[Milton-L] The Son's knowledge

[Mitchell M. Harris]

Rich-

It's an intriguing question--bravo to your students. Whatever the  
answer, and I'm not presumptuous enough to propose one at this point,  
I do think we need to come to some sort of understanding of what it  
means for the Son to be the "omnific" Logos and why Raphael qualifies  
the conversations God has with the Son as being ineffable in nature.  
Moreover, the entire account of the Son's creation is figurative or  
parabolic (I'm thinking of Jean-Luc Nancy's sense of the term), right?  
After all, Raphael has to delineate the happenings of heaven through  
discursive reasoning, and he fully acknowledges that this creates a  
special problem relating to translation:

Yet for thy good,
This is dispensed, and what surmounts the reach
Of human sense, I shall delineate so,
By lik'ning spiritual to corporal forms,
As may express them best, though what if Earth
Be but the shadow of Heav'n, and things therein
Each to other like, more than on Earth is thought? (5.570-76)

So everything in Books 5 and 6 happens, but it happens "like" this or  
that--not as it is or as it were. And Raphael's question is telling:  
he still doesn't quite understand this new, strange beast called  
"Earth."

Best,
	Mitch

Mitchell M. Harris
Assistant Professor
Department of English
Augustana College
2001 S. Summit Ave.
Sioux Falls, SD 57197
(605) 274-4699
mitchell.harris at augie.edu

"Alack, when once our grace we have forgot,
Nothing goes right . . ."
				   - William Shakespeare

On Oct 24, 2008, at 9:25 AM, jamesrovira at gmail.com wrote:

> In Milton, can one be "before" eternity? Isn't eternity a position  
> relative to (outside of) time and space rather than a position  
> "within" time and space? One entering a time line worries about what  
> is before and after, but one outside a timeline could conceivably  
> view the whole thing at once. So we have this description of the  
> Father in bk 3, 77-79:
>
> "Him [Satan] God beholding from his prospect high,
> Wherein past, present, and future he beholds,
> Thus to his only Son forseeing spake."
>
> Now we might get the impression that the Father alone occupies this  
> position, but immediately prior to these lines we're told, "on his  
> right / The radiant image of his Glory sat / His only son" (62-64),  
> so that the Son occupies a position alongside the Father and  
> conceivably also beholds "past, present, and future" "from his  
> prospect high."
>
> I'm not saying Milton was an orthodox trinitarian, but I don't think  
> the argument from silence regarding the Son's omniscience works here.
>
> Jim R
>
> On Oct 24, 2008 10:04am, Larry Isitt <isitt at cofo.edu> wrote:
>
> > Hi
> > Rich,
> >
> >
> > The
> > negative is not a positive; in this case the absence of the term  
> “omniscience”
> > is not warrant to grant what is missing from the list of the angels’
> > hymns to the Son. Only the Father is ever called omniscient in the  
> epic: Things not
> > revealed, which the invisible King, / Only Omniscient, hath  
> suppressed in night
> > (VII, 122-23).Besides,
> > even taking the list as it stands should also tell us something  
> relevant: the
> > Son cannot be all-knowing if he is  not eternal as well, because  
> he lacks
> > what came before his own becoming.
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