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Pedagogy or Gerontagogy:The Education of the Miltonic Deity Neil D. Graves When Gonerill and Regan in King Lear squabble with their father concerning the number of his retinue, reducing it by stages from one hundred to five, Shakespeare is parodying the scriptural topos of the divine "debate" whereby the irascible Old Testament Deity is challenged by a presumptuous human intercessor. In one of these encounters in the book of Genesis, Yahweh and Abraham wrestle over the ever-declining number of righteous inhabitants needed to save the city of Sodom—an exercise comparable to that by which the enraged English monarch is coerced by his superior interlocutors into accepting the smallest retinue possible to uphold his honor. Shakespeare's "debate" is illusory, for Lear is controlled by his daughters, but the question of whether Yahweh is manipulated by his chosen son Abraham, or vice versa, is problematical for biblical exegetes. Milton reencodes this confrontation in his justice debate between father and child in Paradise Lost, book III; Milton's Son of God repeats verbatim Abraham's challenge to Yahweh in Genesis 18.25: "That be from thee far, / That far be from thee, Father, who art judge / Of all things made, and judgest only right" (III, 153–55).1 The Miltonic source of this intercessory debate from Genesis, as well as the unmistakable verbal and thematic echoes from two Mosaic encounters with God in Exodus, chapter 32, and Numbers, chapter 14, has been recognized since Thomas Newton's 1749 edition of Paradise Lost, and more recently critics have offered several interpretations to account for Milton's use of these biblical passages.2 However, I will contend that these critics and Milton's Son of God coalesce in misunderstanding Milton's God, as well as Milton's appropriation of the scriptural topos, which results in their mutual misreading of the scene in Paradise Lost. Modern criticism of Milton's council in heaven starts with Irene Samuel's "Reconsideration," in which she correctly argued that the first four hundred lines of book III comprised a divine debate between distinct characters rather than an inartistic presentation of crucial theological material. 3 Merritt Y. Hughes responded with a scholarly article which argues two important premises that remain accepted by most critics to this day. [End Page 352] Firstly, Milton's scene is indebted to the medieval morality plays—"tension between justice and mercy was so much a part of the tradition to which Paradise Lost belongs that it could not fail to figure in its action." Secondly, the traditional familial hierarchies are inverted such that "the Son seems to be the Father's superior in love, wisdom and even in diplomatic shrewdness," with a result that "modern criticism is rather inclined to contrast him [Milton's Son] with the Father as much the cleverer as well as the wiser and kinder of the two."4 This idea is still current, with Michael Bryson arguing in an article published in 2002 that "the Son is a character instrumental in the development of the Father. The Son challenges the Father to be better, more merciful, and less destructively violent than he has been."5 By designating Milton's council in heaven as a morality play debate which is authorized by the Pentateuchal topos of patriarchal intercession to an unjust Deity hell-bent on mass destruction, Hughes intends to contradict the growing realization that Milton's Son of God is tainted by Arianism, that he is conversely the Father's pupil and a subordinate being: A truth has been revealed which synthesises the thesis of justice and the antithesis of mercy. But has it been taught to a bigoted father by the diplomatic eloquence of his son, speaking with a plausible mixture of sentimentality and worldly wisdom? . . . If our interest in Milton's development of the dialogue can stand the shock of the exposure of God's vulnerability to the Son's suasion by means of his image in the eyes of the angels, we can suspend contempt for his deity and consider what the Son says in the light of Moses' plea for his panicky people [Numbers 14.15–16].6 I believe modern critics are...
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