PARADISE LOST: THE CHRISTIAN EPIC

Each year, New Aberdeen students pore over a single work of literature from the classical Christian tradition. This fall, they are becoming well acquainted with John Milton’s Paradise Lost:

      Of Man’s First Disobedience, and the Fruit
      Of that Forbidden Tree, whose mortal tast(e)
      Brought Death into the World, and all our woe,
      With loss of Eden, till one greater Man
      Restore us, and regain the blissful Seat …

The weekly recitation is led by Dr. Abigail Smith with guest lectures from the Rev’d Dr. Peter Johnston, Chairman of the Board of Directors of New Aberdeen College. Dr. Johnston is a Milton scholar whose dissertation focused on Paradise Lost. (Be sure to read his outstanding article on Milton’s place in Classical Christian Education.)

Johnston sees the epic poem’s value as a critical component of classical education. Johnston explains, “It is an expansive text of Christian imagination, which offers a sustained engagement with classical literature, and presents a Christian transformation of classical heroism. In other words, the power of Paradise Lost is not only in presenting Christian truth in a classical form, but also in reshaping that form according to Christian truth. It therefore represents a kind of conceptual prototype for Classical Christian Education as a whole, which seeks to assimilate the best of classical learning within its Christian commitment.”

But why a single text over the course of an entire year?

Because to read slowly is to think deeply. This slow pace is ideal for a work of literature that is replete with biblical and classical allusions, especially one that wrestles with the cosmic battle of good and evil. This work is one that needs to be read over and over again, but the time that we invest this year will lay a solid foundation.