Free to Fall, Unfit to choose: How Milton’s God Doomed Adam and Eve

We can call Nature herself as a defence-witness for having left us so weak and imperfect.

— “On punishing cowardice” Michel de Montaigne (1685)

    Milton’s God designed a system that inclined Adam and Eve to sin. Free choice is contingent on the ability to know, fairly assess, and choose between obedience and disobedience. Milton’s God negates Adam and Eve’s freedom by intentionally presenting only a part of the truth, a limited view of reality. His system fails to educate, resorting instead to Raphael’s book-learning and divine instruction, which prohibits the pair from acting and choosing autonomously. To stay good, they must subordinate empirical reasoning to the God-given “right reason.” But how can one choose, if the choice itself is a mystery? This paper will refute Adam and Eve’s free by analysing the grounds of their freedom, the motive incentivizing disobedience, and the design of the prohibition.

    Paradise Lost was Milton’s attempt of justifying the ways of God to men. To support the theodicy—as everything that God creates is good— Milton deploys a free will defense (Danielson 132). He argues true virtue and love require genuine choice, as such Adam and Eve’s decision to remain loyal to God must be autonomous. By attributing evil as consequence of the improper use of a rational creature’s free will—bestowed to Adam and Eve by the Father—God and evil may exist in concurrence (Danielson 135). The lack of choice would support the existence of an evil God. Milton’s God places supreme value on the granting of free will, even with the potential for misuse, as it makes for a better world than one where man always chooses the good. After crafting Adam in His image, God places a prohibition to test his and Eve’s obedience: the forbidden fruit of the Tree of Knowledge. Their loyalty to God should be a genuine, meaningful decision grounded in filial love, not compelled by a divine decree. To disobey is to rebell against His order for personal elevation; therefore, Adam and Eve must resist to prove their obedience. Milton believes they should trust without questioning His authority: “Think only what concerns thee and thy being” (8.174). Illustrating the Original Sin as a consequence of Eve’s free act probes readers to conclude that the Fall could have been avoided. In Book IX of Paradise Lost, Eve is successfully tempted by the serpent and eats from the Tree of Knowledge. The narrative frames the Fall of man as the consequence of to Satan’s successful manipulation, but primary because of Eve’s desire for independence, knowledge, and godlike status. The temptation sequence characterizes Eve as the vulnerable face of humanity who reveals her honest loyalties. She puts herself first and God second, which justifies and causes her and Adam’s free fall.  

    Milton’s God is a defensive God that seeks to absolve himself of responsibility for Adam and Eve’s disobedience. In Book III the Father states “I made him just and right; Sufficient to have stood, though free to fall” (98-99), thereby eliminating Himself from Adam and Eve’s disobedience. Yet the Father situates the pair in a state of ignorance, which causes the Original Sin; the prohibition is not equally encouraged and discouraged. Since prelapsarian pair is inexperienced, which is illuminated when Eve misinterpreted disobedience as means of becoming closer to God, they are ill prepared to choose freely. In her first postlapsarian soliloquy, Eve says her consumption of the fruit has amplified her knowledge and her love of God: “Experience... thou open’st Wisdom’s way” (9.807-09). She associates the sin as educational, the lack thereof as the perpetuation of ignorance. Disobeying the prohibition has paradoxically made her wise, obedient, and devoted. Although Eve believes that “knowing both good and evil” will propel her and Adam to a higher state (9.709), at most this choice paints her as gullible, but not as prideful or vain (Posner and Brittan 1052). The serpent says the fruit turned his mind to “all things fair and good” (9.605). She is certain of her deficient knowledge— her familiarity with evil, pain, and sorrow is quixotic—and believes the serpent. If you eat the forbidden fruit, the serpent promises, you will gain complete knowledge. It also tells Eve how fruit gave it the faculties necessary to praise, love, and admire God: “Taught The tongue not made for speech to speak thy praise.” (9.749). Eve justifies her act as positive—by transcending into to a higher state that opens her evil, she will better glorify God.

    In Paradise Lost, Eve asserts herself as a victim of ignorance. Instead of determining Adam and Eve’s devotion to God, the temptation assesses their quality of education. To exercise free will, Adam and Eve’s prelapsarian understanding of disobedience should be proportional to their familiarity with innocence. They exist in an obedient state within the Garden of Eden and know that rejecting the forbidden fruit will extend their blissful life. However, they misconstrue the repercussions of disobedience because have are incapable of experiencing or understanding it. Adam and Eve know the forbidden fruit would subject them to sin and death; however, both concepts only theoretical, taught through divine intervention and book-learning. In Book IV, Eve recounts her birth and the sequence of events following her awakening. She describes her newly born self as a person of “unexperienced thought” (4.457). After rising from under a shade of flowers, she locates a “liquid plain” issuing from a cave (4.455). Looking down she sees her own beautiful countenance “Of sympathy and love,” which “fixed mine eyes... with vain desire” (4.465-66). The Father intervenes to stop Eve from pursuing vain and self-absorbing actives. She learns that her place is at Adam’s side and that she will be a Mother to the human race. This sequence complicates the autonomy of Adam and Eve due to the divine intervention of Father, which sways Eve’s desire. She argues the intervention educated her childlike mind, giving her the capacity to obey or to disobey the Father’s request freely. Upon awakening Eve does not think her self-absorption (with her reflection) is improper, only in her recollection does she comment on the vanity of the act. Consider the temptation sequence in Book IX when Eve fails to recognize the evil inhabitant in the innocent serpent. She is unaware of the serpent’s malicious intent because she does not associate its empirical shape with Satan: “Pleasing was his shape” (9.503). Shouldn’t God intervene to educate in the same way he redirected Eve from her own reflection?

    The failure of Raphael’s prelapsarian lesson motivated Adam and Eve’s disobedience. In Book V, the Father sends Raphael to the Garden of Eden where he shall explain free will and warn the pair of Satan’s evil plot: “As may advise him of his happy state... his will though free, Yet mutable” (5.234-37). Although the angel Raphael enlightens Adam about God’s creation, the War in Heaven, and Satan’s rebellion, he provides only a narrow lesson about the premises of the prohibition. The Father is aware of the inevitable Fall of man, “Man shall not quite be lost, but saved who will” (3.173), but does not order Raphael to teach them the precise consequences following disobedience. The lesson does not include the techniques Satan could deploy against Adam and Eve, nor the visual distinguishers between prelapsarian and postlapsarian creatures (Posner and Brittan 1059). Unlike Adam, Eve was absent for the majority of Raphael’s lesson. Her thirst for knowledge was not quenched, which makes her more susceptible to Satan’s argument in favour of the fruit: “what hinders then To reach, and feed at once both body and mind?” (9.778-79). By concealing the repercussions, Eve had to choose between her duty to God and the seemingly truthful statements made by Satan. Milton argues that trust should be enough reason for Adam and Eve to stay obedient (Posner and Brittan 1060). As aforementioned, Eve desired to be closer to God by knowing both good and evil, which is why she consumed the fruit. To resist and discern Satan’s lies Eve must understand the extent of disobedience, which she does not. If she had, the actions of the happy pair would have reflected their true desires—they did not wish to disobey.

    The design of the prohibition hinders Adam and Eve’s autonomy. Firstly, the sin is encased within an enticing, aromatic fruit “Grateful to appetite” and “Fair to the eye” (9.580, 777). The prohibition, in contrast with obedience, is logically displeasing but empirically pleasant. Although Satan manipulates Eve to eat, she is also drawn to the fruit itself. God designed the prohibition to gauge the loyalty of mankind, to assess their true commitments, when presented with a choice. The serpent does not make the fruit tempting, he simply guides Eve’s attention to its present qualities. The form of the prohibition was built to deliberately misleads and deceive mankind; Eve’s reason fails to override the empirical data of the forbidden fruit. Even if she freely desired, Eve could not have fortified herself to discern the content of the fruit because God withholds information. Secondly, in Book VII Raphael says angels experience the world in a way that “heart of man suffice to comprehend” (114). As such, he must simplify the history lesson and articulate thoughts within the constraints of human language: “what surmounts the reach Of human sense, I shall delineate so, By lik’ning spiritual to corporal forms” (5.71-73). Raphael continues the sentiment in Book VII, stating he will not withhold any information God permitted Adam to receive: “Of knowledge within bounds” (120). Milton believes a surfeit of knowledge is unnecessary for their obedience (Danielson 141). Raphael explains how the excess of knowledge would distract Adam and Eve from their duties: “[you] might err in things too high And no advantage gain” (8.121-122). As such the pair should be taught what is required to sustain their Edenic life and ensure their free will, and no more (Danielson 145). Before inquiring further, Adam is told he will be limited to what does “not [surpass] human measure” (7.640). This prohibition fails to fulfill his desire for knowledge—and Eve is left utterly parched—thus motivating a quest for knowledge and hindering their capacity to resist temptation. Moreover, Raphael’s lesson does not give Adam a true representation of the horrors following the breach of the prohibition—the repercussions of Satan’s rebellion is distinctly different to the repercussions of Adam and Eve’s.

    The system established by God in Milton’s Paradise Lost is incapable of educating Adam and Eve to the degree necessary for the existence of free will. Earth and mankind are created as a means of replacing the fallen angels lost to Satan’s rebellion. A creature enslaved by an inflexible instinct of obedience would not make a good substitute; therefore, Adam and Eve must choose their loyalties (Posner and Brittan 1053). In Book IX, Adam rationalizes eating the fruit by beliving God’s justice is exaggerated. He does not think God would not doom His best creation; “Nor can I think that God... will in earnest so destroy Us his prime creatures” (9.938- 40). The pair is ignorant of the Fall’s repercussions until Book X, when the Son of God delivers God's judgment and clarifies their fate. They do not understand death until the angel Michael presents visions of the future. Adam continues soothing Eve’s lament of possible explosion from the garden until Michael blatantly states “To remove thee I am come” (10.260). The established system failed to protect their free choice; neither Adam or Eve experienced, understood, or perceived the fallen state. The repercussions are disclosed only after they disobey, pushing the once happy pair into a state of distress. In Paradise Lost, their freedom came shackled.

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Works Consulted

1. Danielson, Dennis Richard, editor. “Theodicy, Free Will, and Determinism.” Milton’s Good God: A Study in Literary Theodicy, Cambridge University Press, 1982, pp. 131–63. Cambridge University Press, https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511735646.006.

Chapter 5 of Milton’s Good God examines and contrasts Milton’s incompatibilist model of free will with deterministic compatibilism. Danielson argues Paradise Lost makes a distinction between human freedom and divine freedom (the necessity to act justly). He analyses the incompatibility of necessity with liberty in terms of Milton’s theodicy. The chapter defends that divine foreknowledge does not obstruct Adam and Eve’s free will, nor does it incline sin.

2. Posner, Richard, and Jillisa Brittan. “Classic Revisited: Penal Theory in Paradise Lost.” Michigan Law Review, vol. 105, Apr. 2007, pp. 1049–66. COinS.

The article provides a legal and philosophical analysis of Paradise Lost. Posner and Brittan explore the rationale and the justifications given for exercising punishment, including the models of punishment and the parameters that make one guilty. They argue Milton’s attempt to justify the ways of God to men is imperfect, as the punishments are excessive given God’s perfect goodness.