De Doctrina Christiana (Milton) - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

De doctrina Christiana is a Latin

Latin literature in Britain

Anglo-Latin literature is literature from England and potentially other parts of English-speaking Britain originally written in Latin. A great deal of interest is invested in the literature of Britain in Germanic or Celtic languages, but explicit references to literature in Latin are scattered and...

manuscript found in 1823 and attributed to John Milton

John Milton

John Milton was an English poet, polemicist, a scholarly man of letters, and a civil servant for the Commonwealth of England under Oliver Cromwell...

, who died 148 years prior. Since Milton was blind by the time of the work's creation, this attribution assumes that an amanuensis

Amanuensis

Amanuensis is a Latin word adopted in various languages, including English, for certain persons performing a function by hand, either writing down the words of another or performing manual labour...

aided the author.

The history and style of Christian Doctrine have created much controversy. Critics have argued about the authority of the text as representative of Milton's philosophy based on possible problems with its authorship, its production, and over what its content actually means. The majority of critics nevertheless believe that Milton is the author of the manuscript beyond any doubt.

Both Charles R. Sumner and John Carey have translated the work into English. Sumner's edition was first printed in 1825. This was the only translation until Carey's in 1973.

Background

The only manuscript of Christian Doctrine was found during 1823 in London

London

London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...

's Old State Paper Office (at the Middle Treasury Gallery in Whitehall

Whitehall

Whitehall is a road in Westminster, in London, England. It is the main artery running north from Parliament Square, towards Charing Cross at the southern end of Trafalgar Square...

). The work was one of many in a bundle of state papers written by John Milton while he served as Secretary of Foreign Tongues under Oliver Cromwell

Oliver Cromwell

Oliver Cromwell was an English military and political leader who overthrew the English monarchy and temporarily turned England into a republican Commonwealth, and served as Lord Protector of England, Scotland, and Ireland....

. The manuscript was provided with a prefatory epistle that explains the background and history to the formation of the work. If it is correct, the manuscript is the same work referred to in Milton's Commonplace Book and in an account by Edward Phillips, Milton's nephew, of a theological "tractate".

Because Milton was blind, the manuscript of De Doctrina Christiana was the work of two people: Daniel Skinner

Daniel Skinner

Daniel Skinner was an amanuensis of John Milton. He is best known for his role in the posthumous attempts to publish, and then for trying to suprress, several of Milton's State Papers, including De Doctrina Christiana.-Biography:...

and Jeremie Picard. Picard first copied the manuscript from previous works and Skinner prepared the work to be copied for typesetting, although there are a few unidentified editors who made changes to the manuscript. After Milton died in 1674, Daniel Skinner was given possession of Christian Doctrine along with Milton's other manuscripts. In 1675, Skinner attempted to publish the work in Amsterdam, but it was rejected, and in 1677 he was pressured by the English government to hand over the document where it was then hidden.

There have been only two translations of De Doctrina Christiana. The first was the Charles edition was first produced in 1825 titled A treatise on Christian doctrine compiled from the Holy Scriptures alone. The original Latin text was included alongside of the English translation. However, the next translation produced by Carey was not in a dual language format. Both of these two original translations identified Milton as the author.

However, there is a minority line of criticism that denies Christian Doctrine as a work produced by Milton, but there have been no authors substituted by these critics in place of Milton. These denials are grounded in the assumptions that a blind Milton would struggle to rely on so many Biblical quotations and that the Christian Doctrine is the sole reason why Milton is viewed as having a heterodox theological understanding. In response to this argument, many critics have focused on defending Milton's authorship. This argument also fails to account for the high Biblical literacy of the time. Because of the overwhelming evidence supporting the Miltonic authorship of the piece, most editions of Milton's prose includes the work.

Manuscript

The Christian Doctrine is divided into two books. The first book is then divided into 33 chapters and the second into 17.

The first part of the work appears to be "finished" because it is free of edits and the handwriting (Skinner's) is neat, whereas the second is filled with edits, corrections, and notes in the margins. The Skinner's incomplete fair copy has stirred controversy over the work, because it does not provide critics with the ability to determine what the fair copy was based on.

The manuscript itself is patterned on the theological treatises common to Milton's time, such as William Ames

William Ames

William Ames was an English Protestant divine, philosopher, and controversialist...

's Medulla Theologica and John Wolleb's Compendium Theologiae Christianae Although Milton refers to "forty-two works", of them many were "systematic theologies", in his various works, Christian Doctrine does not allude to them in the same way as he does in his political treatises. However, the actual pattern of discourse found within the treatise is modeled after Ames's and Wolleb's works even if the content is different.

Where Milton differs is in the use of scripture as evidence; Milton relies on scripture as the basis of his argument and keeps scripture in the center of his text; whereas, many other theological treatises keep scriptural passages to the margins. In essence, as Lieb says, "Milton privileges the proof-text over that which is to be proven." Schwartz has gone so far as to claim that Milton "ransacked the whole Bible" and that Milton's own words are "squeezed out of his text." However, the actual "proof-texts" of the Bible used are various, and there is not one version used in Milton's Latin citations.

Theology

Milton's approach to theology is to deal directly with the Bible and use "the word of God" as his basis. Even though Milton relied on the pattern of "theological systems" of his day, he believed that there could be "progress" achieved in understanding theology by relying on the Bible completely. Milton "filled" his theology with direct quotes from the Bible in order to separate his work from his contemporaries who did not deal with the Bible enough for his taste. Some critics have argued, persuasively, that Milton's theology is Arian

Arianism

Arianism is the theological teaching attributed to Arius , a Christian presbyter from Alexandria, Egypt, concerning the relationship of the entities of the Trinity and the precise nature of the Son of God as being a subordinate entity to God the Father...

Christian Doctrine

The first chapter of Christian Doctrine discusses the actual meaning of "Christian Doctrine." Milton claims that this "Christian Doctrine" needs to be understood before one can begin to talk about divinity and that the doctrine comes from Christ's communication to mankind about divinity. The doctrine requires humans to "come to terms with God's nature" and it comes from "the ever-abiding desire to celebrate [God's] glory because of his redemptive plan."

Milton's approach to Christian doctrine is not philosophical, and Milton does not attempt at "knowing" God. Instead, we have to find God "in the Holy Scriptures alone and with the Holy Spirit as guide." Milton grounds his message in Christian teaching when he says:

"I do not teach anything new in this work. I am only to assist the reader's memory by collecting together as it were, into a single book texts which are scattered here and there throughout the Bible, and by systematizing them under definite headings in order to make reference easy"

As such, Milton promotes the idea that his whole work comes only from the teachings of Christ, and that Christian doctrine can only come from Christ.

Milton's God

Milton's version of God is characterized by the darker aspects of deus absconditus. Milton's God is an "over-whelming force" that, in some of Milton's works, appears "as the embodiment of dread." Along with this, God is not definable, but some of his aspects are knowable: he is one, omnipresent, and eternal.

Milton's interpretation of God has been described as Arian

Arianism

. Kelley explains the actual usage of this term as he says, "Milton may be quite correctly called an Arian if he holds an anti-Trinitarian

Nontrinitarianism

Nontrinitarianism includes all Christian belief systems that disagree with the doctrine of the Trinity, namely, the teaching that God is three distinct hypostases and yet co-eternal, co-equal, and indivisibly united in one essence or ousia...

view of God; and it is in this sense that scholars have been calling Milton an Arian since the publication of the De Doctrina in 1825." In particular, Christian Doctrine denies the eternity of the Son

Son of God

"Son of God" is a phrase which according to most Christian denominations, Trinitarian in belief, refers to the relationship between Jesus and God, specifically as "God the Son"...

, Jesus's pre-birth title. Such a denial separates the unity between God and the Son. However, some claim that the Son is eternal, since he was begotten before time, and that he represents part of the Logos. But this cannot be, as Kelley points out, "Milton concludes, the Son was begotten not from eternity but 'within the limits of time.'" Although some have argued that the Son is equal in some respects with God, the Son lacks the complete attributes of God.

Another aspect of Milton's God is that he is material. This is not to say that he has a human form, as Milton states, "God in his most simple nature is a SPIRIT." However, such "spirits" to Milton, as with many of his contemporaries like Thomas Hobbes

Thomas Hobbes

Thomas Hobbes of Malmesbury , in some older texts Thomas Hobbs of Malmsbury, was an English philosopher, best known today for his work on political philosophy...

, are a type of material. God, from his material essence, is able to establish all other matter and then manipulate that matter to create forms and beings.

Critical response

In the mid 20th century, C. A. Patrides declared Christian Doctrine as a "theological labyrinth" and as "an abortive venture into theology." The style of organisation has been identified as (in large part) Ramist, or at least compatible with the elaborate charting by Ramean tree

Ramean tree

Ramean tree may refer to:* Arbor porphyriana* Any binary tree...

s common in some of the systematic and scholastic Calvinist theologies of the early seventeenth century.

External links

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