Ironies of Faith: The Laughter at the Heart of Christian Literature by Anthony Esolen

Author:Anthony Esolen [Esolen, Anthony]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781497635883
Publisher: Intercollegiate Studies Institute
Published: 2014-04-22T00:00:00+00:00

Thou also mad’st the Night,

Maker Omnipotent, and thou the Day,

Which we in our appointed work imploy’d

Have finisht happy in our mutual help

And mutual love, the Crown of all our bliss

Ordain’d by thee, and this delicious place

For us too large, where thy abundance wants

Partakers, and uncropt falls to the ground.

But thou hast promis’d from us two a Race

To fill the Earth, who shall with us extol

Thy goodness infinite, both when we wake,

And when we seek, as now, thy gift of sleep. (4.724–35)

Adam and Eve are “Godlike erect” not because God stands straight in some manlike shape. There is neither up nor down nor right nor left with God; Milton is careful to describe only the splendor of God, his eye, his smile, his voice. What can the phrase mean, then? Adam and Eve stand erect for the same reason Dante ends each of the three canticles of the Commedia with the word stelle, “stars.” To be erect is to face one’s destination and perfection, the heavens—whence Satan has been thrust because of his pride. The beasts do not stand erect, and “of thir doings God takes no account” (4.622), says Adam. But to turn away from one’s perfection, as the devils have done, is to become depraved, distorted, “bent,” as C. S. Lewis puts it in Out of the Silent Planet, taking his cue from Milton and Dante (“Guai a voi, anime prave!” cries Charon to the damned awaiting their passage across the Acheron to hell—“Woe to you, crooked souls!” [Inf., 3.84]). So when Adam and Eve stand erect, they signify the power they enjoy by virtue of their submission to the heavens that stir their yearning. If for God power is inseparable from love and grace, in us creatures it is inseparable from love and obedience.

In Native Honor Clad in Naked Majesty

The word “clad” is ambiguously placed: it can be construed either with “Honor” or with “Majesty” without straining the syntax. What does it mean for Adam and Eve to be “clad in native honor”? In the world of political materialism, the words “native Honor” are meaningless. How can one be born with what must be seized, to use Satan’s words, by “force or guile” (1.121), or, to use Machiavelli’s words, by the ways of the lion or the fox? Yet Milton wants us to view Adam and Eve—creatures such as we were meant to be—as so noble that others must naturally honor them. They are honored, even as they honor God. To be deserving of honor, and to grant honor that is deserved, are natural to them. Even Satan is struck by this native honor, and in flattering Eve will call her, with deceitful exaggeration, “Queen of this universe” (9.684). The lowly animals, too, will not enter the private bower of Adam and Eve, the chamber of their love, their church, their royal palace, “such was thir awe of Man” (4.705).

It is another delightful irony that the first couple are “clad” in honor, since they are not clad in anything at all.

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