Theology Today - Vol 31, No. 4 - January 1975 - BOOK REVIEW - Christian Doctrine (The Complete Prose Works of John Milton, Volume VI)

378 - Christian Doctrine (The Complete Prose Works of John Milton, Volume VI)

Christian Doctrine
(The Complete Prose Works of John Milton, Volume VI)
Edited by Maurice Kelley and translated by John Carey
New Haven, Yale University Press, 1973. 863 pp. $40.00.

I can refer briefly to editor, translator, and publisher. In each case the task-a monumental one-has been done superbly. 116 pages of introduction, innumerable footnotes, and an appendix on revisions in the manuscript are the work of the editor. Nearly 700 pages of translated text are the work of John Carey. The work has been beautifully printed with an appropriate index by the Yale University Press. And this is only one of the total corpus of eight volumes in course of production.

It is perhaps surprising that "The Englishman John Milton's Two Books of Investigations into Christian Doctrine drawn from the Sacred Scriptures alone" is so little known. Possibly those who would want to follow him in appealing to Scripture alone find his deductions embarrassing; those who would prefer a wider frame of reference find his method irritating. No man could have labored more whole heartedly to build his great house of Christian Doctrine out of genuine, unvarnished Scriptural material. Yet the edifice when finished proved to be anti-trinitarian, Arminian, unorthodox in its treatment of creation and the body-soul relationship of man, to say nothing of its startling views on marriage and divorce. Yet Milton was convinced that he had derived everything from Scripture and Scripture alone. The pursuit of individual freedom produced strange results when the field of operation was biblical interpretation.

What then was Milton's way of "doing theology"? First of all, a careful study of Old and New Testaments in their original languages and, although he may not have been expert in Hebrew, there is no question of his proficiency in Greek. Secondly, he made himself familiar with certain systems of divinity which provided a pattern or framework for his own exposition. Thirdly, he collected under general headings an extraordinarily extensive commonplace book of Scriptural passages that would serve as supports to the general propositions that he formulated in going from stage to stage in the building of his system. Fourthly, he gave close attention to those matters of faith on which there had been disagreements amongst earlier theologians in order that he might make his own position clear. These stages did not follow one another in exact chronological sequence but all were included in his method. And the connecting apparatus that held everything together in the final systematic presentation was logic. Like other leading Puritans of his age Milton was rigorously trained in the use of logic and believed that by its aid he could weave together out

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of his Scriptural material a "systematic exposition of Christian teaching."

Yet with all this dependence upon logic and upon what is "reasonable," Milton can write twenty-nine chapters of exposition before ever raising the question of the nature of the material he is expounding. He affirms at the outset that his appeal is to Scripture alone; not until Chapter 30 does he give us his views on Holy Scripture and these, it must be said, are entirely uncritical and even at times illogical. The Scriptures are "absolutely clear," and yet there is place for interpretation. Each passage has only a single sense, and yet typological as well as literal meanings are allowed. There is no recognition at all of the possibility of historical development either in the process of revelation or in the apprehension of truth. Scripture is given as the external revelation; the Holy Spirit is given to the individual as the internal revealer. Failure to grasp true doctrine can be due only to failure to relate to one or other of the two agents of revelation. Milton is so passionately concerned for the freedom of the individual that he is willing to adopt completely unorthodox views on the Trinity or on marriage if he can make a case for them by appeal to a number of appatently supporting Scriptural texts.

In the introduction, Maurice Kelley gives a full account of the literary history of Milton's treatise-its composition, its revision, and its dramatic recovery early in the nineteenth century. He then discusses the theological issues that emerge, particularly those on which Milton held heterodox views. By the help of certain well-known writers on early Christian doctrine he shows how much in common Milton had with Arius, Pelagius, and other heresiarchs, though on many aspects of Christian belief he was, of course, entirely orthodox. In my judgment the introduction and footnotes serve excellently to set the treatise in context and to draw out the distinctiveness of the poet's theology, a distinctiveness that had already been revealed in a different way in Paradise Lost.

Perhaps the major impression that one gains through reading Milton's systematic treatise is one of immobility, almost of lifelessness. In the writings of the sixteenth century Reformers there is a sense of dynamic change, of destiny. But the aim in the mid-seventeenth century seems to have been to consolidate, to build on an impregnable foundation. The classics of the past are accepted at face value and used as materials for the composition of great poetry and of less great systems of theology. Milton shows no awareness of the vast revolutions already germinating in the apprehension of the West-the scientific and the historical,.o him the Scriptures were "plain and sufficient in themselves." Any believer was entitled to interpret them without reference to or knowledge of either the structure of the universe or the history of people. Little did he realize how great would be the problems confronting interpreters when the figural schema of the Bible was being abandoned by the consciousness of the West and when

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the whole place and function of the Bible in human development would need to be considered afresh.

F.W. Dillistone
Oriel College
Oxford, England