|
|
Article: Infelix culpa: Milton's Son of God and the incarnation as a fall in Paradise Lost.(Critical Essay)
- Article from:
- Philological Quarterly
- Article date:
- March 22, 2002
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2002 University of Iowa. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
|
In a sermon written fifty years before the publication of Milton's Paradise Lost, John Donne ruminates that "I must not ask why God took this way to incarnate his Son." (1) Despite the centrality of the concept of the Incarnation in Christian doctrine, it is perhaps not surprising that such a theory raises numerous problematic questions for most Christian thinkers. The OED defines the Incarnation of God in Christ as the "investiture or embodiment in flesh; assumption of, or existence in, a bodily form," and any explanation of the translation of the divine form into the human body is essentially speculative. Indeed, the history of Christian doctrine is testament to this as ...