The Wide Path of Perfection
John Milton, Desire, and Perfected Souls
Before I dump out some words on whether or not we feel desire in Heaven and what that means for perfection as a state of being and God as a representative of that state, let me give the context to why I fell down this internal rabbit hole (I say internal because I have not looked far into other people’s opinions on this, dug around for pithy quotes, or done most of the preparatory work that usually accompanies these essays).
What happened was that I was staring at my bookshelf and waiting to see if any title jumped out at me. I’ve done this sporadically for several years now. Whether it's a haphazard pile of books on the floor of my childhood bedroom or an overstuffed Ikea bookshelf, I like offering fate the chance to step in and draw my eye to the spine of a book I haven’t cracked open in years. I like the randomness, the spontaneity of letting my eyes drift across titles – some that I’ve read multiple times and others that have sat neglected on the shelf since I picked them up during an overly optimistic bookstore visit – and sometimes, though not always, a title jumps out at me and I just have to pull it off the shelf and start thumbing through it.
An important side note: I’ve decided my allegiance in the great booklover battle, the warring sides of which are team to-dogear-pages versus team not-to-dogear-pages, and declared myself a loyal soldier of the dogear army. Because of this, returning to a previously read book is an especially sweet occasion. Each dogeared page signals to me that something was underlined on that page, something that was important enough for me to pull out a pen and mark up the book. Sometimes there’s writing in the margin, sometimes there’s cross references to other books, but every time there is something that a version of myself, in the near or distant past, had thought significant, or at least beautiful.
The most recent time I did this exercise, staring at a bookshelf and waiting to feel a pull from the benevolent booklover gods, my eyes were drawn to John Milton’s Paradise Lost. I read it for the first time a couple years ago and was challenged by it, inspired by it, and endlessly fascinated by it. It is as familiar as a story could possibly be to me, and yet I know it demands I reread it, that I study it again, maybe in a few years time, with a new perspective. For now, though, I had just pulled it off the shelf at random and was thumbing through the dogeared pages. There were enough memorable lines that I could write about nothing else for a year, but one line stood out to me more than any other I perused that day.
Milton writes that mankind is made “In degree, the cause of his desire.”
If, as Milton is suggesting, desire is the product of differences, it follows that if, in Heaven, we are to experience perfect contentment, that must mean that differences evaporate – otherwise, with the existence of differences, desire would be introduced to Heaven. I am talking, for the purposes of this essay, about a generic, Christian-ish idea of Heaven, though one that I will challenge and mold as I try to figure out what I think, separate from Christian expectations, Heaven might look like – with or without desire.
Now, the first counterargument to my above claim is that it is not the differences themselves that cause desire, but our recognition of them. If this is the case, and if we are for now assuming that desire is an unacceptable addition to the Heavenly realm, does that mean that we become blind to our fellow souls? Are we unable to distinguish one soul from another – whether a stranger or our closest loved one – not because we have have all been polished down to an identical state in the pursuit of perfection and the eradication of desire, but because we, as heavenly beings, are now either incapable or unwilling to recognize differences between souls, though those differences exist as much as they did in life? Does this difference-blindness, in protecting Heaven from the unwanted infection of desire, reduce the goodness of Heaven in another, unintended way?
Milton writes of God that, “Thou in thy secrecy, although alone / Best with thyself accompanied, seek’st not / Social communication”
As a perfected being, God has no need for other souls; he is “with thyself accompanied.” But we, flawed souls as we are, act differently. Milton writes of humans that we “by conversation with his like, to help / or solace his defects.” We humans need communication with other humans to comfort us in our flawed state. We rely on each other's shortcomings to “solace” our own defects.
If, as Milton is suggesting, differences between souls is the cause of desire, and if as a perfected being God – and by extension us, upon reaching heaven – no longer require “social communication,” then perhaps desire will never have to threaten the purity of heaven, because the souls that exist there will not notice each others differences – if such difference even exist – because they are “with thyself accompanied,” and to be accompanied by a heavenly soul is enough for eternal contentment. It may be a lonely afterlife, but we won’t notice because we are perfectly satisfied with our own perfected, isolated state.
All of the flaming hoops we’ve jumped through are hinging on the presupposition that desire cannot exist in Heaven, that desire is an emotion of a flawed, earthly soul, not an exalted, heavenly one. But what if it’s not? What if desire existed in Heaven? What if desire and perfection could exist in the same space, at the same time?
What are the implications of that wrinkle to the definition of perfection? Does that indicate that even different souls can both obtain perfection? This is all, I understand, assuming that perfection is even a possible or desirable state of existence for a soul other than God, which is a debate in and of itself; but, for the sake of this essay, let’s assume it is. Let’s assume perfection is attainable within the bounds of Heaven – whatever that may look like theologically. I don’t believe that perfection could be attained at the cost of finding other souls indistinguishable due to a uniform perfection across the board, and so it must mean that perfection is not, as we like to think, a straight and narrow path (Matt. 17:4).
From this I conclude that perfection and differences can co-exist, but we are left with a loose-end: desire. We now have to determine how wide that path of perfection really is and what features are included under its umbrella. Is desire an emotion that a perfected being can feel?
In Christian theology, maybe more than ever in the 21st century, there is an emphasis on God’s desire for your salvation. If you take the traditional Christian God as the benchmark for perfection, that must mean that desire is a pure emotion, if felt in a godly way. But I don’t see the Christian God as the benchmark (I’ve written about why before and likely will again – all is flux, including my thoughts on divinity!). So instead of turning to a God to determine if desire can exist within a perfected soul, I am turning instead inward. What do I think? The vanity! The pride!
At this moment, I would say yes. I think perfection resembles something closer to the mastery of emotions – from desire to sorrow to joy to pain – more so than the elimination of unsavory emotions altogether. Perfection is not the buffing out of the creases that make us unique, it is not the elimination of all shadow in the world, leaving only blinding light, as Bulgakov writes in The Master and Margarita, it is certainly not a state of existence in which we can no longer recognize our fellow souls for their sameness; instead, it must be the expert craftsman creating their masterpiece, the experienced rider taming their steed, the inspired author finding one perfect word after another. Heaven – as a place of perfection and of vibrant differences and even of desire – is a collection of souls who have not abandoned their emotions and idiosyncrasies or even their need for effort, but have learned to navigate themselves with precision, to navigate their relationships with others with the same infinitely skilled hand, and have discovered perfection in harmony, not just faultless uniformity.
The path of perfection is wider than we think, make room.
