Kill the Dragon, Get the Girl

Kill the Dragon, Get the Girl:

God's Holiness, Sovereignty, and the Necessity of Order in the War in Heaven and its Aftermath in Milton's Paradise Lost

            When one thinks of Paradise Lost, often thought naturally turns to the moment when Eve eats the fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and convinces Adam to do the same, thus falling from paradise into a state of sin.  The fall is naturally the subject to which the fallen human mind most closely relates, since in Adam all fell.   What must be considered paramount, however, is the way in which Adam and Eve fall, especially in comparison to the way in which Satan and his demons fall.  The contrast is clear and important.  Milton spends two full books describing for his reader Satan's fall and the misery and chaos that ensues.  Satan and his fallen do indeed fall from grace, but they are in fact driven forcefully from paradise, whereas Adam and Eve are escorted from paradise gently, though purposefully.  Satan's fall foreshadows that of Adam and Eve, and the war in heaven in Book VI is the key to understanding both falls, and most importantly, in revealing God's sovereignty in His creation.  The Son of God is in charge of both, acting as the authority that drives Satan from heaven to hell and also, as intercessor, decrees the escorting of Adam and Eve from the garden in Eden to Eden itself, forbidden to rest in the garden, which is destroyed as they leave, but instead instructed to work the earth.  The similarity in each expulsion is rebellion, the difference is the very manner in which the expulsion is carried out, and the underlying point in each episode is God's sovereignty through it all.  The war in heaven, resulting in Satan's fall in Book VI and the fall of Adam and Eve in Book XII, shows how God remains sovereign in His expelling the created and underscoring the divide between creator and created, illustrating that the poem is not only about falling and its results, but ultimately about God and His holiness, sovereignty, and the necessity of order.

            When considering the war in Heaven in Book VI, the most prominent passage, that which Michael Lieb called "the most overwhelming event in Milton's epic" (21) is undoubtedly that which contains the Chariot of Paternal Deity:

                                                            forth rush'd with whirl-wind sound

                        The Chariot of Paternal Deity,

                        Flashing thick flames, Wheel within Wheel, undrawn,

                        Itself instinct with Spirit, but convoy'd

                        By four Cherubic shapes, four faces each

                        Had wondrous, as with Stars their bodies all

                        And Wings were set with Eyes, with Eyes the Wheels

                        Of Beryl, and careering Fires between;  (6.749-56)

The mystery of this passage is that no one knows for sure what exactly this chariot is supposed to look like, and it must be submitted that it does not matter in the least if one can figure it out and accurately sketch it.  The image of the chariot itself, while important, remains a mystery and most likely always will.  The point of the chariot is not only what it looks like, but rather how it is used.  The chariot is undrawn, but moves with such specific intention in its mission to root Satan that "under [the Son's] burning Wheels/ The steadfast Empyrean shook throughout,/ All but the Throne itself of God" (6.832-34).  The throne of God is the only thing that is unshaken.  Certainly God's angels feel the terror just as Satan and his fallen do and indeed watch their creator, whose "count'nance [is] too severe to be beheld," as he expels the fallen from heaven (6.825).  The war for God's angels, however, is finished and for the Son is just beginning.  The chariot, then, functions in the capacity of the means by which the fallen are driven from heaven; it is terrifying and awesome and powerful, and at the same time instills union and (re)creates order.  "In mounting the chariot, the Son initiates union. . . .  Christ in the chariot. . . is a prince who shows himself to his subjects and receives homage, then gathers them to himself. . ." (Revard 258).  Yes, there is terror in the chariot, but the way in which it functions and serves to both destroy and restore is the impetus behind it; in chasing and expelling the fallen, the Son naturally draws the faithful to his side and recreates order in his holiness.

            Milton tells his reader exactly how Satan is driven from heaven beginning at line 853:

                        Yet half his strength [the Son] put not forth, but checked

                        His Thunder in mid Volley, for he meant

                        Not to destroy, but to root them out of Heav'n:

                        The overthrown he rais'd, and as a Herd

                        Of Goats or timorous flock together throng'd

                        Drove them before him Thunder-struck, pursu'd

                        With terrors and with furies to the bounds

                        And Crystal wall of Heav' n, which op'ning wide,

                        Roll'd inward, and a spacious Gap disclos'd

                        into the wasteful Deep;  (6.853-62)

The creator causes and the created react.  Created angels are no match for the creator God as He chases them from heaven into hell.  Interesting to note here is that the Son both chases his foes and drives them like a herd of goats.  He chases them so fiercely and with such determination to root them from heaven that they willingly jump into hell because that which is behind them- the Son and his rage- is far more terrifying to them than that which is before them- hell and chaos and the unknown.  Milton spends two books showing his reader how terrifying hell is with imagery of chaos in the abyss and a horrific description of Sin and Death, so the reader naturally understands the awful place that it is.  But Milton in the war in heaven, in less than one hundred lines- and specifically in the above nine- shows just how much more terrifying the Son of God is than Satan.  Holiness is so important to God that a complete expulsion of Satan and his followers is necessary.  God's aim is to protect that which is holy and shun that which is evil.  So the Son's chasing Satan in a fiery, thundering, terrifying, and intent manner is no less than what should be expected to accomplish the goal.  Again, the Son and His chariot, while admittedly complex in structure, cannot be the most evident take away from the war in heaven.  What is accomplished, how, and why is most important.  Also notable in the preceding lines is that the Son does not set out for destruction, just for expulsion.  This is essential to understand when considering the state of Adam and Eve as well.

            While the focus on Adam and Eve falling at the end of Book XII is both warranted and important, the notability of the passage actually lies in the position of God in the fall- in all His sovereignty- in relation to the couple's ultimate escorting from the garden in Eden.

                              High in Front advanc't,
The brandisht Sword of God before them blaz'd
Fierce as a Comet; which with torrid heat,
And vapour as the Libyan Air adust, 
Began to parch that temperate Clime; whereat
In either hand the hast'ning Angel caught
Our ling'ring Parents, and to th' Eastern Gate
Led them direct, and down the Cliff as fast
To the subjected Plain; then disappear'd. 
They looking back, all th' Eastern side beheld
Of Paradise, so late thir happy seat,
Wav'd over by that flaming Brand, the Gate
With dreadful Faces throng'd and fiery Arms:
Some natural tears they dropp'd, but wip'd them soon; 
The World was all before them, where to choose
Thir place of rest, and Providence thir guide:
They hand in hand with wand'ring steps and slow,
Through Eden took thir solitary way.  (12.632-49)

If the role of the war in heaven is the key to understanding the poem, the understanding of its influence here on the expulsion of Adam and Eve from the garden is paramount.  God decreed in Book XI that the Son's duty was to

                        Eject [Adam] tainted now, and purge him off

                        As a distemper, gross to air as gross,

                        And mortal food, as may dispose him best

                        For disolution wrought by Sin, that first

                        Distemper'd all things, and if incorrupt

                        Corrupted.  (11.52-57)

Necessary to recognize, of course, is that Adam and Eve are indeed expelled from the garden for their sin.  At the end of the poem, in the above lines, they are escorted out of the garden by a Cherubim.  This is a mirror, or perhaps a shadow, of what the Son did to Satan in the war when He drove them out of heaven.  In a way, the expulsion of Satan was a foreshadow of the expulsion of Adam and Eve and the reader is brought back to the idea of (re)creating and maintaining an established order in all God's creation.  In her book, Remembering and Repeating: Biblical Creation in Paradise Lost, Regina Schwartz says that  

            While that primordial battle remains tacit in Milton's epic, as it does in the Bible, the suggestion of a cosmogonic conflict is embedded deep in the mythic fiber of Paradise Lost.  The war in heaven is itself symbolic of that conflict: after all, the war ends in the creation, a creation, we are told, specifically designed to repair the injury from that war.  Then, too, that insistent symbolic equation between the war and chaos suggests that creation not only follows the defeat of Satan; Milton's cosmos depends on the defeat of that other adversary- Chaos.  (28)

This cosmogonic conflict, Schwartz says, is pervasive in the poem, and is indeed the connective tissue.  Battle is the recurring theme throughout the Paradise Lost: in God's created order, He battled Chaos, His power prevailing and thus the world was created; in heaven, God battled Satan and thus heaven was restored.  Battle in the poem always results with God's sovereignty prevailing. God cannot lose because He is omnipotent and he exercises His power through His sovereignty, creating order to which all creation is subject, even to the point of Satan's fall and the fall of Adam and Eve being similar in nature, though different, in order to act out God's will and maintain holiness and order in his creation.  In the war, God took a stand against rebellion and, by His power, just consequences ensued.  In the case of Adam and Eve, the consequences are upheld and carried through.  Both situations of rebellion are judged equally.  God in each, in accordance with His nature, is unchanging; He is the same, the standard, sovereign, and at the end of the "mythic fiber" that Schwartz mentions is He and He alone, suggesting that the poem is about Him first and man's relation to Him second.  There are of course both similarities and differences in the way in which each above episode is carried out, and both deserve attention in their own respect to show God's sovereignty in His creation and exercising of His will- though for the sake of brevity the examples will not be exhaustive, but instead focus on similarity in rebellion and the difference in each literal fall.

            Similar in the two instances, then, is obviously rebellion.  Satan rebels when he learns that he is subject to the Son of God in Book V.  As Stella Purce Revard notes in The War in Heaven: Paradise Lost and the Tradition of Satan's Rebellion, "When God proclaimed the kingship of the Son. . . he was proclaiming in truth the mystical unity of all creation under this very special being.  Ironically, of course, the proclamation to union resulted in the first breech of union, as Satan withdrew from the throne of God, leaving it 'unworship't, unobeyed'" (258).  Satan's free will allows him to reject what God has decreed right and good, but as a result Satan in his rebellion enters into a state of sin in His rejection of God.  In this state of rebellion that leads to war with God, Satan cannot remain in heaven.  God is Holy and cannot tolerate sin in heaven; permitting sin to exist in heaven in any of its forms is both anathema and impossible by heaven's very nature, as it disrupts order and undermines holiness.  Thus, Satan is rooted from heaven.  Likewise, Adam and Eve rebel when they eat the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.  They reject by their own free will what God has decreed right and good and, like Satan, are expelled from Eden, as in Eden, like heaven, there cannot exist sin in a perpetual state.  Thus, Adam and Eve are rooted from Eden.  Yes, they are tempted and do not rebel in the same way as Satan, but rebellion is rebellion, so God is just in their expulsion.

            In the rooting from their respective paradises, however, is another similarity, as was mentioned earlier, and probably the most important one: there is no destruction, only expulsion.  God does not seek to annihilate anyone, only to remove their sin from His presence and distance Himself from their sinful state, as God, being Holy, cannot exist along side of sin, but only above it, in accordance with His nature.  The beings, both angels and humans, that God has created cannot be completely destroyed, but are created to live eternally from their inception. 

            The different ways in which Satan and his angels and Adam and Eve are dismissed from their respective paradises also illustrates God's sovereignty and His justice.  As has already been shown, Satan is driven from heaven forcefully by the Son of God and the simile is important.  Milton writes that Satan and his angels were driven as a herd of goats, thunderstruck, and pursued with terrors and furies by the Son.  In a note in his edition, Merritt Y. Hughes makes reference to Matthew 25:33: "And he shall set the sheep on his right hand, but the goats on the left" (343).  But in using only this verse, Hughes stops short of a full explanation that is essential to understanding how each fall was different.  In Matthew 25:41, the illustration of the goats is revealed: "Then shall he say also unto them on the left hand, Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels."  The goats- Satan and his angels- are the reprobate destined for hell and are chased from the glory of heaven in an appropriate manner, the terror of God's holiness at their heels.

            This imagery, however, is starkly contrasted in the expulsion of Adam and Eve from the garden.  Adam and eve are not chased from the garden in Eden, but are rather escorted from it.

                                                            whereat
                        In either hand the hast'ning Angel caught
                        Our ling'ring Parents, and to th' Eastern Gate
                        Led them direct, and down the Cliff as fast
                        To the subjected Plain; then disappear'd. 

                                                                        (12.636-40)

Adam and Eve are not violently dismissed from the garden, and the language here shows it.  They are "caught" and "led" to the Eastern Gate, not driven "Thunder-struck" with "terrors" and "furies" as is depicted in the expulsion of Satan in Book VI.  The language of each episode appropriates it in its context.  God righteously expels the reprobate to the place that he has prepared for them, and likewise escorts the blessed pair to their prepared place.  Returning to Matthew's gospel, 25:34 says: "Then shall the King say unto them on his right hand, Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world."  The sheep at God's right hand are in this instance Adam and Eve; they are His chosen, by His sovereign decree, and His preference for them is shown in His treatment of the dismissal of Adam and Eve from the garden.  Likened to a shepherd, God drives goats and guides sheep, imagery that is pervasive in the Bible.  The twenty fifth chapter of Scripture concludes in verse forty six: "And these [reprobate] shall go away into everlasting punishment: but the righteous into life eternal."  God in His sovereignty rules over all things and is just in His judgment. 

            In Paradise Lost, God is concerned with preservation of holiness.  He is concerned with order in both creation and in heaven, and when war disrupts purity and order in Book VI, God through His Son restores it.  The war in heaven, especially the final hundred or so lines of Book VI, is indeed the point on which the poem is balanced.  It is in these lines that God exercises His authority and counters the sin of rebellion and, in a manner of speaking, kills the dragon and gets the girl- that is, expels sin and restores holy paradise.  In this light, it must be noted that in a sense paradise itself, that is, a state of holiness and sinlessness, is a character in the poem, and while it may be blasphemous to say that God has His closest relationship to a dwelling- instead of His image bearer, Man- the idea must be at least recognized that it is indeed set apart and separate, and a state to which one must try to obtain.  God is holy and sovereign, and the only proper place for sinful angels and men is apart from Him, at least in this account.  Like the rest of the poem, the intricacies of the war in heaven will probably never be fully resolved, as a close reading of every line seems to always reveal something new.  Milton accomplished what he set out to do in creating his epic: he created a poem that, like creation itself, will never be fully comprehended, thus providing unending discussion to this great work, and for that one must be thankful.

Works Cited

Hughes, Merritt Y., ed.  Complete Poems and Major Prose.  By John Milton.  Indianapolis:          Hackett Publishing Company, Inc., 2003.  Print.

Lieb, Michael.  "'The Chariot of Paternal Deitie': Some Visual Renderings."  Milton's Legacy in     the Arts.  Ed. Albert C. Labriola and Edward Sichi, Jr.  University Park: The        Pennsylvania State university Press, 1988.  21-58.  Print. 

Milton, John.  Paradise Lost.  Complete Poems and Major Prose.  Ed. Merritt Y. Hughes.             Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, Inc., 2003.  Print.

Revard, Stella Purce.  The War in Heaven: Paradise Lost and the Tradition of Satan's Rebellion.  Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1980.  Print.

Schwartz, Regina M.  Remembering and Repeating: Biblical Creation in Paradise Lost.     Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988.  Print.

The Bible. Biblia.com. Authorized Version. Logos Bible Software, n.d. Web. 19 April 2013.