Inevitable?
I can't think of a different way to start this so I'll begin with the question that's been on my mind: Was this inevitable? And by "this" i mean Adam and Eve's eventual succumbing to the tasting of the forbidden tree. Now, we know that Satan tempted Eve with the idea and she eventually gave in and, in turn, tempted Adam but what if Satan had not tempted them? Book V lines 235-236 where God is instructing Raphael to warn Adam says, "Happiness in his pow'r left free to will, left to his own free will, his will though free yet mutable." Satan,once blameless and pure like Adam and Eve, had free will and had defied God all on his own accord. Adam and Eve were also given free will and chose to eat of the fruit. So if Satan could sin without being tempted by someone, could'nt Adam and Eve have sinned without being tempted as well? Was it just a matter of time?
P.S. I commented on Natalie and Will's posts :)
In my honest opinion, it all goes back to God's will for everything. In this book's sense, yes, it could have easily been avoided, what with all the warnings God sent to Adam and Eve. In a real-world sense, we were destined to fall from the start. It's a discouraging fact at first, but then you have to remember that even when God knew his perfect creation would fall, he already had a plan to bring us back to him - Jesus. This book's version of God doesn't think up that plan until Satan escapes from Hell, but our real-life God always is an infinite number of steps ahead of every force in this universe.
ReplyDeleteI wanna say that it was most likely that they would eventually sinned, yes. Humans are not sinless creatures, so eventually they would have succumb to their own desires of free will and so forth. Satan only sped up the inevitable.
ReplyDeleteIn Milton's world of Paradise, I think this was not inevitable. God saw it coming, but He also gave humans the ability to withstand temptation. Adam and Eve could have said no. They had plenty of warning, and knew God's command. They did not have a desire to sin yet because this was before they had a sin nature. I think there could have been an alternate ending to this story where Adam and Eve withstood Satan's temptation and lived in a perfect world in harmony with God.
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ReplyDeleteI want to revise my comment:
DeleteHumans, though created perfect, were destined to fall. We can't pretend to understand any of this in the way that God does, obviously, but I would think about it like this: God is just. God created Satan and all the angelic hosts pure and to glorify Him, while also giving them the freedom to disobey Him and face the consequences. God is sovereign over all and there is nothing he did not know from the beginning, thus, even as He created the angels, He knew there would be those who would turn away from Him. Why then did He create them? It's about His glory. In chapter 9 of Romans it is written, "Has the potter no right no right over the clay, to make out of one lump one vessel for honorable use and one vessel for dishonorable use? What if God, desiring to show his wrath and to make known his power, has endured with much patience vessels of wrath prepared for destruction, in order to make known the riches of his glory for vessels of mercy, which he has prepared beforehand for glory" (9:21-23). In short, God's glory is not diminished by Satan and His angels' fall, and it is not diminished by our fall, either. God has always had a plan and His plan is perfect.