Loving Liberty

Abstract

Using methods drawn from literary analysis, theology, and political history, Loving Liberty explores the relationship between Milton's thinking about liberty and his practice of scriptural interpretation. It argues that Milton advances a model of a free society ultimately modeled on the charitable relations between the Father and the Son, who in his view differ essentially from one another. This model of liberated unity in difference derives from, and responds to, Milton's encounter with the Reformation ideal of each believer reading the Bible for him or herself, along with the social chaos that accompanied the resulting proliferation of interpretations. Using a complex concept of charity, Milton's writings imagine a society in which all are free to use scripture in highly individualized ways that nevertheless conduce to unity rather than chaos. In the end, the very interpretative practice through which Milton thinks his way toward this model also stands as its shining example, culminating in a rich body of writing that creatively re-imagines scripture and that invites its readers to use these new creations or not, as charity demands and in keeping with their own freely exercised gifts. In contrast to what he calls “obstinate literality” and “alphabetical servility&rdquo in The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce, Milton's liberated interpretative method requires the interpreter to generate his or her own Bible, whether by radically reassembling the text (as Milton does in De Doctrina Christiana), by prophetically speaking the scripture written on one's heart (as Michael teaches Adam to do in Paradise Lost).