Editing Paradise Lost (section)

=== Moral ambiguity ===

[[File:Satan summoning his Legions, 1796-1797 by Sir Thomas Lawrence.jpg|thumb|upright|[[Thomas Lawrence]], ''Satan summoning his Legions'', 1796–1797]]
The critic [[William Empson]] claimed the poem was morally ambiguous, with Milton's complex characterization of Satan playing a large part in Empson's claim of moral ambiguity.<ref name="Leonard, John 2000" />{{page needed|date=March 2016}} For context, the second volume of Empson's authorized biography was titled: ''William Empson: Against the Christians''. In it his authorized biographer describes "Empson’s visceral loathing of Christianity."<ref>{{Cite web |last=peterwebster |date=2007-11-20 |title=William Empson against the Christians |url=https://peterwebster.me/2007/11/20/william-empson-against-the-christians/ |access-date=2023-12-26 |website=Webstory |language=en-US}}</ref> He spent a large amount of his career attacking Christianity, demonizing it as "wickedness" and claiming that Milton's God was "sickeningly bad."<ref>{{Cite book |last=Haffenden |first=John |url=https://academic.oup.com/book/49167 |title=William Empson: Against the Christians |date=2006-11-02 |publisher=Oxford University Press |isbn=978-1-383-04203-0 |language=en}}</ref> For example, Empson portrays Milton's God as akin to a "Stalinist" tyrant "who enslaves His human creations to serve His own narcissism."

From there, Empson gives fake praise that is really an attack, saying that "Milton deserves credit for making God wicked, since the God of Christianity is 'a wicked God'." John Leonard states that "Empson never denies that Satan's plan is wicked. What he does deny is that God is innocent of its wickedness: 'Milton steadily drives home that the inmost counsel of God was the Fortunate Fall of man; however wicked Satan's plan may be, it is God's plan too [since God in ''Paradise Lost'' is depicted as being both omniscient and omnipotent].'"<ref name="Leonard, John 2000" />{{page needed|date=March 2016}} Leonard  notes that this interpretation was challenged by Dennis Danielson in his book ''Milton's Good God'' (1982).<ref name="Leonard, John 2000" />{{page needed|date=March 2016}}

Alexandra Kapelos-Peters explains that: "as Danielson logically asserts, foreknowledge is not commensurate with culpability. Although God knew that Adam and Eve would eat the forbidden fruit of knowledge, He neither commanded them to do so, nor influenced their decision." Moreover, God gives humans free will to choose to do good or evil, while a tyrant would do the very opposite and deny free will by controlling his subjects' actions like a puppet-master. She says Danielson and Milton "demonstrate one crucial point: the presence of sin in the world is attributable to human agency and free will. Danielson argues that free will is crucial, because without it humanity would have only been serving necessity, and not participating in a free love act with the divine."<ref>{{Cite web |last=Kapelos-Peters |first=Alexandra |date=November 27, 2007 |title=» Milton's just, merciful and redemptive God |url=https://www.alexandrakp.com/text/2007-11/milton%E2%80%99s-just-merciful-and-redemptive-god/ |access-date=2023-12-26 |website=www.alexandrakp.com}}</ref> She notes that in ''Paradise Lost'', God says: "''They trespass, Authors to themselves in all, Both what they judge and what they choose; for so I formd them free, and free they must remain."''

Kapelos-Peters adds: "Milton demonstrates that far from being a tyrannical lord, God and the Son function as a collaborative team that desire nothing but the return of man to his pre-fallen state. Furthermore, God is not even able to dominate in this aspect because human agency and free-will are not abandoned. Not only will the Son sacrifice himself pre-emptively in Book 3 for the not-yet-occurred Fall of Man, but Man himself will have a role in his own salvation. To successfully navigate atonement, humanity will have to admit and repent of their former disobedience."

C. S. Lewis also rebutted the approach of people like Empson super-imposing their own interpretations with an agenda onto the poem long after it was written. Lewis wrote: "The first qualification for judging any piece of workmanship from a corkscrew to a cathedral is to know ''what'' it is{{snd}}what it was intended to do and how it is meant to be used."<ref>{{Cite web |last=David |date=2023-07-18 |title=S6E34 – AH – Jack's Bookshelf: John Milton, After Hours with Graeme Donaldson |url=https://www.pintswithjack.com/s6e34/ |access-date=2023-12-26 |website=Pints With Jack |language=en-US}}</ref> Lewis said the poem was a genuine Christian morality tale.<ref name="Leonard, John 2000" />{{page needed|date=March 2016}} In Lewis's book ''[[A Preface to Paradise Lost]]'', he discusses the theological similarities between ''Paradise Lost'' and St. Augustine, and says that "The Fall is simply and solely Disobedience{{snd}}doing what you have been told not to do: and it results from Pride{{snd}}from being too big for your boots, forgetting your place, thinking that you are God."<ref name="A Preface to Paradise Lost"/>