“Higher Argument”: Paradise Lost 1665–1669This first matter, emanating from God, is organized in a chain of being which is not
fixed but mobile, and which intelligent creatures can by their choices ascend to
become “more spiritous and pure” or, alternatively, descend to become more ma-
terial and gross, as is the case with the fallen angels. Raphael also explains that angels
and humans share the same defining quality, reason: “Discursive or Intuitive; dis-
course / Is oftest yours, the latter most is ours, / Differing but in degree, of kind the
same” (5.488–90). Milton’s angels eat real food “with keen dispatch / Of real hun-
ger” (5.436–7), fight a real war with real arms, have sex which involves total inter-
penetration, and can change genders at will. By eating Edenic food, Raphael
demonstrates that the same food can nourish both humans and angels, and he sug-
gests that Adam and Eve’s own diet can promote their gradual change to angelic
state:
And from these corporal nutriments perhaps
Your bodies may at last turn all to Spirit,
Improv’d by tract of time, and wingd ascend
Ethereal, as wee, or may at choice
Here or in Heav’nly Paradises dwell;
If ye be found obedient. (5.496–501)That lesson might have kept Eve from believing Satan’s claim that she would re-
quire the special food of the forbidden tree to ascend from human to higher state,
and that such transformation would be instantaneous.
Milton could escape the constraints of biblical literalism in treating his subject
because from the time of his divorce tracts he gave the indwelling spirit of God
priority over the letter of scripture, insisting that the meaning of any scripture text
must accord with the dictates of reason and the overarching precept of charity.
These interpretative principles emerge from his assumption that a good God in-
tends the good of humankind, and from the antinomian doctrine, spelled out in De
Doctrina Christiana, that for Christians the Law as law (even the Decalogue) is abro-
gated, to be replaced by a “more perfect” morality inscribed in the heart. That
antinomianism in Milton’s humanist version^136 is also central to the educative issues
of the poem, as Milton foregrounds for his characters and his readers the problematics
of interpreting God’s decrees and his works, and the validity of appeals to reason
and experience in probing their implications and responding to them. Not blind
obedience to law, but thoughtful discrimination is all.
For the angels, the decree requiring interpretation is God’s proclamation of his
Son as their king. It is staged as a suddden, awe-inspiring declaration, whose literal
terms are clear: “your Head I him appoint, / And by my Self have sworn to him
shall bow / All knees in Heav’n, and shall confess him Lord: / Under his great
Vice-regent Reign abide / United.” So is the promised eternal punishment in
“utter darkness” for the disobedient (5.600–15). But the ramifications are not clear: