'Earth's great altar': Greek patristic theology and the sacrament of nature in Milton's 'Paradise Lost'

摘要

While much has been written about Milton's theology, Milton criticism lacks a sustained examination of his poetic theology vis-a-vis the Greek Fathers of the Eastern Church. But such an examination of Milton's poetics, especially in the prelapsarian books of Paradise Lost, sets in relief a rich sacramental vision of nature. This suggests (1) that nature, not just history, is a means by which God is immanent in creation, and (2) that nature is a means by which Adam and Eve may live in communion with God. Made imaqo dei, Adam and Eve are summoned to be the sovereigns of creation (to give form to nature) and the priests of creation (to offer this to God eucharistically). Through the fulfillment of this vocatio--exemplified in their eucharistic consumption of the food which God provides them--Adam and Eve possess the prospect of theosis. This involves not only their own deification but also the transfiguration of the entire created order so that it, too, may participate in God. This is a vision of nature that reiterates the theological vision of the Greek Fathers, especially those of the fourth century: Basil, Gregory of Nyssa, Gregory of Nazianzus, and Chrysostom. These Fathers constitute either Milton's sources or a locus of influence for his understanding of nature. Several things indicate this: (1) Milton purchased numerous editions of the Greek Fathers and read them extensively; (2) Milton sojourned for a month in Venice, home to the largest colony of Orthodox Christians in western Europe; (3) certain ideas of the Greek Fathers were widely disseminated during the seventeenth century. But there is one indication the Greek Fathers were not Milton's sources: Milton replaces nature with history as the sole arena of God's redemptive activity; so nature as a restored sacrament plays no part in the postlapsarian redemption of humankind. Adam's and Eve's postlapsarian redemption is incompatible with their prelapsarian possibilities. Milton fails to sustain nature as a sacrament, but the Greek Patristic character of his prelapsarian poetic theology can recover for us the universal character of the world conceived as a sacrament and humankind's eucharistic response in worship.