cally argues against is the idea of "fate" that is written in the stars of astrology. Augustine does say that the strength of human will is subject to God's will and foreknowledge, but he does not see this as the same thing as predestination because, as Potter explains (65), God "exists in an eternal present," seeing and knowing all human behavior but not causing it. According to Potter, Milton adopts Augustine's distinction, but the evidence of Paradise Lost as an artifact is that Milton fills in Augustine's general statement about the fall of the angels with the extended and detailed narrative of Creation, Satan, and the Garden.
Both Milton and Augustine used the Genesis narrative as a scriptural source for their writings. The book of Genesis states that two conditions are necessary for the occurrence of transgression (i.e., the Fall): a command by God, whose authority is supreme; and an intentional and conscious infringement of that command. Augustine quotes Genesis: "thus, when God spoke about the forbidden food to the man whom he had placed in the garden, he said 'On whatever day you eat of it you will surely die'--[spiritual death]." He explains that, in the "disobedience to God's instructions, the first human beings were deprived of God's Favor" (Augustine XIII 15). Augustine spells out these contingencies by saying "they [Adam and Eve] had violated God's command by an overt transgression" (Augustine XIV 18). Milton, too, clearly uses these two conditions in his epic. "Remember what I warn thee, shun to taste, / And shun the bitter consequence" (Milton VII.326-327) knowing this "forth reaching to the Fruit, she [Eve] pluck'd, she eat" (Milton IX.781-782). Both St. Augustine and Milton zone in on these two key conditions surrounding and leading to the fall as means of supporting their explications.
By interpreting Genesis, in Paradise Lost, Milton's purpose---like that of St. Augustine in City of God--in part, is to "justif...