Milton's Arianism Again Considered
Since 1825, when Bishop Sumner issued the first edition of John Milton's De Doctrina Christiana, the Arianism of that treatise has become an all but unanimously accepted fact. Although reviewers of Sumner's two quarto volumes divided in praising or lamenting Milton's tenets on the Tri...
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| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
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| Published: |
Cambridge Univ. Press
1961
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| In: |
Harvard theological review
Year: 1961, Volume: 54, Issue: 3, Pages: 195-205 |
| Online Access: |
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| Summary: | Since 1825, when Bishop Sumner issued the first edition of John Milton's De Doctrina Christiana, the Arianism of that treatise has become an all but unanimously accepted fact. Although reviewers of Sumner's two quarto volumes divided in praising or lamenting Milton's tenets on the Trinity, they united in pronouncing them unorthodox and Arian; and later scholars have generally accepted this nineteenth-century verdict. In 1959, consequently, students of Milton were surprised when William B. Hunter, Jr., under the title “Milton's Arianism Reconsidered,” devoted some twenty-five pages to the argument that “we may assert positively that Milton was not an Arian” even though “modern judges are unanimous in branding him one.” And more recently, Roland M. Frye, praising Mr. Hunter's work, has gone on to state that “Milton could never be convicted, before a fair and competent theological court, of trinitarian heresy in Paradise Lost.” With these assertions of the orthodoxy of Milton and his epic I cannot agree; and at the cost of controversy with two close friends, I must argue 1) that Mr. Hunter is wrong in believing that Milton's view of the Son accords with that stated in the Nicene Creed; and 2) that Mr. Frye violates an established principle of textual interpretation when he denies the Arianism of Paradise Lost. |
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| ISSN: | 1475-4517 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: Harvard theological review
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1017/S0017816000024652 |