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Paradise Lost: Bk I

#61: Jan. - Mar. 2009 (Fiction)
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Thomas Hood
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Ibid wrote: When an angel is killed do they simply spring up yet again at the back of the line? Do they go to some other heaven?
Ibid, we're dealing with mythology so we needn't expect ordinary experience. Being angels, they can't be killed, but they are sensitive and suffer injury. As Milton explains in Book 6:

. . .Satan, being an ethereal spirit, soon heals, for spirits: "All heart they live, all head, all eye, all ear, / All intellect, all sense, and as they please, / They limb themselves, and color, shape or size / Assume, as like them best, condense or rare" (Study Master notes).
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When I first read this work, I had the same questions. So I asked one of my professors who was a former Catholic priest. This is what he said. God knows and sees all before it even happens. He knows that he has to have a system of checks and balances. So instead of out right destroying Satan, he banished him. Knowing that he will need him sometime in the future.

As for the angelic death, there is. Nothing but God and Satan are truly immortal. When an angel dies, they become one with their "masters". Forever part of the spiritual pool of good and evil.
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Thomas Hood
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Raving Lunatic wrote:As for the angelic death, there is. Nothing but God and Satan are truly immortal. When an angel dies, they become one with their "masters". Forever part of the spiritual pool of good and evil.
Raving, apparently Catholics are not in agreement on this point. I have it from the Saint's mouth: Angels cannot die.

". . . , angels do not have 'lower' life-functions such as digestion, growth, or sexual reproduction. In fact, they cannot reproduce themselves in any way at all, since they do not have parts that can serve as angelic 'genetic material'. But, then again, neither do they grow old or suffer from sickness and physical deterioration. (For instance, unlike some of us oldsters, angels do not need reading glasses of various strengths for different tasks!) Needless to say, angels cannot die or, as St. Thomas would put it, undergo corruption" (Angels and Demons by Alfred J. Freddoso, University of Notre Dame).
http://www.nd.edu/~afreddos/pdfs/angelsdemons.pdf
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Thomas Hood wrote:
Raving Lunatic wrote:As for the angelic death, there is. Nothing but God and Satan are truly immortal. When an angel dies, they become one with their "masters". Forever part of the spiritual pool of good and evil.
Raving, apparently Catholics are not in agreement on this point. I have it from the Saint's mouth: Angels cannot die.

". . . , angels do not have 'lower' life-functions such as digestion, growth, or sexual reproduction. In fact, they cannot reproduce themselves in any way at all, since they do not have parts that can serve as angelic 'genetic material'. But, then again, neither do they grow old or suffer from sickness and physical deterioration. (For instance, unlike some of us oldsters, angels do not need reading glasses of various strengths for different tasks!) Needless to say, angels cannot die or, as St. Thomas would put it, undergo corruption" (Angels and Demons by Alfred J. Freddoso, University of Notre Dame).
http://www.nd.edu/~afreddos/pdfs/angelsdemons.pdf
Haha- I wonder exactly how St. Thomas was able to acquire this knowledge. Perhaps he captured an angel and examined it, sort of like an alien autopsy. So funny, so foolish - and there are grown ups that actually believe this... :?
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Raving Lunatic wrote:When I first read this work, I had the same questions. So I asked one of my professors who was a former Catholic priest. This is what he said. God knows and sees all before it even happens. He knows that he has to have a system of checks and balances. So instead of out right destroying Satan, he banished him. Knowing that he will need him sometime in the future.

As for the angelic death, there is. Nothing but God and Satan are truly immortal. When an angel dies, they become one with their "masters". Forever part of the spiritual pool of good and evil.
That answer would open an entire can of worms about the nature of god then huh? His benevolence/malevolence, does he need Satan to justify his own existence or will Satan once again serve the will of god - interesting.
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Thomas Hood
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Ibid wrote:Haha- I wonder exactly how St. Thomas was able to acquire this knowledge. Perhaps he captured an angel and examined it, sort of like an alien autopsy.
Catholics (I'm not Catholic, but they do have the nicest art) believe there are three harmonious sources of knowledge: tradition, reason, and sensory experience. St. Thomas, being a saint, partook of all three:

"His theme was "The Majesty of Christ". His text, "Thou waterest the hills from thy upper rooms: the earth shall be filled with the fruit of thy works" (Psalm 103:13), said to have been suggested by a heavenly visitor, seems to have been prophetic of his career" (Catholic Encyclopedia).
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/14663b.htm

So St. Thomas wouldn't have needed to do an autopsy to know about angels. They visited him personally :)
Last edited by Thomas Hood on Wed Jan 21, 2009 1:59 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Just to justify my statement earlier, I did say that the prof was a former priest. He separated from the Church due to what he called "fundamental philosophical differences". That in itself is a huge can of worms that I didn't want to go into with him. I thought it a little too personal, if you get my drift. Anywho, I am not Catholic either (I agree they have lovely art and I would love to an exhibition of papal treasures), and I believe that there is a "weapon" that can kill whoever designed it. To use a Hollywood analog, the Predator had weapons that not only would kill the arch-rivals, Aliens, but themselves as well. Okay, I know that wasn't a very educated analogy but it works.
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This is interesting, this is from the Sparksnotes website's summary of Book 1:
"Satan's unrepentant evil nature is unwavering. Even cast down in defeat, he does not consider changing his ways: he insists to his fellow devils that their delight will be in doing evil, not good. In particular, as he explains to Beelzebub, he wishes to pervert God's will and find a way to make evil out of good. It is not easy for Satan to maintain this determination; the battle has just demonstrated God's overwhelming power, and the devils could not even have lifted themselves off the lake of fire unless God had allowed it. God allows it precisely because he intends to turn their evil designs toward a greater good in the end. Satan's envy of the Son's chosen status led him to rebel and consequently to be condemned. His continued envy and search for freedom leads him to believe that he would rather be a king in Hell than a servant in Heaven. Satan's pride has caused him to believe that his own free intellect is as great as God's will"

I hadn't really considered this work in exactly these terms. This paints Satan as more of a Quixotic character. If he and the other demons couldn't even kill a single angel and then as they lay prostrate in defeat, if they couldn't even pick themselves up without god allowing it, it means that conquering god would be a battle against the ultimate windmill.

So here we have Satan as the tragic anti-hero striving against a tyranny that he cannot possibly succeed against. In pop culture of the last 50 years this character has resonated with audiences who loved to sympathise with the tragic hero (James Dean,Pulp Fiction,etc). I wonder if the audience at the time this was published was as sympathetic to this type of character.
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Ibid: This paints Satan as more of a Quixotic character. If he and the other demons couldn't even kill a single angel and then as they lay prostrate in defeat, if they couldn't even pick themselves up without god allowing it, it means that conquering god would be a battle against the ultimate windmill.
That's an interesting way of looking at Satan, yet for me he can't be quixotic because his belief in his possible omnipotence is not his delusion, but a possibility believed in by the millions of other fallen angels as well. I think it is also only Milton's editorial comments that tell us that God is actually granting the demons whatever small remaining power they have. This is all part of Milton's attempt to remain theologically correct and to curb Satan's charisma just a bit, at the same time as he makes Satan a worthy epic opponent of God. He had a delicate task in PL's opening books, and the strength of Satan here is mainly what fueled the "Satan hero" views of later poets and readers. Milton's drama is probably stronger than his logic in setting up the confrontation between God and Satan.
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Ibid wrote:Satan as the tragic anti-hero striving against a tyranny that he cannot possibly succeed against.
This description of God as a tyrant is not right. A tyrant acts for self interest, whereas God supports acts of love. It is rather like saying the law of gravity is tyrannical, or an eddy saying the river is a tyrant for flowing with the natural law. If Satan chose to act in love instead of his twisted hatred he would find his opposition to God would dissolve in mercy and forgiveness.
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