Areopagitica
By Jonathan Koch
In 1644, in the thick of the political and religious conflict that came to be known as the English civil wars, John Milton wrote a polemical tract arguing against the pre-publication censorship of books and for an open exchange of ideas. “Though all the winds of doctrine were let loose to play upon the earth,” Milton wrote, “so Truth be in the field, we do injuriously, by licensing and prohibiting to misdoubt her strength. Let her and Falsehood grapple; who ever knew Truth put to the worse, in a free and open encounter.” Milton titled his tract, Areopagitica, a nod both to a speech by the Greek philosopher Isocrates and to Paul’s speech on the Areopagus, as recorded in Acts 17:16-34.
Though scholars have debated the extent to which Milton was self-consciously modeling his speech (delivered, in print, to the English Parliament) on Paul’s speech, there is no question that two speeches share a number of essential moves. They both begin with moments of passion (17:16) and proceed to arguments based on logical reasoning (17:17). They both are relentless in their approach (17:17) and confident in their premises (17:18). They both frame their remarks by observing features of their audience (17:22) and pepper their speeches with quotations from the literature of their opponents (17:23, 28). It is on this last point of commonality—the detailed knowledge of an audience that comes from paying attention to their cultural expressions—that I’d like to focus my reflections on Paul’s speech as it bears on my career as a teacher and scholar of early modern literature.
When I came to graduate school, I was eager and prepared to jump in and learn about those aspects of early modern literature (roughly literature from 1500-1700) that had drawn me into the field. Poetics—yes. Theater—sure. Reformation religious culture—definitely. English political history—why not? But as I strode into these waters, naively unafraid of their depths, I found, similar to Naomi Kim as she expresses it, unexpected currents, rocks, eddies, and flotsam. What about the histories of early modern sexuality, race, and empire? What of literary theories that seemed grounded in a different metaphysics than my own?
At first, I was unwilling, perhaps afraid, to engage with ideas and arguments that fell outside of the confines of my beliefs and habits of mind. As an early modernist, this was not particularly limiting: there was plenty of work to be done within the lanes of seventeenth-century religious culture. But about one year into my dissertation, I was working on a poem that required me to think about how religious toleration (the subject of my dissertation) might intersect with a toleration of sexual practices. There was no way around it—the sex was there right in the middle of a poem otherwise about religion. It had to be addressed.
When I did, eventually, address it, my reading of the poem was powerfully sharpened, and the audience for my work significantly expanded. What I realized in this moment was that my picture of God was too small, too narrow, too weak. Unlike Milton, I feared that Truth might not actually win in “a free and open encounter.” Unlike Paul, I feared that God might not shine clearly in the marketplace of idols. I had tried to confine “the God who made the world and everything in it” to a “temple made by man”—made by me (17:24). By engaging with contemporary Athenian culture, Paul was not simply suiting the Gospel message to his audience or attempting to make it appear like one of the “new teachings” so desired by the Greeks; rather he was living out his view of a powerful, creator God, one who “gives to all mankind life and breath and everything” (17:25).
In my work, I need constant reminders that I follow such a God. Recently, this need has become clear to me in my study of women and men who wrote on behalf of an early modern reformed church that is, in many respects, the ancestor of my own. Some of the most beautiful expressions of reformed doctrine and faith come from this period—from John Milton and John Donne, from Lucy Hutchinson and Anne Bradstreet, from Edmund Spenser and George Herbert, from Samuel Rutherford, John Owen, and Richard Baxter. Yet these same men and women were beset by sin in other areas of their lives: How can we trust the doctrine of documents like the Westminster Confession of Faith (1646) when we know how intertwined the Assembly of Divines was in the violence of the English civil wars? And how can we celebrate the beautiful vision of the united Church in Book 1 of Spenser’s Faerie Queene (1590) when we know how brutally he treated Irish people in his View of the Present State of Ireland (1596)?
The Lord has used these questions and moments of doubt to draw me back to him and to remind me of his power and sovereignty. For what am I but a sinner in need of God’s grace just like these early modern followers of Christ? When my own intellectual powers fail to trust Truth in the storm of doctrine, in the field of falsehood, in the midst of the Areopagus, I must rely evermore on the Holy Spirit to guide and sustain me in my work. It is humbling to be reminded that God does not need us to do his kingdom work. John Milton, who wrote the Areopagitica, reminds me of that lesson in one of the many great poems he wrote:
God doth not need
Either man’s work or his own gifts, who best
Bear his mild yoke, they serve him best.
God does not need me. Yet he chooses me—he chooses each of us—like Paul, broken, frail, and inconsistent, to be his ambassadors of the Gospel in the world.
This beautiful paradox lies at the heart of my sense of calling as a teacher and researcher in higher education. Though the work is not easy, though some will mock (17:32), some will “join” and “believe” (17:34). I can trust God in my work, knowing that he has set the “periods” and defined the “boundaries” of this world and that he alone changes hearts: Dionysius the Areopagite, a woman name Damaris, and others—students and colleagues—who might “feel their way toward him and find him” (17:34, 27).
Jonathan Koch is assistant professor at Pepperdine University. He earned his PhD in English at Washington University in St. Louis and was a member of the Carver Project English reading group.