Satan Paper
Apr. 3rd, 2006 06:41 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jhameiaI should not even be writing this yet, considering I haven't finished Paradise Lost.
Introduction.
I'll have to cook something up.
Translation of felix culpa and the implications of the term.
FATE AND GOD
Problem of Free Will vs Fate: if Fate exists, then how can Satan be blamed.
Epicurus: Problem of Evil
Challenge of God's Omnipotence vs. Intention: allowing Satan into Eden - foreknowledge may not be influence, but lack of action? III 116-118
God created evil?
Speculation: was Satan meant to cause the Fall?
If God's Will cannot be understood, then it would be presumptuous to assume anything.
- Neil Forsyth:
Epicurus: God either wishes to take away evils, and is unable, or he is able, and is unwilling, or he is neither willing nor able, or he is both willing and able. If eh is willing and unable, He is feeble... f he is able and unwilling, he is envious... if he is neither willing nor able, he is both envious and feelble, and therefore not god; if he is both willing and able, which alone is suitable to God, from what source then are evils, or why does He not remove them?
Occam's razor ... would destroy theodicy.
(522)
On V 604 - 615
In the speech itself, since God's word is itself productive, creative, instigative, Satan is called into being as the disobedient one at the very moment God proclaims the eternal happiness of all. God's speech, in other words, suggests that he knows there will be trouble. Poor Satan, we may well feel, walks into the trap that God's words open for him, stepping forward, as it were, to fill the perennially vacant seat at the left hand of God.
- Michael Bryson
89 In sharing the Father's obsessions with rank and power, Satan reflects the Father's image in a way that the Son ultimately refuses to. Whereas Satan means to overthrow the Father and take him down from a heavenly throne, the Son adopts an end more radical than Satan's (and closer to Milton's) while employing means hitherto unseen in Milton's Heaven: he fights - through reason, self-sacrifice, and self-denial - to overturn heavenly kingship, to refuse thrones both earthly and heavenly, and to abolish kingship itself by reclaiming a Miltonic, internal definition of glory, heroism and true government.
94 ... In declaring that the "ways of God" are the object of justification, MIlton is declaring that the "Ways of God: stand in the place of that object of dikaioun whose cause is unjust. What the narrator wishes to "justify" is not God, but the "ways of God." It is the "ways of God" that are unjust; those "ways of God" stand in need of being "declared to be in the right," of being "acquitted," even of being forgiven.
95 Evil may come into the mind of God or Man and leave no spot only if that evil is not acted upon. Eve does eventually act on evil that comes into her mind, and Raphael seems to take for granted that the Father is also quite capable of acting on such evil.
SATAN
Obviously I'm not going to say he's a good guy. "Zaphod's just this guy you know?" HAHA.
Hero or Fool, G Rostrevor Hamilton
13 In the full unfolding of the story the first impression of Satans heroic qualities is sustained. They are not quelled by danger, or pain of body, or torment of mind; they are proof against all things but one, the revelation of God's omnipotence.
14 In the fighter against hopeless odds we may expect to find a folly which is itself heroic, so that in the common use of language we can hardly dismiss him as a fool.
- the fighter spirit in Satan
40 The conflict [of of morality] is summed up in Satan; in him we recognise our own divided wills.
Barbara Reibling points out how Satan doesn't reflect the ideal prince. Who the hell wants the ideal prince - in Hell?
Book II - meeting. Discussion of every possible way to get back at God, but no one really suggests backing down.
Werblowsky
47 ... practically every critic has at least once used the epithet"Promethean" to describe some of Satan's qualities.
Hamilton 33 Milton's Almighty, after foretelling that Man will "easily transgress", porses the question "whose fault?", and then expiates, in an arid and rather trite disquisition, on Man's free will.
ADAM AND EVE
Adam and Eve have executed their own agency:
Eve has eaten the apple. Although tempted by Satan, she has had her own choice, and she exercised the choice to disobey God.
Adam ate the fruit of his own volition, out of love for Eve - he has proved his love for Eve, although it is at risk of disobeying and giving up God. The nobility of this gesture cannot be dismissed.
With the advent of their own awareness and agency, they are given, as a gift from God to help them along, conscience - III 194-95
Beverly Sherry -
Michael's Consolation: XII 581-87 XII 464-65 - a paradise within thee, happier farr - conscience, and peace of mind from knowing that agency has been done in the name of GOOD, and in the name of God with full awareness.
Adam and Eve open dialogue with each other, finding reconciliation
McColgan, Kristin.
While at first Adam whines (X720 - 844) Eve approaches X 863-865 offers herself to suffer for Adam X 914-936
12 ... Eve initates a change in Adam, bringing about an end to the stalemate [of guilt and hopelessness], the "fruitless" and "vain contest" that appeared unending at the close of Book IX (1188-89). Through her words and action, she leads Adam from the physical and spiritual isolation of soliloquy to the mutuality and interdependence of dialogue.
Question: "Would Adam and Eve have been happier to have been in Paradise?" XI 88-89
Introduction.
I'll have to cook something up.
Translation of felix culpa and the implications of the term.
FATE AND GOD
Problem of Free Will vs Fate: if Fate exists, then how can Satan be blamed.
Epicurus: Problem of Evil
Challenge of God's Omnipotence vs. Intention: allowing Satan into Eden - foreknowledge may not be influence, but lack of action? III 116-118
God created evil?
Speculation: was Satan meant to cause the Fall?
If God's Will cannot be understood, then it would be presumptuous to assume anything.
- Neil Forsyth:
Epicurus: God either wishes to take away evils, and is unable, or he is able, and is unwilling, or he is neither willing nor able, or he is both willing and able. If eh is willing and unable, He is feeble... f he is able and unwilling, he is envious... if he is neither willing nor able, he is both envious and feelble, and therefore not god; if he is both willing and able, which alone is suitable to God, from what source then are evils, or why does He not remove them?
Occam's razor ... would destroy theodicy.
(522)
On V 604 - 615
In the speech itself, since God's word is itself productive, creative, instigative, Satan is called into being as the disobedient one at the very moment God proclaims the eternal happiness of all. God's speech, in other words, suggests that he knows there will be trouble. Poor Satan, we may well feel, walks into the trap that God's words open for him, stepping forward, as it were, to fill the perennially vacant seat at the left hand of God.
- Michael Bryson
89 In sharing the Father's obsessions with rank and power, Satan reflects the Father's image in a way that the Son ultimately refuses to. Whereas Satan means to overthrow the Father and take him down from a heavenly throne, the Son adopts an end more radical than Satan's (and closer to Milton's) while employing means hitherto unseen in Milton's Heaven: he fights - through reason, self-sacrifice, and self-denial - to overturn heavenly kingship, to refuse thrones both earthly and heavenly, and to abolish kingship itself by reclaiming a Miltonic, internal definition of glory, heroism and true government.
94 ... In declaring that the "ways of God" are the object of justification, MIlton is declaring that the "Ways of God: stand in the place of that object of dikaioun whose cause is unjust. What the narrator wishes to "justify" is not God, but the "ways of God." It is the "ways of God" that are unjust; those "ways of God" stand in need of being "declared to be in the right," of being "acquitted," even of being forgiven.
95 Evil may come into the mind of God or Man and leave no spot only if that evil is not acted upon. Eve does eventually act on evil that comes into her mind, and Raphael seems to take for granted that the Father is also quite capable of acting on such evil.
SATAN
Obviously I'm not going to say he's a good guy. "Zaphod's just this guy you know?" HAHA.
Hero or Fool, G Rostrevor Hamilton
13 In the full unfolding of the story the first impression of Satans heroic qualities is sustained. They are not quelled by danger, or pain of body, or torment of mind; they are proof against all things but one, the revelation of God's omnipotence.
14 In the fighter against hopeless odds we may expect to find a folly which is itself heroic, so that in the common use of language we can hardly dismiss him as a fool.
- the fighter spirit in Satan
40 The conflict [of of morality] is summed up in Satan; in him we recognise our own divided wills.
Barbara Reibling points out how Satan doesn't reflect the ideal prince. Who the hell wants the ideal prince - in Hell?
Book II - meeting. Discussion of every possible way to get back at God, but no one really suggests backing down.
Werblowsky
47 ... practically every critic has at least once used the epithet"Promethean" to describe some of Satan's qualities.
Hamilton 33 Milton's Almighty, after foretelling that Man will "easily transgress", porses the question "whose fault?", and then expiates, in an arid and rather trite disquisition, on Man's free will.
ADAM AND EVE
Adam and Eve have executed their own agency:
Eve has eaten the apple. Although tempted by Satan, she has had her own choice, and she exercised the choice to disobey God.
Adam ate the fruit of his own volition, out of love for Eve - he has proved his love for Eve, although it is at risk of disobeying and giving up God. The nobility of this gesture cannot be dismissed.
With the advent of their own awareness and agency, they are given, as a gift from God to help them along, conscience - III 194-95
Beverly Sherry -
Michael's Consolation: XII 581-87 XII 464-65 - a paradise within thee, happier farr - conscience, and peace of mind from knowing that agency has been done in the name of GOOD, and in the name of God with full awareness.
Adam and Eve open dialogue with each other, finding reconciliation
McColgan, Kristin.
While at first Adam whines (X720 - 844) Eve approaches X 863-865 offers herself to suffer for Adam X 914-936
12 ... Eve initates a change in Adam, bringing about an end to the stalemate [of guilt and hopelessness], the "fruitless" and "vain contest" that appeared unending at the close of Book IX (1188-89). Through her words and action, she leads Adam from the physical and spiritual isolation of soliloquy to the mutuality and interdependence of dialogue.
Question: "Would Adam and Eve have been happier to have been in Paradise?" XI 88-89