Choosing Destiny
“As if predestination overruled
Their will, disposed by absolute decree
Or high foreknowledge; they themselves decreed
Their own revolt, not I: if I foreknew,
Foreknowledge had no influence on their fault,
Which had no less proved certain unforeknown.”
Bk. III 114-119
It is clear that the question of whether man has free will or is subject to divine providence or predetermination is central to Milton in Paradise Lost and also to philosophers and theologians before, after, and during Milton’s time. Does man have no free choice or will because God already knows the outcome of history? It seems clear to me that Milton does not feel that free will is hampered by predestination, although many contemporaries of Milton and philosophers after disagree. The belief in free will and predestination that Milton demonstrates in Paradise Lost is paradoxical and Milton is certainly aware of the paradox, but, as I will attempt to demonstrate, does not believe that the paradox in any way lessens the importance or power of free will or divine providence.
For the purposes of this paper we can assume predestination and divine providence to be virtually interchangeable and define free will as the ability to make a choice based solely on one’s own criteria without interference by outside forces. One’s own knowledge and desires are the only bases on which a free individual should make a choice. The reason that the existence of this will comes into question is because God already knows the outcome of each and every decision, so in effect all choices have already been made; an individual can make no other choice than that one which was predestined or fated. If we assume that time is not linear, or at least that the divine experience of time is not linear, then it seems a logical conclusion to assume that there is no free will.
However, Milton’s portrayal of both the human experience of time and the divine experience of time is linear. In other words, God is aware of what is to come, but he must still play time out. God knows what choices he and others will make, but he still must make them. This is the fundamental paradox with which we are here concerned. Of course, we are not particularly concerned with whether God or, in opposition, Satan has free will, but rather whether humans have free will living under the omnipotence and omniscience of the divine.
Nevertheless, God’s position of foreknowledge in relation to his linear experience of time is an excellent point of departure, as I will demonstrate later, for discussion of the human paradox. Some have said, inside and outside our class, that Satan is the agent of free will; Satan is the author of free will for humanity because he presents Adam and Eve with the apple and original sin. In other words, because Satan is the driving force behind the experience of choice, in this case departure from ignorance, he is the creator of choice. Unfortunately such an argument, at least when based on Paradise Lost, is spurious. It is clear that Milton feels that the choice is still present whether or not the other option in the choice has been experienced. In simpler terms, a choice between 1 and 0 is still a choice even if 0 is chosen every time. So in this case, Adam and Eve do have choice or free will before the fall. Satan is not the author of free will simply because he motivates Adam and Eve to experience 1.
There is, of course, even greater reason to believe that God is the author of free will. God planted the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil in Eden, in easy reach of our progenitors. Before man was created, the possibility of choice existed. However, Adam and Eve would not have known what choice was simply through the existence of the Tree. God presented Man with the first choice by making the first commandment: “Do not eat from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil.” God’s commandment presented Man with two fundamental choices: eat or do not eat. The possibility for transgression is there from the moment that the commandment/choice is presented, and Satan is in no way necessary for free will to exist in Man. Simply put, Man must choose to eat or not, regardless of whether he is ignorant of the ramifications of either choice. It is obvious that the threat of death is no real deterrent to one who does not know what death is (“whate’er death is,” Bk. IV 425), and can have no real bearing Man’s choice before the Fall.
So it seems clear at this point that God is the creator of free will in man. Of course, our original question remains. Is man free to choose despite God’s foreknowledge and providence? To answer this question, we must turn to the model I promised earlier. God in this case will be a model for Man. If we assume that God has no free will, then we must assume that he is a slave to his own providence. That is to say that God’s foreknowledge of the future does not allow him to make any choice other than the one he knows will be chosen. However, because Milton presents us with a God that experiences time in a linear fashion, that God must still make choices when the time comes to do so. Granted, linear time is not an adequate explanation for divine choice. But it does give us the option to explore the possibility that divine choice is paradoxical.
This paradox is similar to Camus’ Sisyphus. Sisyphus is doomed to eternally push the rock up the hill, fail, return to the bottom and try again. Sisyphus is aware that he must do this eternally, but he disregards that knowledge and chooses continually to push the rock. Instead of surrendering himself to predestination he chooses to enter into the moment. He makes a choice despite a lack thereof. So God also continually chooses that which is predestined or foreknown.
Man is also similar to Sisyphus. However, in this case we see that Man has more choices than Sisyphus. Where Sisyphus, and possibly God, have only one choice, possibly no choice, but, paradoxically, choose it, Man has a myriad of choices, none of which are actually forced. Man was created “Sufficient to have stood, though free to fall (Bk. III 99).” Although God knew that man would fall, Man still chose to do so. God did not make man fall as we see in the opening quote. Indeed, as I showed earlier, God gave man the option to fall; God gave man choice. However, our resolution of this paradox is not complete.
At this point it is clear that man was not made to choose anything in particular but it is not clear why man’s free will is paradoxical as God’s or Sisyphus’ is. The major argument for why Man's will is not free after the Fall is that there is the promise of Heaven and the threat of Hell. Man is forced to choose between eternal pain or eternal bliss by choosing between subjugation to God’s will or willful disobedience. It certainly does seem that this type of choice is no real choice at all, and those who would make the aforementioned argument would further say that either God (power and will outside of man) is dead or that free will in Man does not exist.
However, we can see that this argument does not deal with the possibility that free will is fundamentally paradoxical as we have demonstrated God’s and Camus’ Sisyphus’ to be. To Milton the choice between Heaven and Hell, pain and bliss, is not a matter for dispute; God is not dead. As a Christian the choice must be made and it must be made regardless of whether the outcome is known or not, as the choice to commit original sin was. In this case the only difference between Man before the fall and Sisyphus is that Man is not aware of the future as Sisyphus is. Man makes his choice in ignorance, Sisyphus in knowledge. Of course, after the Fall, Man is given foreknowledge. So after the Fall, Man is exactly like Sisyphus. When Man leaves Eden he must choose what he is predestined to do.
At this point it is glaringly obvious that there is evidence in Paradise Lost to support the conclusion that free will must be paradoxical when it is related to divine providence, and that free will does exist and is not abolished by divine providence. Of course, it is quite possible that our investigations into PL on this subject may not represent Milton’s beliefs or intent. So we must take our interpretation one step further and attempt to understand how Milton himself is interpreting.
It is probably fair to say that Milton is interpreting in a Knightian manner. At least in that he is reconstructing the vision of the Christian myth. However Milton is reconstructing vision in a manner that would be foreign to Wilson Knight and even partially disproves Knight’s statement about the nature of interpretation. Knight states that “interpretation is passive,” but it is clear that Milton is both interpreting the Christian myth and recreating it. In other words, Milton’s interpretation is creative, not passive, as I will demonstrate.
The title Paradise Lost is probably an adequate statement of subject for his epic. But the story of the loss of Paradise has already been told. We know the outcome. Adam and Eve were forced to leave Eden and humanity has grown up outside of it. So it is clear that Paradise Lost could end in only one way: Adam and Eve leaving (losing) Paradise. In other words, the end of Paradise Lost was predestined. Nevertheless, Milton chose to write Paradise Lost. So when Milton began Paradise Lost he had foreknowledge of the outcome, but he still had to make choices during the creation of Paradise Lost. Milton had to decide what material to use in his story and what to throw away. He had to interpret what he felt the scriptures meant and decide how best to represent that meaning in Paradise Lost. Milton had to exercise free will in the creation of Paradise Lost. But he had to exercise his free will in full foreknowledge of the outcome. Milton as author of Paradise Lost demonstrates the idea of paradoxical free will that we earlier found inside the text. In short, Man in Paradise Lost is a metaphor for Milton.
So we can see that free will is paradoxical in Paradise Lost and for Milton as an author, but our exploration means nothing if we do not understand how it affects us as readers and interpreters. When we approach a text, Paradise Lost for example, we are presented with a choice: to read it or not to read it. This choice is much like Man’s choice before the fall. We must choose in ignorance of the ramifications of our choice. The text is already written, the end is predestined, but we do not know what that end is. Our experience of the text is linear: we make choices about meanings as we experience the flow of the text. Eventually we reach the end, which does not change despite any choices we may have made during the time of the story. As interpreters we must take the text at hand. The text is static and immutable, but we make choices about meanings within the framework of this unchanging text. So our experience of a text as a reader and interpreter is also paradoxical. When we practice interpretation we are practicing Milton’s paradox of free will in the face of predestination. In the great chain of metaphor we have created God and Sisyphus are metaphors for Adam and Eve who are in turn metaphors for Milton who is a metaphor for the interpreter. In the end we see that interpretation is ultimately Milton’s paradox in action, and we as students, readers, and humans in general are living proof of the paradox of free will and predetermination.
Micah Krabill
Final essay composed for the course "Interpreting English Literature: Milton, Herbert & Donne"
December 8, 1998