"Hate in Heav'n": Milton and the Odium Dei

Abstract

In his recent discussion of Paradise Lost, John T. Shawcross formulates what he feels to be underlying theme of Milton's epic. According to Professor Shawcross, the theme in simplest terms is love. We see it in providence of God which poem asserts, in of Son for God Father and thus for man, and in realization of Adam in Book XII, which thus justifies God's ways. By contrast, we see hate of Satan and its generation of revolt, revenge, and deceit. Love leads to eternal life; hate, to eternal death. ' As a succinct and cogent statement of theme of Milton's epic, foregoing observation has support of Milton's God, who declares that Heav'nly shall outdo hate, / Giving to death, and dying to redeem, / So dearly to redeem what hate / So easily destroy'd (3.298-301). At very thematic center of Paradise Lost, then, one discovers all-important triumph of Heav'nly love over Hellish hate. In its assertion of eternal providence, Milton's epic represents a veritable celebration of that triumph. Despite paradigmatic sense through which theme of Paradise Lost is articulated in triumphant assertion of God's over Satan's hate, one must nevertheless come to grips with an aspect of Milton's epic that has received little or no attention in history of Milton scholarship. This aspect might be called odium Dei, a phenomenon that finds its fullest expression in Son's statement to Father just before Son ascends The Chariot of Paternal Deitie to overwhelm rebel angels in book 6 of Paradise Lost. Responding to his Father's directive to Pursue these sons of Darkness, drive them out / From all Heav'ns bounds into utter Deep (715-16), Son says, whom thou hat'st, I hate, and can put on / Thy terrors, as I put thy mildness on, / Image of thee in all (734-36). As this response suggests, it is not only through an encounter with Satan that Adam and Eve come to discover things to thir thought / So unimaginable as hate in Heav'n (7.53-54). One must likewise acknowledge that this discovery includes an encounter with a Being who is customarily