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The Puritan God and Sympathy for the Devil.

Paradise Lost is Milton’s defense of his view of God, “to justify the ways of God to man.�� It’s a masterful poem, but it’s also a theological argument, By the time Milton composed his epic, he was blind and had suffered many other setbacks in his life. He wanted to take comfort in the sovereignty of God, that God was in control of all things, in spite of his apparent arbitrary actions and cruelty. In this spirit, a recent mega-church pastor and preacher of the End Times, John Hagee, claimed that Hitler was sent by God to drive the Jews to their ancestral homeland, Israel, in preparation for the return of Christ.

But in the first two books of Milton’s epic, Satan (aka Lucifer, “bringer of light,�� “The Morning Star,�� i.e. the planet Venus as it appears at dawn) is displayed as a much more attractive character than Milton’s God. This has gained traction in modern times, as the preference for hierarchies, spiritual or political, have faded in developed societies. Satan is the sexy rebel��..

Receive thy new Possessor: One who brings
A mind not to be chang'd by Place or Time.
The mind is its own place, and in it self
Can make a Heav'n of Hell, a Hell of Heav'n.
What matter where, if I be still the same,
And what I should be, all but less then he
Whom Thunder hath made greater? Here at least
We shall be free; th' Almighty hath not built
Here for his envy, will not drive us hence:
Here we may reign secure, and in my choyce
To reign is worth ambition though in Hell:
Better to reign in Hell, then serve in Heav'n.

Later in the poem, Satan’s charm works on Eve, who is lured into disobeying God in the Garden of Eden. (Although by then, Satan is described “squat like a toad��). This fall from grace by Eve and Adam is called the Original Sin. It results in the fall of humankind and the need for redemption through the sacrifice of Christ on the cross. Milton goes to great lengths to claim that the Fall is the fault of the first humans because of free will. God cannot be directly implicated in this act.

In Book IX, Milton attempts to reverse the attractive image of Satan from the beginning of the book by making the Devil degenerate and confused. He is now portrayed, in modern terms, as a delusional psychopath. He is condemned by God to crawl on his belly like a snake. It’s important that Satan not be the hero of the story, even though many thinkers from the Enlightenment on have interpreted him as such. The trouble is that Milton’s God often comes across a arbitrary and cruel, rather than a welcoming alternative to Satan.

The problem of the justification of God to men, i.e. theodicy, the vindication of the divine goodness and providence of God in an evil world, is still unsolved. This video is a dramatic presentation of the problem��