[Milton-L] angelic knowledge

[richard strier]

I have not been following this discussion, so I'm sure everyone knows about 
Robert West's wonderful old book on Milton and the Angels.  Really smart and 
savvy.  Daring when it needs to be; cautious when it needs to be.



---- Original message ----
>Date: Mon, 30 Mar 2009 11:36:46 -0700
>From: John Geraghty <johnegeraghty at hotmail.com>  
>Subject: RE: [Milton-L] angelic knowledge  
>To: John Milton Discussion List <milton-l at lists.richmond.edu>
>
>    
>   I came across a page that anyone interested in
>   learning more on Milton and Angels in PL might find
>   useful. It's  "Angelic Nature in Paradise Lost"
>   http://www.tcnj.edu/~graham/angelicnature.html
>    
>   I'd add Thomas Heywood's "Hierarchie" (1635),
>   and Causabon's publication " A True & Faithful
>   Relation"  (1659) to the list of Milton's
>   contemporaries writing about angels on listed on the
>   page.   
>    
>   -John
>    
>   H  e drew not nigh unheard, the Angel bright,
>   E  re he drew nigh, his radiant visage turnd,
>   A  dmonisht by his eare, and strait was known
>   T  h' Arch-Angel URIEL, one of the seav'n
>    
>   In medieval mysticism Uriel is represented as the
>   source of the HEAT of the day in winter, and as the
>   princely angel of Sunday, the first day of the week 
>   http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/view.jsp?artid=49&letter=U
>    
>    
>    
>
>     ------------------------------------------------
>
>   Date: Mon, 30 Mar 2009 15:08:32 +0000
>   From: f.mohamed00 at gmail.com
>   To: milton-l at lists.richmond.edu
>   Subject: [Milton-L] angelic knowledge
>
>   There's little to add to Joad Raymond's excellent
>   summary below, though it is worth emphasizing that
>   Milton seems less Thomist still than Lawrence who
>   avers that angels are 'simple formes' (_Our
>   Communion and Warre_ 13). In the Thomist logic, no
>   substance means no senses, and thus no place for
>   discursive reason and its interpretation of sensory
>   input. Raphael suggests that the angels employ both
>   discursive reason and intellection (5.486-90), which
>   is consistent with those decidedly un-Thomist
>   instances in the epic where the angels learn through
>   experience, and with Milton's suggestion that they
>   do indeed have a spiritous substance.
>
>   The largest debt to Wollebius in Milton's
>   angelology, I think, is the principle that the
>   upright angels must continue to display obedience
>   and are not fixed in beatitude. That is a rare
>   position indeed. That the fallen angels retain their
>   capacity for high intellection but are cut off from
>   revelation, and especially the full significance of
>   the Son's role in Redemption and Judgment, is a more
>   common view rooted ultimately in Augustine's _De
>   Genesi ad litteram_.
>
>   This is all a run-up to a shameless plug for my
>   recently released _In the Anteroom of Divinity: The
>   Reformation of the Angels from Colet to Milton_
>   (Toronto 2008).
>
>   Best,
>   Feisal Mohamed
>
>   Joad Raymond <joadraymond at googlemail.com> to John
>   Milton Discussion List <milton-l at lists.richmond.edu>
>   11/7/08
>
>   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
>
>     ------------------------------------------------
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