John Milton: Classical Learning and the Progress of Virtue

Our third book in the Giants in the History of Education series The Puritan poet John Milton is most famous for his massive theological epic Paradise Lost. He was also known as perhaps the greatest genius of the English Renaissance—possibly the best-educated man of his day—and as a major theorist of classical learning for Christians. The man who wrote the seminal words “The end then of Learning is to repair the ruines of our first Parents by regaining to know God aright, and out of that knowledge to love him, to imitate him, to be like him . . .” (Of Education, 1644) argues across all his voluminous writings that the purpose of education is soul work for virtue as opposed to information-gathering for profit. In this book, Milton scholar Dr. Grant Horner from The Master’s University examines the poet’s powerful vision of a Christian and classical education. Trained at Duke University by Stanley Fish, the world’s most influential Miltonist, Horner approaches the text as a Christian educa