Lucifer paradise lost series#

At the deepest level, Satan represents in a way the unavoidability of truth. For he knows, and somehow realizes, the foundations of his own being: the futility of sin. The other part that complicates Satan is that he can never be sincerely satanic he can never fully believe the story about himself that he is trying to tell. Learn more about Martin LutherвЂ™s view of Satan. Again, Satan in some sense resents the conditions of his own existence. To himself at times, Satan seems to think of himself as someone who, as one of the other angels says, would вЂњrather than be less / cared not to be at allвЂќ. ItвЂ™s not really your fault youвЂ™re caught up in a much larger war between superpowers-myself and God-that treat you like a plaything.вЂќ GodвЂ™s the one whoвЂ™s causing me to cause you to suffer. You are going to suffer for what God has done to me. When Satan sees Adam and Eve, he says, вЂњOh, you poor creatures. How can Satan do this? What is the motive for SatanвЂ™s sinning? What is SatanвЂ™s inner life like? We get some of this when Satan tries to talk to other people, to the other fallen devils and especially sometimes to, say, Adam and Eve. In a way that Anselm and Aquinas thought wasnвЂ™t really possible for Satan, Milton says Satan can actually formulate this thought and Milton tries in his poetry to represent SatanвЂ™s thinking as he does this. In IblisвЂ™s case, his fall-the fall of Satan in the Islamic text-is caused by Iblis not doing something, by not acting and again, thereвЂ™s at least a semi-reputable ethical or spiritual rationale for IblisвЂ™s resistance on some readings of Iblis.Д«ut in SatanвЂ™s case for Milton, this is not so SatanвЂ™s rebellion is clearly, wholly self-willed, wholly committed to the idea-more extreme even than Aquinas or Anselm or Dante, too-that Satan should be his own god. Think about Satan in comparison to Iblis. (Image: Wolfgang Sauber/Public domain) Iblis and Satan

Learn more about the вЂњlogicвЂќ of SatanвЂ™s rebellion against God.ДЄnselm was a medieval scholastic, who also wrote about SatanвЂ™s fall. When he thinks about his own condition, he blames God-вЂњGod set me up for thisвЂќ-but when he thinks about his own ambitions, he thinks of himself as doing it himself, as wholly unsponsored. Does Satan think he had a choice, or does he think he was set up? He seems to oscillate wildly between these two extremes. Milton through Satan also raises the question about whether or not choice itself, freedom, is about having lots of possibilities.

Lucifer paradise lost series#

This is a transcript from the video series Why Evil Exists.

Typically they come only at the end of vast, wandering lines, paragraphs, which are enormously rhetorically powerful but when considered outside of the rationalizations that led up to them, can sound enormously dubious. He has a hard time making straight declarative sentences. Satan is also a sinuous thinker he doesnвЂ™t just end up as a serpent, he thinks sinuously. This wonderful first line of SatanвЂ™s is a hypothetical-if that is you, but oh how disastrous your fall has been. He says, вЂњif thou beвЂ™est he but O how fallen!вЂќ. When he first looks over at the bottom of the pit, he sees another angel, Beelzebub. It matters a lot that SatanвЂ™s first spoken word in the whole poem is вЂњifвЂќ. Satan is never willing to own up to his own responsibility in this he wants to figure out a way to make it someone elseвЂ™s fault.ДЄmong his many other gifts, Satan is also a master of possibilities, of hypotheticals, but never able to settle on any of them. Satan admits he is a rebel, but as with the Islamic accounts of Iblis, and with the medieval scholastics like Anselm and Aquinas, he has an excuse: from his perspective, God was behind his fall. (Image: izzzy71/Shutterstock) Satan: A Thinker and a Master of Possibilities From SatanвЂ™s perspective, God was behind his fall. As Satan says in the first book, God вЂњtempted our attempt, and wrought our fallвЂќ. He sees himself as tempted tempted by God. Milton tries to capture how Satan sees the rebellion. By Charles Mathewes, Ph.D., University of Virginia In the early part of the Paradise Lost, Milton establishes that it is about SatanвЂ™s rebellion against God.