I absolutely love Milton, though I confess he is a bit dense and it takes a great deal of discipline for me to read him thoroughly. I find Paradise Lost to be poetic, entertaining, personal, and intellectually deep all at the same time. I think the main reason I love Milton so much is that he takes a story and concept which is so central and present in my own faith life and in the mind of western civilization and makes it come alive. He adds flesh to the bones of the story in Genesis and gives my religious history a faith and a circulatory system.
If I believe hell exists wouldn't it be nice to be provided with a poetic description of its dark burning lake? OF COURSE IT WOULD. I find myself absolutely fascinated by the description of legions of fallen angels and especially Beelzebub. He gives color to an invisible world and sequence to an unexperienced past. I am almost certain that any Christian, possibly Muslims and Jewish persons as well who share this common story of the fall of mankind, would find some part of their spiritual life enlightened by reading Milton's expounded version of the fall. It is sometimes hard to grasp abstract ideas such as original sin and evil. It also hard to abstract the foundation for a religion of off a few one liners from the Almighty. LUCKILY, Milton appears to also be divinely inspired by The Holy Spirit, so...I guess it is safe to say that God is using him to fill in gaps with the creation story and help provide us with a more clearly illustrated picture of the abstract theological principles present in the book of Genesis. Furthermore, Milton makes everything more personal. I kind of feel like I know Satan and who my first mother Eve was way back in the day before her story was cut down to a few pages but she was still held responsible for...basically everything that followed. Well done Milton, I both appreciate and enjoy of existence's first story.
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