Milton and the Heresy of Apokatastasis
By Marc DiPaolo
Oesterreich notes that Eschenmayer addresses the invading spirit “as if he had a sinner before him to convert,” and includes the following excerpts from Eschenmayer’s chronicle:
“I shall not do it, and even if I did, what good would it do me?
For me all pity is lost!” Nevertheless, we did not leave him, but
comforted him with suitable passages from the Gospels. In the
end he began to stammer like a child: “Go-Go-God!” Here he
stopped and said: “Ah, if you only knew how much it costs a
damned soul, you would not insist!” … Soon he lent ear to our remonstrances and we took up again the thread of yesterday’s conversation. He now had the chance of preparing for initiation
by becoming progressively better or else being expelled by violence. Again, we commanded him to repeat after us: “God be merciful…”
which he did with less effort. As for our desire to say Our Father,
he at first refused obstinately, asking how he could say “Father” when
he was damned and lost. Earlier, earlier, it might have been possible.
Already during the repetition (of a canticle) it was observed
that he was profoundly agitated. But soon he was seized with a
lively repentance of his sins and breaking into poignant lamentations, wrung his hands, imploring pity of his Heavenly Father. “Yes, yes,”
cried he, “compassionate and pitiful!” All his features were animated
by an emotion hitherto unknown to his heart. From his eyes flowed
the tears of repentance, he was overwhelmed with an indescribable grief.
[The possessed woman had kept her full consciousness
during all this and] had heard and seen all that occurred. For she
never lost consciousness, but in spite of her utmost efforts she
could not resist the demon when it took possession of her body.
We asked her then [after she regained control of her body] if the
tears which the demon shed must not have been inspired by her,
but she denied it positively (Oesterreich 62-63).
Instead, he merely includes the incident as a landmark case of possession and allows Eschenmayer the voice to offer an obviously theological interpretation of the “possession.” What makes the anecdote so bizarre for an orthodox Christian is that Eschenmayer appears to assume that demons can be rehabilitated, and that assumption flies in the face of a dogma that posits the eternal damnation of all demons and evil human spirits.
Dante Aligheri argued that it was absurd to think of the souls trapped forever in Hell as tragic figures for they were too corrupt to repent their evil deeds in life and refused to recognize God’s moral authority to punish them. None of Dante’s souls would be capable of the self-awareness and genuine repentance evidenced by the demon in this passage, who was capable of crying “tears of repentance.” Neither would Dante’s damned be capable of so poignant, selfless a gesture as the one Eschenmayer’s demon made, since that demon relinquished his control over the girl voluntarily (presumably out of compassion for her) and risked being drawn immediately back to Hell.
Although Eschenmayer was dealing with a “lesser demon,” his willingness to preach to a soul deemed irrevocably lost by the Christian tradition suggests that he would have been equally willing to reach out to Satan himself had Satan been the creature plaguing the girl in the C. St. Case. And he would not have been the first Christian – exorcist, theologian, or otherwise – to feel pity for a demon or offer it hope for redemption.
As literary critic Maximilian Josef Rudwin illustrates in his book The Devil in Legend and Literature: “[The Devil] has had apologists even among the saints, particularly among the saints of the weaker sex. St. Theresa desired that men should not speak ill of the Devil, and pitied him for not being able to love. St. Thomas Aquinas could hardly be happy, it is said, from thinking of the doom of the Devil and went so far in his pity for the prisoner of the pit as to spend a night in prayer for the pardon and restoration of the dethroned archangel. ‘O God,’ he prayed, ‘have mercy upon Thy servant the Devil’” (Rudwin 284).
One of the enduring tenants of Christianity is that suffering engenders holiness and to be truly Christ-like is to suffer. That being the case, many theologians outside of the mainstream of Christian thought have argued that “Satan’s suffering puts a halo around his sin. Supreme suffering, hence supreme sympathy” (Rudwin 285).
Consequently, Rudwin indicates,
Origen, who was among the leading
authorities in deciding what was and what was not to be
included in the New Testament, predicted the Devil’s
purification and pardon. This belief in the salvability of
Satan was apparently shared by Justin, Clemens Alexandrinus
and afterwards by Didymus and Gregory of Nyssa”
(Rudwin 282).
Origen’s theory of the restoration of Satan to his position of former glory at God’s side came to be known as apokatastasis. A number of the proponents of the doctrine of apokatastasis held that the end of human history will see Hell dissolved from existence and all the devils and lost souls redeemed of their sins and granted a place in Heaven. Others modified Origen’s views, such as Saint Jerome, who believed that only the baptized benefited from apokatastasis, but the doctrine fell into disfavor by the time of St. Augustine, who himself considered the belief an abominable heresy.
The Emperor Justinian clearly shared Augustine’s view, since he declared all Roman Catholics who embraced the doctrine of apokatastasis heretics during the Fifth Ecumenical Council, the Second Council of Constantinople in A.D. 553. The declaration failed to crush the theory, however, and it reappeared in the ninth century, when “the famous Irish philosopher and theologian, John Scotus Erigena, professed the belief that, inasmuch as all beings came from God, they must all return to him, including the evil spirits. [Also noteworthy is a] religious poem of the thirteenth century, A Moral Ode, contains the assertion that the Devil himself might have had mercy if he had sought for it” (Rudwin 282).
As a learned scholar of theology, John Milton clearly had access to most, if not all, of the writings on apokatastasis since the doctrine first appeared in the writings of Origen circa 200 A.D. Because the character of Satan was central to his epic Paradise Lost, Milton had to wrestle with the issue, and, as a Protestant, he was not bound to follow the dictates of the Fifth Ecumenical Council in determining his position.
Although Rudwin argues that “All successful treatment of the Devil in literature and art … must be made to conform to the norm of popular belief and Catholic dogma,” (282) there was enough precedent for apokatastasis in the history of theology since Origen that Milton could be simultaneously rebellious and orthodox in his own ideology if he chose to embrace it (just as he believed he was being both traditional and revolutionary in determining his position on divorce through the study of the divorce tradition in Christianity and Judaism). Certainly the somewhat vague construction of the Biblical passages alluding to Hell and the devil granted Milton the same latitude as these earlier theologians in determining their meaning.
If Milton did believe in apokatatasis and disagreed with Justinian’s condemnation of the doctrine, then he would not be the only Protestant to share this view. Apokatatasis was championed during the Reformation
“in the writings of Denk (d. 1527), and Harnak has
not hesitated to assert that nearly all the Reformers were
apokatastaists at heart… The doctrine of apokatastasis
viewed as a belief in a universal salvation is found among
the Anabaptists, the Moravian Brethren, the Christadelphians,
among rationalistic Protestants, and finally among the
Professed Universalists. It has been held, also, by such
philosophic Protestants as Schleiermacher, and by a few
theologians, Farrar, for instance, in England, Eckstein and
Pfister in Germany, Matter in France (Battifel 3).”
However, the John Milton who challenged mainstream Christian opinion in his writings on divorce is equally capable of challenging popular opinion on other issues as well, including apokatastasis.
Much has been made of the apparent nobility of Satan in Paradise Lost, with critics arguing that Milton either deliberately or unconsciously cast Satan as the hero of a text one would expect him to be the villain of. Although it is certainly going too far to assert that Satan is the hero of the epic, he does show enough intelligence and seeming virtue to make one wonder if he is, indeed, wholly and irredeemably evil. As Origen maintains, so long as any part of Satan remains at all good, there should remain the possibility of his reform.
Critic Irene Samuel, in her book Dante and Milton: The Commedia and Paradise Lost, argues that Satan’s fate is left ambiguous at the climax of Milton’s epic. “The mechanical fixity we see in Dante’s Lucifer is only implied as the end of Milton’s Satan. Within Paradise Lost, where the central concern is not with the destiny of evil, he is left in the reptilian shape that fits the parent of sin, his ultimate future and that of his followers still not clear” (Samuel 127).
It isn’t surprising that Samuel is left in doubt about the final fate of Milton’s Satan given that several characters in the narrative don’t seem to know themselves just how long they can expect to suffer God’s divine wrath. Since sin and injustice are new concepts to the characters in Paradise Lost, then so are the concepts of punishment, just revenge, and rehabilitation. The devils are uncertain what will happen to them because there is no precedent for their fall and imprisonment, and it is as yet unclear whether they will be trapped forever in hell, or for a finite period.
Mammon, a demonic lieutenant to Satan, suggests in Book II of Paradise Lost that God could conceivably offer the fallen angels forgiveness for their attempted conquest of Heaven.
“Suppose he should relent/And publish grace to all, on promise made/Of new subjection” (II.237-239).
While contemplating the beauty of Eden, Satan himself ponders a scenario where he is restored to his former role as the angel of Light in God’s kingdom. “But say I could repent and could obtain/By act of grace my former state” (IV 93-94).
Admittedly, in both of the above passages, the devils’ musings are laced with spite and a vow not to accept clemency from God, but they are words spoken in reaction to fresh pain and confusion. It is unclear if the demons would be so spiteful should such a hypothetical situation ever arise. After all, even Adam and Eve indulged in spite and recriminations after their painful, confused fall before they were able to collect themselves enough to properly atone.
Indeed, Adam falls out of favor with God, his thoughts go towards the injustice of a supposedly good and just God punishing a transgressor for an eternity when the transgression took a mere instant to carry out. “Will he draw out,/For anger’s sake, finite to infinite/In punished man, to satisfy his rigor” (X.801-803).
Adherents of apokatastasis have traditionally relied on exactly this line of reasoning to justify their belief. It certainly helps to resolve “the problem of Hell” that Hiroshi Obayashi describes in his essay Death and Eternal Life in Christianity, that “Christians have always been aware of the absurdities and the logical gap between the infinitely forgiving God of love and the sadistic cruelty of unending punishment. The major thrust of the Gospel of Jesus was in God’s love and forgiveness. To exact infinite agonies of punishment for finite human activities is too sadistic to befit God, who even fulfils justice through love, the love that can only be expressed through self-sacrifice” (Obayashi 116).
In his milestone work On First Principles, Origen, the father of apokatastasis, describes the suffering that souls endure in Hell as the spiritual equivalent of unpleasant medications and surgeries the sick must undergo in life to return to a state of perfect physical health. In Book II, Chapter nine, he writes: “There is a resurrection of the dead, and there is punishment, but not everlasting. For when the body is punished the soul is gradually purified, and so is restored to ancient rank. For all wicked men, and for daemons, too, punishment has an end, and both wicked men and daemons shall be restored to their former rank” (Origen 146).
A follower of Origen, St. Gregory of Nyssa wrote in his “De anima et resurrectione” (P.G. XLVI, cols. 100, 101) that Hell is a place where souls are refined as gold is refined in a furnace. When the refinement is complete, and all evil is burnt out of the soul, that soul can escape from Hell and find a home in Heaven. Both the length of the refinement process and the amount of agony involved in the expurgation are determined by how evil the soul was in life. Gregory suggests that all evil will be purged from the universe by the end of time, thereby liberating both man and the devil from the forces of evil (Battifel 1).
Since the Hell of Origen and Nyssa is a place of redemption and not merely revenge, their Hell seems far less gratuitous in its agonies, and certainly appears more consistent with the message of Christ than the inescapable Hell of mainstream Church dogma. And yet, the language of the condemnation of apokatastasis holds that God would only be wicked if he were lenient in his punishment of evil, not harsh.
Article Nine of the Emperor Justinian Against St. Origen and Church of the East condemned apokatastasis in the following fashion:
“If anyone says or thinks that the punishment
of demons and of impious men is only temporary, and
will one day have an end, and that a restoration
(apokatastasis) will take place of demons and impious
men, let him be anathema. Anathema to Origen and to
that Adamantius, who set forth these opinions together
with the nefarious and execrable and wicked doctrine
and to whomsoever there is who thinks thus, or defends
these opinions, or in any way hereafter at any time shall
presume to protect them.”
St. Michael, who appears in Jude 9 as the
enemy of Satan, will in the end of days, according to the
Revelation of St. John (xii. 7 ff.), vanquish the diabolical
dragon. The Adversary will be chained eternally in hell, the
portals of which will never again open to permit him to
molest mankind” (Rudwin 282).
As theologian Joseph Hontheim points out in an essay on Hell written for The Catholic Encyclopedia, the description of Hell as a place of rehabilitation is counterintuitive for anyone who has carefully read the Biblical passages concerning Hell.
“The Holy Bible is quite explicit in teaching the
eternity of the pains of hell. The torments of the damned shall
last for ever and ever (Apoc., xiv, 11; xix, 3;xx, 10). They are
everlasting just as are the joys of Heaven (Matt. Xxv, 46).
Of Judas Christ says: ‘it were better for him, if that man had
not been born (Matt., xxvi, 24). But this would not have been
true if Judas were ever released from Hell and admitted to
eternal happiness. Again, God says of the damned: ‘Their
worm shall not die, and their fire shall not be quenched.’
(Is. Lxvi, 24; Mark ix, 43, 45, 47). The fire in hell is repeatedly
called eternal and unquenchable. The wrath of God abideth on
the damned (John iii, 36); they are vessels of Divine wrath
(Rom., ix, 22); they shall not possess the Kingdom of God
(I Cor., vi, 10; Gal. V, 21), etc.”
If true evil is, as Dante defines it, eternally unrelenting, unrepentant, and eager to corrupt the innocent, than permanent punishment is the only moral way to punish a soul that eternally sins. This being the case, it would be absurd for God to wait for the devil to reform if the devil is so evil that he is incapable of any serious contemplation of reform. It would be unworthy of God to dance to every solitary selfish whim of a rebellious, childish enemy.
As Rudwin states, “…this original and spiritual idea of the salvation of Satan, beautiful as it may be philosophically, is neither aesthetically nor theologically acceptable. Such a conception of Satan is inconsistent with the grandeur of the Personality of Evil. The sentimental devil, who repents his past wrongs and is willing to creep to the Cross, is certainly inferior to Byron’s impenitent Empyrean, who scorns all ideas of reconciliation with his ancient Adversary…”(Rudwin 281).
Northrop Frye, in his essay “The Story of All Things,” correctly maintains that any reader who sees heroism in Satan’s unrelenting stubbornness is essentially misreading the poem. He argues that any element of Satan’s behavior that conforms to the standard of the epic hero is to be seen as “perverted parody heroism” since
“it is only the divine that can really act, by Milton’s
own definition of an act, and the quality of the divine act
reveals itself in Paradise Lost as an act of creation, which
becomes an act of recreation or redemption after the fall of
man. Christ, therefore, who creates the world and then
recreates or redeems man, is the hero of Paradise Lost simply
because, as the agent or acting principle of the Father, he is
ultimately the only actor in the poem” (N. Frye 521).
“The fact that conventional heroism, as we have it in
Classical epic and medieval and Renaissance romance, is
associated with the demonic in Milton means, of course, that
Paradise Lost is a profoundly anti-romantic and anti-heroic
poem. Most of us live our lives on a roughly human level,
but if we meet with some setback, snub, imposed authority
or other humiliation we are thrown back on something that
will support and console us, and unless we are saints that
something is likely to be the ego. The sombre, brooding,
humourless ego, with its ‘high disdain from sense of injured
merit’ drives us to look for compensation, perhaps by
identifying ourselves with some irresistible hero. If in this state
we read Milton, we shall find his Satan, so far from being the
author of evil, a congenial and sympathetic figure. If we later
regain a better sense of proportion, we may understand
something of the profundity and accuracy of Milton’s
conception of evil.
“Satan is a rebel, and into Satan Milton has put all the
horror and distress with which he contemplated the egocentric revolutionaries of his time, who stumbled from one party to
another and finally ended precisely where they had started,
in a cyclical movement with no renewal” (N. Frye 524).
Roland Frye, in his book God, Man, and Satan, notes that Milton depicts Satan’s “choice [to rebel as] free and deliberate, and once made is never repudiated. ‘Better to reign in hell than serve in heav’n’ (I, 263), Satan says, for he has sealed himself. The more he strives after the power of God, the more he accomplishes his own fulfillment; the more strenuously he attempts to ‘reascend, Self-raised’ (I, 633-34), the more he achieves his own self-damnation. Here we have the central irony of his rhetorical ‘awake, arise, or be forever fall’n’ (I, 330), spoken from the fiery lake of hell” (R. Frye 27).
From the beginning, it was preposterous for Satan to rebel against God since Satan should have realized that an almighty, all-knowing Creator could not be defeated by one of his creations. Satan should have also realized that the only person qualified to rule Creation is the Creator himself, not a single being who counted himself among the created.
As Milton in the Puritan Revolution author Don M. Wolfe indicates, “God at its head, the hierarchy of Heaven wields its power with or without the consent of the governed, secure in its spiritual superiority. The duty of the lesser angels is identical with that of men: They should place themselves under the immediate direction and control of wiser and more virtuous beings, resting content in intelligent obedience” (Wolfe 344). And so, “…in Milton’s portrayal of Satan: one of Satan’s chief sins is that he has rebelled against a just aristocracy of virtue, rather than finding his place (his place as determined by his character) in the actual government of Heaven” (Wolfe 246).
In Book I of Paradise Lost, Milton explains that Satan was consumed with pride when he had aspired, along with “all his host of rebel angels”,
The futility of Lucifer’s rebellion is one of many reasons why Christians are tempted to consider the possibility that Lucifer was destined to fall and become Satan so that he might serve a divine purpose as the lord of evil. Determining when Lucifer fell is also a critical part of determining how much free will Lucifer had in choosing evil.
Russell offers an in-depth analysis of the problem of the fall of Satan that is particularly relevant for anyone interested in determining whether there is any chance of the effects of that fall being reversed:
Since Satan never chooses to do good in the entirety of Paradise Lost, one might wish to argue that Milton adhered to this belief. And yet, Milton’s depictions of Satan’s thought processes show Satan being brought to the very brink of goodness on several occasions. Satan even turns “stupidly good” when he gazes upon Eve, so I cannot fully accept that Milton agrees with Aquinas on this issue.
A moderate position, one that existed between the extremism of Satan being given no time to repent and an infinite amount of time to repent, is the position of St. John Damascene. Writing in the eighth century, Damascene taught that “the Lord gave Satan some time to reform after the sin of the fall, but that the Tempter used it instead to lead Adam astray” (Rudwin 282). Damascene is unlike Aquinas in that he deems Satan capable of redemption but notes that Satan chooses not to accept redemption. It is this position that Milton appears to be building into the structure of Paradise Lost.
Although it is never stated directly, the Archangel Gabriel seems to hint in Book IV of Paradise Lost that Damascene’s theory was correct, and that God never intended Satan to be trapped in hell forever. Hence Gabriel’s confusion that Satan would risk prolonging a rehabilitative stay in Hell by escaping from his punishment and incurring further wrath.
“To whom with stern regard thus Gabriel spake.
‘Why hast thou, Satan, broke the bounds prescribed
To thy trangressions …’” (IV 877-879)
Satan is so opposed to allowing God authority over him that he refuses to submit to the purifying fires of hell, merely because they are painful, yet Gabriel argues that
“no pain/Can equal anger infinite provoked’” (IV 877-923).
This scene is just one of many throughout Paradise Lost in which God is either overtly offering Satan a chance at redemption through his angels or is making the offer subtly, through divine inspiration, yet Satan chooses to refuse each and every offer. And each time Satan rejects God’s overtures, the decision is seen as just as insane, self-destructive, and prideful as the decision to rebel in the first place.
The first scene with Satan in Paradise Lost, the opening of Book I, takes place immediately after he has lost the war in Heaven, and Milton shows Satan wasting no time in furthering his thoughts of rebellion, vowing “never to submit or yield” to God, nor “to bow and sue for grace/With suppliant knee.” Instead, Satan resolves “To wage by force or guile eternal war/Irreconcilable, to our grand foe,/Who now triumphs, and in th’ excess of joy/Sole reigning holds the tyranny of heav’n” (I.108-124). Then, later in the same segment, he coaxes the following promise from his followers: “To do aught good never will be our task,/But ever to do ill our sole delight,” (I.159-160). For Satan, “All is not lost” so long as “the unconquerable will” is committed to the “study of revenge, immortal hate” (I.106-107).
Further proof of the depths of Satan’s depravity is his jealousy of Adam and Eve. When he realized that they still held God’s favor while he was suffering in Hell, he decided that the best way to soothe his ego was to spread his misery and destroy humanity’s happiness. Only when he succeeded in corrupting humans and convincing God to with repenting hand/Abolish his own works” (II.364-370), would Satan be happy. This attitude stands in stark contrast with Adam, who, after eating the apple, feared that his descendants might have to share in his disgrace and who wished to prevent future falls. Adam, unlike Satan, did not believe that misery should love company.
In moments when Satan remembers the glory of serving God before the betrayal, when he reflects on how far he has fallen, he appears to have an opportunity to repent that he does not take. Instead of apologizing for his misdeeds and vowing to atone, he mires himself in the pride that damned him and offers himself to the idolatry of hate. The first passage of this kind comes at the outset of the epic:
Assuming that Adam is correct and assuming that the opposite is also true, then the good that God sends into Satan’s mind – the remorse, the recognition of beauty – also leaves no grace or hope for redemption behind if it goes unapproved by Satan.
The most dramatic instance of Satan being “tempted” back to “the good” comes when he looks upon the Sun and the Garden of Eden and is awestruck by the splendor of Creation. Satan wonders why he betrayed God when God had done nothing to warrant scorn and disobedience:
Be then his love accursed, since love or hat,
To me alike, it deals eternal woe.
Nay cursed be thou; since against his thy will
Chose freely what it now so justly rues.
Me miserable! Which way shall I fly
Infinite wrath, and infinite despair? (IV.63-74)
“Thoughts, whither have ye led me, with what sweet
Compulsion thus transported to forget
What hither brought us, hate, not love, nor hope
Of Paradise for hell, hope here to taste
Of pleasure, but all pleasure to destroy, (IX.457-477)
To see how Satan could have escaped from eternal imprisonment in Hell, one need only look at the example given by Adam and Eve. When anxiety and temptation first enter into Eve’s mind via her dream, the first thing she and Adam do to restore their relationship with God is offer an oath of allegiance (V.153-174). Had Satan done this, or expressed his anxiety about humanity to God rather than suffering in secret, Sin would never have been born from his head.
Like Satan, Adam and Eve at first lamented their fall only because of the suffering they expected it entailed. They did not repent that they had wronged God and they did not take responsibility for their own actions.
“To rise even a little toward God-like perfection,
depends, however, upon man’s own choice. He is free to
accept or reject God and his commandments. If man were
not free, if he were bound by the pressure of his environment
or any other source to become sinful, then God might be said
to be the author of sin, since He created the universe. ‘I made
him just and right,’ says Milton’s God in Paradise Lost,
‘sufficient to have stood, though free to fall.’ (90) Thus did
Milton reject the harsh Calvinistic doctrine of election, by
which the atonement was declared to serve for the benefit of
a few only, the vast majority of men being condemned
inevitably to perdition, and not being able by exertion of their
will to change their status. Whereas the Calvinists had
emphasized the inherent depravity of man and the
changelessness of God’s stern decrees, Milton, following
the teachings of the Arminians, asserted man’s innate nobility
and made the infliction of God’s wrath contingent upon man’s
freedom of choice. From Milton’s point of view all people
might secure the benefits of the atonement, whereas the
Calvinists would have salvation the good fortune of the
elect few only” (Wolfe 63-64).
And later on:
“Revenge, at first though sweet,
Bitter ere long back on itself recoils;” (IX.171-172)
Roland Frye defines sin as “primarily – ‘originally’ – self-deification, the attempt to warp all life, and all that lifes, into one’s own orbit. It is the reduction of all things to one’s own dominion, the exaltation of the self above all else. It is the manner in which man is enslaved to himself, to his own ultimacy. From this slavery there can be rescue, but no escape” (R. Frye 72).
“The first sort [ the fallen angels ] by their own suggestion fell,
Self-tempted, self-depraved: man falls deceived
By the other first: man therefore shall find grace,
The other none.” (III.129-134)
As Russell indicates, Christ is in the unique position of being the only one capable of saving humanity from death and paying the debt it owes to God. That is because Christ is both God and Man; he has the divine power to defeat sin and the humanity to act as a representative of mankind and apologize to God the Father on humanity’s behalf.
“As for the Devil, he is not saved by Christ’s Passion;
neither can any satisfaction be made for his sin. As it required
one of the same species to save humanity, it would require one
of the same species to redeem Lucifer, and this is impossible,
since each angel constitutes its own species. Also, since the
Devil fell untempted, he would have to return to grace unaided,
which is impossible” (Russell 171).
The final book of Paradise Lost is replete with prophecies concerning the ultimate end of Satan, first referring to Christ’s victories over Satan in the Gospels and then referring to Satan’s defeat in the Book of Revelation. Adam, who dispelled thoughts of suicide with the hope that one day he might have his revenge against Satan, is reassured that the revenge will be carried out by Christ, whose human side is the spawn of Adam’s seed, “Shall in his seed be blessed: by that seed/Is meant thy great Deliverer, who shall bruise/The Serpent’s head; (XII.148-150). (Since Adam is delighted by this prophecy, it can be safe to say that he would have had little sympathy with any attempt on the exorcist Eschenmayer’s part to rescue Satan from Hell.)
Also predicted is the destruction of Satan’s works (XII:394-395), the defeat of his minions, Sin and Death (XII.429-431), and the humiliation of Satan, when he will be dragged “in chains/Through all his realm, and there confounded leave” (XII.454-455).
If this had been the final reference to Satan’s fate in the book, then I would have assumed that Milton’s take on the eternity of Satan’s punishment is entirely orthodox. And yet, the final reference to Satan and Hell undercuts this assumption, indicating that Milton agreed with those who saw the punishments of Hell as finite.
Finally, Milton’s Satan remains just as trapped in Hell as the Satan of orthodox Christianity, but the obliteration of all evil at the end of time offers Satan a pseudo-apokatastasik chance of relief that orthodoxy does not. And so, Milton’s theology emerges as an interesting mix of orthodoxy and an “error of Origen” that the Roman Catholic Church condemned as heresy nearly 1000 years before Milton wrote Paradise Lost.
Frye, Northrop. “The Story of All Things” from Paradise Lost: A Norton Critical
Edition. Second Edition. Ed. Scott Elledge. W. W. Norton and Company 1993.
Frye, Roland Mushat. God, Man, and Satan: Patterns of Christian Thought and Life in
Paradise Lost, Pilgrim’s Progress, and the Great Theologians. New Jersey (Princeton University Press), 1960.
Hontheim, Joseph. “Hell”, The Catholic Encyclopedia. Encyclopedia Press, Inc. 1913.
Kermode, Frank. “Adam Unparadised” from Paradise Lost: A Norton Critical Edition.
Second Edition. Ed. Scott Elledge. W. W. Norton and Company 1993.
Milton, John. Paradise Lost: A Norton Critical Edition. Second Edition. Ed. Scott
Elledge. W. W. Norton and Company 1993.
Obayashi, Hiroshi. “Death and Eternal Life in Christianity” from Death and Afterlife:
Perspectives of World Religions. Ed. Hiroshi Obayashi. Greenwood Press. New York. 1992.
Oesterreich, Traugott K. Possession and Exorcism (among primitive races, in antiquity,
the middle ages, and modern times). Causeway Books. New York. 1974.
Origen. On First Principles. Peter Smith. Gloucester, Mass. 1973.
Rudwin, Maximilian Josef. The Devil in Legend and Literature.
Chicago, London (The Open Court Publishing Co.), 1931.
Russell, Jeffrey Burton. Lucifer: The Devil in the Middle Ages. Ithaca and London
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Wolfe, Don M. Milton in the Puritan Revolution. NY (Humanites Press), 1963.
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Dr. Traugott K. Oesterreich’s Possession and Exorcism, the definitive 1921 study of the history of demonic possession that author William Peter Blatty used as the main source for his novel The Exorcist, includes a provocative account of a 19th Century exorcist who attempted to save the soul of a demon. The exorcist, Eschenmayer, writing about an incident he refers to as “the C. St. Case,” attempted to spiritually convert a demon that had possessed the body of a young girl.
‘… Although all the manifestations appeared
unfavorable, I wanted … to make an attempt to know whether
there was in him any response to good. I asked gravely: “Can
you repeat ‘God be merciful to me a poor sinner and receive
me with pity in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ?” He refused
and told us contemptuously to mind our own business, saying:
As a historian, Oesterreich does not attempt to prove that the possession in this anecdote was a hoax any more than he argues that it truly involved an actual demon who escaped from Hell into the body of the young girl.
“The dogma of the eternal damnation of the Devil
was … not universal in the Church. Basing their belief on
the biblical passage “Even the devils are subject unto us
through thy name” (Luke X.17), several fathers and doctors
of the Church entertained hopes for the Devil’s reform and
restoration to heaven.
Despite the support that the theory found in these Protestant thinkers, Rudwin maintains that “the Church has always condemned the belief in the redemption of Satan. Protestants and Catholics alike hold out no hope for the deliverance of the Devil from his deserved damnation. In our own country, the Reverend Mr. Tillotson, a minister of the Universalist Church, which believes in the salvation of all men, was unfrocked by his church for wishing to extend its doctrine of universal salvation to Satan” (Rudwin 284).
The reason why the Protestant and Catholic Churches have primarily agreed that Satan is doomed for all eternity is that too many biblical passages illustrate that the Devil
“cannot repent and win pardon like Adam, our first
ancestor. The original sin, by which mankind fell a prey to
the powers of hell, will be wiped out, at least for a part of
mankind, but Satan’s sin can never be expiated. This
Catholic conviction is based on the biblical text that “the
Devil will be destroyed utterly (Hebr. ii. 14; cf. also Ez
xxviii. 18-19).
“To set himself in glory above his peers,
He trusted to have equaled the Most High,
If he opposed; and with ambitious aim
Against the throne and monarchy of God
Raised impious war in heav’n and battle proud
With vain attempt” (I.36-44).
So what did Lucifer hope to gain by rebelling? Jeffrey Burton Russell, author of both Satan: The Early Christian Tradition and Lucifer: The Devil in the Middle Ages, notes that the answer to the question “Why did Lucifer sin?” is “For no other reason than that he willed to…. There was no cause of Lucifer’s sin, none at all” (Russell 166).
“Although traditionally Lucifer was generally
supposed to have been corrupt from the beginning, Peter
Lombard and others observed that if he had really been evil
from the moment of his creation, that would mean that God
had denied him free will and created him evil. On the other
hand, he could not have delayed long in making his choice,
because angelic intelligences grasp the nature of the cosmos
immediately and intuitively. Angels do not learn through
sensory observation or reason, so no new information could
ever have entered his mind to change it. Therefore at least a
small delay—moracula—must have intervened between his
creation and his fall, during which he must have recognized
his own limited nature as opposed to God’s and freely chosen
to disobey his master. The fallen angels had been created
naturally good with natural grace, but they had not been
confirmed in supernatural grace. At the moment of their fall,
the loyal angels were confirmed in supernatural grace and
were now beati as well as boni, but the evil angels were
confirmed in their evil. The evil angels are fixed in their own
choice and cannot be saved. First, unlike Adam and Eve, they
cannot plead the extenuation of an external tempter who was
a superior being. Second, their natural intellect being so
much greater than that of humans, their fault was
correspondingly greater. Third, they are purely spiritual
beings and do not possess the mobility of nature proper to
humans. A spiritual creature is completely bonded to its
choice: this is why human souls after death are also unable to
repent. Fourth, after their fall, their angelic qualities are
diminished. They retain much of their sharp intellect, but in
an impaired form, and although they do not lose their free will,
they lose the power actually to choose between good and evil”
(Russell 175).
Russell notes that Thomas Aquinas was one of the central theologians who held the view that the demons lost the power to choose good after the rebellion.
“Once the angels’ choice is made they cannot
reverse it. The angels that chose to accept God’s free gift of
grace are confirmed forever in beatitude and are incapable
of sin. Lucifer and his followers are forever damned and can
never be saved” (Russell 203).
For now the thought
Both of lost happiness and lasting pain
Torments him; round he throws his baleful eyes
That witnessed huge affliction and dismay
Mixed with obdurate pride and steadfast hate: (I.54-58)
When Eve is troubled by the nightmare tempting her to Sin, Adam consoles her, observing that “Evil into the mind of god or man/May come and go, so unapproved, and leave/No spot or blame behind: which gives me hope” (V 117-118).
Ah wherefore! He [God] deserved no such return
From me, whom he created what I was
In that bright eminence, and with his good
Upbraided none; nor was his service hard.
What could be less than to afford him praise,
The easiest recompense, and pay him thanks,
How due! Yet all his good proved ill in me, (IV.32-48)
Following this sad self-reflection, the devil begins to take responsibility for his own actions for the first time. He dismisses the notion that he Fell because he was destined to, since other angels who were tempted as he was did not Fall:
but other Powers as great
Fell not, but stand unshaken, from within
Or from without, to all temptations armed.
Hadst thou the same freewill and power to stand?
Thou hadst: whom hast thou then or what to accuse,
But heav’n’s free love dealt equally to all?
Satan’s reflections here have been predominantly pious, brining him closer to reconciliation with God than he has been since the outset of Paradise Lost. The fact that Satan is able to come this far in his thinking shows that Milton rejects the notion that angels are incapable of second-guessing their decisions. But it is at this point that Satan’s desire to reform collapses.
But say I could repent and could obtain
By act of grace my former state; how soon
Would highth recall high thoughts, how soon unsay
What feigned submission swore: ease would recant
Vows made in pain, as violent and void.
For never can true reconcilement grow
Where wounds of deadly hate have pierced so deep:
Which would but lead me to a worse relapse,
And heavier fall: so should I purchase dear
Short intermission bought with double smart.
Here Satan decides that, should such a reconciliation occur, he would only wind up leading yet another rebellion against God, since it is not in his nature to serve, only to rule. And it is in this passage that Satan gives himself so completely to evil, that Milton illustrates why Satan will never be free of evil and will never again escape from the torments of Hell:
This knows my punisher; therefore as far
From granting he, as I from begging peace:
All hope excluded thus, behold instead
Of us outcast, exiled, his new delight,
Mankind created, and for him this world.
So farewell hope, and with hope farewell fear,
Farewell remorse: all good to me is lost;
Evil be thou my good; by thee at least
Divided empire with heav’n’s King I hold
By thee, and more than half perhaps will reign:
As man ere long, and this new world shall know.”
Thus while he spake, each passion dimmed his face
Thrice changed with pale, ire, envy, and despair,
Which marred his borrowed visage, and betrayed
Him counterfeit, if any eye beheld. (IV.93-117)
This vow that Satan makes is merely the latest in a long chain of vows made up until this point. Although it is the firmest to date, and God has little reason to suspect that Satan will change his mind, goodness still touches Satan even after his face “dimmed” and “marred,” for when he beholds the beauty of Eve, he is briefly, just for an instant, converted back into piety:
Thus early, thus alone; her heav’nly form
Angelic, but more soft, and feminine,
Her graceful innocence, her every air
Of gesture or least action overawed
His malice, and with rapine sweet bereaved
His fierceness of the fierce intent it brought:
That space the Evil One abstracted stood
From his own evil, and for the time remained
Stupidly good, of enmity disarmed,
Of guile, of hate, of envy, or revenge;
But again, this conversion, which is nearly complete, does not last.
But the hot hell that always in him burns,
Though in mid-heav’n , soon ended his delight,
And tortures him now more, the more he sees
Of pleasure not for him ordained: then soon
Fierce hate he recollects, and all his thoughts
Of mischief, gratulating, thus excites.
If the sight of Eden, the Sun, and Eve aren’t enough to convert Satan, then one can infer from Milton’s prose that the horrors of Hell, which exist in a chaos as far from God as one can get, will not be enough either.
Thus they in mutual accusation spent
The fruitless hours, but neither self-condemning,
And of their vain contest appeared no end. (IX.1187-1189)
Their emotions during this dark period were evil, and had they not later had the courage to forgive one another and pray for God’s forgiveness, they would have never been able to reconcile with God and joined Satan in eternal banishment. But Adam eventually redevelops the piety and the maturity to take full responsibility for his own actions, and begins to impress upon God the notion that humanity has some hope of salvation after all.
“On me, me only, as the source and spring
Of all corruption, all the blame lights due;
So might the wrath. Fond wish!” (X. 832-834)
And when Eve makes the same assertion, she proves that she, too, is worthy of God’s forgiveness:
“The sentence from thy head removed may light
On me, sole cause to thee of all this woe,
Me me only just object of his ire.” (X.934-936)
Also unlike Satan, who rejected God’s authority as judge, the humans accept the justness of their banishment from Eden. They don’t doubt God, nor do they actively seek “to evade/The penalty pronounced” (X.1021-1022). Although they are tempted to escape their Hellish fate via suicide, Adam and Eve do not risk God’s wrath further, as Satan did by breaking free of Hell, but instead take a course of action that Gabriel would approve of and embrace hope for the future.
No more be mentioned then of violence
Against ourselves, and wilful barrenness,
That cuts us off from hope, and savors only
Rancor and pride, impatience and despite, (X.1041-1044)
Unlike the demons, who enjoy refusing God’s forgiveness before it is even offered, Adam and Eve apologize to God and beg for forgiveness.
Repairing where he judged us, prostrate fall
Before him reverent, and there confess
Humbly our faults, and pardon beg, with tears
Watering the ground, and with our sighs the air
Frequenting, sent from hearts contrite, in sign
Of sorrow unfeigned, and humiliation meek.
Undoubtedly he will relent and turn
From his displeasure; in whose look serene,
When angry most he seemed and most severe,
What else but favor, grace, and mercy shone?” (X.1087-1096)
Finally, Satan proves his impiety by declaring himself king of Hell, the nation he has been exiled to. Adam, however, acknowledges that God is still his king, even after he and Eve have been expelled from Eden. And so, rather than declare himself king of the world, Adam chooses to build the first Church in God’s name.
So many grateful altars I would rear
Of grassy turf, and pile up every stone
Of luster from the brook, in memory,
Or monument to ages, and thereon
Offer sweet-smelling gums and fruits and flow’rs: (XI.323-327)
According to Wolfe, Adam and Eve are saved from sharing Satan’s fate because of these pious actions.
And so, the final irony of Satan’s eternal imprisonment is that he is solely responsible for it. This is true in Dante’s Inferno, where the violent flapping of Satan’s wings freezes the air around his body, keeping him trapped permanently in a lake of ice at the center of the earth. This somewhat comical scenario merely acts out physically the self-destructive moral corruption of Satan’s mind, heart, and soul. He is his own prison. Dante demonstrates Satan’s statement, “Myself am Hell,” even before Milton writes it for him. For all those who missed the point, Milton has God reveal that Satan will have to suffer the effects of all the evils he intends to visit upon others:
“so bent he seems
On desperate revenge, that shall redound
Upon his own rebellious head.” (III.80-88)
Christ offers himself as the rescuer of humanity in Book III of Paradise Lost, but does not plea to die on Satan’s behalf. Nor is anyone – man, God, or angel – appointed for the task, because Satan and the demons are less deserving of rescue than humans are.
In glory of the Father, to dissolve
Satan with his perverted world, then raise
From the conflagrant mass, purged and refined,
New heav’ns, new earth, ages of endless date
Founded in righteousness and peace of love,
To bring forth fruits joy and eternal bliss.” (XII.546-551)
As this passage conclusively illustrates, Milton believed that the end human civilization, the apocalypse, will celebrate the glory of God the Father through the complete destruction of Hell and all the evil it contains. Therefore, although Milton does not agree with Origen that the devil and all the evil souls will ultimately find their way into Heaven, he does agree with the apokatastasik doctrine of the destruction of Hell at the end of time. He also shares St. John Damascene’s view that God gave Satan time to repent that Satan did not use, and also shares Dante’s orthodox notion that Satan’s imprisonment is self-imposed.
Works Cited
Batiffel, Pierre. “Apocatastasis” The Catholic Encyclopedia. Encyclopedia Press, Inc.
1913.
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