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Milton's Conception of Time in the Christian Doctrine
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 23 August 2011
Extract
In the argument preceding Book I of Paradise Lost, Milton chooses to emphasize at the outset one aspect of his conception of time. He summarizes Satan's report to the fallen angels, and adds “for that Angels were long before the visible Creation, was the opinion of many ancient Fathers.” Nowhere else in these prefatory “arguments” does he feel it necessary to make any explanatory statements about the cosmology of the poem. Here, however, he calls attention to a belief that was in conflict with the prevailing Christian view. But, as Milton realized, the reader must grasp this heterodox belief of his in order to understand the whole design of the poem.
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- Copyright © President and Fellows of Harvard College 1964
References
1 In “Time and Eternity: Paradox and Structure in Paradise Lost,” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 23 (1960), 127–38CrossRefGoogle Scholar, Rosalie L. Colie shows how the “paradox” is an essential element in the structure of the poem, and is related to the other paradox of free knowledge and free will. Laurie B. Zwicky, in his doctoral dissertation, “Milton's Use of Time: Image and Principle” (University Microfilms, 1961), provides a comprehensive discussion. But he gives a very eclectic presentation of the philosophical background and does not thoroughly analyze the material in Christian Doctrine. Among earlier studies, the most helpful are those by Williams, Arnold, “Renaissance Commentaries on Genesis and some Elements of the Theology of Paradise Lost,” PMLA 56 (1941), 151–64CrossRefGoogle Scholar; The Common Expositor (Chapel Hill, 1948)Google Scholar.
2 This Great Argument (Princeton, 1941), p. 199Google Scholar. Jackson I. Cope, in “Time and Space as Miltonic Symbol” (originally published in ELH 26 [1959], 497–513, now Ch. 4 of his book, The Metaphoric Structure of Paradise Lost [Baltimore, 1962]), rejects Kelley's principle in favor of the position taken by Rajan and Sewell, deprecating the use of Christian Doctrine in interpretations of Paradise Lost because of the discrepancies they find between it and the poem. Professor Cope's method of reading leads him to the conclusion, which I believe to be a mistaken one, that in III 56–79 of P.L. “Time has become space, because space is at once the creature, the ambient and the symbol of that fall in which Milton found the meaning of nature's history and of man's” (p. 60 in The Metaphoric Structure, and see fn. 9 on p. 56).
3 The City of God, trans, by Marcus Dods et al. (New York, n. d.), p. 350 (XI, 6).
4 Timaeus, 37 D-E, translated by Cornford, F. M., Plato's Cosmology (New York, 1937), pp. 97–98Google Scholar.
5 Taylor, A. E., A Commentary on Plato's Timaeus (Oxford, 1928)Google Scholar. Other aspects of Augustine's view of time are discussed in Confessions, XI. On time in Plato and in Augustine see also Callahan, John F., Four Views of Time in Ancient Philosophy (Cambridge, 1948)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Brabant, Frank H., Time and Eternity in Christian Thought (London, 1937)Google Scholar.
6 Logic, I, XI, in The Works of John Milton, ed. Patterson, Frank Allen et al. (New York, 1931–38), XI, 93, 95Google Scholar. Further references will be given in the text to the Columbia ed. The Christian Doctrine will be cited according to the volume and page numbers of this edition.
7 Hunter, William B. Jr., “Milton's Arianism Reconsidered,” Harvard Theological Review 52 (1959), 21CrossRefGoogle Scholar. In “Milton's Arianism Again Considered,” Harvard Theological Review 54 (1961), 195–205CrossRefGoogle Scholar, Professor Maurice Kelley successfully refutes Hunter's main argument, but his article contains other valuable suggestions.
8 Hunter, p. 33.
9 The Summa Theologica of St. Aquinas, Thomas, Literally Translated by the Fathers of the English Dominican Province (2nd rev. ed., London, 1922), III, 120–21 (q. 61 Art. 2)Google Scholar.
10 See Robbins, Frank E., The Hexaemeral Literature (Chicago, 1912)Google Scholar, and Arnold Williams, op. cit.
11 Heywood, Thomas, The Hierarchie of the blessed Angells (London, 1635), p. 334 (lib. 6)Google Scholar. See also p. 33s and the prose commentary following lib. 6, pp. 368–69.
12 J. P. Migne, ed., Patrologiae … Series Graeca, XXIX. See F. E. Robbins, op. cit., p. 45: “But after the fashion of Milton, Basil prefers to depict the ‘elder state’ as an extra-temporal period wherein the angels dwell in heavenly light (cf. 13 A ff., 40 C ff.) rather than as God's timeless, changeless existence with his Word.” As I have shown, however, Milton did not conceive of this “state” as an “extra-temporal period.”
13 Hanford regards the entries from Basil in the Commonplace Book as of uncertain date. He says that Milton's references are to the two-volume folio of Basil's Opera published in Paris in 1618. See “The Chronology of Milton's Private Studies,” PMLA 36 (1921), 279Google Scholar.
14 Milton does not condemn the “received opinion” on this topic but characterizes it as “asserted … with more confidence than reason” (XV, 33).
15 According to Robert H. West, Milton and the Angels (Athens, Georgia, 1955), p. 125, Milton asserts “against a majority of all denominations that the angels were created long before the world.” Although he devotes relatively little attention to this question, and does not treat the hexaemeralists at all, Mr. West mentions some seventeenth-century thinkers whose opinion differed from Milton, for example, Hakewill, Comenius and Boyle. Raleigh might also be mentioned (History of the World, Bk. VI, ch. 1 sect. iv). Cf. Arnold Williams, The Common Expositor, p. 62: “… all the commentators I have read favor the opinion that the angels were created during the six days.”
16 Aristotle, Physica 220 b 15, 221 b 10, trans. R. P. Hardie and R. K. Gaze, in Works, ed. W. D. Ross (Oxford, 1908–52), II.
17 “With the exception of Brocardus, all commentators agree that ‘in the beginning’ refers to time … Time dates from the first moment of creation” (Williams, The Common Expositor, p. 42).