[Milton-L] Knowledge, free will, etc.

[mgrattan at ucsd.edu]

Jefferey,
I second Margaret's thanks, and I must acknowledge "promoting" the Son as
an error, although God refers to the Son as "Messiah his anointed King" in
VI.718.

The supposition that the Son was created as an Ethereal Power and later
promoted makes sense if he was choosing to follow God's request for a
volunteer. This would mean, as you point out, that he becomes the Son (I'm
having trouble coming up with terms to differentiate pre/post elevation)
after choosing to sacrifice himself. The other possibility is that he was
elevated upon creation or shortly thereafter, coequal and therefore not
operating with freewill (just will), but then the whole ceremony of God
asking for a volunteer other than the Son is somewhat of a charade.
The temptation (pun intended) for me is to choose the latter, especially
considering the role he plays in defeating Satan as described in Book VII:

Mean while the Son
On his great Expedition now appeer'd,
Girt with Omnipotence, with Radiance crown'd
Of Majestie Divine, Sapience and Love [ 195 ]
Immense, and all his Father in him shon.

And earlier, in Book VI:
Effulgence of my Glorie, Son belov'd, [ 680 ]
Son in whose face invisible is beheld
Visibly, what by Deitie I am,
And in whose hand what by Decree I doe,
Second Omnipotence

It seems to me that here the Son is elevated to coequal status in terms of
power, which is why he is able to defeat Satan when other archangels could
not. Again, for me this troubles what is often considered the pinnacle of
a free choice

I guess that your comment about death as the state of one choosing to cut
oneself off from God suggests that death, as it describes ones relation to
God, is significant in exercising true freewill. Without understanding
death, isn't obedience merely mechanical? God seems to have reserved the
punishment of death exclusively for man. Yet when it is offered as a
consequence / condition of or punishment for disobedience, man has no
concept (dare I say no possibility of conceiving) of what this is.
Raphael's warning, while a fine and lengthy description of disobedience,
doesn't help with this point either. Others who disobey suffer all kinds
of punishments, except death. (And so too the Son, who specifically
ensures that the death he will suffer will be short.) So what started out
as a rather simple query for me has become...entangled.
Thanks again for the response, and sorry to take up so much space with my
musings.
Michael

> Michael Grattan asked a couple of questions. Here's my response to the
> latter question first:
>
> I have another question regarding freewill. When God relates to Jesus,
>
> Such I created all th' Ethereal Powers [ 100 ]
> And Spirits, both them who stood and them who faild;
> Freely they stood who stood, and fell who fell.
> Is Jesus included in "Ethereal Powers," and if not, does he have freewill
> (or does God)? Obviously he exercises "freewill" when offering to suffer
> death for man's salvation, but as a manifestation of God, wouldn't he be
> somehow separate from other Ethereal Powers?
> Jeffery Hodges responds:
>
> First, I doubt that we should be using "Jesus" to name the Son at this
> point, for Jesus doesn't appear until Paradise Regained, so far as I know.
> This is the pre-incarnate Son.
>
> Second, I suppose that the Son is one of the ethereal powers because
> Milton's theology is Arian. The Son is that one of the ethereal powers who
> has been elevated to Sonship. Could he have freely fallen prior to his
> elevation? That would seemingly follow logically -- unless he came into
> existence in the ceremonial moment of elevation. Could he freely fall
> after the elevation to Sonship? As the divine Son of God, he could no
> longer fall at all, freely or otherwise -- or so I would infer.
>
> As for the first question, which is actually two questions, Matthew wrote:
>
> I have wondered just what was the point of God offering any kind of
> punishment for disobedience, and especially one he knows is foreign to
> Adam.
>
> . . . of all the Trees
> In Paradise that bear delicious fruit
> So various, not to taste that onely Tree
> Of knowledge, planted by the Tree of Life,
> So neer grows Death to Life, what ere Death is, [ 425 ]
> Regardless of the level of God's complicity in letting Satan tempt Adam
> and Eve (or more accurately, just Eve), it seems that God mentions the
> punishment of death as a necessary element for Adam to choose obedience. I
> always thought that the threat of losing Paradise would have been more
> persuasive.
>
> To me it raises a sticky issue of motives for obedience: does one obey out
> of love and loyalty or out of fear of punishment? A student asked if God
> preferred one kind of obedience to the other. I'm not sure.
> I had better let others reply to this in more depth -- since I'm out of
> mine -- but my understanding of Milton's thought is that disobedience to
> God is a free choice to deliberately cut oneself off from God, who is the
> source of life, such that death follows . . . whatever thing death may be.
> In Milton's view, free obedience is better than "mechanical necessity"
> because the latter is not really obedience at all, so -- Milton argues --
> God creates free beings who can make the fruitful, fateful choice to obey
> or disobey. The point is to obey out of love, but disobedience sets in
> motion the 'natural' consequence of cutting oneself off from God as the
> source of life.
>
> The question that arises -- for me anyway -- is this: why could God not
> have created free beings whose choice of disobedience did not cut them off
> from the source of life, but rather resulted in a lesser punishment, e.g.,
> expulsion from the Garden. On this point, I don't know enough about
> Milton. Perhaps he thought that a fateful choice was necessary for a truly
> free individual, namely, that to be radically free, an individual must be
> able to utterly reject God, damn the consequences.
>
> What do others think?
>
> Jeffery Hodges_______________________________________________
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