Paradise Lost - Universitatea "Emanuel"

“So Is My Will”
(both of these points can be argued from this passage); no, rather, these
lines consciously demand that salvation is by the grace of God alone.
Asserting this and a libertarian view of the will would require not a few
theological somersaults. 25 It is sola gratia poetically defined, though not in
the high Calvinistic sense, for it is also true that the epic represents
distinctively hybrid positions such as conditional election and universal
atonement. From this vantage point we gain another glance at the depravity
of man, as the Son speaks of the universal provision of grace for all
mankind:
Father, thy word is past, man shall find grace;
And shall grace not find means, that finds her way,
The speediest of thy winged messengers,
To visit all thy creatures, and to all
Comes unprevented, unimplor’d, unsought?
Happy for her man, so coming; he her aid
Can never seek, once dead in sins and lost;
Atonement for himself or offering meet,
Indebted and undone, hath none to bring:
Behold mee then, mee for him, life for life
I offer. (PL 3.227-37; emphasis added).
We can infer three points from this passage without doing harm to its plain
sense: 1. Grace visits all of creation (there is not, however, a distinction here
between common and salvific grace) 26 ; 2. Man can never seek the aid of
grace (i.e. total inability), being dead in sins and lost; 3. The atonement is
substitutionary in nature, and, though universally offered to all as
sufficient, is not yet efficiently applied. That is, Milton was no universalist
when it came to salvation. Clearly, this passage (as does the following)
begins to resound with non-Calvinist chords; even still, it is not altogether
Arminian. While Fallon wished to emphasize lines 230-1, thus showing that
universal grace informs the epic, notice on what condition that grace comes
– by the absolute free offering of the Son. We should not miss the fact that
this, the Son’s speech, is a response to the Father’s probing question
throughout all the celestial realm: “Say Heavenly Powers, where shall we
find such love?” (3.213). The heavy silence is almost unbearable, as Milton
would have us see angelic foreheads beading with sweat, their eyes shifting
to and fro at the prospect of God’s call: “Which of ye will be mortal to
redeem/Man’s mortal crime, and just th’unjust to save,/Dwells in all
Heaven charity so dear?” (3.214-16). Finally, the Son speaks. Man shall find
grace, yet not in a mere abstraction, but in the very flesh of the one who
“Freely put off” his glory (3.240). The epic, however, at once shuns the
notion that natural man can, despite the offer of universal grace, pine after
righteousness (though if he did, salvation would indeed follow, Milton
might argue), for the depravity of man, “once dead in sins and lost,” runs
far too deep to desire God (3.232-3).
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PERICHORESIS 2/2 (2004)