Justifying The Ways Of God To Man: Paradise Lost, Book III
One of the most important things an individual can do in his or her life is come to an understanding of God. It takes some people all of their lives to figure out whether they even believe in a God, never mind which one. Imagine how difficult it would be for someone to portray God as a character in a poem, especially someone who had a good idea about the God he believed in. Milton, however, may have come very close to hitting the nail on the head in his portrayal of God's nature in the first 200 lines of Book III of Paradise Lost.
Milton sets out to "justify the ways of God to men" (Chambers, 26), which ultimately he proves he does not need to do. In Book III, we are taken up to ...
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with the same physical blindness that Milton had. He makes it clear that we could not see it anyway. Instead we must seek inward illumination, which we all possess and need only to utilize.
One cannot be sure that God even places much value on mortal sight. A.B. Chambers (1963) wrote that in Heaven "it is no longer possible to distinguish between physical and spiritual light, between eyes of the body and those of the mind, between vision and wisdom and beautitude. They are all one" (Chambers, 222). Going a step further, we cannot say that physical vision unites with spiritual vision in Heaven because there is no way we can comprehend the physical nature of Heaven. We could never understand how God sees. We cannot even look upon the face of God as mortals. It is through the eyes that we can be deceived, and through inward light that we remain obedient. Although "God is light," we cannot view God as being physical light. If God were physical light there would be no night and ...
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We could view God's omniscience as a mystical power, but it could be the constancy of reason that gives him this power. If God is reason, then perhaps its eternal and unchanging nature brings into view the events of the past, the resulting present, and the forthcoming future. Because the universe will always, as it has, operate under the same laws of Reason, it is possible for God to view all of what we know as time at once. As mortals, if we turn to God we may be able to gain a fraction of his viewpoint. By using reason, we can better understand the past, and how the past has led us to where we are now. When we gain knowledge of our history and our place in the universe today, it ...
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"Justifying The Ways Of God To Man: Paradise Lost, Book III." Essayworld.com. September 4, 2007. Accessed April 18, 2024. http://www.essayworld.com/essays/Justifying-Ways-God-Man-Paradise-Lost/70638.
"Justifying The Ways Of God To Man: Paradise Lost, Book III." Essayworld.com. September 4, 2007. Accessed April 18, 2024. http://www.essayworld.com/essays/Justifying-Ways-God-Man-Paradise-Lost/70638.
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