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Paradise Lost in a Nutshell

Although almost all the great writers prior to the mid-seventeenth century had been Catholic in either sympathy or practice, John Milton (1608-74) took up the Protestant cause with revolutionary zeal. Following the victory of Cromwell’s Puritan army in the English Civil War, he supported and defended the execution of King Charles I. Then, in 1660, when he was in the middle of writing Paradise Lost, he had strongly opposed the Restoration of the monarchy, which had signalled the ultimate demise of the Puritan “Commonwealth” that Cromwell had established and to which Milton had pinned his political and theological hopes. 

Milton became so heterodox, denying the Trinity and therefore the true divinity of Christ, that it is arguable that he cannot justifiably be called a Protestant or even a Christian of any sort in C.S. Lewis’ “merely Christian” sense of the word. And yet, Paradise Lost is indubitably one of the true masterpieces of world literature, following in the noble epic tradition of Homer and Virgil and, in consequence, demands inclusion in any series focusing on the great works of literature. 

Nonetheless, and irrespective of positive readings of its indubitable literary merit by estimable critics, such as C.S. Lewis, Catholic readers of Milton’s epic need to be aware of the heterodoxy that animates it. This heterodoxy will be our focus, therefore, even though such a critique should not blind us to the glorious sweep of Milton’s use of the English language, or his gifts as a storyteller, or his wonderful depiction of marital love in the prelapsarian Garden. 

Praise the Lord

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