Johnson 2

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Joel Johnson

Professor Samuel Smith

Milton and Hermeneutics

15 December 2014

The Ecological Hermeneutic of Paradise Lost

John Milton’s epic poem, Paradise Lost, not only references environmental issues; it provides a framework for understanding Milton’s larger ecological hermeneutic. The poem illustrates how Milton understands proper, godly relationships between humans, animals, plants, and the earth within the larger context of the ecosystem. Milton’s hermeneutic is both descriptive and prescriptive; not only laying out his personal views, but also inviting thinkers of all eras into an ecological conversation. As Ken Hiltner notes, “Milton certainly looked back to the past when imagining Eden, but it is also the case that the poet is offering a prescription for the future as well as a description of the past” (6). Milton’s environmental ideas were highly modern and sophisticated, and his epic poem anticipates many of the ideas we attribute to contemporary environmentalism (Hiltner 8).

John Milton was a devout Christian, and an exploration of his ecological hermeneutic would be incomplete without taking into account some of the stigmas associated with Christian ecology and noting how his views resonate with or differ from the stereotypes.[footnoteRef:1] In 1967, Lynn White Jr. wrote “The Historical Roots of Our Ecologic Crisis”, an explosive article for Science magazine, in which he argued that the Christian faith bears much of the responsibility for our current environmental predicament. Among other issues, he claimed that Christianity condemned pagan forms of animism, and in doing so “made it possible to exploit nature in a mood of indifference to the feelings of natural objects” (White 221). He also accused Christians of using the language of Genesis, specifically commands such as “have dominion over” and “subdue,” as an excuse to dominate and exploit the natural world. Finally, he asserted, “Christianity is the most anthropocentric religion the world has ever seen” (221). Does Milton’s ecological hermeneutic plead guilty to White’s accusations? At first glance it may appear so, but a close analysis reveals an author who cared deeply for the earth and portrayed an ecological community of mutual respect and service between all members. [1: That is, the stereotypes as presented by Lynn White Jr. in his article “The Historical Roots.” ]

We must begin somewhere, and it seems natural to begin with place itself. Not a specific location, but rather the concept of “place-ness,” and more specifically, an “ecological perception of place” (Bouma-Prediger 3). Steven Bouma-Prediger claims that a sense of place is derived from an intimate knowledge of the natural history of a piece of land—its flora and fauna, its natural systems and inhabitants (3). All this knowledge feeds into what he refers to as “ecological literacy”. Ecological literacy is not a goal in and of itself; it provides a foundation for action. As environmental activist David Orr claims, “The ecologically literate person has the knowledge necessary to comprehend interrelatedness, and an attitude of care or stewardship” (92). Steven Bouma-Prediger elaborates, “ . . . in short, [it] implies a modicum of knowledge about the inextricable interconnectedness of all creatures great and small” (4). That modicum of knowledge then directs and motivates proper action within the sphere of interconnectedness. How we understand the world around us informs how we relate to it and live within it; in order to understand how Milton believes humans ought to relate to nature, we must first look at the perception of place he presents in Paradise Lost.

After hearing Raphael’s answer to his questions in book eight, Adam replies:

But apt the mind or fancy is to rove

Unchecked and of her roving is no end

Till warned or by experience taught she learn

That not to know at large of things remote

From use, obscure and subtle, but to know

That which before us lies in daily life

Is the prime wisdom. (8. 188-94)

After searching for answers to questions about abstract and distant concepts, Adam recognizes the importance of knowledge being locally grounded. Wisdom, he claims, is found in knowledge of daily life, specifically that “which lies before us” (8.193). Here, Adam describes ecological literacy, a knowledge of place. However, Adam and Eve do not have a merely academic knowledge of place. For them, place becomes connected to life itself.

When informed that they will be removed from the garden, Eve cries out, “O! unexpected stroke worse than of death / Must I leave thee Paradise? Thus leave / Thee, native soil” (11. 268-270)? In losing Paradise, Eve loses an intimate relationship she has with a specific place. She continues, “How shall I part and wither wander down / Into a lower world . . . How shall we breathe in other air less pure” (11.282-85)? Eve laments that she will no longer benefit from the beauty and purity of paradise, but there is more to it. Adam explains the depth of what they have lost: “All places else / Inhospitable appear and desolate, Nor knowing us nor known” (11.305-07). Adam and Eve were deeply grounded in the garden. They knew the place, and the place knew them. In Paradise, Adam and Eve were part of a dynamic relationship with their ecosystem, a relationship that was fractured by the fall. In prelapsarian Eden, “Adam and Eve are found to be thoroughly rooted in the Earth; understanding their garden place not as dead resources to be utilized, but rather as the very source which makes life in the garden possible” (Hiltner 4). That all changes after the first sin, and Milton shows the consequences to be painfully personal. As Bill Devall says, a true notion of place is when “a person can sincerely say after careful self-evaluation and prayer that . . . if this place is destroyed, then something in me is destroyed” (Hiltner 13). Adam and Eve’s laments clearly show that in leaving their “native soil” behind, they lose a part of themselves, and the sheer beauty of their relationship with the land before the fall makes the loss of that connection so much more painful.

How did the link between humanity and environment become so deep that Eve describes the fractured relationship as worse than death? It begins with Adam and Eve’s roles in the garden, and Milton’s understanding of how God designed humanity to interact with the earth.

As Adam wakes Eve one morning he whispers,

The morning shines and the fresh field

Calls us. We lose the prime to mark how spring

Our tended plants, how blows the citron grove,

What drops the myrrh and what the balmy reed,

How nature paints her colors, how the bee

Sits on the bloom extracting liquid sweet. (5.20-5)

This passage seems to render the first parents as mere observers of nature, watching and admiring God’s creation. However, the word “tended”, suggests a different reality. Throughout their time in the garden, Adam and Eve are described checking the growth of fruit trees whose boughs “over-woody reached too far” (5.213), and “[directing] / The clasping ivy where to climb” (5.216-17). Milton displays that Adam and Eve are dynamic participants in the garden ecosystem. They do not simply observe nature; by tending, they actually alter it from its natural form.

This brings us to an interesting crossroads in current environmental theory. The morality of human interaction with the environment has been highly debated for centuries, and those debates have come to the academic foreground in light of recent concern over climate change, overpopulation, and a host of other environmental issues. Some scholars believe that humans should have no impact on the environment whatsoever. In defining his environmental ethic, philosopher Paul Taylor sets forth a “Rule of Noninterference” (346). He describes this rule as having two duties: “ . . . one requiring us to refrain from placing restrictions on the freedom of individual organisms, the other requiring a general ‘hands off’ policy with regard to whole ecosystems and biotic communities, as well as to individual organisms” (Taylor 346-7). Taylor’s rule involves no involvement, implying that humankind should be entirely separate from nature.

The idea that nature, in its most pristine and pure state, should be independent from human involvement is also reflected in America’s legal language. The Wilderness Act of 1964, designed to protect over 9 million acres of federal land from development, describes wilderness as such: “A wilderness, in contrast with those areas where man and his own works dominate the landscape, is hereby recognized as an area where the earth and its community of life are untrammeled by man, where man himself is a visitor who does not remain” (Scott 127). Words such as “untrammeled” and “dominate” imply that where man does exist within nature, his effects are always negative. Such a negative assumption is understandable in light of our current environmental crisis, but Milton does not subscribe to such pessimism. By giving Adam and Eve active roles of stewardship in Eden, “Milton advocates a position contrary to that of environmentalists who bitterly claim the earth would be better off without humans” (Buckham 136).

Fred Van Dyke also challenges such a cynical perspective. He claims, “When we speak of the world as ‘nature,’ we speak of it as a self-generating, self-sustaining system, and we mentally (even if unconsciously) exclude ourselves from it” (39). Van Dyke notices that we tend to view humanity as an unnatural part of the world, which “leads us to conclude that the best we can do for nature is to remove ourselves from it” (39). This thought process, Van Dyke argues, is detrimental to the natural world, because God purposefully designed humans to play an integral role in the natural system. He made us to exist within nature and to live out his role as sustainers and redeemers of the natural world (Van Dyke 40). Raphael comments that “whatever was created needs / To be sustained and fed” (5.414-15). God is recognized as the ultimate source of sustenance, but he also imparts upon humans, the bearers of his image, some of the duties of that role. In tending the plants of the garden, Adam and Eve reflect the image of God as sustainer. This role cannot be fulfilled if humans believe that respecting creation means separating themselves from it.

In order to more fully understand Milton’s interpretation of Adam and Eve’s role as sustainers and redeemers of creation, we need to examine God’s command to the first parents and how Milton would have understood it. In Genesis 1:28, God says, “Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth” (King James Version). Man is also instructed to “dress”(cultivate) and “keep” the garden (Gen. 2:15). As White demonstrated, these commands often have a negative connotation in light of modern technological degradation. But would Milton have interpreted the biblical commands as permission to exploit the natural world? Determining the answer prompts a look at the original biblical language.

The Hebrew (another language Milton mastered) word for cultivate, abad, means “‘to serve’ or, more literally, ‘to be slave to’” (Van Dyke 96). Thus, cultivating the earth would not involve anthropocentric gain, but geocentric service. Similarly, keeping involves preservation and protection. In fact, the Hebrew word for keeping, samar, “is the same word used in Numbers 6:22-26,” (“the Lord bless you and keep you”) implying that “humankind is instructed to ‘keep’ the garden as the Lord ‘keeps’ us” (Van Dyke 96). Milton’s ability to read Greek, Hebrew and Latin, would render him a more complete understanding of the biblical meaning than most modern readers, and we see that reflected in the diction he employs throughout Paradise Lost.

Milton reuses the language of Genesis when God says to Adam, “This paradise I give thee, count it thine / To till and keep,” (8.319-20) and Michael echoes “All th’ Earth he gave thee to posses and rule” (11.339). These words sound stereotypically monarchial, but it is imperative to remember that Milton’s view of ruling and subduing would be compatible with the original Hebrew, that is, a rule of service, protection and holistic development. Milton’s wording in “The Tenure of King and Magistrates” reflects such an interpretation, as he writes, “Aristotle and the best of political writers have defined a king him who governs to the good and profit of his people and not for his own ends” (391). Clearly, Milton applies this service-oriented definition of kingship to his interpretation of Adam and Eve’s rule in paradise as well. Van Dyke deftly describes Milton’s viewpoint when he writes, “To subdue Eden . . . meant to retain the goodness and beauty which God gave it, while actively serving Eden through managing (cultivating) it to better enhance and manifest the qualities hidden within it” (96).

Time and time again, Milton shows Adam and Eve not simply as members, but as active managers, or sustainers, of the garden. Adam reminds Eve:

With first approach of light we must be ris’n

And at our pleasant labor to reform

Yon flow’ry arbors, yonder alleys green,

Our walk at noon with branches overgrown

That mock our scant manuring and require

More hands than ours to lop their wanton growth

Those blossoms also and those dropping gums

That lie bestrewn unsightly and unsmooth

Ask riddance if we mean to tread with ease. (4.624-32)

Adam describes a physical alteration of nature, which brings to mind White’s accusations of exploitive interaction. With this in mind, the importance of the word “reform” cannot be overstated. The alteration Adam details is fundamentally different from the domination and exploitation that Lynn White Jr. condemns. To reform means, “To restore to full strength or health, or to proper function . . . to amend or improve by alteration of form” (“reform”). Additionally the word is described as “relating to renewal or restoration” (“reform”). The English word is derived from the Latin (a language Milton knew well) reformare, meaning “to change, form . . . restore.” Broken down, “re-” means, “back” and formare, “to form” (“reform”). Thus, the interaction Adam and Eve have with nature is neither destructive nor exploitive. They recognize the garden’s tendency towards chaos (Eve notes, “One night or two with wanton growth derides / Tending to wild” (9.211-12)) and their work is one of reformation—bringing the garden back to its original shape, one of order. Restoring order is one of the primary roles Milton sees Adam and Eve fulfilling. In this way, they reflect God’s role as redeemer. As Fred Van Dyke puts it, “It was God who brought order out of chaos . . . now, not out of need, but out of love, he involves a human being in the continuing work of the ordering of creation” (91).

Adam and Eve’s mission to reform and reorder should not be ignored, because the way in which Milton represents idyllic nature as embodying order goes against the very heart of some of our nation’s foremost environmental thinkers. Henry David Thoreau idealized wilderness. In his essay, “Walking,” he wrote, “Life consists with wildness. The most alive is the wildest. Not yet subdued to man, its presence refreshes him . . . In short all good things are wild and free” (124, 26). Similarly John Muir voiced, “Thousands of tired, nerve-shaken, over-civilized people are beginning to find out that going to the mountains is going home; that wildness is a necessity” (1). These men relished nature not only for its beauty, but also for its lack of human-orchestrated order. Thoreau even went so far as to condemn German ecologists for making their forests too clean and orderly. Would Muir and Thoreau, then, have disapproved of Milton’s garden, and the way in which Adam and Eve try to prevent the garden from reverting to its wild state? Perhaps, but I think not.

When Raphael descends to earth to converse with Adam, he enters through,

A wilderness of sweets, for Nature here

Wantoned as in her prime and played at will

Her virgin fancies pouring forth more sweet,

Wild above rule or art, enormous bliss. (5.294-97)

The garden itself is tended and maintained, but the outskirts of the garden are “above rule,” yet still blissful. Even further out, beyond the borders of Eden, there is a “steep wilderness whose hairy sides / With thicket overgrown, grotesque and wild, / Access denied” (4.135-37). “Despite its being called ‘grottesque’ by Milton’s epic narrator, and marginalized altogether by Adam and Eve, there is wild, raw nature present in Paradise” (Pici 39). Milton’s construction of Eden seems to imply that while raw wilderness is not conducive to human habitation, it still has value—it still has a place in Paradise. Adam and Eve tend the garden, but only the garden. They are members of the natural community, who like all species need a suitable habitat, but they are never seen as conquerors of nature, nor do they extend their reformation beyond the garden, or attempt to order the wilderness. Their garden habitat offers a sustainable model for living in harmony with, instead of opposition to the natural world. Wildness is still alive and well in Milton’s Eden.

The depiction of Edenic subduing starkly contrasts with the subjugation of creation that Milton portrays in Hell. Rather than partnering with creation to bring about order, in Hell we see Satan and the other demons demeaning creation in order to exalt themselves. While the flowers of Eve are “touched by her fair tendence” (8.47), the demons treat the earth with anything but gentleness. In the landscape of Hell, they “Opened into the hill a spacious wound” (1.689), and Milton explains that it is the demon Mamon who eventually teaches humanity to “[ransack] the center and with impious hands / [rifle] the bowels of their mother Earth” (1.686-87). Instead of reforming creation, Satan and his cohorts deform it. Not surprising since Satan admits, “only in destroying I find ease / To my relentless thought” (9.129-130).

Milton was not alone in choosing to depict Hell as the birthplace of the mining industry, an understandable imagination in 17th century England. The forests surrounding London had been completely razed by 1600, so seacoal served as the primary means of fuel. The coastally mined coal had a particularly high sulfur content which caused it to produce toxic smoke that lead to a drastic increase in respiratory death in England between 1500-1700 (Hiltner 2). In 1662, John Graunt wrote that some people “cannot at all endure the smoak of London, not only for its unpleasantness, but for the suffocations it causes” (Hiltner 2). One year prior, John Evelyn wrote, “the city of London resembles the face rather of Mount Aetna, the Court of Vulcan . . . or the Suburbs of Hell, [more] than an Assembly of Rational Creatures” (Hiltner 2-3). In the context of early modern England’s air pollution, it makes sense that Milton would portray mining and all its destructive side effects so antipathetically.

Several Milton scholars have attributed the destruction the demons wreak on their environment (such as mining) to their lack of place. Canvassing the earth, Satan takes note “Of hill and valley, rivers woods and plains” but acknowledges “I in none of these / Find place or refuge and the more I see / Pleasures about me so much more I feel / Torment within me” (9.118-121). When the fallen angels were thrown from heaven they lost all sense of connection to the space around them. In Chaos, “time and place are lost,” (2.894) and the consequences are striking. As John S. Tanner recognizes, a lack of place means, “Domination of the world, not cooperation, mutuality, reciprocity, or grateful acceptance, becomes the only way of connecting the self to the other” (164). Ken Hiltner points out, “The devils have no sense of place, so they behave violently towards whatever space they inhabit” (17). Milton connects placelessness with Hell itself, and in doing so, he underscores the tremendous importance of place.

The land ethic of Hell seems to relate to that of Milton’s younger contemporary, John Locke. Locke believed that land must be altered in order to have value, and strongly supported individual ownership. In the Second Treatise of Government, he wrote, “Land that is left wholly to Nature, that hath no improvement of Pasturage, Tillage, or Planting, is called, as indeed it is, waste and we shall find the benefit of it amount to little more than nothing” (26). Locke surely had more noble intentions than the demons, and his improvements are generally positive, but there are still fundamental similarities between his assertion and the land ethics of Hell. Locke sees no intrinsic value in creation. Its only value is found in what man can make of it and thereby possess and consume. Similarly, “The epic’s devils see place as objectively that which can be consumed and developed” (Hiltner 4). In some ways it is this viewpoint that Lynn White Jr. associates with Christianity, which makes it intriguing that Milton chooses to situate this anthropocentrism in Hell rather than Eden. In contrast to the devil’s perspective, Adam and Eve recognize that Earth has value simply because it was created by God. As already evidenced, they have deep connections to place, and thus see the garden not as “space to develop . . . but as the living source of life” (Hiltner 28).

Additionally, one of the reasons Milton urges respect for all forms of life is that all of God’s creation springs from one substance. Raphael explains to Adam:

All things proceed and up to him return

If not depraved from good, created all

Such to perfection, one first matter all

Endued with various forms, various degrees

Of substance and in things that live of life,

But more refined, more spirituous and pure

As nearer to Him placed or nearer tending, (5.469-76)

Raphael points to the basis for assuming intrinsic value in all life. All things were created by God and find life in Him. Milton’s words are reminiscent of Colossians 1:16 which reads, “For by him were all things created, that are in heaven, and that are in earth . . . all things were created by him, and for him: And he is before all things and by him all things consist” (King James Version). The wording of Colossians also meshes with the basis of the natural hierarchy that Raphael presents; that while God created all things, some are superior to others because of their proximity to him.

Milton’s hierarchy opposes the ideas of some environmentalists, specifically those who subscribe to the concept of deep ecology. Wendell Berry wrote, “I humble myself before a mere piece of earth and speak of myself as its fragment” (25). While Milton often refers to Adam as “a creature formed of Earth” (9.149), he also believes that man is superior to earth and beast, because he is nearer to God. Humans were formed of the fragments of the earth, but Milton would never consider man to be a byproduct of the soil. There is a balance here, and in it we can see that Milton’s ecological hermeneutic is neither anthropocentric nor eco-centric. It is theocentric. The goodness of creation is derived solely from its connection to God. Man does not receive his worth from the earth, but neither should the earth be valued solely for what it can offer man. After all, as Fred Van Dyke points out,

At the time of God’s pronouncements on the goodness of his creation, after God had ordered all things, no humans were yet present. Human beings are not created until the pronouncements are complete . . . arriving as the last act of a nearly finished work. They are not asked to applaud, evaluate or critique. Their own opinion about creation’s goodness is not considered. The judgment has already been made, the valuation already declared, by the only Judge who really matters. Creation is good in general and in particular, and its value exists because its Creator exists. (48)

Returning to Raphael’s explanation that what is more pure is “nearer to [God] placed” (5.476), we see that there is indeed a natural hierarchy, that hierarchy is completely dependent upon God, not man.

Still, even with such an understanding, the hierarchy that Raphael alludes to can be a troubling aspect of Milton’s work. For instance, Milton’s representation of animal life seems to indicate an anthropocentrism out of line with the rest of his ecological hermeneutic. While Milton devotes great attention to the importance of plant life (necessary for survival), his consideration does not seem to extend to the animals. Animals are largely portrayed as man’s entertainment; playing and frolicking, but otherwise “[roving] idle unemployed” (4.617). Conversing with Eve, Adam claims,

Man hath his daily work of body or mind

Appointed which declares his dignity

And the regard of Heav’n on all his ways

While other animals unactive range

And of their doings God takes no account. (4.618-22)

The wording of the last line is particularly harsh, and seems to betray that Milton does not believe God cares for animal life. Taken on its own, the line directly contradicts Luke 12:6, “Are not five sparrows sold for two farthings, and not one of them is forgotten before God?” However, a closer look at Milton’s wording may shed light on the problem. Ann Torday Gulden outlines the issue:

Adam describes a kind of hierarchical divine indifference that does not easily accord with the scenes of pastoral activity showing the playful prelapsarian innocence of the animals, unthreatened and unthreatening. It may be that in using the word “account,” however, Adam means that the animals do not have to account for their actions as man does, for they are not subject to any prohibition. (Gulden 51)

If Gulden is properly interpreting Milton’s word choice—and I believe that she is—then Milton does not believe that God devalues animals, but rather that animals are not held accountable to the same moral standards as humans. Philosopher Tom Regan agrees that animals are moral patients not moral agents. He claims, “moral patients lack the prerequisites that would enable them to control their own behavior in ways that would make them morally accountable for what they do” (Regan 314). Regan recognizes that the actions of moral patients still have an effect on the world around them, and that those effects may even be negative. Still, he believes “[a] moral patient lacks the ability to formulate, let alone bring to bear, moral principles in deliberating about which one among the number of possible acts it would be right or proper to preform” (314). Because they lack the ability to consider and deliberate (Milton refers to this as reason) “[m]oral patients . . . cannot do what is right, nor can they do what is wrong” (Regan 314). In this context, it makes sense, that while God values animal life inherently, “of their doings [he] takes no account” (4.622).

The importance of reason is crucial to Milton’s ecological hermeneutic. It not only removes moral obligation from the animal kingdom, it serves as the foundation for the ecological hierarchy described in Eden. On the fifth day of creation, Milton describes God “[creating] the great whales and each / Soul living” in the sea (7.391-2). Next, God calls the earth to “bring forth soul living in her kind, / Cattle and creeping things and beast of th’ earth / Each in their kind” (7.451-3). The account shows God caring about animal life enough to imbue all kinds with living souls—the very breath of life. That being said, Milton continually emphasizes reason as that which distinguishes between man and beast and frames the natural hierarchy. God describes man as the “master work,”

a creature who not prone

And brute as other creatures but endued

With sanctity of reason might erect

His stature and, upright with front serene,

Govern the rest, self-knowing, and from thence

Magnanimous to correspond with Heaven, (7.504-11)

Milton was not the only prominent thinker of his age to suggest reason as the key distinction between man and animal. Rene Descartes, a few years Milton’s elder, claimed that animals are nothing more than machines. He argued that it is by the use of language and reason that “we may . . . recognize the difference that exists between men and brutes” (Descartes 275). Descartes felt so strongly about this distinction that he wrote, “this does not merely show that the brutes have less reason than men, but that they have none at all, since it is clear that very little is required in order to be able to talk” (275). Descartes believed animals to be guided solely by passion and instinct, whereas a man could understand and curb those passions and instincts because of his ability to reason. Milton’s representation of animal life conforms to Descartes’ theory in many ways. (We see in Eve’s encounter with Satan that the animals were, by nature, “Created mute to all articulate sound” (9.557)). Still, as part of God’s unique creation, Milton’s animals hold higher value than the automata Descartes describes.

Milton makes it clear where unreasoning animals fit into the hierarchy of the garden. With wording reminiscent of Milton’s prose in “The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates,” Abdiel asserts, “God and Nature bid the same / When he who rules is worthiest and excels / Them whom he governs” (6.175-77). On the merit of reason, man is presented superior to beast, and as such, animals must “pay [Adam] fealty / With low subjection” (8.344-5). Such monarchial language is noticeably different from that of St. Francis, the patron saint of ecology in the Christian faith, who White described as desiring to “depose man from his monarchy over creation and set up a democracy of all God’s creatures” (White 223). Indeed, in comparison, Milton’s description of ruling over animals sounds distant and tyrannical. However, we must remember that Milton interprets ruling as an intimate act of service, not detached self-promotion. As the animals pass before Adam, paying their fealty, he gives them their names, and in doing so, “[understands] / Their nature” (8.352). God also questions Adam about the animals: “Know’st thou not / Their language and their ways” (8.372-3)? Adam is, by right and merit, ruler. But that does not mean he is disconnected from the animals. Rather, his reason is used to know and understand the animals, and thus value them for who they are. In the naming process, we again see Adam’s high level of ecological literacy. He does not classify the animals in a cold, scientific manner. He knows their very essences.

Adding to the importance Milton places on the natural world, we see that in Paradise Lost, nature becomes Nature. The natural world is seen as a character in and of itself, and Milton demonstrates this through his ample use of personification. Milton routinely gives Nature bodily characteristics (Buckham 130). She is described as having a “champaign head” (4.134), “hairy sides” (4.135), a sweet smelling bosom (7.319) and a “Universal face” (7.31). Creation is also shown to be in a constant state of praise. Birds “bear on [their] wings and in [their] notes His praise” (5.199) and “all things that breathe, / From th’ Earth’s great altar send up silent praise / To the creator” (9.194-96). Nature is clearly shown to have a life and purpose of its own, and thus Milton depicts the relationship between humanity and creation as a partnership of service, rather than a rule of subjugation.

No scene makes it more clear that Nature is an active character in Milton’s story than the wounding of the earth during the Fall. When Eve partakes of the fruit, immediately “Earth felt the wound and Nature from her seat / Sighing through all her works gave signs of woe / That all was lost” (9. 782-84). When Adam eats, Milton reiterates, “ Earth trembled from her entrails as again / In pangs and Nature gave a second groan” (9.1000-1). Milton again personifies Nature and shows her deeply, physically affected by Adam’s sin. Throughout his poem, Milton makes it abundantly clear that there is a real, personal relationship between mankind and creation, and he here demonstrates the immediate consequences of that fractured relationship. Nature’s response is incredibly humanizing, in that “Earth responds as any injured member in a community might, for the breaking of relationship hurts” (Buckham 141). The pain of the broken relationship is so deep and so tangible, that in one of the most powerful moments of Paradise Lost, Nature weeps for Adam’s sin, and rain falls on Eden for the first time.

Richard DuRocher captures the importance of the moment perfectly:

Like so much in Milton’s great argument, the personification of the wounded Earth in Paradise Lost lays claim to a universal significance. It insists that the Fall involves more than a human tragedy, and more than a shift in human consciousness. Our first conclusion, then, can simply be put: The Fall has a palpable effect on nature. In Milton’s poem, we are shown immediately what Adam and Eve will only later be forced to realize: that the choices of human beings intimately affect the entire scale of being . . . Milton’s focus on the wounded Earth at the pivotal moment of the human drama shows how closely interconnected is the health of human and natural bodies. (96)

For any reader, as yet unconvinced about the significance of Nature in Milton’s drama, Milton lends her a voice and the Earth itself cries out and weeps. Nature seems to be screaming for recognition and acknowledgement as Adam and Eve fall. Taking the apple becomes more than the first sin; it marks the first tragedy in a long history of ecological neglect and humanity’s abandonment of its responsibility to Nature.

Regarding that responsibility, there is one final aspect of Milton’s poem that must be understood. The closing words of book eleven read, “Seed time and harvest, heat and hoary frost / Shall hold their course till fire purge all things new, / Both Heav’n and Earth, wherein the just shall dwell” (11.899-901). One of the major faults environmentalists such as Lynn White Jr. find in Christianity is a profound “other-worldliness.” In short, it is assumed that Christians believe that Christ will come again, and upon his return, the Messiah will start over. The broken, post-lapsarian Earth will be wiped clean, and a new one will be forged. Such a belief would naturally not lend itself to environmental stewardship. After all, what is the point of caring for an earth that is destined for destruction?

Milton has already made it clear throughout Paradise Lost that he believes creation care is a vital act of obedience, restoration and redemption, but if the fire that concludes book 11 is understood to wipe out creation, it may seem that all his environmental prescriptions are meaningless. Moreover, wholesale earthly destruction would seem to indicate some sort of satanic victory, which would be out of line with the rest of Milton’s poem. This, however, is yet another example where we must understand the original biblical language to properly appreciate Milton’s meaning.

2 Peter 3:10 seems to support a second coming distinguished by destruction. The verse reads, “But the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night, in which the heavens will pass away with a great noise, and the elements will melt with fervent heat; both the earth and the works that are in it will be burned up” (NKJV). However, Steven Bouma-Prediger argues that this verse “represents perhaps the most egregious mistranslation in the entire New Testament” (68). Bouma-Prediger points out that the key Greek verb of the passage, heurethesetai, comes from heureskein, meaning “to find,” not “to burn.” The interpretation provided by the New Revised Standard Version then reads much closer to the original text. The NRSV finishes, “the earth and everything that is done on it will be disclosed” (2 Peter 3:10). Bouma-Prediger believes “the text states that after a refiner’s fire of purification (v. 7) the earth will be found, not burned up. The earth will be discovered, not destroyed” (69). Such a reading also parallels Calvin’s perspective. As Susan Schreiner summarizes, “in Calvin’s view, the fires of judgment will not destroy creation but will purify its original and enduring substance” (Bouma-Prediger 69).

Milton’s words reflect Bouma-Prediger’s interpretation. Milton writes, the fire will “purge all things new” (11.900). It seems clear that Milton is referencing a refiner’s fire, not an arsonist’s flame. We also find this wording in Malachi 3:2-3. Of the Messiah’s eventual return, Malachi reads,

But who can endure the day of his coming, and who can stand when he appears? For he is like a refiner’s fire and like fullers’ soap; he will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver, and he will purify the descendants of Levi and refine them like gold and silver, until they present offerings to the Lord in righteousness. (NRSV)

Though the writer wonders who will be able to endure the coming of the Son, he makes it clear that humanity will pass through the fire and come out purified. Peter and Malachi reference neither destruction nor creation; they speak rather of the refinement and restoration of that which already exists.

The book of Revelation provides one final outlook on the day of the Son’s return. Revelation 21:1 reads, “Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away” (NRSV). The passage continues, “And the one who was seated on the throne said, “See, I am making all things new.” (Rev. 21:5) Again, scripture may seem to imply a clean slate and new creation, but Bouma-Prediger asserts that “the new here connotes new in quality, in contrast to what is old” (107). Biblical scholar Eugene Boring agrees, writing,

Even though the first earth and the first heaven have passed away, the scene continues very much as a this-worldly scene . . . God is the creator. Yet the one who does not quench a smoking wick or break a bruised reed (Isa 42:3; Matt. 12:20) does not junk the cosmos and start anew—he renews the old and brings it to fulfillment. The advent of the heavenly city does not abolish all human efforts to build a decent earthly civilization but fulfills them. God does not make “all new things,” but “all things new” (21:5). The end of history is not a return to its beginning, a “getting back to the Garden” [implying the elimination of human civilization] . . . [Revelation 21] represents a recovery of the original goodness of creation by the redemption of the historical process rather than its elimination. (220)

Understanding Milton’s words in this light, turns this passage from a troubling exception to Milton’s ecological hermeneutic, to a foundational statement of belief in God’s restorative future—one that includes this present earth, albeit a refined and purified version.

This belief in a restorative future forms the basis of Milton’s environmental prescriptions. As Ken Hiltner writes,

Milton did not believe, as did other thinkers of his time . . . that the world was in a state of irretrievable decay as a result of the Fall; rather, he held out hope for a regenerative era here on earth. In doing so, Milton was in the company of a number of early modern environmental thinkers . . . who hoped that England could be fashioned into a new Eden” (Hiltner 3).

Milton truly believed that the holistic systems of Eden could be implemented, at least to some extent, on this earth. The circle of trees that borders Eden (4.147) is a prime example. John Evelyn proposed this idea six years prior to Milton, in his 1661 Fumifugium, as a natural solution to London’s unbearable air pollution. In Paradise Lost, Milton borrows Evelyn’s idea and projects it backwards into the perfect past of Paradise. Ken Hiltner points out, “In so imagining Eden, Milton is not looking back to some forever lost origin, but rather to contemporary London’s environmental situation, prompting to imagine Eden as a place not only free of, but protected from, air pollution” (3). We see in this idea, Milton expressing a hopeful correlation between God’s flawless, original design for the natural world and the ideas of creative innovators seeking sustainable solutions to anthropogenic decay.

While a surface reading of Milton’s poem may, in some ways, seem to conform to the anthropocentric ideas that Lynn White Jr. condemns, a complete understanding of Milton’s ecological hermeneutic reveals a Milton who deeply respects the earth and consistently emphasizes humanity’s responsibility to serve and protect creation. Throughout Paradise Lost, John Milton presents the natural world not as a top-down, oppressive hierarchy, but as an ecological community. Humanity, animals, plants and the very soil itself are parts of a system that functions on mutual dependency, and Milton’ s writing not only comments on God’s original design, it also outlines the way in which we should interact with the environment, today and in the future. Diane McColley beautifully sums up the prescriptive ideal of Milton’s hermeneutic when she writes, “We cannot return to Eden, but we can make Edenic choices” (190). While Milton’s poem is set thousands of years in our past, it looks forward to our present situation and beyond.

To read Paradise Lost without an eye to the future would be a tragic mistake. Wendy Furman-Adams and Virginia James Tufte, write,

. . . as our increasingly rogue nation refuses to share responsibility for the containment of pollution and the conservation of resources; as, in our increasing sense of deracination, we insist upon our narrowly shared material comfort and “security,” privileging our ravenous appetites for nonrenewable wealth above every other planetary concern, Milton’s vision of paradise must speak at least as urgently today as it did to his own generation, and to over three centuries of generations since. (108)

While the current state of our environment would sadden Milton, it would neither surprise nor discourage him. Milton’s ecological message in Paradise Lost denotes sadness for what has been lost, yet also, unmistakable hope for the future.

It is clear that the Paradise Milton presents is fragile and subject to disaster (Lewalski 16). Even in the heavenly war, the hills are displaced and torn from the earth (6. 644). But the beauty of Milton’s heaven is that they are not left degraded. The Son came down and, “At his command th’ uprooted hills retired / Each to his place: they heard his voice and went /Obsequious. Heav’n his wonted face renewed” (6.781-83). This is the work Milton calls us to. Paradise was lost, and it bears the marks of the fall. It is stained, scathed and scarred. But it is recoverable. Of Adam and Eve, Milton writes, “in their looks divine / The image of their glorious Maker shone: / Truth, wisdom, sanctitude severe and pure” (4.291-93). Adam, Eve, and the rest of humanity bear not only the Creator’s countenance, but also his nature, and purpose. The ecological hermeneutic John Milton presents in Paradise Lost reminds us that we are image-bearers, and with urgency, Milton calls us to reflect the Son, that in our faces too, creation may find renewal.

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