Jason A Kerr. Milton’s Theological Process: Reading De Doctrina Christiana & Paradise Lost

Kerr’s Milton’s Theological Process does a great deal of scholarly work: as the title promises, it reads De Doctrina Christiana meticulously to draw out the process of Milton’s theological thought; it models close and careful reading of that theological treatise for other scholars to replicate; it makes specific claims about Milton’s changing theology; it tries to convince readers to take up the treatise (and the epic) to continue the work it does. Kerr’s procedures for interpreting De Doctrina Christiana are effective and productive, and the account his book makes of Milton’s theological thought and how Milton conceptualizes the procedures of theology is both vibrant and convincing. In refusing to present theological product in place of theological process, this book captures both what Milton does and how Milton sees scripture, while of necessity presenting Milton’s thinking in various stages of development and without many sweeping characterizations or sharp definitions; readers seeking clarity will find plenty of it at the level of the particular, but Kerr reserves most of his bolder claims for the book’s final chapter, aimed more as a calling to further discussion and analysis and not as conclusory arguments. In all these regards, I think the book successful and incisive. The book may prove less successful in convincing readers to continue its work, in part because Kerr’s precision in reading De Doctrina Christiana and the wealth of knowledge he brings to bear upon the treatise seems so compendious as to be beyond all but the most dedicated of analysts. In my conclusion to this review, I take the liberty of suggesting ways in which readers of this book might even so engage profitably with De Doctrina Christiana.

Kerr organizes his book around three parts: one part on Milton’s views of scripture and the church spans the first three chapters; one part focused on Milton’s anti-trinitarianism and his complex views of the Son of God takes up two more chapters, with the second linking this material to the work of the first three chapters; the final part reads Paradise Lost through the contexts established in the rest of the book, consisting of a single chapter with some linking material and a conclusion. The book concludes with a 24-page appendix cataloging Kerr’s observations of the material manuscript of De Doctrina Christiana, focused on any markers suggesting layers of replacement or revision to the text. Both Kerr and Oxford University Press deserve praise for including this material, which may be invaluable to future scholars wanting to interpret De Doctrina Christiana without the funds to travel to the manuscript.

Chapter 1 suggests that despite its overt Ramist structuring, De Doctrina Christiana only sometimes operates as a logical systematic theology, taking up rhetorical structures in moments where Milton’s internal scripture demands exploration in place of definition. This chapter also lays the groundwork for Kerr’s later readings of the treatise’s scriptural citations as another form of rhetoric, where by altering the order of citations or their translation, Milton aims to convince. Chapter 2 most completely demonstrates Kerr’s method of reading De Doctrina Christiana: taking up both Milton’s departures from the systemic theologies of Wolleb and Ames and the material evidence of Milton’s revisions in the doctrine’s manuscript, Kerr adroitly traces Milton’s scriptural thinking in-process, showing how he shifts from an orthodox understanding of renewal to a complex reconceptualization of it as grounded, not in the exterior or interior of a believer, but in the extent to which a believer’s capacities remain natural or are augmented through the supernatural agency of the Holy Spirit. This chapter illustrates both the immediate and eventual rewards of a careful reading of De Doctrina Christiana, as the text offers a glimpse into Milton’s process of theological thought.

Chapter 3 argues that Milton’s treatise, in its composition and revision, enacts his evolving understanding of inner scripture as generative through relation to what Kerr terms ‘Ecclesial process.’ Milton’s own attempt to interpret and then to speak scripture through the words of his treatise requires, Kerr suggests, an engagement with other believers undergoing the same process. These believers form a looser community than a defined church, but the accumulation of individual interpretation generates a church-in-progress.

Chapter 4 focuses on De Doctrina Christiana’s Book I Chapter 5, Milton’s strident refutation of the Trinity, starting at first with Chapter 6 (on the Holy Spirit) and the ways in which Milton’s treatise violates the expected Ramist structures visible in his exemplar systematic theologies of Ames and Wolleb. Kerr convincingly deploys the interpretive tools he develops in his first two chapters to argue that Milton changes his mind about the Son and the Trinity while writing De Doctrina Christiana, a change he analyses in more depth in his own fifth chapter. Chapter 5 more closely examines the grounds for Milton’s change of mind about the Trinity, focusing on Psalm 2, which drives a flurry of revisions which may have in turn convinced Milton to abandon the treatise in favor of exploring the same ideas in his epic poem. Kerr reads Milton arriving at a decisive rejection of the unity between Father and Son grounded within the need for a Christ as human exemplar (one with humanity, not with God) and thus as a means of modeling or even generating human unification with God and the divine.

In Chapter 6, Kerr turns to the figure of the Son in that epic poem, deploying concepts from earlier chapters to explore Milton’s ongoing process of understanding who and what the Son is. Kerr also considers ontology, materiality, free will, and the possibility that both the Son and believers might in some capacity actuate God within the world by speaking words of internal scripture aloud. A brief conclusion distinguishes between theology and religious studies, relating the openness of the latter to Paradise Lost and the former’s narrow focus to the treatise. Kerr finishes by arguing that openness and narrowness, through their interplay, generate a new space where scholars can understand both poem and treatise as provocations toward an individual scripture.

The rigour of Kerr’s exemplary readings of De Doctrina Christiana deserves special praise, but may intimidate other potential interpreters of the treatise. To read as Kerr does, one needs to attend to Christian theology from the early church to Milton’s time, to the Bibles available to Milton and his choices of passage between (or sometimes against) them, to Ames and Wolleb’s own systemic theologies, to the condition of the manuscript of Milton’s treatise and what it suggests about Milton’s ongoing revisions; all these steps in addition to the words of the text. Kerr’s final section gestures towards the potential rewards, whether by hinting at a new form of dualism in Paradise Lost or suggesting a form of queer community found somewhere between Eve’s proposal that humanity end with her and Adam’s and the Son’s mediatorial offices.

Academics studying Milton, including advanced graduate students, and anyone interested in De Doctrina Christiana or Milton’s theology, will find Kerr’s book invaluable. While it does not model other forms of reading the treatise, I think this study opens up other possibilities: in addition to analysing the text as the product of multiple complex sets of revisions, scholars might examine it as a collaborative work (between Milton and other theologians, between Milton and the Bibles he used), both in formal and rhetorical terms; students of material texts may find Kerr’s process of uncovering strata of revision useful in application to other works. The intellectual labour necessary to compare Milton’s systematic theology to Ames and Wolleb does not have to be seen as preparatory work: in itself, that labour uncovers Milton’s engagement with his exemplars which tells us about how people thought theologically together, not just what Milton thought at a specific moment or moments in his life. Kerr writes about De Doctrina Christiana as encapsulating an understanding under revision, a process of thought; to read such a text attentively and as a literary work is to complicate what we as scholars might consider a complete or comprehensive interpretation, and to embrace the partial and provisional reading even as we recognize the text itself as partial and provisional. If even Milton could not remain strictly systematic in his systematic theology, Milton scholars should not expect to do better when reading that theology: deploying partial understanding, establishing partial contexts, or even reading the theology naively all represent legitimate practices of reading which the text itself invites.