Freedom of conscience and guilt in Paradise Lost

Published: Dec. 2, 2010, 4:15 p.m.

b"Freedom on conscience in Protestantism.\\xa0 How it plays out in Satan.\\xa0 His belief in his own conscience is what makes it possible for him to believe in his own guilt as well.\\xa0 The non-magical powers of the fruit.\\xa0 Milton's suggestion, in inviting us to judge him, that God is just because it's justice, not because he's God.\\xa0 The fiat preventing Adam and Eve from eating it considered in two possible lights: that God may dispose and bid what shall be right; or that it is right to show gratitude to God.\\xa0 The same situation in heaven when Satan rebels against what he regards as the arbitrary apotheosis of the Son.\\xa0 (A difference, not mooted, is that the Son is a person, so in fact more liable to being talked about in inherent terms and not just in the arbitrary terms that the fruit requires on any interpretation the poem considers of the couple's sin.\\xa0 But this may be clarified with respect to the difference between Adam's fall and Eve's.\\xa0 Eve falls for a fruit, Adam for a person.)\\xa0 Satan's nobility in hell."