Paradise Lost

Reading excerpts from this book in British Lit class. Very interesting questions have arisen. My teacher is one who encourages us to think for ourselves and voice our thoughts and oppinions. Today we began discussing the philosophy of Paradise Lost. Fascinating!

We brought up the whole story of Lucifer becoming envious of God and therefore being cast into Hell. Mr mcginnis pointed out that apparantly angels have free will. From there he asked if lucifer has the free will to repent, and if God would take him back if he did so. It's a good question. It's never stated one way or another in the bible. From here, I asked who created envy. That may sound like an extremely basic question, but if you think about it, the only conclusion is "God created envy." Ben, being the smart-face that he is said that "God did not create envy. In fact, envy is like darkness... it is not anything, just a lack of something else." ... oooook... so God screwed up and created an absence of gratitude? A black-hole of thankfulness?

So then someone said that Satan (that is Lucifer) created hatred or something like that. I asked what I thought was the intelligent question of "hang on, Lucifer created hate? Does he actually have the power to create something like that, or would that be Gods job?" Oh yes, all those smart-faced kids had the answer. "But before his fall, it was Lucifers job to create music for God! So therefore he had the power to create!" Um... I do believe that God created music and gave Lucifer the power to play with it.

So, back to the first point, God condemning Lucifer to Hell because of envying God. How does that jive with the Loving God that is spoken about all through the NT? Also, is envying God all it takes to make him so mad he will send you to hell for eternity? Seems a bit petty to me...

Lastly, this was a question that I did not have time to bring up in class (I will probably do so on Monday). God created the earth and "it was good." So, God's perfect world was free of sin except of corse the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. The tree was placed in the garden so Adam and Eve would still have free will. They could choose God or choose the fruit. So, If God had condemned Lucifer to hell, how did he get into Gods perfect garden? Obviously, either God let him in or he snuck in behind Gods back. So, assuming that God knows everything, we can exclude the second option. So, God let him in. Why? Why let Lucifer into the Garden before the Fall? Why not wait to let him enter the world until after Adam and Eve had decided to eat the fruit? The logic of lettin him in so that we would have free will has already been refuted simply by the presence of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. The only difference Lucifer made was either causing the fall (not a desired thing) or speeding up the end of the relationship between God and Man (also not desired). So, if God longed so much for us to be companions, why smash the connection between man and God?

So many questions, so few literature classes...