God as an Active Influence in Everyman & Paradise Lost
Deus Ex Hominus:
As we humans wonder how God holds dominion over his creation, we begin to interpret the events or occurrences around us in being in accordance with—if not directly cause by—a divine power. In the case of Catholicism, God has always been communicated in the Bible as a mysterious figure who takes the form of various objects, people, or natural events to communicate a greater point to his followers. This has always implies that despite our understanding of God to be all-knowing and all-seeing, he seems to interact with us in the present moment and never shows his “true form” to our mortal eyes. It should also be noted that since it has been said that God created humanity “imago dei” or “in His image,” we have always been inclined to perceive God appearing to us in the perfect form of human being, or something adjacent to humanity.
While traditionally, this is not how the Catholic Church teaches its followers to identity God (instead he operates above the influence of humanity), medieval artists and authors tend to depict him as a human figure as way to measure our understanding of him. After all, its easier for people to worship and fear an older male king-like figure in the sky that you cannot see, rather than a nebulous undefined force that somehow moves through creation like a powerful wind. But what seems most striking about the personification of God in literature is how the authors not only create an accessible image that can be understood by audiences, but they also attribute personality and desire onto a figure that is seemingly above such concepts. Just by being a part of the plot as a character with his own agenda, God in turn adopts human-like characteristics and tendencies (like being capable of reason, anger, etc.), therefore becoming an active influence in the story along with the rest of the characters.
God in Everyman:
Take for instance God’s involvement in the morality play Everyman. Since this is a play to be acted out by live actors, a human must assume the role of God, reinforcing his human-adjacent image. He begins the story with deeply dissatisfied with how humanity has not been living in accordance with his rule despite all the he has done for them. He in turn declares, “The worse they be from year to year: all that liveth appaireth fast. Therefore I will, in all the haste, have a reckoning of every man’s person” (560). Since Everyman—the mass representation of all humanity—is the protagonist of our story, God becomes an opposing character due to his non-mutual desire to bring Everyman to the afterlife. Despite being the antagonist, God is still portrayed as the hero instead of the villain, since he is trying to show the blind Everyman the wrongness of his ways. Even in this story, God’s desire is paramount and must not be questioned by any one of lower form. It is because of this that God is depicted in having has the best intentions behind his desire, which he pursues it for the good of mankind. Since God achieves his desire to send Everyman to the afterlife with only his good deeds, God’s dominion over his creation remains respected and unchallenged, implying that God still has objective rule over us and our world
God in Paradise Lost:
But not all authors during this time were so accepting of God. In John Milton’s epic poem Paradise Lost, where he puts a new spin on the creation native, God is portrayed in a less than favorable light. He is a righteous and domineering antagonist to the real hero in the story, which just so happens to be the Devil himself. Up until this point, Satan has always been the epitome of evil and despair, with promises of eternal damnation to all who follow his ways. But in here, he is a frustrated and misunderstood figure who was ousted out of heaven due to a disagreement with God about humanity’s free will. Since God is the antagonist, Milton in a way turns us against him, since God was too harsh and unreasonable with Satan, who simply thought his dominion over the angels wasn’t a perfect union between creator and creation. Samuel Fallon comments further about God’s rigid rule in his dissertation on the text, stating, “The more Milton shows God speaking and acting, the more apparent become the things he cannot do: he cannot die; he cannot suffer; ultimately, he cannot change” (Fallon). With this in mind, Milton in a way comments on the shortcomings and inherent problems with God: how he is unable to see past himself and empathize with his creation, and how his godliness restricts him from being anything else but God. It should be noted that Satan succeeds at causing Adam and Eve to commit the first sin. This impedes God from achieving his desires of creating a new world free of evil, and therefore disrespects his dominion over creation.
Comparing the Gods:
In both stories, God exhibits human traits: he has desires, he can be selfish, and he can exhibit emotions such as anger. While he is portrayed in human form in Everyman, in Paradise Lost he is described as something more indefinite: “Eternal King; thee Author of all being, Fountain of light, thyself invisible amidst the glorious brightness where thou sitt’st throned inaccessible” (Milton, 1545). While Everyman builds the entire narrative behind God’s infinite wisdom and his plan of salvation for mankind, Paradise Lost subverts this trope by taking the side of Satan as an underdog amidst a holy dictator. It is Everyman’s intention to reinforce God’s dominion over the people, as he can evaluate the life of a person based on their good deeds and choose where their soul will spend all of eternity. It infers that what he did to the life of Everyman, he could do to the rest of humanity. But in Paradise Lost, Milton wants us to challenge God’s dominion over creation, and in some ways the dominion of the Catholic Church over the Western world. In his case, disobedience means freedom of the mind and soul. This in turn romanticizes Satan into a tragic figure, where our sympathy feeds off of our frustration with what we perceive as God, and more broadly, the regal rule over England.
In The End…
Our way of understanding God is to personify him as a human with his own agenda that directly affects the plot. This gives us a more approachable way in how we conceive of God influencing his creation, since it is more clear and definite than imagining God as a “passive” influence where one has to engage with the Catholic faith to be moved by God. While these incarnations of God can help us to accept him as a force in our lives, it does allow us to become frustrated with God when things go badly, since we attribute God in having the power to bring us out of—or prevent—occurrences of misfortune. Since our conception of God is limited in our human nature, having God as an active force reduces God’s divine image and replaces it with a projected humanity. In a way, he loses his divine mystery since he can now be understood, evaluated, and criticized by human readers. When God is an active influence in a story, He is more of a reflection of our feelings towards considering the existence of a divine creator, whether it is embraced or rejected is unquestionably determined by the personal tastes of the author.
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Sources Cited:
- Milton, John. Paradise Lost. The Norton English Anthology: The Sixteenth Century and The Early Seventeenth Century. Tenth Ed. New York: Norton & Co., 2018. Print.
- Everyman. The Norton English Anthology: The Middle Ages. Tenth Ed. New York: Norton & Co., 2018. Print.
- Fallon, Samuel. “Milton’s Strange God: Theology and Narrative Form in Paradise Lost.” ELH, vol. 79, no. 1, Johns Hopkins University Press, 2012. Web (Project Muse).