Wednesday, August 13, 2008

satan, predestination, england as ancient isreal...rambling

so, i may be totally off the mark, but I keep feeling like Satan is also railing against the entire concept of predestination and free will (or lack of it). If God is completely in control, and Satan can't wrest any of that power away, then even though he is rebelling against the power of God, he is also rebelling against the idea that he, Satan, will never be able to control his own destiny because God in his onmipotence is in control of all things, all events. So, maybe, for Satan, the frustration of God being all powerful, and of Satan having no power, is, in a sense, equal to having no free will.

And you can look at not having any free will as the absolute control of a monarch in power (the people, like Satan, have no control). So, the people railing against the king and his total control is comparable to Satan railing against predestination and God and so, maybe, in that context, that could be why Satan is a bit sympathetic.

On the other hand, if the fall of Satan can represent the fall of man as a whole through the sin of Adam and Eve and the eating of the apple from the Tree of Knowledge, then can it also represent the fall of England and a disappointment on a grand scale that Milton might have felt with the political and moral turn his country was taking?

And then, if England is the land of the Isrealites, the English, Milton's countrymen, would be comparable to the ancient Isrealites. So, then, who is Moses of the first few lines of Paradise Lost leading the country to the Promised Land? Is it his Cromwell taking England from across a religious and political desert (as formerly controlled by the monarchy) to a Promised Land where monarchy has no control? Then it would be a symbolic trip (of 20 years or whatever) through events of politics and civil unrest, etc. instead of a literal 40 year wandering through the desert. So then, would the fall of satan, (also-mankind -so also england) be the return to a monarchy and the Restoration of the king?
So maybe the Restoration is really the fall or Hell itself? ??? i'm just saying...

No comments: