The Unfolding God of Jung and Milton

James P. Driscoll

• Publisher: The University Press of Kentucky
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN:
  9780813160177
  9780813118093
• eBook ISBN:
  9780813185583
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: European Poetry
• Index: Literature

1

Something of Graver Import

Hence poetry is something more philosophic and of graver import than history, since its statements are of the nature rather of universals, whereas those of history are singulars.

—Aristotle

With both the Iliad and more or less in all epic Poems where the subjects are from History, they have no rounded conclusion—they remain after all but a single chapter from the volume of History tho’ an ornamented Chapter. . . . The superiority of Paradise Lost is obvious, . . . it comprehends . . . the origin of evil and the combat of Evil and Good, a matter of such interest to all mankind as to form the basis of all religions, and the true occasion of all Philosophy.

—Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Paradise Lost is rich above all other epics in the graver import of the universal or the archetypal. Critics, however, have left unexcavated some of the richest veins of its graver import. Bringing them to light requires two fundamental changes. First, we must give archetypal elements priority over historical influences and Milton’s conscious designs, those surface veins of meaning critics commonly pursue. Second, we must supplement standard critical methods with philosophical and psychological methods designed to probe the archetypal. Implementing these changes, this chapter will utilize the combined methods of modern philosophy and Jungian psychology to explore the graver import in Milton’s treatment of Godhead.

I have divided the chapter into five parts. In the first section I establish the need for new approaches by showing how the dominant critical schools neglect or misconstrue Milton’s graver import. In the second section I apply a philosophic-psychological approach to the theodicy of Paradise Lost. In the third section I consider how archetypal conflicts influence theological positions on free will. In the fourth section I use Jung’s analytical psychology to investigate the archetypes of Godhead. And in the final section I establish an archetypal perspective upon the ethical and philosophical outlooks that shape Paradise Lost; the chapter concludes with a critical overview. Like the book as a whole, this chapter has a twofold character: it is an original study of Milton informed by Jung and an original study of Jungian thought.

DOMINANT CRITICAL SCHOOLS

The philosophic-psychological approach I employ will incur resistance among traditional Milton critics and scholars.¹ Rather than try to gloss over differences between my approach and that of my more traditional colleagues, I will show the limitations of their basic assumptions. Once these limitations become apparent, it ought to be clear that a philosophic-psychological approach, such as the one I offer, is a legitimate, indeed a necessary, alternative.

Assumptions about the Reader. Stanley Fish’s Surprised by Sin remains a prime watershed of traditional assumptions about the reader. Cut to its essence, Fish’s argument is that in Paradise Lost Milton orchestrates reader responses to the main drama through rhetoric functioning like metadrama. Milton’s presumed intentions are (1) to entangle the wayward reader in Satan’s rhetoric and Adam and Eve’s errors thus inducing a guilt that can spur repentance and doctrinal purification or (2) to test the wary reader and thereby strengthen his faith. Objective understanding of Paradise Lost, Fish contends, comes only to those readers who respond to Milton’s rhetoric the way Milton intended.

However, suppressing our modern responses to follow Milton’s Christian rhetoric, as some traditionalists attempt to do, creates a problem of authenticity. Authentic reader responses are born of authentic personal values choices. Even orthodox Christians living in the twentieth century choose their values within a modern, not a seventeenth-century, context. Because moderns must reject or embrace important alternatives to orthodoxy (e.g., scientific philosophy, Freud, Jung, and Marx) that were unavailable in the seventeenth century, their value choices necessarily differ from those of Milton’s original “fit” readers. The authentic choices and responses of Milton’s “fit” readers are, therefore, as lost to us as Adam’s unfallen state.

The problem of authenticity extends further. Twentieth-century readers of Paradise Lost themselves are an increasingly heterogenous lot. They include Jews, Moslems, Hindus, Buddhists, adherents of heterodox Western thought systems like Marxism, analytic philosophy, existentialism, Freudianism, and Jungianism along with non-Protestant Christians and Protestants for whom Milton’s scriptural literalism proves unpalatable. The most that can be expected of these “unfit” modern readers is to suspend disbelief temporarily in order to apprehend what the poet endeavored to say or do to his “fit” reader. Afterwards they must return to themselves and respond authentically from their personal values. If we prohibit the last step, the poem will become for them a dead artifact.

Supreme works of imagination, even those that are openly didactic, stimulate the minds and stir the spirits of readers committed to diverse value systems. However, didactic works that lack ecumenical appeal remain essentially propagandistic. To be sure, Milton the prose writer was an accomplished propagandist, but Milton the poet was much more than that. By reducing Milton to a Christian apologist, admiring critics diminish his achievement no less than those who disparage his work because they reject his theology. In either case Milton’s poems dwindle to artful propaganda for a dated theology, their enduring value mere technical virtuosity.

Oblivious to these considerations, traditional critics often assume recalcitrant modern readers are like seventeenth-century Protestants in need of a heavy dose of repentance and reform. Repentance and reform, however, go beyond imaginative suspension of disbelief to promote theological and psychological credulity. Suspension of disbelief to achieve an overview of one’s own values that allows appreciation of an alternative value system is a legitimate critical request.² But criticism cannot legitimately ask readers to drop their personal beliefs (that is, suspend belief, not disbelief) and embrace the beliefs of an earlier age. Such a betrayal of authenticity would yield atavism, not objectivity, nostalgia, not insight.

Assumptions about Meaning in Art. Reevaluation, traditional critics often argue, does not give us the poem Milton wrote. This assumes that the only valid meanings in Milton’s poems are the ones he intentionally put there. When we apply to Milton criticism Jungian scholar Rivkah S. Kluger’s discerning advice to religious historians, it becomes evident why the critics’ assumption is untenable:

To be sure, one must let one’s ideas grow out of the material, not put them into it. But in the process of grasping the material, one cannot ignore all possibilities of understanding which have crystallized during subsequent cultural developments. For instance, to understand archaic thinking does not mean to think archaically oneself. Distance, not identification, is just what makes understanding possible. . . . our understanding of the material must necessarily go beyond the self-understanding of a past era, for, old material contains more meaning than was conscious at the time of its origin. . . . We must immerse ourselves in the material in as unprejudiced a manner as possible or better, with the greatest possible awareness of our own preconceptions. But we cannot avoid expressing the meanings we have grasped in the cognitive terms which our culture has created since. Concepts like “hypostasis,” “manifestation,” “identity,” and the like can therefore be applied with full legitimacy to an Old Testament context, even though they are not Old Testament concepts themselves.³

Similarly, to understand Milton does not mean to think like Milton oneself. Understanding requires distance, not identification, which abdicates critical judgment. Milton’s poems contain more meaning than their author or his contemporaries grasped, and it’s our obligation to probe their total meaning. While we must always remain aware of our preconceptions, we cannot and should not avoid expressing meaning in cognitive terms that our culture offers or avoid posing questions Milton’s beliefs or conceptual tools would not have allowed him to pose.

Because it was not possible for Milton to comprehend the entire meaning of all the ideas, symbols, and myths his vast subjects encompassed, his poems convey meanings different from and larger than what he intended. Moreover, in dealing with powerful, archetypal figures such as Adam and Eve, the Father, the Son, and Satan, and in following his muse, Milton the artist necessarily fell under the sway of unconscious forces that have their own intents and purposes that, however much he may have tried, Milton the apologist could never entirely suppress or control. Of the artist whose visions carry him beyond the constrictive dogmas of the cultural canon into the heart of our primal myths, C.G. Jung observes: “Being essentially the instrument of his work, he is subordinate to it, and we have no right to expect him to interpret it for us. He has done his utmost by giving it form, and must leave the interpretation to others and to the future. A great work of art is like a dream; for all its apparent obviousness it does not explain itself and is always ambiguous. A dream never says ‘you ought’ or ‘this is the truth.’ It presents an image in much the same way as nature allows a plant to grow, and it is up to us to draw conclusions.”⁴ Accordingly, the most significant meanings of Paradise Lost are not interpreted by Milton the Christian apologist through rhetoric. Milton the artist presents them through symbol, myth, and archetype and leaves their interpretation to us.⁵ Moreover, when we learn to interpret the artist’s meanings, we realize that they frequently subvert the conscious meanings of the apologist.

Assumptions about Milton’s Logic and Methods. But before we take up Paradise Lost’s most significant meanings, its graver import, we need to raise a mundane question: are modern critical disputes generated by flaws in the logic of the poem’s theology? Milton’s theology, I contend, at times violates logic. Those who lack the training to articulate the violations nevertheless sense them and register their protest in critical disputes.

Acknowledging violations of logic in Paradise Lost, Stanley Fish offers an explanation widely accepted by traditional critics. These violations, he insists, are deliberate on Milton’s part, their object being to entangle the reader in sin and error in order to compel him to abandon his own reasonings for blind faith in absolute authority.

Milton doubtless aims to strengthen the reader’s faith. The problem lies with the method attributed to him: it can be employed to strengthen radically opposed religious and political faiths. It works for the Catholics Milton hated (it is “jesuitical”) no less than for the English Protestants he favored. A method that can with equal ease support opposing views can never provide convincing support for any single view.

To be surprised by sin is to be surprised by guilt. Hence, Milton must methodically use guilt to strengthen belief. Where in the poem can we find unambiguous evidence that the poet sought to induce guilt? What indeed proves surprising (and refreshing!) is how little Milton belabors sin and guilt and how much he relies on faith to lead men to God. The decisive evidence of Milton’s predilection for faith over guilt is his choice in Paradise Regained to make the temptation, not the bloody, guilt-soaked crucifixion, the pivotal event in the Son of God’s incarnation. Another Miltonic predilection was for truth, which he pursued with a genius’s disdain for mere cleverness. Yet the sophisticated rhetorical methods Milton supposedly employs to entangle the reader in sin and guilt are just that, mere cleverness.⁶

Rather than ascribing to Milton rhetorical subterfuges and psychological manipulations like those of Satan, why not admit that Milton’s knowledge and beliefs had their limitations? Why not acknowledge that in Paradise Lost he, in his apologist role, undertook the impossible task of offering a rational defense of Christian theology and myth? We will then be left free to examine the ways logical hiatuses in theology and refractory elements in myth affect argument, character, and drama and thereby give rise to critical difficulties.

Since these difficulties reflect profound psychological conflicts along with philosophical problems that have perplexed the best minds of two millennia, we will not expect definitive solutions from Milton. Understanding the conflicts and problems and Milton’s treatment of them will become our critical goal.

Assumptions about Historical Causation. The assumption that historical causation moves monodirectionally from a fixed past to a distinct present to an unknown future is widely accepted by traditional critics. This assumption devalues the influence exerted by the artist’s vision of the future and by his unconscious intuitions about both present and past. Jung and Erich Neumann provide a corrective.⁷ The psyche of the visionary artist and seer, they maintain, follows unconscious, teleological causation as it remedies past and present imbalances in the cultural canon by activating compensatory archetypes.⁸ Wherefore, a visionary opus like Paradise Lost, in addition to reflecting and reinforcing its cultural canon, manifests, despite the author’s conscious designs, the unresolved tensions between past, present, and future. In Milton’s case the unresolved tensions generate the most perplexing critical problems, and, far from detracting from his achievement, these tensions guarantee his work lasting interest by spurring each age to perceive it anew in its own lights.

A Revealing Anachronism. Unresolved tensions, however, exist solely to be resolved for critics who insist their answers are the only correct ones. Their traditional Christian interpretations are often surprisingly well-tailored to quell doubts common in our skeptical age, indeed, surprisingly Kierkegaardean in tactics. The crucial similarity to the founder of modern religious existentialism is reliance on radical freedom and faith to smash through the paradoxes in which skeptical reasoning entangles man.⁹

In Milton’s age skepticism had yet to expose the logical and psychological inconsistencies that mar Christian theodicy. Consequently, he had no pressing need to supplant reason with radical faith. While he did not believe that reason by itself could generate fai...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Preface
• 1 Something of Graver Import
• 2 The Shadow of God
• 3 Decisive Identity
• 4 Yahweh Agonistes
• Glossary
• Notes
• Index