The contest between good and evil is one of the staples in classic literature. In this commentary Dr Andrew Kania has a look at some of those classic stories in the search for "Paradise Found"…

A humanity which knew no shame…

"Some natural tears they drop'd, but wip'd them soon; The World was all before them, where to choose, Their place of rest, and Providence their guide: They hand in hand with wandering steps and slow, Through Eden took their solitaire way". Thus ends John Milton's, Paradise Lost, and thus begins, according to Milton, the travail of humanity after the Fall.

Milton's poem, although in the concluding Book alluding to the eventual salvation of humanity through the death and resurrection of Christ, is powered by the intricacies of Satan toying with Adam and Eve and challenging the authority of God. The reader watches how in cat and mouse fashion the couple are beset upon by a creature who seeks to tear down what the Creator had elevated up — the human condition. Milton's depiction of Adam and Eve prior to the Fall is extraordinary. With especial elegance, Milton describes for the reader conjugal love, in terms which for 17th Century England may have been considered risqué, but which in the setting of Eden's garden is a powerful and innocent symbol of spousal devotion. Here we see humanity existing as was first created and intended. There is no sexual denigration or jocularity — there is but sublime beauty. The blind Milton opens our eyes to an unsoiled reality, a humanity which knew no shame.

But it is neither parent of humanity who attracts the reader's attention the most, rather it is the shadowy figure of Satan, all the while planning his masterstroke. One recalls in Milton's plot a scene from another powerful but more modern work of the English language, J.R.R. Tolkiens's The Lord of the Rings, where Gollum seeks to turn friend against friend in order to attain his selfish ends. In both allegorical cases it is almost as if the person in depravity believes himself to be slightly the less worse off, if he can climb on the virtuous person's shoulders so as to make his way out. Essentially this is the key to the corruptive nature of sin; the evil person or spirit taunts and tempts the virtuous in order to rub off on themselves a bit of the purity of their victim, and also to dispel some of their evil tarnish on to their prey. Satan in Paradise Lost in a self-inflicted position and unwilling to love the Creator, seeks to damn Adam and Eve, for "fellowship sake". Satan seeks to destroy the bonds of love that exist not only between God and man, but between man and his neighbour. Milton thus provides for us the wonderful maxim, that evil is any force which seeks to tear down and destroy. For their part, Adam and Eve, could have resisted the temptation in the Garden, they had every reason and motivation to do so, bar the fact that they chose not to be obedient. The most humiliating end was caused by the greatest act of pride — the assertion that one is self-sufficient without obligation to creation or Creator.

It has been said that the greatest demons are not those individuals seemingly devoid of all goodness, but those who masquerade in goodness or use goodness, so as to do greater evil. Satan in Paradise Lost fits this mould perfectly for his turning of Eve's heart is not achieved by a calling for direct hatred of God, but by subtly convincing Eve of the 'goodness' of her action through flattery. Satan is the ultimate evil, for he perverts goodness to its maximum. Eve, by contagion, passes to Adam the knowledge of evil along with the disability to act out of a lack of love.

In such a light we can attempt to understand another truly evil character in English literature, the Norman knight, Bois de Guilbert of Sir Walter Scott's Ivanhoe. Bois de Guilbert becomes infatuated with the Jewess, Rebecca of York, and through his overwhelming desire to win her love, crosses the thin boundary between love for the good of the other, to possession of another for self-gratification. Bois de Guilbert sinks further and further away from his knightly vows, to become over a short time, a liar, and a murderer, a man who would do anything in order to grasp within his arms Rebecca. Rebecca for her part continues to resist, leading to the eventual trial by combat scene between Bois de Guilbert and Rebecca's champion, Ivanhoe. Bois de Guilbert would rather see Rebecca burned to death on a stake as a witch, than have Rebecca not to take him as her husband. It is only when Ivanhoe deals Bois de Guilbert the final mortal blow, that the fallen knight, at death's door, knowing all is now lost, comes to his senses once more. In similar fashion to Milton's Adam and Eve, who after their fall know only too well, how much they have lost, and for what little they have sold their virtue, Bois de Guilbert speaks to Rebecca. There is a sense that the recognition of mortality awakens in the human spirit a search for redemption and a need for God.

To do good and resist evil...

With comparable self-realization, Goethe's Faust, having sold his soul to the devil, finally realizes that the soul is the only treasure worth living or dying for in this world. The key to living is to find one's own path to salvation, and to strive as best as one can, to reject the lure of evil, or as Goethe tells us in the conclusion to Faust II, "He only earns his freedom and his life Who takes them every day by storm". One must resist every attempt made by the world to pry open the grasp one holds on one's soul and one's virtue. Goethe who for much of his life resisted obedience to Christian doctrine, acknowledged at life's end, that the best we can hope for in humanity is to do good and resist evil. This is a simple adage, but a difficult task to carry out — especially when we are teased and taunted by all manner of promises, treasures and distractions. But we are not abandoned in our struggle for salvation. Humanity has fallen but through God, the Fall has a tinge of sweetness, God will not leave us abandoned, but will offer us a reversal of fortune, an opportunity to climb to the heavens.

Two spiritual masters of the Catholic Church offer us guideposts in order to find Paradise. The first, St. John of the Cross, reminds the individual that in any given circumstance, they are not deprived of solace, one but needs detachment from things, and attachment to God: "Live in the world as if only God and your soul were in it; then your heart will never be made captive by any earthly thing". The second Doctor of the Church, St. Basil the Great, while acknowledging our fallen state, requests that we not act as if we have a terminal condition which will immolate our very beings. But rather in words which are both challenging and uplifting, he exhorts us: "Let us raise ourselves from our fall and not give up hope as long as we are free from sin. Jesus Christ came into this world to save sinners. 'Come, let us adore and prostrate ourselves and weep before him' (Psalm 95:6). The Word calls us to repentance, crying out: 'Come to me, all you who labor and are heavily burdened and I will refresh you' (Matthew 11:28). There is, then, a way to salvation if we are willing to follow it".

For in the very end, although exiled in a vale of tears, outside of Eden's garden, we are in control of our destiny, we are as free as we are determined to be free, and the path to salvation is as open as we choose the path to be. In the end, as in the very beginning, Paradise Lost to Paradise Found all comes down to a matter of choice.

Image Credits:
Clicking on the images in the body of the article will take you to the original source. The background images used in the headline were sourced from the satan.com which is not a satanist website but one showing images of how satan and evil have been portrayed in Christian literature.

©2008 Dr Andrew Thomas Kania

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