I started my reread of Book IV of Paradise Lost recently. It took the better part of an hour to get through the first 115 or so lines. They are fraught with implications, questions, and applicable ruminations, which meant that I had to go very, very slowly. And, as so often happens when you're reading good literature, there were three real showstoppers:
If you're familiar with the poem (or, y'know, Christianity), you know that Satan will pick to remain a tempter and opposition to God, so he decides to (as it says above) curse the Love of God and head deeper into sin (though how he could go into anything worse than waging open war against God is a different topic). But before that pivot, there's a lot to think about, a lot to unpack.
For Satan, he is likewise wondering how far God will go to forgive His creations (or, in Mormon parlance, His children*). But he's in a place beyond where Claudius sees himself, wondering if he has gone so far that there isn't the possibility of pardon at all. Claudius explores what mortality has to offer for those who do wrong, gain a boon, and then wish to be pardoned of the fault. Satan is at a new level, one of worry about having gone too far.
This leads to a mental image that some students put into my head (or it came about because of our conversation, the memory is a bit blurry) of God, long before the creation of Earth** and still with His children. In this image, God is helping Lucifer to learn how to ride his bike, going through the parental role of coaching, cheering, and assisting while the little version of Himself goes about the process of mastering a skill. That is, God still loves Lucifer.
The essence of this idea is that God's love is truly stronger than Satan's hatred. That God still wants Lucifer to return, despite all he's done, though knowing that it cannot be--that concept is, I'm sure, heretical to some. But then, I'm reminded of Paulina's comment in The Winter's Tale, It is an heretic that makes the fire, / Not she which burns in't" (2.3) and I have to pause a little. What makes this posit heretical is the idea that God's love is immense and genuinely all-encompassing. "But He's not going to forgive Satan," some would want to argue, as if that were what I meant. I don't think there's anything that I have to say in response to that.
Now, the idea that I'm perfectly me is unlikely, insofar as a postlapsarian world (y'know, the very thing Paradise Lost is all about) interferes with what I was and what I will be. And some of who I am is yet to be uncovered (i.e., revealed), so who I am is subject to influence, but I feel like the core pieces of my identity are constant. This isn't to say that there aren't changes in a person; we're all dynamic and modify and grow, but the essential personhood, I think, remains.
So when Satan says that he was "made this way", it makes my antennae quiver. If Satan was made the way he is, then he's acting upon the God-given impulses, tendencies, and expectations.*** And that means that God is really responsible for creating evil--leading to an entire rabbit hole of theodicy that the poem is grappling with. Without going into that direction, I can put it into the more important modern parallel of gender identity. One of the arguments from the LGBTQ community is that they were "born this way", which makes a lot of sense to me--my oldest was born with a heart condition that nearly took his life twice during his first year alive. It wasn't a matter of choice, but it was definitely a reality. He was "born that way". It makes sense that Milton's Satan is the way he is because that's how he was made. And if that's the case, then the Fall of Satan is one that's predestined--that God, in effect, caused because of how He designed Lucifer. And in a poem that is all about the freedom to choose, this undermines the entire narrative.
I think that's why it's so important for God to say in Book III, "I made him just and right,/ Sufficient to have stood though free to fall" (98-99). Satan--and Mankind--were made capable of overcoming their built in deficiencies. Yet, that also gives me pause. My oldest couldn't simply choose life: He had to have surgeries and medications in order to overcome what he came packaged with. He needed a lot of help to stay alive. There are some inherent things that cannot be overcome through faith, I guess is what I'm saying. That it requires something of others, help and attention and love, in order to survive.
Maybe Satan fell less because he was "created as I was" and more because he didn't feel he had the support needed to suss out his feelings.
Yet there are limits to subjectivity. Aside from my own qualms with moral relativism, I feel like there is an objective reality that exists independently. The stimuli are coming from somewhere, as it were. God's love, in this case, is a real thing. It's there, it enlarges the heart, expands the mind...except for where it doesn't.
I think what I mean is that the love is real (primary quality, to use a Lockean phrase), but naturally enough, the meaning of it, the secondary quality, is contingent upon the organ doing the sensing.
During my LDS mission to Florida, my companion**** and I were getting our car worked on. To pass the time, we fell into a conversation with a nice Black fellow whose name I either never learned, or have forgotten. We were chatting, naturally enough, about religion, and we got onto the idea of his spouse, whom he said he loved deeply. Thinking he saw an opening, my companion asked, "What would you say if I told you that there was a way to be with your wife forever. That after you died, you and she could be together for eternity?"
The man looked at my companion for a long moment, a thoughtful look in his eye, then said, "I would say that you're the devil himself."
My companion was floored. This argument, this promise of continued marriage into eternity, was supposed to be the ace-in-the-hole doctrine that would make people positively rejoice at learning the gospel message.
The man went on. "If I'm living with God, why do I need to be with her? I already spent my life with her. Ain't that enough?"
I never thought of it that way before. I disagree with the man: I love my wife very much and I am happy to consider our time together as perpetual and unbounded. But in terms of approaching a Truth from a different angle, that one always stands out in my mind. For him, eternity with the missus would be no Heaven, but a Hell.
I've heard other qualifications about what needs to be in the afterlife to make it worth being there, some posited in various levels of seriousness: "If there isn't steak in heaven, I don't know if I want to go" to "How can it be heaven if my rapist is there? Just because he was forgiven by the bishop?"
And that leads to the really hard part about this whole thing--as well as tying into the "Repentance" section: What do we want out of heaven? When it comes to God's judgment, we want His love for us and those we care about, but what about those who did ill? Don't we want people who escaped justice in this life to receive punishment in the afterlife? (I mean, assuming you're down with this type of theology.) Everything everyone does is a sin to somebody, so aside from sorting out that mess, what can we hope for in a heaven that's contingent on the person there? I've heard the idea of individualized heavens (this example being one of the most poignant; seriously, watch it), but there's definitely a problem there. What if someone wants to be with me in heaven, but I don't like them? Being with them would be a type of hell, yet for them it's a heaven.
Could Satan be happy with God? Well, not Milton's Satan, that's for certain. Being in these areas of love is anathema to Satan. But he also points out that he's in Hell! It's a part of him, always in him. He's suffering regardless of what he does. He's suffering in Hell; he suffers when God shows him love.
I don't know what to do with that. To say he's "damned if he does, damned if he doesn't" takes on an additional meaning when we're talking about Satan, but that seems to be the situation he's put himself in.
I also don't know how to wrap this up except to say that you should read Paradise Lost. Again, if it's been awhile. There's a lot there to make a person think, even if the answers are hard to come by.
----
* For Mormons, the hierarchy of heaven isn't with different types of created entities--seraphim, archangels, thrones, principalities, and what have you--but all are children of God in various stages of progression. There are intelligences, premortal spirits (one's soul, before the gaining of a body), mortal souls (that's us right now), and spirits of varying degrees of exaltation. In short, the angels of heaven are in some way appertaining to this Earth, either because they were once residents on the planet, or will one day be so. This idea of Lucifer (his prelapsarian name) as another child of God underpins what I'm discussing here.
** Through the means of natural processes and evolution, as I talked about before. Obvs.
*** This is challenged later in the poem, but earlier in the timeline (meaning Satan has changed) when Satan argues that he and the rest of the angels weren't created, but were instead "self-created" (5.852-855).
**** For LDS missionaries, they are assigned a place to serve and are given a permanent friend that they have to spend their time with. Though these assignments change over the course of the mission, when Mormons talk about "companions" they basically mean "assigned friends during the mission".
...is there no placeand
Left for Repentance, none for Pardon left? (4.79-80)
...he deserv'd no such returnand
From me, whom he created what I was (4.42-43)
Hadst thou [Satan] the same free Will and Power to stand?Taken out of context as they are, the meaning of the passages is rather opaque. I should probably note that these quotes come from Satan's soliloquy before he enters the eponymous (well, one of the eponymous) Paradise and sees Mankind for the first time. He has fought God, circumvented the pits and perils of Hell and Chaos, tricked an angel into giving him directions, and now stands at the moment of decision. Should he turn back? Should he repent to God and try to undo the wrong he's done? Or should he persevere in his own nature? Should he seek to undo the good that God made?
Thou hadst: whom hast thou then or what to accuse,
But Heav'ns free Love dealt equally to all?
Be then his Love accurst, since love or hate,
To me alike, it deals eternal woe. (4.66-70)
If you're familiar with the poem (or, y'know, Christianity), you know that Satan will pick to remain a tempter and opposition to God, so he decides to (as it says above) curse the Love of God and head deeper into sin (though how he could go into anything worse than waging open war against God is a different topic). But before that pivot, there's a lot to think about, a lot to unpack.
Repentance
King Claudius, in Hamlet, only has one meaningful soliloquy. It's found after the play-within-the-play, where Claudius is in the chapel and trying to absolve himself of the guilt of having killed his brother for the crown. There's one line in particular that strongly connects (though the entire speech in Act 3 scene 3 is worth reading) to what Satan says in the quote above. Claudius asks, "May one be pardon'd and retain the offence?" Claudius is probing the limits of repentance, the boundaries of Godly mercy.For Satan, he is likewise wondering how far God will go to forgive His creations (or, in Mormon parlance, His children*). But he's in a place beyond where Claudius sees himself, wondering if he has gone so far that there isn't the possibility of pardon at all. Claudius explores what mortality has to offer for those who do wrong, gain a boon, and then wish to be pardoned of the fault. Satan is at a new level, one of worry about having gone too far.
This leads to a mental image that some students put into my head (or it came about because of our conversation, the memory is a bit blurry) of God, long before the creation of Earth** and still with His children. In this image, God is helping Lucifer to learn how to ride his bike, going through the parental role of coaching, cheering, and assisting while the little version of Himself goes about the process of mastering a skill. That is, God still loves Lucifer.
The essence of this idea is that God's love is truly stronger than Satan's hatred. That God still wants Lucifer to return, despite all he's done, though knowing that it cannot be--that concept is, I'm sure, heretical to some. But then, I'm reminded of Paulina's comment in The Winter's Tale, It is an heretic that makes the fire, / Not she which burns in't" (2.3) and I have to pause a little. What makes this posit heretical is the idea that God's love is immense and genuinely all-encompassing. "But He's not going to forgive Satan," some would want to argue, as if that were what I meant. I don't think there's anything that I have to say in response to that.
What We Are
Man, these lines are packed. In the interest of time, I'm going to focus on the last six words: "whom he created as I was." I often discuss the nurture versus nature concept with my students, and pretty often, students are convinced that they wouldn't be who they are if they were born elsewhere. Yet, most of my students are LDS. Obviously, my reading of Mormonism is different than the Church's mainstream (see above), but I would think that I'd be on the same wavelength. They come from a belief about existing before they were born and that they were once intelligences (see footnote * below). Part of what's interesting about these doctrines is that it gives a continuity of existence and identity that goes in both directions of time. "I was me, I am me, I will be me." It's a literal belief in the coeternal existence as identity--but if they were born in Detroit, they wouldn't be themselves anymore?Now, the idea that I'm perfectly me is unlikely, insofar as a postlapsarian world (y'know, the very thing Paradise Lost is all about) interferes with what I was and what I will be. And some of who I am is yet to be uncovered (i.e., revealed), so who I am is subject to influence, but I feel like the core pieces of my identity are constant. This isn't to say that there aren't changes in a person; we're all dynamic and modify and grow, but the essential personhood, I think, remains.
So when Satan says that he was "made this way", it makes my antennae quiver. If Satan was made the way he is, then he's acting upon the God-given impulses, tendencies, and expectations.*** And that means that God is really responsible for creating evil--leading to an entire rabbit hole of theodicy that the poem is grappling with. Without going into that direction, I can put it into the more important modern parallel of gender identity. One of the arguments from the LGBTQ community is that they were "born this way", which makes a lot of sense to me--my oldest was born with a heart condition that nearly took his life twice during his first year alive. It wasn't a matter of choice, but it was definitely a reality. He was "born that way". It makes sense that Milton's Satan is the way he is because that's how he was made. And if that's the case, then the Fall of Satan is one that's predestined--that God, in effect, caused because of how He designed Lucifer. And in a poem that is all about the freedom to choose, this undermines the entire narrative.
I think that's why it's so important for God to say in Book III, "I made him just and right,/ Sufficient to have stood though free to fall" (98-99). Satan--and Mankind--were made capable of overcoming their built in deficiencies. Yet, that also gives me pause. My oldest couldn't simply choose life: He had to have surgeries and medications in order to overcome what he came packaged with. He needed a lot of help to stay alive. There are some inherent things that cannot be overcome through faith, I guess is what I'm saying. That it requires something of others, help and attention and love, in order to survive.
Maybe Satan fell less because he was "created as I was" and more because he didn't feel he had the support needed to suss out his feelings.
Love as Hell
Lastly, Satan drops this bomb: "Be then his Love accurst, since love or hate,/ To me alike, it deals eternal woe." This is taking his earlier posit about Heaven and Hell ("The mind is its own place, and in it self/Can make a Heav'n of Hell, a Hell of Heav'n" (1.254-255)) and broadening it. How one perceives the light and love of God--or anything--changes how one feels about it. It's Hamlet's argument "There is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so" (2.2) recapitulated.Yet there are limits to subjectivity. Aside from my own qualms with moral relativism, I feel like there is an objective reality that exists independently. The stimuli are coming from somewhere, as it were. God's love, in this case, is a real thing. It's there, it enlarges the heart, expands the mind...except for where it doesn't.
I think what I mean is that the love is real (primary quality, to use a Lockean phrase), but naturally enough, the meaning of it, the secondary quality, is contingent upon the organ doing the sensing.
During my LDS mission to Florida, my companion**** and I were getting our car worked on. To pass the time, we fell into a conversation with a nice Black fellow whose name I either never learned, or have forgotten. We were chatting, naturally enough, about religion, and we got onto the idea of his spouse, whom he said he loved deeply. Thinking he saw an opening, my companion asked, "What would you say if I told you that there was a way to be with your wife forever. That after you died, you and she could be together for eternity?"
The man looked at my companion for a long moment, a thoughtful look in his eye, then said, "I would say that you're the devil himself."
My companion was floored. This argument, this promise of continued marriage into eternity, was supposed to be the ace-in-the-hole doctrine that would make people positively rejoice at learning the gospel message.
The man went on. "If I'm living with God, why do I need to be with her? I already spent my life with her. Ain't that enough?"
I never thought of it that way before. I disagree with the man: I love my wife very much and I am happy to consider our time together as perpetual and unbounded. But in terms of approaching a Truth from a different angle, that one always stands out in my mind. For him, eternity with the missus would be no Heaven, but a Hell.
I've heard other qualifications about what needs to be in the afterlife to make it worth being there, some posited in various levels of seriousness: "If there isn't steak in heaven, I don't know if I want to go" to "How can it be heaven if my rapist is there? Just because he was forgiven by the bishop?"
And that leads to the really hard part about this whole thing--as well as tying into the "Repentance" section: What do we want out of heaven? When it comes to God's judgment, we want His love for us and those we care about, but what about those who did ill? Don't we want people who escaped justice in this life to receive punishment in the afterlife? (I mean, assuming you're down with this type of theology.) Everything everyone does is a sin to somebody, so aside from sorting out that mess, what can we hope for in a heaven that's contingent on the person there? I've heard the idea of individualized heavens (this example being one of the most poignant; seriously, watch it), but there's definitely a problem there. What if someone wants to be with me in heaven, but I don't like them? Being with them would be a type of hell, yet for them it's a heaven.
Could Satan be happy with God? Well, not Milton's Satan, that's for certain. Being in these areas of love is anathema to Satan. But he also points out that he's in Hell! It's a part of him, always in him. He's suffering regardless of what he does. He's suffering in Hell; he suffers when God shows him love.
I don't know what to do with that. To say he's "damned if he does, damned if he doesn't" takes on an additional meaning when we're talking about Satan, but that seems to be the situation he's put himself in.
I also don't know how to wrap this up except to say that you should read Paradise Lost. Again, if it's been awhile. There's a lot there to make a person think, even if the answers are hard to come by.
----
* For Mormons, the hierarchy of heaven isn't with different types of created entities--seraphim, archangels, thrones, principalities, and what have you--but all are children of God in various stages of progression. There are intelligences, premortal spirits (one's soul, before the gaining of a body), mortal souls (that's us right now), and spirits of varying degrees of exaltation. In short, the angels of heaven are in some way appertaining to this Earth, either because they were once residents on the planet, or will one day be so. This idea of Lucifer (his prelapsarian name) as another child of God underpins what I'm discussing here.
** Through the means of natural processes and evolution, as I talked about before. Obvs.
*** This is challenged later in the poem, but earlier in the timeline (meaning Satan has changed) when Satan argues that he and the rest of the angels weren't created, but were instead "self-created" (5.852-855).
**** For LDS missionaries, they are assigned a place to serve and are given a permanent friend that they have to spend their time with. Though these assignments change over the course of the mission, when Mormons talk about "companions" they basically mean "assigned friends during the mission".