should be his sole concern. Adam’s response is revealing:How fully hast thou satisfied me, pureIntelligence of heaven, angel serene,And freed from intricacies, taught to live,The easiest way, nor with perplexing thoughtsTo interrupt the sweet of life, from whichGod hath bid dwell far off all anxious cares,And not molest us, unless we our selvesSeek them with wandering thoughts, and notions vain.Read more: What to say to someone who lost a game(8.180 – 8.187)Even in the realm of knowledge – perhaps especially in he realm of knowledge, given the epistemic nature of the fruit – freedom is gained in limitation. Adam is not freed from, as Satan was, externalities. In fact, it is precisely the external imposition of Michael that frees him from internal troubles: “intricacies … perplexing thoughts … anxious cares … wandering thoughts, and notions vain.” Likewise, Adam is not satisfied by a new external sphere of knowledge where he has free reign but a restriction of knowledge allowing him to enjoy “the sweet of life.” Just as satanic freedom is cautious of external tyranny, so is heavenly freedom cautious of internal tyranny.I must emphasize, if not only for how unintuitive it is, that heavenly freedom has nothing to do with the faculty of choice. It is the mere state of obedience, of being aligned with reason. “Inordinate desires / And upstart passions catch the government / From reason, and to servitude reduce / Man till then free” (7.90). It is clear, that freedom is lost during the fall. The idea must be: what man loses in the fall is not the faculty of choice, for it is made clear that we will eternally be able to choose. What he loses is heavenly freedom, the state of being aligned with reason. It is only by distinguishing freedom as a state and freedom as a faculty to choose can we possibly make sense of this perplexing line: “freely all their pleasant fruit for food / Gave thee” (7.540 – 7.542). What is being described here is a fruit-bearing tree in Eden. But what could it possibly mean for a tree to be free in the act of giving food? Certainly, Milton is not suggesting that Eden’s vegetation is enchanted with wills of their own. The idea must be that the tree, by providing food, satisfies its function and adheres to the rational order of the universe. To be free here, as is the case with Satanic freedom, is merely a state that has nothing to do with what we normally consider freedom to be: the faculty to choose. The reversal between Satanic and heavenly freedom is where authority lies. For the former, authority lies in the self, for the latter, it lies in God and the rules that govern his universe.There is also a normative reversal between these two states. Whereas we are often exposed to the troubled and torturous inner-dialogue of Satan, it is made abundantly clear that humanity, pre-fall, lived in a state of constant joy. “Our happy state / Hold … while our obedience holds” (5.36 – 5.38). It is unquestionable that heavenly freedom, in its consequences for life, is elevated above Satanic freedom.

The Problem of Evil

We are now ready to answer the motivating question. Milton’s theodicy – unlike that of, say, Augustine’s in the City of God – is not to tackle the broad and general question of how an all-just, all-powerful, and all-knowing God continuously permits evil. What needs to be justified is much more specific. To make God’s means intelligible at all in this poem, Milton needs to show why God is not responsible for the fall from this heavenly freedom of happiness where we were obedient to reason to this satanic freedom of suffering where we rely only on ourselves. After all, God is responsible for creating the entire universe.This is a project made all the more challenging by God’s perfect foresight. Even before Satan’s attempts of seduction, God, “past, present, future he beholds,” saw not only Satan’s plans but humanity’s inevitable fall (3.78). He speaks of man’s fall in the past tense before it even occurs. Yet, God does nothing to obstruct Satan. We must understand the difficulty of this project. This would be equivalent to parents watching their toddler stick their hand in a garbage disposal that the parent themselves turned on knowing full well the consequences, yet doing nothing to prevent it.

The Responsibility of Flexibility

Milton’s theodicy proceeds in two steps. The first step is to take the responsibility of the fall off the shoulders of God. God comments on the forthcoming fall:Whose fault? Whose but his own? Ingrate, he had of meAll he could have; I made him just and right,Sufficient to have stood, though free to fall.Such I created all the ethereal powersAnd spirits, both them who stood and them who failed;Freely they stood who stood, and fell who fell.(3.102)What could it mean for man to fall freely or stand freely? Evidently, the concept of freedom appealed to here is no longer a state, as it was in the first two cases, but the aforementioned faculty of choice. Those who stood, chose to stand; those who fell, chose to fall. Milton lessens the burden of responsibility off the shoulders of God by positing a will that is always free to choose. The analogy of the toddler, is no longer valid, for it does not have the faculty of choice fully formed. God’s intervention, or lack their of, is more like a negligent factory owner who prescribes safety rules but does not provide safe working conditions for their adult workers. Central to this concept of freedom is choice. And smuggled in choice is personal responsibility that draws the blame away from God.Read more: Who made me a princess manhuaBut Milton is not content with just partially exonerating God from blame, he needs to show that the fault is man’s in its entirety. He can only do so by expanding the will’s capabilities out of proportion. If the will can only choose between a few choices, within specific circumstances, and with limited power, then it can only be partially responsible for every choice. Under this view, God must be at least partially blamed for the conditions around Adam and Eve’s choice to eat the fruit. To fully alleviate the blame of God, Milton has to point to more than just a freely choosing will. He has to posit a will that, no matter how coercive the circumstance, always has an absolute conscience to desire the good, an absolute clarity in recognizing the good, and absolute power to act according to the good. By absolute I mean a complete sovereignty from external conditions. For in so far as the conditions of Eden influenced the fall, God must be held responsible. If God is to be declared completely blame-free, then the will must be sovereign from all conditions. It is only with such a powerful will that Milton is able to describe God’s creation as blameless. Humans are “authors to themselves in all / Both what they judge and what they choose; for so / I formed them free” (3.122 – 3.124). That is to say, every single choice of man in all, not just partly, is the result of his will. Therefore, he is fully responsible. It is only with such a powerful will can we say that Eve was free, in any meaningful sense of the word, when Satan coerces her with, as Milton depicts it, eloquence fitting for the best Roman orators.Absolutely good, absolutely knowledgeable, and absolutely powerful, the type of will that exonerates God takes on the qualities of God. Perhaps we are supposed to interpret it literally when God speaks of man: “he had of me / All he could have” (3.97 – 3.98). My unconventional reading – that the will takes on powers comparable to that of God’s – is supported by the will’s relationship to divine predestination. “Nor can justly accuse / Their maker, or their making, or their fate, /As if predestination overruled / Their will” (3.112 – 3.115). God argues that man cannot blame God because divine predestination does not override the will. In other words, God’s own plans of destiny does not hold ultimate sway over the human will. It is will that shapes destiny and not destiny which determines the will. The will is made so powerful, elevated to such a high status, that even God seems, in some sense, powerless against it. Nowhere is this more apparent than the brief consideration God gives to taking away man’s will. “I else must change / Their nature, and revoke the high decree / Unchangeable, eternal, which ordained / Their freedom” (3.125 – 3.128). The objection God gives to changing our nature and revoking our freedom is that our wills are eternal and unchangeable, even by God.

The morality of Will

Milton may have exonerated God in the moment of the fall by offering a, however unrealistic, picture of human agency. But there is another objection he needs to respond to. Why give humans this free will in the first place, especially if he knew it was going to lead to disaster? After all, why couldn’t God have made a perfectly deterministic universe where we are only free in the second sense, like the fruit-bearing tree? We may not enjoy this faculty of freedom but we would always be in a constant state of joy. God’s response reveals another dimension of the will integral to Milton’s theodicy:Not free, what proof could they have given sincereOf true allegiance, constant faith or love,Where only what they needs must do, appeared,Not what they would? what praise could they receive?What pleasure I from such obedience paid,When will and reason (reason also is choice)Useless and vain, of freedom both despoiled,Made passive both, had served necessity,Not me.(3.110)God asks us to imagine such a deterministic world where we, like the fruit-bearing tree, adhere to the good but only out of necessity. How could our actions and thoughts be anything but useless and vain? How can our allegiance, faith, and love be meaningful to God, if they did not come out of our free choice? This should not be interpreted as the mere selfish remarks of a lonely God desiring attention, but true for all human relations. How can Adam take pleasure in Eve’s allegiance, faith, and love to him if she had no other choice? How can Eve even comprehend herself if every action was necessitated? What this thought experiment reveals is that not only does our faculty of choice have an immense metaphysical power, as previously discussed, but it also carries an immense ethical weight. Only that which is chosen by the will is authentic and meaningful. The exact same outcome is experienced completely differently by both object and subject based on whether it was the outcome of choice. God could’ve had a fully deterministic universe where there was no evil but still he chose a reality with this faculty of choice, where those who stand, stand freely, and those who fall, fall freely. The calculus must be that whatever evil might result from our free will is largely overshadowed by the goodness of this free will itself. In practical terms: look around and observe all the suffering, warfare, disaster, and disease in the world. This could’ve all been prevented, but it wasn’t, because we were made as free beings. This must mean that our faculty of will is at least as valuable and good as all our suffering is bad.

Conclusion

It is through these 2 movements that Milton completes his theodicy. By positing an immensely powerful will, Milton relieves God of the responsibility of the fall. And by positing an immensely good will, Milton justifies God’s decision of giving it to us in the initial place.Read more: Who does mordecai end up with

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