ABSTRACT
Einstein’s claim that God does not play dice with the universe rejects indeterminacy and denies that spooky otherness could be constitutive of reality. By affirming God’s foreknowledge and human liberty, John Milton anticipates the impasse between a predictable universe and one where outcomes are constitutionally unpredictable. One episode in his epic seems fundamentally indeterminate: when Satan in chaos plummets into “a vast vacuity.” At other moments of apparent contingency, the possibility of prevention flagged by the Narrator is arguably disingenuous. But in chaos, the situation lies beyond providential manipulation and the fate of humanity seems to rest on contingency.
