Milton's Theology Research Articles

Meditations on Mediation: John Milton and the Muslim Jesus

This paper explores theological and textual confluences between John Milton and Islamic theology. Rather than argue for the direct influence of Islamic sources on Milton, a series of historical and intellectual contexts are adduced which mediated contact between English and Islamic (especially Ottoman) cultures: the Mediterranean trade conducted by the Levant Company, the seventeenth-century acceleration and institutionalization of Arabic scholarship, and theological currents including anti-Trinitarianism and the discourse of monotheism. These contexts furnish a perspective from which to read Milton's Paradise Regained as part of a global tradition of literary elaborations upon the life of Jesus that also includes accounts of the sayings and stories of Jesus in Arabic sources, a corpus collectively termed “The Muslim Jesus” by Tarif Khalidi. While Milton's theology takes account of Jesus's Sonship and role as mediator, his poetics displace these dimensions in favour of human ones consonant with Islamic tradition.

Milton's Theology of the Cross: Substitution and Satisfaction in Christ's Atonement

Recent scholarship on John Milton argues that Milton rejected the popular Reformation understanding of Christ's atonement, the penal-substitutionary theory of atonement, and that Milton was uncomfortable with the Crucifixion of Jesus as God's means of human salvation. A close reading of Milton's Paradise Lost and De Doctrina Christiana clearly shows, however, that Milton did in fact embrace the penal-substitutionary theory of atonement, and he believed that Jesus' death on the cross effected this atonement. Milton's decision not to dwell on the cross or the details of the crucifixion in his poetry does not manifest a rejection of the cross as God's means of effecting atonement.

The Origins and Development of Milton's Theology in “De doctrina Christiana”, 1.17–18

The Origins and Development of Milton's Theology in “De doctrina Christiana”, 1.17–18

Loving Justice

Research Article| September 01 2012 Loving Justice Regina Mara Schwartz Regina Mara Schwartz Northwestern University regina-s@northwestern.edu Regina Schwartz has been a professor at the University of Colorado, Duke University, and Northwestern University, teaching courses on literature, religion, and law. Her writing centers on the question of justice in religion and culture. She is the author of Sacramental Poetics at the Dawn of Secularism, in the Cultural Memory in the Present Series (Stanford University Press, 2008); The Curse of Cain: The Violent Legacy of Monotheism (nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, University of Chicago Press, 1997); Remembering and Repeating (Cambridge University Press, 1988; reprinted as Remembering and Repeating: On Milton's Theology and Poetics [University of Chicago Press, 1992]). She is the editor of Transcendence: Philosophy, Theology and Literature Approach the Beyond (Routledge Press, 2005); The Book and the Text: The Bible and Literary Theory (Basil Blackwell, 1990), and co-editor of The Postmodern Bible (Yale University Press, 1995) and Desire in the Renaissance: Psychoanalysis and Literature (Princeton University Press, 1995). Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google English Language Notes (2012) 50 (2): 23–39. https://doi.org/10.1215/00138282-50.2.23 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Permissions Search Site Citation Regina Mara Schwartz; Loving Justice. English Language Notes 1 September 2012; 50 (2): 23–39. doi: https://doi.org/10.1215/00138282-50.2.23 Download citation file: Zotero Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search Books & JournalsAll JournalsEnglish Language Notes Search Advanced Search The text of this article is only available as a PDF. Copyright © 2012 Regents of the University of Colorado2012 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

The Pilot and the Keys: Milton's Lycidas 167-171

CRITICS have discerned in John Milton's Lycidas a protracted con flict between the outmoded imagery of Greek pastoral and its analogues in the Christian tradition. I shall argue here that this reading will be all the more persuasive if Saint Peter is not identified as the pilot who laces his praise of Edward King with a satire on the delinquent shepherds of the church. The attributes of this figure, when interpreted in the light of Milton's theology and the Protestant creeds of his day, will prove him to be Christ and hence more capable than Peter himself of redeeming the protagonist after emptying the genre of its false gods. The pilot's entrance is the grand peroration to the eulogies on King:

Milton's Theology of Freedom – By Benjamin Myers

Milton's Theology of Freedom – By Benjamin Myers

The Wreath, The Rock and The Winepress: Passion Iconography in Milton's Paradise Regain'd

Readers of Paradise Regain'd have been perplexed by Milton's preference for the Gospel temptation narratives over the Passion narratives in describing the Son's regaining of Paradise. The article argues that, in explicitly laying down the pattern of a Christian hero in the character of the Messiah, Milton enriches his brief epic with a subtle Passion iconography. Milton's brief epic defines exemplary heroic martyrdom by re-appropriating and transfiguring the Messianic icons of the thorny wreath and the immovable rock from William Marshall's frontispiece to Eikon Basilike. Furthermore, in his winepress simile, Milton adopts a traditional conceit highly evocative of the Son's Passion within the Christian imaginary. Milton's treatment of the wreath, the rock and the winepress suggests that the atonement is of greater moment for Milton's theology, politics and poetry than some of his readers have supposed.

W. B. Hunter, C. A. Patrides and J. H. Adamson. Bright Essence: Studies in Milton's Theology. Pp. 181. (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1971.) $7·95.

W. B. Hunter, C. A. Patrides and J. H. Adamson. Bright Essence: Studies in Milton's Theology. Pp. 181. (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1971.) $7·95.

W. B. Hunter, C. A. Patrides, J. H. Adamson. Bright Essence: Studies in Milton's Theology. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1971. 1 pl., ix+181 pp. $7.95 (2nd pr. forthcoming, $8.50).

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REVIEWS

Journal Article REVIEWS Get access Bright Essence: Studies in Milton's Theology. By W B HUNTER, C A PATRIDES, and J H ADAMSON Pp x + 182Salt Lake City University of Utah Press, 1971 $7 95 Calm of Mind. Tercentenary Essays on Paradise Regained and Samson Agonistes in honor of J. S. Diekhoff. Edited by J A WITTREICH Pp XXVI + 342 + 13plates. Cleveland and London The Press of Case Western Reserve University, 1971 £7 25 net D.T. MACE D.T. MACE Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The Review of English Studies, Volume XXIV, Issue 93, 1973, Pages 210–213, https://doi.org/10.1093/res/XXIV.93.210 Published: 01 January 1973

Bright Essence: Studies in Milton's Theology. By W. B. Hunter, C. A. Patrides, J. H. Adamson. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1971. ix + 181 pp. $7.95.

Bright Essence: Studies in Milton's Theology. By W. B. Hunter, C. A. Patrides, J. H. Adamson. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1971. ix + 181 pp. $7.95.

Bright Essence. Studies in Milton's Theology

Bright Essence. Studies in Milton's Theology

ABSTRACTS

Akira Aral“Milton's Defensio Secunda.” Ot‐suka ReviewAkira Aral“The Epic Element in Lycidas.” The Rising GenerationFredson Bowers. “Adam, Eve, and the Fall in PL.” PMLALeonora Leet Brodwin. “Miltonic Allusion in Absalom and Achitophel: Its Function in the Political Satire.”Albert R. Cirillo. “‘Hail Holy Light’ and Divine Time in PL.“Jackson Cope. “PR: Inner Ritual.”Milton StudiesClifford Davidson. “Sceptre and Keys and Visual Images in PL.” Dalhousie ReviewMario A. DiCesare. “PL and Epic Tradition.”Milton StudiesMichael Fixler. “Milton's Passionate Epic.”Milton StudiesRoland Mushat Frye. “Reason and Grace: Christian Epistemology in Dante, Langland, and Milton.”Action and Conviction in Early Modern EuropeDavid G. Hale. “Milton and the Body Politic.” Read at the Northeastern Language AssociationO. B. Hardison, Jr. “Written Records and Truths of Spirit in PL.” Milton StudiesLawrence W. Hyman. “The Unwilling Martydom in SA.” Tennessee Studies in Literature, XIIIThomas Kranidas. “A View of Milton and the Traditional.”Milton StudiesAnthony Low. “Angels and Food in PL.” Milton StudiesLouis Martz. “Chorus and Character in SA.” Milton StudiesPatrick Murray. “Milton's Theology: A New Perspective.”Irish Ecclesiastical RecordAnts Oras. “Darkness Visible: Notes on Milton's Descriptive Procedures in PL.” All These to Teach: Essays in Honor of C. A. Robertson.B. Rajan. “PL: the Providence of Style.”Milton StudiesSister M. Hilda Bonham, i.h.m. “The Anthropomorphic God of PL.” Papers of the Michigan Academy of Science, Arts, and LettersRussell E. Smith, Jr. “Adam's Fall.”ELHJohn M. Steadman. “Milton's Rhetoric: Satan and the ‘Unjust Discourse.'”Milton StudiesArnold Stein. “Satan's Metamorphoses: the Internal Speech.”Milton StudiesSamuel S. Stollman. “Samson's ‘Sunny Locks the Laws': An Hebraic Metaphor.”SCNCharles D. Tate, Jr. “Vondel's Reputation in England.”Recent Articles of Related Interest: Robert Ellrodt (University of Nice). “Le Parades Terrestre de Milton.”

Milton and the Protestant Aesthetic

Milton is the last great Christian poet until Gerard Manley Hopkins. Between these two there are poets of stature who are Christian, but there are no Christian poets of stature. It would seem that Milton failed to transmit his most deeply felt values. This has been generally assumed. Such a view, however, is only superficially true. It fails to take proper account of the untraditional nature of Milton's theology and of the aesthetic consequences of his highly individual religiosity. For while Milton comes at the end of the universal Christian culture and preserves much from the medieval heritage (as from the more recent orthodoxy of the Reformation) it is also true that Milton projects into the secular culture which succeeds him, values and techniques which already in his most characteristic work contradict and repudiate significant aspects of the traditional Christian aesthetic.

Milton's Theology

Milton's Theology

Milton's Debt to Wolleb's Compendium Theologiæ Christianæ

In seeking for sources of Milton's theology, scholars have gone far afield. While they have argued for Milton's dependence on Ochino, Boehme, Servetus, and even the occult Cabbalists—with little or no external evidence and only vague and general parallelism to corroborate Milton's knowledge and use of these writers—they have disregarded certain systematic theologies, which Milton knew, and which have the same general plan and purpose as the De doctrina Christiana. With one of these treatises, the present investigation is concerned: it will seek to determine the relationship of the De doctrina to Wolleb's Compendium Theologiœ Christianæ with the view of contributing something to an evaluation of Milton's originality as a theologian, and to a knowledge of his habits of borrowing and of the manner in which he worked.

Milton and Servetus: A Study in the Sources of Milton's Theology

That Milton's theology is remarkable for its independence has often been noted. Although he has something in common with the Fathers, with the Greek philosophers, with the Renaissance metaphysicians, with the Protestant reformers, and with the chief heretical sects of the Reformation, nevertheless, among them all we can nowhere find a parallel for his system; we cannot even find all the elements of which it is composed, nor, indeed, its chief conceptions.