John Milton wrote the poem Paradise Lost in the seventeenth century. This epic poem by Milton takes a philosophical look while arguing about man’s relationship with God. Milton believed that God predestined man to fall but that the fall was ultimately to the advantage of mankind. Here the word predestined is actually used to describe the connection between God and His creations. Those who believe in predestination argue that our fate is already predetermined and no matter how hard we try to do good or bad things we can actually do very little to alter Gods plan.
The argument is that during creation God chose those He intended to go to heaven and those that He actually thinks should perish in the fires of hell. I however beg to disagree with this great English poet that this predestination was actually intended to benefit mankind and not Him; it’s actually the opposite because the fall was predestined to benefit God and not man as we shall see below.
The fall of mankind was predestined by God. Milton openly shows us this in his poem and I quote, “… though both Not equal, as their sex not equal ……….” (Milton, IV.295–311)
These lines are found at the end of book ten and they were first spoken by Adam and now John is narrating them. These observations are made in book four as Eve and Adam prepare themselves to go to bed. Milton contrasts Gods creations Adam and Eve basing on their looks and general behavior. He reasons from that perspective in assessing their value in the spiritual context. God created Adam and Eve to play different roles and they do exactly that. Adam was created to serve God and that is why we see them working together before Eve was created.
Eve on the other hand was created to serve both God the creator and Adam her husband. She is serving God and His servant; this makes her task to be very complicated. She surrendered to Adam because of her love to him while at the same time serving God by that. Comparing Adam and Eve and the roles that they play, Adams seems to be very clever and holy compared to his wife Eve. Milton clearly brings out the gender imbalance between the two genders. Women are supposed to submit to their husbands and serve them. This is predetermined by God because He is the one who actually created these genders. This weakness in women makes them very vulnerable and that is why sin actually enters mankind through her.
Since Adam trusts her so much, he fails to disagree with her and sins with her. What we actually realize from this is that had God not created Eve weak, then there would be no sin. The reason why she was created weak and loving was to bring Adam down and she does exactly that. This fall was meant to benefit God though and not mankind because after being sent away from the Garden of Eden, life changes and things become pretty hard afterwards..
“ Farewell happy fields, Where joy forever dwells: hail, horrors! Paradise Lost. (Milton Line, 249). Adam and Eve having sinned only remain with two choices namely repenting or continuing in disobedience. They choose to repent and this actually marks the beginning of the long search for salvation. God makes man to sin and then provides the option of salvation so that man remains very obedient and serves Him in truth and spirit or else perishes in the fires of hell. If only we had foreknowledge of what awaits us then things would be very different.
“Of Man’s first disobedience, and the fruit Of that forbidden tree whose mortal taste
Brought death into the world, and all our woe”. Paradise Lost” Book i. Line 1.
We would all be able to know exactly what awaits us and why. Foreknowledge is used here to mean the ability to become aware of something before it actually happens. Unfortunately Adam and Eve didn’t know that they would be sent away from the Garden of Eden but God knew this.
Had mankind recognized what the almighty plans were then, life would be simpler than it actually is today. God created man very innocent and also made him be able to sin at the same time. God makes man to sin so that he can be glorified and His power. Adam and Eve having tasted the forbidden fruit become very knowledgeable and God does not like this, so He sends them away from paradise now that they are able to discover things that He did not want them to.
We see that Satan is also sent away later on when he also disobeys God. He automatically ceases to be referred as son of God as the other Angels who have not sinned. These are in essence the repercussions of trying to know more or behaving like you want to challenge God.
Satan after being sent away now is leading those that will go to hell. Satan was of course created by God but now he is opposing God and kind of they are sharing people. God remains in paradise alone with the angels that have not sinned. Hell on the other hand is the extreme opposite of heaven with all the bad things one can ever imagine of. Man is not fortunate because he was created with both the ability to sin and do good though he has very little or no choice regarding his future. Mammon disobeys God and is equally send away
“ Mammon, the least erected spirit that fell From heaven; for ev’n in heaven his looks and thoughts Were always downward bent, admiring more The riches of heaven’s pavement, trodden gold, Than aught divine or holy else enjoy’d” Paradise Lost (Milton Line 679).
We are able to deduce that the fall of man from grace was necessary so as to show that God is omnipotent and cannot be rivaled. God knew very well prior to creation that man would fall but still went on to create him. The reason partly was to fulfill history because He had already predestined this.
“ sin consists in the deviation of the creature’s will (man’s or angel’s) from the will of God; yet, to the degree that our will is congruent with God’s will, we are constrained to will that original sin should have occurred, since God Himself willed that of which it was the necessary precondition. At the same time, of course, we are not to will that we continue in sin (in willing at cross-purposes with God’s will (Milton).
God then brings us someone to redeem us from sin so that we can make our way back to heaven. God sends His son to do this and makes Him do only good things meaning that one can live without sinning. Despite all the good things that the son does, He is still crucified by man. This speaks of our brutality and justifies the fact that God loves man but it is man who refuses to do good.
This perspective makes it clear that God did not create Adam and Eve together with their descendants to lead a happy life in Paradise but instead created them to serve Him. Through the fall of mankind, God is now able to send His son here so that He can also show how omnipotent His father is. The son only does good things and speaks of how well and gentle His father is. He is crucified for sins He did not commit.
The ultimate end of Gods creation is to glorify Him. This is why we have salvation so that those who glorify and serve God in truth and spirit may go to heaven. The challenge actually is not only doing good things other than serving God. This is so because God has predestined the life of every man. Man therefore has no choice on where he will go after his life on earth. God has already chosen those that He wants to be with in Paradise come the Day of Judgment.
Humankind is a creation of God with unique brains and the ability to do things in a certain manner. God therefore having created man, still has the ability to control his actions and that is why He lets man sin. God is thus working for the fall just from the word go. This fall is very necessary in that He will get a chance to show His love by reinstating humankind.
This is very crucial because upon restoration our state becomes even better than it was before the fall. However this should not be misconstrued to mean that the fall was necessary so as to better the lives of humankind. There are arguments of course that this fall was necessary for us to be redeemed and then lead a happier life thereafter, but is this really true? Look at it this way, if God has the ability to restore us after the fall, then He definitely had the ability of giving us a better life even without falling.
But then why did we have to fall first? It is fallacious to answer this question that we had to fall so as to be given a better life. We will therefore have to critically look at His motives for letting us fall. God lets man fall as in this quote “Which way shall I fly Infinite wrath and infinite despair? Which way I fly is hell; myself am hell; And in the lowest deep a lower deep,
Still threat’ning to devour me, opens wide, To which the hell I suffer seems a heaven”. (Milton Line 73).
God is what Milton says He is not. If He schemed the fall then He actually is the author of sin. Fortunate fall us to God in a discomfited state of furtively wanting Adam and Eve to practice what He tells them not to. This is not easy for Adam and Eve though because their lives are predestined and they have no control of what they are doing since they cannot act independently. This doctrine makes all Gods forewarnings insincere. In book five the angel Raphael is send by God to caution Adam in relation to Satan. Lightly, you might be tempted to think that the intention of God is compassionate but the argument in book five tells us the exact opposite because Gods motive is to make man indefensible.
Others can argue that the fact that God brings good out of evil is not enough to make the fall auspicious. It can only be fortune if the good that arises subsequently could not have arisen in any other different way. The major issue here is that does God really need evil for Him to show His strength? God did not necessarily require Adam and Eve to eat the apple as a pre stipulation for the eventual and tremendous happiness of those few descendants who will enjoy it. “…..most of us will of course anguish forever in hell” (Milton). I however beg to disagree with such reasoning because God has the power to prevent us from sinning but instead He chooses not to. Man therefore sins and suffers all the consequences.
Adam also goes further to tell us that the fall was fortunate, “O goodness infinite, goodness immense. That all this good of evil shall produce, And evil turn to good; more wonderful……….” (Milton). This affirms that the fall was Fortunate.
This position is incredibly important to the interpretation of this work as a whole because all the blame is in reality being placed on Adam and Eve yet God had a hand in it. Eve carries the blame of misleading Adam and Adam carries the blame of blindly following the woman without first thinking about the repercussions. No one wants to mention the extremely decisive role played by God in predestining the lives of these innocent beings that did not have foreknowledge hence unfortunate. For instance why did the almighty create the woman to be weak? Adam and Eve are only here to implement Gods plans, they have no choice. “So farewell hope, and with hope farewell fear, Farewell remorse; all good to me is lost. Evil, be thou my good.” Paradise Lost. Book iv. Line 108.
They are Gods creations created to perform certain specific tasks and that is what they do anyway. The implication is that God is solely responsible for all the actions that occurred in Paradise, so Adam and Eve should just be left out of the whole mess that occurred in Paradise.
Work cited
John Milton (1667) Paradise Lost. Web.