To the early Renaissance humanists, such as Erasumus, Elyot, and More, the clasical learning is never renounced as pagan, but rathe embraced as an essential part in training an ideal Christian. The idea of great human possibilities, however, directly ...

To the early Renaissance humanists, such as Erasumus, Elyot, and More, the clasical learning is never renounced as pagan, but rathe embraced as an essential part in training an ideal Christian. The idea of great human possibilities, however, directly collides with Protestantism. Luther's and Calvin's doctrines, which insist that man's salvation is dependent solely upon God's grace, deny any relevancy of human goodness or virture to one's salvation and susequently repudiate the congruity between Christian virtue and that of pagan. Understandably, humanism finds no proper place in this new evangelical movement.
As a devout Protestant, John Milton views human attempts to achieve salvation, or Christian ideal, are futile unless Grace takes the initiative. As a humanist poet, however, he finds it inevitable to use classical aesthetics and rhetoric in order to present his works as sound and convincing artistic entities. This paper is to examine how the poet struggles to cope with the obvious conflict between his puritan beliefs and humanist aesthetics in Paradise Regained, where he portrays what he conceives to be the ideal human being in Christianity, or Saviour in human shape and ability, so as to present himself as a heroic prophet who reveals in human terms who Christ really is.
Man is always at the center of Milton However, he is keenly aware of the inadequacy of employing humanist ideas and aesthetics in his depiction of the ultimate Christian hero, Jesus. Humanism must be rejected for Jesus to reveal himself as the victor over Satanic power. By making Jesus reject humanist value, a basis of his own literary career, Milton reveals the true nature of his hero who is substantially a man like himself and at the same time overcomes the limitations of human being. Thus, itis clearly the possibility of great human achievement that Milton intends to present in the work. And it is in his belief that man is capable of imitating Christ so as to become "perfect," can we find the humanist spirit alive in the poet whose beliefs in human nature may have been shattered by the Restoration.