Paradise Lost, published in 1667, is John Milton’s (1608-74) most recognizable literary masterpiece. It claims to justify the “fall” of humanity through an elaborate rewriting of the book of Genesis. A centerpiece in the canon of English literature, scholars have uncovered, studied, and analyzed Milton’s sources from numerous theoretical and historical angles. Having studied Latin, Greek, Hebrew, and Italian, Milton had access to multiple sources that played a role in his account of Genesis. Despite this, there have been few attempts to study his potential involvement with, or exposure to, Islamic philosophy and, particularly, the ideas of the polymath Ibn Sīnā. Ibn Sīnā, otherwise Latinized as Avicenna, is one of the most consequential philosophers in the history of both European and Islamic Philosophy. Avicenna argued for a view of creation in which the world becomes a gradual product of God’s superabundance, emanation, or “effulgence” (fayḍ). He thus argues that God “…is the enactor of the whole” because he is the existent “from whom all existence emanates.” This paper describes how the imaginative language of Milton describes the multiple ways in which God is the first cause of all creation – a theory which is elaborated by Avicenna in his Kitāb al-Shifā’. Milton achieves this by using detailed metaphors, allusions, and descriptions as well as the continuous use of passive voice, particularly, in Uriel’s description of the world’s creation in the third book of Paradise Lost. This paper argues that this use of passive voice in the description of the act of creation highlights a paradox between God’s abstraction and the materiality of His creation. This is an issue that is also raised in the works of Avicenna, as Avicenna’s God is a first principle lacking quiddity, but He also creates by necessity of nature. This paper also considers Avicenna’s invocation in the literary genealogy of Paradise Lost and, chiefly, in Dante Alighieri’s Divina Commedia as well as the philosophy of Marsilio Ficino to explore how Avicenna’s ideas not only entered Milton’s cultural and educational milieu but also how Milton reimagined and gave concrete artistic expression to some of Avicenna's ideas in his complex and multifaceted poem.