/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.17645212]

Did Milton not believe in an omnipotent God? I get that God was able to destroy Lucifer’s army with one blow, but then Lucifer and his friends can just do whatever they want when they’re in Hell. Does God’s power not extend to all his creation, and did he not create Hell? Shouldn’t God have known that Lucifer was on his way to corrupt Adam and Eve? Or did Milton just not take what he was writing too seriously?

[Anonymous No.17645286]

>>17645212
>actual literature thread.
>0 replies

I'm not too sure, maybe this has to do with free will, I don't think there was ever a mention of god attempting to do anything to Lucifer in Paradise Lost to prevent the corruption (it's been a while since I read it, so I could be totally off, but I want to bump this thread anyway) so I see nothing contradictory to his omnipotence

[Anonymous No.17645291]

Read the first damn sentence of the book and you'll have these questions answered. Seriously, the first damn sentence.

[Anonymous No.17645294]

>>17645212

Im still reading through Isaiah, but bump.

[Anonymous No.17645297]

>>17645291
I'm sorry, I meant the second sentence.

[Anonymous No.17645304]

>>17645297
Its okay, we all make mistakes sometimes.

[Anonymous No.17645332]

>>17645212
>Did Milton not believe in an omnipotent God?
Yes, he even calls him omnipotent.

>I get that God was able to destroy Lucifer’s army with one blow, but then Lucifer and his friends can just do whatever they want when they’re in Hell.

They could only do what God allowed them to do.

>Does God’s power not extend to all his creation, and did he not create Hell? Shouldn’t God have known that Lucifer was on his way to corrupt Adam and Eve?

Yes, God allowed Satan to corrupt Adam and Eve, and allowed them to Fall, for the GREATER GOOD that would result from God then needing to save humanity by becoming incarnate as Jesus. Now, in all the ages of heaven, we will know God as redeemer and savior, as opposed to just knowing him as creator.

>Or did Milton just not take what he was writing too seriously?

Milton spent his entire life as a sort of preparation leading up to the writing of Paradise Lost.

[Anonymous No.17645334]

God literally lets Satan torture an innocent man in the Bible. And kill his family. Although in that case he know that Job would still remain faithful.

[Anonymous No.17645346]

>>17645332

Here's a passage about this point, right near the end:

O goodness infinite, goodness immense!
That all this good of evil shall produce,
And evil turn to good; more wonderful
Then that which by creation first brought forth
Light out of darkness! full of doubt I stand,
Whether I should repent me now of sin
By mee done and occasiond, or rejoyce
Much more, that much more good thereof shall spring,
To God more glory, more good will to Men
From God, and over wrauth grace shall abound.

[Frater Asemlen !XS8vrClKs2 No.17645352]

If you want to go deeper and just have him lay down his theology, that actually exists.

https://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_Doctrina_Christiana_(Milton)

[Anonymous No.17645363]

>>17645334
>od? I get that God was able to destroy Lucifer’s army with one blow, but then Lucifer and his friends can just do whatever they want when they’re in Hell. Does God’s power not extend to all his creation, and did he not
well yah, but the point there was discussing wether faith can hold even when the physical is so pained and rended. If faith can hold regardless of worldly phenomenon.

[Anonymous No.17645455]

>>17645212
Paradise Lost is pretty cool in its descriptions. I’m about halfway through. There’s a graphic novel version by Pablo Auladell that seems really great, too.
As for your questions, I think you’ve happened upon inconsistencies in Christianity. As a longtime Sunday School attendee, I can tell you the Bible and Christian doctrine is rife with such inconsistencies and things that barely make sense unless you understand it as a work of man’s imagination. (I certainly appreciate it from that standpoint, as an influential mythos with tales and symbols and worthwhile moral lessons.) But when you prod further for real answers, you will either be told you ‘lack faith’ or that a human can’t really understand God’s plan. Maybe I can’t, but I can sure understand the human interest in creating such a concept as eternal suffering as deterrent for potential deviants.
Personally I have taken the Spinoza pill and believe in the non-interventionist, natural deity that manifests itself through the universe in fundamental forces, whose being doesn’t have the grimy fingerprints of man running all over it.

[Anonymous No.17645512]

>>17645455
idk, that seems like kind of a reductive cliched veiw imo.
When you refer to inconsistencies in christianity I can understand from different interpretations of the faith through the years, but I do think the
>a human can’t really understand God’s plan
is a perfectly adequate explanation for it since the very nature of an omnipotent hypothetical being would be as such and is kind of the point of it. We only being particulars within the avsolute and all.
Not saying a spinozist veiw of things are wrong, just that your particular critiques seem to be a bit presumptuous in offering explaination (not that those explanations are not valid interpretations or parts of a greater whole, just not absolute ones)

[Anonymous No.17645565]

>>17645212
In the poem it says that angels are God’s creation and they can’t fully be destroyed since they are ‘eternal beings.’ It also says God has left their spirit and strength intact so that they can better feel pain, so that God can go on taking his revenge against Satan. God essentially wants Satan to suffer eternal punishment for going against him.

But what if He our Conqueror (whom I now
Of force believe Almighty, since no less
Than such could have o’erpowered such force as ours)
Have left us this our spirit and strength entire,
Strongly to suffer and support our pains,
That we may so suffice his vengeful ire,
Or do him mightier service as his thralls
By right of war, whate’er his business be,
Here in the heart of Hell to work in fire,
Or do errands in the gloomy Deep?
What can it then avail though yet we feel
Strength undiminished, or eternal being
To undergo eternal punishment?”

[Anonymous No.17645641]

>>17645332
why didn't god just make the world a permanent friday evening where everyone is just getting slightly drunk, what did he mean by this

[Anonymous No.17645743]

>>17645512
Yeah, that's fair. In the end I have no idea, just like everyone else. If I sounded bitter it's probably because I am. My Catholic upbringing caused me a lot of personal anguish--I would often sit during Mass unwanted thoughts, like 'Fuck Jesus', randomly intruding in my head and spent a lot of time as a kid thinking about how much I would suffer for it. I learned much later that it's called scrupulosity--I think Augustine suffered from something similar.
My question is, if all faith is just an approximate worship of God, as it's the best we limited creatures can do, then why not pick better belief systems, that don't enforce draconian manmade moral systems? What about the mathematical infinite, or something like that. If you have the means to create your own system of worship, why take the tradition at full value? But the end of the day, if you get something out of it, I am happy for you.

[Anonymous No.17645943]

>>17645743
>if all faith is just an approximate worship of God, as it's the best we limited creatures can do, then why not pick better belief systems, that don't enforce draconian manmade moral systems?

Tbf I can come up with good secular reasons for most of what mainstream Christian churches preach about morality. The stuff churches preaches today were mostly the natural way people conceived of morality in the pre-industrial world. The persecution of homosexuality, sexual promiscuity, and other stuff that might seem draconian and manmade in today's world made a certain degree of sense in the pre-industrial world, even from a secular perspective.

Not anon btw

[Anonymous No.17646346]

>>17645641
God could have done that. He had the power to make a world where everyone is blissfully happy and they never know any pain.

But he decided to make a world of painless joy and happiness that is preceded by a world of suffering and sorrow (our present world).

Why?

Because now we will know God, in all eternity, as our Redeemer and Savior. And somehow that will be better than the alternative.

[Anonymous No.17646531]

Holy shit OP;, I read that book years ago and even I know that God allows Satan to do his shit. Turning.him.and.his homies into snakes for a quick second at the end was to show them they have no power he does not give them.

[Anonymous No.17646555]

>>17645743
No I understand the the sensation and the socialogical effects that the general institution/social force can cause. I was mostly just refering to the theory and the essence of the religiousity rather than the consequences that it very well can inspire, I also had a similar experience, though not quite as extreme as yours i think.

Im not really practicing, but I can both apreciate the aspects of tradition and of more intuitive self made conceptions of theorycrafting.

THere is an implicitcy in tradition that is very much hard to simulate through pure mental praxis, often just devolving into a lack of inertia and you just start jerking off or whatever. But in another way a purity of explicity is found in a more mathmatical logical method. But in all of this, it may be a limitation in human behavior.

But again, i am a bit of a conceptual fence sitter lmao.

[Anonymous No.17646561]

>>17645743
>>17645455
I've found that the most devout (and most well-studied, intelligent too) people at my college's catholic campus ministry are converts and not lifelong Catholics. It makes me wonder whether or not raising my children catholic would even be a good idea, because I get the feeling that they would feel like you and come to hate something that I came to love. I was raised by a dawkins-tier atheist family, and my natural rebellious instinct lead me to consider the Catholic church.

[Anonymous No.17646587]

>>17645641
>friday evening where everyone is just getting slightly drunk
I see you too have achieved true bliss.

[Anonymous No.17646605]

>>17646561
maybe just raise them passively catholic, but that has its own risks too. Not being super forceful with it, but the basic premises.

[Anonymous No.17646613]

>>17645641
let me tell you this anon...
we already are living in a permanent friday evening.

[Anonymous No.17646642]

>>17645641
Friday evenings are only good because the rest of the work week is awful.
Alcohol during Friday evenings is only good because it feels like a relief of the tension accumulated during the week.
NEETs don’t enjoy Friday evenings nearly as much.
Alcoholics don’t enjoy alcohol nearly as much.

[Anonymous No.17646693]

>>17645294
Based, Isaiah is one of the best books in the OT. Practically every verse points to Jesus. Like you, I am planning to read the bible cover to cover before Paradife Loft

[Anonymous No.17646707]

Paradise Lost is anglo fan fiction and not official church dogma. Read the Church Fathers