|Background and Overview of
(For a fuller discussion of
the textual and theological history of De Doctrina Christiana, see vol. 6 of the
Yale Complete Prose edition)
Christian doctrine is to be derived solely from Scripture
(those books of the Old and New Testaments considered canonical in
Protestant editions of the Bible).
Scripture is authoritative because it is divinely inspired.
Belief in the inspiration of scripture rests not on the testimony
of any church, but on the operation of the Holy Spirit in the hearts of believers.
Scripture contains everything necessary for salvation.
Scripture is clear and its meaning is self-evident.
Scripture is only to be interpreted in one sense,
though in the case of the Old Testament, that sense may be a
combination of the historical and the typical (reading Old Testament
events and figures as "types" of New Testament events and figures).
Sound interpretation of scripture requires
attention to the original manuscripts, knowledge of the grammar and
idioms of the original languages, and a knowledge of the historical
contexts of the writings.
Ultimately, each believer, aided by the Holy
Spirit, must interpret scripture himself.
Believers possess a two-fold scripture: the
external scripture of written texts, and the internal scripture
written by the Holy Spirit on the hearts of believers.
The written word can suffer corruption, but the
Spirit cannot; therefore, the internal scripture is a more trustworthy
guide than either the external scripture or the traditions of
political and ecclesiastical authorities.
The Father and the Son
The doctrine of the Trinity originated, according to Milton, from
an imagined inconsistency between the Old and New Testaments: "Since, however, Christ
not only bears the name of the only begotten Son of God, but is also several times called
in Scripture God, notwithstanding the universal doctrine that there is but one God, it
appeared to many, who had no mean opinion of their own acuteness, that there was an
inconsistency in this; which gave rise to an hypothesis no less strange than repugnant to
reason, namely, that the Son, although personally and numerically another, was yet
essentially one with the Father, and that thus the unity of god was preserved" (I.v).
The Trinity is derived primarily from one suspect text, 1 John
5:7: "For there are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the
Holy Ghost: and these three are one." This text is lacking in Syriac, Arabic, and
Ethiopic versions of the manuscript, as well as most Greek versions.
Adherents to the Trinity doctrine have resorted to sophistry and
subterfuge borrowed from the "schools" (Scholastics).
The doctrine of the Trinity obscures the plain meaning of
The Trinity finds no clear support in scripture.
The Trinity is contrary to reason.
The Bible nowhere establishes that the Son was generated from
Interpretation of John 10:30, "I and my Father are one,"
differs: Trinitarians interpret "one" as "one in essence." Milton
rejects this view: the Son and the Father are not "one in essence" because the
Son says quite the opposite at John 10:29, "My Father . . . is greater than
all," and at John 14:28, "my Father is greater than I."
John 10:30 states that the Son and Father are one "in the
same manner as we [Christians] are one with him [Christ],that is, not in essence,
but in love, in communion, in agreement, in character, in spirit, in glory" (I.v).
Trinitarian doctrine contradicts reasonwhat it asserts
regarding the oneness of essence conflicts with what it asserts regarding the number,
causation, and equality of the three persons of the Trinity.
Things differing in number must differ in essence.
Things differing in causation must differ in essence.
Equality can only exist between different essences.
(Otherwise, what you have is not equality, but sameness.)
The Father created the Son from his own substance (creation ex
deo rather than ex nihilo)not from necessity (which is implied by the
Trinitarian doctrine of the eternal generation of the Son), but from free will.
This generation is not from eternity (implying that the Son has
always existed, just as the Father has always existed), but in time, because willing the
creation of the Son must have preceded the actual creation of the Son.
The Son is the first of all creation, through whom everything else
is created by the Father.
The Father gave the Son divine nature and attributes, but the Son,
though called God, is not the One God, since his divinity is given rather than self-existent.
What about the Holy Spirit?
Less is said in the Scriptures concerning the Holy Spirit.
The Bible nowhere mentions that the Spirit is divine in the sense
that the Father and Son are said to be divine.
The Spirit was not known or worshipped as God in Old Testament
Arminianism is a Reformation-era development which grows out of a
conflict dating back to the 5th century: the conflict between Pelagius and
Augustine over human nature and sin.
The Eastern church of the 5th century had a relatively
sanguine view: man possess free will, is responsible for his actions, and maywith
the help of Gods gracerecover that which was lost in the fall. Origen, an
early father of the Eastern church, promulgated a doctrine of universal salvation:
everyone, even including Satan himself, would ultimately be redeemed by God.
The Western church had a much darker view: though they believed
both in the free will of man and the grace of God, the primary emphasis of the Western
fathers was on sin and a concept of fallen man as incapable of willing anything good and
as totally dependent on Gods grace.
Pelagius was shocked at the immorality and vice of Roman society
in the 5th century. He attributed these conditions to the deteministic theology
of the Western church, a theology that discouraged any moral effort on the grounds that
men are born sinful, only grace can overcome that sin, and no individual can will even the
slightest good in and of himself. Pelagius denied the idea that men are born sinful, and
affirmed free will and the responsibility of each individual. He even went to the extent
of suggesting that humans could, theoretically, live absolutely sinless lives. Man
suffered no hereditary consequences from the fall of Adam and Eve: "everything good
and everything evil . . . is done by us, not born with us." Pelagius even anticipated
the tabula rasa view of human nature which would later be promulgated by Locke:
"we are begotten as well without virtue as without vice." Pelagius thought that
God wished men to practice righteousness of their own free will, and he also believed that
human action, whether for good or evil, always remained within the power of human will to
All of this outraged Augustine. He thought that this doctrine left
no room at all for the influence of gods grace, the sacrifice of Christ, or the
authority of the church. Augustine responded to Pelagius by promoting the following ideas:
Adams fall contaminated the entire human race; this fall not only deprived mankind
of its original righteousness, but it left humans with an inclination to sin passed down
to each generation of descendents; Mens wills are so warped in the direction of sin
that they can only will and do that which is evil; Sin is inescapable, and the only way to
salvation is through the unearned receiving of Gods grace; God determines, in a
choice made from all eternity, who shall receive his grace (Augustine referred to this as
the "predestination of saints."
Augustine won the official battle; Pelagianism was condemned by
the Council of Carthage in 418 A.D.
The views of the Eastern church remained much the same as they
In the West, a phenomenon known as Semi-Pelagianism developed in
resistance to the Augustinian notion that the will was free only to choose evil.
Semi-Pelagianism was officially condemned at the Synod of Orange
in 529; however, its influence lived on, being clearly evident in the writings of the
medieval scholastics, particularly in the works of Thomas Aquinas.
Aquinas developed the idea that all created things tend toward
their inherent endthe good. The will is free to choose good, because the good is the
inherent end of the will. The will just needs a little help, and that is where Gods
grace comes in. Grace operates to help the will beyond a certain critical point in its
progress towards the good, a point beyond which it cannot progress on its own.
The real descendents of Augustine were Luther and Calvin. Fallen
man, in their view, was inherently worthy of damnation; all deserve the most severe and
horrible judgment, but somequite undeservedlyare given the gift of Gods
According to Calvin, "man is so enslaved by the yoke of sin,
that he cannot of his own nature aim at good either in wish or actual pursuit" (Institutes,
II.iv.1). Mans "heart is so thoroughly envenomed by sin that it can breathe out
nothing but corruption and rottenness" (II.v.19), and "Man has now been deprived
of freedom of choice and bound over to miserable servitude" (II.ii.title). God
ordains election and reprobation: "Those, therefore, whom God passes by he
reprobates, and that for no other cause but because he is pleased to exclude them from the
inheritance which he predestines to his children" (III.xxiii.1).
Calvins theology is called Supralapsarianism.
Arminianism developed in response to Calvins theology. Dutch
divines who subscribed to a position known as Infralapsarianism charged that
Calvins doctrines made God the author of sin. The infralapsarian view held that God
foreknew, but did not decree, the fall of man.
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Arminius became the defender of this position in this way: two
ministers from Delft, Arnoldus Cornelisz and Reynier Donteclock, in 1589 published a
document entitled Responsio ad Argumenta quaedam Bezae et Calvini ex Tractatu de
Predestinatione in Cap. IX ad Romanos. A professor at Franeker, named Martin Lydius,
was disturbed by this work and sent a copy of it to James Arminius, who was at the time a
newly ordained Amsterdam minister. Lydius asked Arminius to defend the supralapsarian
position of Calvin (and Calvins deputy and eventual successor, Beza). Arminius ended
up being convinced by the work of Cornelisz and Donteclock, and defended an infralapsarian
position for the rest of his life.
Arminianism rejects both the totally autonomous man of Pelagianism
who independently works out his own salvation, and the totally helpless man of Calvinism,
who depends utterly on the arbitrary will of a predestining God.
Human will cooperates with divine grace to attain and earned,
rather than an ordained, reward of eternal life.
Human nature is not completely depraved.
Man forfeited his original righteousness with the fall.
With his decree of predestination, God renewed in each man
sufficient freedom to choose the good that will lead him to attain to salvation and
With Gods grace, man can think, will, and do the good.
God does not arbitrarily select some for salvation, but calls all.
Those who heed the call are rewarded; those who refuse the call are punished.
Gods decree of predestination is not absolute (as in
Augustine and Calvin), but conditional: if man believes and turns to God, he will
be saved; if man does not believe and turns away from God, he will be damned.
God foreknows the number of his elect; he does not know this,
however, through arbitrary selection, but by his perfect foreknowledge of how each person
will act according to free will.
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- Creation was not the joint work of a Trinity. The Bible does not
establish the role of the Holy Spirit in creation.
- The Creation in six days does not mark the beginning of time: time
began with the Creation of the Son.
- God created from pre-existing matter drawn from his own substance.
God did not create out of nothing.
- Thnetopsychism ("Soul death") is a position holding that
the soul dies with the body, and is resurrected with the body.
- This position is allied to Psychosomnolence ("Soul
sleep"), a position holding that the soul sleeps" after the death of the
body. Luther, Tyndale, and the continental Anabaptists held this position, while Calvin
and Zwingli opposed this idea (holding with the Roman Catholic position that the soul
neither dies nor sleeps upon the death of the body).
- Polygamy and Divorce
- Polygamy must be true marriage or else Abraham and other
patriarchs were nothing more than fornicators and adulterers.
- The children of the patriarchs would then be bastards, who
according to Deuteronomy 23: 2"A bastard shall not enter into the congregation
of the LORD; even to his tenth generation shall he not enter into the congregation of the
LORD"is excluded from Gods congregation.
- The texts used to condemn polygamy are few and misapplied, while
numerous texts justify polygamy.
- Marriage is not an indissoluble union.
- The primary function of marriage is companionship and solace
- If a marriage fails to meet these ends, it is no true marriage and
may be ended by divorce.
The Atheist Milton
(Ashgate Press, 2012)
||Basing his contention on
two different lines of argument, Michael Bryson posits that John
Milton–possibly the most famous 'Christian' poet in English literary
history–was, in fact, an atheist.
First, based on his association with Arian ideas (denial of the
doctrine of the Trinity), his argument for the de Deo theory of
creation (which puts him in line with the materialism of Spinoza and
Hobbes), and his Mortalist argument that the human soul dies with
the human body, Bryson argues that Milton was an atheist by the
commonly used definitions of the period. And second, as the poet who
takes a reader from the presence of an imperious, monarchical God in
Paradise Lost, to the internal-almost Gnostic-conception of God in
Paradise Regained, to the absence of any God whatsoever in Samson
Agonistes, Milton moves from a theist (with God) to something much
more recognizable as a modern atheist position (without God) in his
Among the author's goals in The Atheist Milton is to account
for tensions over the idea of God which, in Bryson's view, go all
the way back to Milton's earliest poetry. In this study, he argues
such tensions are central to Milton's poetry–and to any attempt to
understand that poetry on its own terms.
The Tyranny of Heaven
Milton's Rejection of God as King
(U. Delaware Press, 2004)
The Tyranny of Heaven argues for a new way of reading the figure of
Milton's God, contending that Milton rejects kings on earth and in heaven.
Though Milton portrays God as a king in Paradise Lost, he does this
neither to endorse kingship nor to recommend a monarchical model of deity.
Instead, he recommends the Son, who in Paradise Regained rejects
external rule as the model of politics and theology for Milton's "fit
audience though few." The portrait of God in Paradise Lost serves as
a scathing critique of the English people and its slow but steady
backsliding into the political habits of a nation long used to living under
the yoke of kingship, a nation that maintained throughout its brief period
of liberty the image of God as a heavenly king, and finally welcomed with
open arms the return of a human king.
Review of Tyranny of