[Milton-L] (no subject)

[Joad Raymond]

Milton's unfallen angels also learn through experience -- for example, about
pain in the war in heaven. Commentators adopt various positions on this
topic, emphasising intuition or experience or continuing revelation. For
example, Milton's friend Henry Lawrence says there are four grounds of
angelic knowledge: i) natural; ii) revelation; iii) experience; iv)
supernatural. Having no senses angels know by species infused into them, but
they also know by reasoning, which they perform with speed and accuracy
beyond human comprehension. Thus their modes of knowing are much more like
ours than Aquinas suggests. John Salkeld adopts a more Thomistic position.
But it's worth noting that there are a range of positions on this topic
expressed in C17th Europe, and Milton probably writes expecting us to be
familiar with these debates.

There's even more on the varieties of knowledge possessed by fallen angels.
Wollebius writes: "There remained also in them no small knowledge, and a
sagacity also of searching out future things, having these helps. 1. Their
natural knowledge. 2. Their long experimental knowledge. 3. Astrologie. 4.
The knowledge of Scripture, chiefly of the Prophets. 5. Extraordinary
revelation, so often as God makes use of the service of these torturers."
Milton's Satan also knows things in several ways.

Joad Raymond

On Fri, Nov 7, 2008 at 8:54 PM, Horace Jeffery Hodges <
jefferyhodges at yahoo.com> wrote:

> John Rumrich wrote:
>
> "Angels are very intelligent, Milton believes, and they tend to understand
> phenomena intuitively, by sudden apprehension. But one might reply that
> Satan sits on top of the tree of life and doesn't understand it at all. Go
> figure."
>
> Jeffery Hodges suggests:
>
> But Satan is fallen and as God's adversary can now think only in
> purely adversarial, instrumental ways. He *might* still be capable of
> reasoning intuitively, as an angel, but we see him reasoning *discursively
> *, asking himself questions and seeking answers. Perhaps he is clever --
> a high IQ sort of guy -- but Milton portrays him as lacking genuine insight.
>
> Jeffery Hodges
>
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-- 
The woods are lovely, dark, and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.
~~~~ Robert Frost
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