Subordination, Substance, and the Trinity in Milton's Paradise Lost and De Doctrina Christiana

Abstract

Whether Milton's works represent his Arian beliefs or Trinitarian orthodoxy has been hotly debated. Arianism denies the coessentiality, coequality, and cosubstantiality of the Father and the Son and subordinates the Son to the Father. While Milton's theological treatise De Doctrina Christiana clearly reflects some key Arian dogmas which repudiate the Trinity, his poetic representations of the Father and the Son in Paradise Lost seems to support Trinitarian doctrines. Our knowledge of the political religious situations of seventeenth-century England will help us understand this seemingly incompatible evidence. One noticeable fact is that while his prose work was a posthumous treatise never published during his lifetime, his poetic work was intended to address his contemporaries during his lifetime. In the seventeenth century Arianism was considered to be heretical by the clerical and political authorities. And Milton was well aware that lots of Arian believers were severely persecuted for having heretical thoughts. Even though Milton claims that he firmly bases his systematic theology on Holy Scripture, and in his Doctrina he cites many passages from the Bible to support his Arian arguments, his public confession of having his unorthodox beliefs in his published poetry might have caused him a lot of trouble. And some Miltonists find several implicit Arianism in Paradise Lost. Therefore, even though Paradise Lost contains the key Trinitarian dogmas, the social and ecclesiastical circumstances in which lots of Arians were persecuted could have affected the poetic representations of Milton's religious issues. The defeated and frustrated republican might have wanted to avoid other troubles caused by his unorthodox writings.