Mitch MacEachern November 26th, 2014 Suicide by Regicide The conclusion of the Creation story of the Bible is known throughout the world. It is one of the most easily recognized stories of all time. Satan, disguised as a snake, seduces the innocent Eve into eating the Forbidden Fruit. This angers God who then banishes both Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden. The story is representative of the fall of humankind and how each Christian person carries with them the Original Sin. John Milton took up the goal of writing out, in epic poetic form, just how this story unfolded. He did so with incredible detail and grandiose setting. Paradise Lost allows a reader not only the widely recognized story of the Fall of Adam and Eve, but it also gives us intimate glimpses into the minds of the various characters within the story. God, Satan, Adam and Eve all make choices and argue their reasons with fervor and clarity. It is because of Milton’s epic poem that we can see how Eve and Adam did not fall in the sense that they were reduced. Rather, Satan, in Milton’s poem, is more of a friend to Eve then is God. He tries to lift humankind up out of the dark ignorance that they live in. And the God in the poem is a tyrannical narcissist who can only find happiness through using his underlings as pawns in a cosmic game of chess. The fall of Adam and Eve in Paradise Lost is not due to Eve’s vanity, or her naiveté, nor is Adam beguiled by Eve’s femininity and therefore rendered love-drunk and impressionable. They fall because Satan helps them become aware of their situation. He frees them from God’s power; Eve chooses to make choices of her own freewill; and God uses freewill as a scapegoat in order to retain control. In order to characterize Eve as a victim of God’s tyranny, we must first demonstrate how God is tyrannical. Peter L. Rudnytsky wrote that one could equate “God’s foreknowledge of the outcome [of the story] with responsibility for everything that happens in the poem” (Rudnytsky 265). Because God is omniscient he must certainly have understood that the angels would rebel, that Satan would seduce Eve, and that humankind would fall. If he understood this dynamic and was an all-loving being, why then did he allow it to happen? God explains to his son, Christ, that he gave his creations freewill, and that it was not his responsibility to control their choices. He argues that his creations, both angelic and human, “freely…stood who stood, and fell who fell” (Milton 363); and that “will and reason (reason also is choice)/ Useless and vain, of freedom both despoiled/ Made passive both, had served necessity/ not me” (364). God is erasing his responsibility for the outcome by simply stating that others have the ability to choose, and are therefore responsible for their own actions. The fact that God gave freewill to others may at first seem to ratify his innocence. As Milton states in his Christian Doctrine, “we must conclude that God made no absolute decrees about anything which he left in the power of men, for men have freedom of action” (Milton 1153). What Milton is saying about God here is that God should not be held responsible for the falls of angels and men. However, this would mean both Milton and God are “making the necessary excuses without admitting that there is anything to excuse” (Rudnytsky 270). In the quote from Paradise Lost above, God is seen as defending himself so as to deflect blame for why the angels and humans fell. Why does he need to do this? At the same time he is “making excuses”, he is simultaneously alluding to his desire to be worshipped. Yes, he did create freewill, but he also tyrannically governs all things. When he makes the comment that the angels and humans “served necessity/ not me”, he is indicating that he is a being who demands that his subordinates follow his commands. Indeed, the whole of Christianity is about repentance. As Milton wrote, “[God] wishes us always to understand his decrees in the light of this agreement” (Milton 1154). The “agreement” that Milton is alluding to here is the Christian covenant with God: should one live a life devoted to God and free of sin, God will allow them admittance into heaven. If they do not, if they live of their own choices which may or may not counteract the divine providence of God, then to Hell they go. God is not a benevolent being. He is a tyrannical ruler that threatens all his creations with eternal punishment should they not choose to follow his commands. Now that we can see how God is not a loving being but rather a tyrant, we can see that Satan’s seduction of Eve was an act of kindness. Satan, disguised as a talking snake, explains to Eve how he felt after eating the fruit: “O sacred, wise, and wisdom-giving plant/ Mother of science, now I feel thy power/ Within me clear, not only to discern/ Things in their causes, but to trace the ways/ Of highest agents, deemed however wise” (Milton 537). It is true that Satan did not actually eat the fruit. But what is certain is that he rebelled against God’s authority. How one rebels is beside the point. What Satan is trying to argue here is that eating the fruit (rebelling) will allow Eve to see the truth of God; how he is a tyrant. Satan speaks the line “not only to discern/Things in their causes, but trace the ways/ Of highest agents, deemed however wise.” The “highest agents” he speaks of are beings like God, all-powerful, all-knowing, and unmatchable in all ways. Satan is telling Eve that the only way for her to recognize her state as a puppet is to rebel against the tyrant’s wishes. By doing so she will be able to “trace the ways”, that is, understand who “causes” things to happen, i.e., God, and therefore begin to see the truth of her incarceration. Satan is trying to free Adam and Eve from their prison of ignorance. Satan’s influence over Eve can only be looked upon as being kind if Adam and Eve’s current predicament is unkind. Satan is the perfect vessel to communicate to Eve her dire straits since he was in the same situation before. Satan was banished from Heaven by God for rebelling. God tells Christ that Satan is an “ingrate” for rebelling, and that “he had of me/ All he could have; I made him just and right/ Sufficient to have stood, though free to fall” (363). Here it sounds like God is angry at Satan for his choice to rebel. If God actually loved Lucifer, his chief arch-angel, then why is he so upset that Lucifer chose of his own freewill to disobey? Only a being who feels his power threatened would take the decisions of others personally. This makes God, not accepting and kind, but manipulative and cold. As Rudnytsky says, “Because God is the quintessential controlling parent, to whom all his offspring are attached by a primal bond though he does not love them for their own sakes,” he comes across as a mean-spirited, domineering tyrant. Satan’s seduction of Eve was meant to free her from God’s tyranny. The “good and evil” that Eve suddenly discovers by eating the fruit is simply the divine providence of God; his power is elucidated to her because she becomes aware of how God controls everything, all with the red herring of freewill placed on a pedestal. The most sinister reason why God is a tyrant is because of how he uses freewill to deflect blame away from himself. God created angels and man to have choice; he states that “reason is choice” (Milton 364), and so the individuals who have freewill are ultimately responsible for what happens to them. Of course, if God had of simply allowed his creations to choose lives for themselves that would have been fine, noble even. But because God insists that his children follow his rules he is contradicting himself. How can beings use their freewill effectively if they are living in fear of damnation? Does this not sound like coercion? As Rudnytsky elucidates, “Because of [God’s] insatiable need for praise from his underlings, God places [his creations] in a double bind, in which they can choose to either submit [to God’s tyranny] and remain ‘For ever happy’ or else rebel and suffer the consequences” (Rudnytsky 269). God’s foreknowledge of the outcome of Milton’s Paradise Lost inextricably connects him to the responsibility of what happens. It is as if God wants his creations to fall out of his grace. With all this said, it should not be undervalued that God, who is omniscient, foreknew both Eve’s eating of the fruit and Satan’s prompting her to do so. If this is the case then God knew that Eve would learn about his tyranny and desire real freedom. God already knew why Satan was going to rebel, and why Adam and Eve would rebel, so why did he allow it to happen? If he wanted to stay in control he could have stopped Satan’s seduction of Eve. The reverse happened. It appears as if God did not want to be in control. Perhaps his grand plan has always been to “die” as Nietzsche surmised. Why else would an all-knowing being allow his underlings to see him as a tyrant? Suicide by regicide, maybe? This would make sense in Milton’s universe. Bibliography Milton, John. "Paradise Lost.", "Christian Doctrine." Kerrigan, William, John Rumrich and Stephen M. Fallon. The Complete Poetry and Essential Prose of John Milton. New York: Modern LIbrary, 2007. 1365. Rudnytsky, Peter L. "Freud as Milton's God: Mapping the Patriarchal Cosmos in Psychoanalysis and Paradise Lost." American Imaho (2014): 253-287. Mitch MacEachern 5