Christ’s Awakening To Divinity

 I’ve always found it interesting to think about what Christ thought of himself as he grew up. To what extent was he aware of his divinely appointed mission? What did he know about his heritage and what did he not know? How did he feel as a youth growing up, did he feel more mature, different than everyone around him? So many interested questions that we have little to no knowledge about from Biblical Accounts. We have accounts of Apostles writing about the divinity of Christ but nothing written by Christ himself about his life or mission. In our own Mormon literature, Jesus the Christ offers some insight into some of these possibilities but beyond that we don’t have much.

The first chapter Paradise Regained offers an interesting perspective on some of these questions in a narrative written from the perspective of Christ. I think Milton did a fantastic job at diving into these questions and creating a persona that I could see as a very possible reality for what the young Jesus may have thought.

Towards Mormopagitica

I've had a running internal/external debate in my head for the past ten... no make that fifteen years on the worth of wickedness observed. On the one hand, I think of the often graphic horrors opened in visions by the Lord to His prophets; if God saw fit to put wickedness on display for Isaiah, John the Revelator, there must be some value derived from it, right? And ancient american prophets seemed to view the records of the Gadianton robbers to be important to their education, right? But on the other hand, I argue that God and his anointed were the gate-keepers in both instances; maybe only He and the prophets who share His secrets are physicians fit to prescribe such useful drugs. Then again, don't we believe in an egalitarian God who upbraids not when any man seeks knowledge in faith?

"To both these objections one answer will serve, out of the grounds already laid, that to all men such books are not temptations, nor vanities; but useful drugs."

And so I've gone round and round. I suppose I should sit down to read and write and pray about it. But I have little confidence, at present, in settling the question by an appeal to King James, Mormon, or Milton. Rather, when stirred by Areopagitica and Paradise Lost, I find myself thinking about the official narrative of LDS history. Happily, it seems we are moving towards the free market of thought advocated so well by Milton in Areopagitica. I suppose this change in policy--where we find the Joseph Smith papers published unedited, and where CES teachers are being instructed to address uncomfortable facts rather than merely avoiding them, and where Pres. Uchtdorff and others frankly acknowledge the reality that LDS leaders have sometimes acted and spoken out of harmony with eternal truth--has been a necessary fruit of the internet: a digital tree whose broad boughs put the knowledge of good and evil at the fingertips of millions.

So where does this all essay? Toward confidence, calmed by faith. The bittersweet fruits of good and evil knowledge have been tasted in other worlds, including Milton's. It's natural to wish for cultural-narrative control, but can we become saints, individually or collectively, without confessing our fathers' transgressions?

"And what is faith, love, virtue unassayed..."

I have to say, considering that Adam and Eve were "as little children" in the Garden of Eden, they both have a grasp on the English language far above anything that I can aspire to.  Book IX of PL is a prime example of the use of rhetoric and it illustrates the dangers of it's misuse as Satan crafts a solid-seeming argument for eating the fruit that induces Eve to eat.  But this begs the question:  how much of this did Eve already have in mind?  I'm not suggesting that Eve set out that day with the intent to eat the fruit and openly defy God, but I do wonder how much she had progression in mind.  Even in Milton's version of the paradisiacal Garden of Eden, the Garden seems to be a place of stasis—pleasant stasis, granted, but stasis nonetheless.  The existence is apparently one of gentle garden work in lopping, pruning, propping, and binding the plants of the Garden each day.  To what effect, though?  The fruit grows freely and plentifully in the Garden and there is always plenty to eat, and Eve says that any work that they do is essentially undone in one or two nights (see ll. 209-212).  So what is the point of their labor in the Garden?  Perhaps God was giving them "busy work" until the Fall happened.

Milton gives us a sense that Eve is seeking to prove herself out of some misplaced pride, but I think there is an argument to be made for her seeking progression from her current state.  After all, one of the most appealing arguments that the serpent makes to her is that by eating she will ascend to a higher plane of existence.  He says, "...in the day / Ye eat thereof, your eyes that seem so clear, / Yet are but dim, shall perfectly be then / Opened and cleared, and ye shall be as gods, / Knowing both good and evil as they know" (ll. 705-709).  Eve wants more than the simplicity that she and Adam experience in the Garden.  She wants to achieve higher things and reach higher levels.  Adam appears fairly content in this simple existence, but Eve wants more.

Latter-day Saints have a different view on the Fall of Adam and Eve, of course, and as a Mormon I'm obviously going to bring some of that to what I read.  Probably Milton didn't give Eve as much credit as we do when it comes to her decision to eat the fruit, but I don't think she is meant to be seen as an idiot.  After all, he basically has Eve quote himself in making her arguments.  Milton said in the Areopagitica, "As therefore the state of man now is, what wisdom can there be to choose, what continence to forbear without the knowledge of evil?" (location 32231).  Eve reflects this sentiment in Book IX when she says "And what is faith, love, virtue unassayed / Alone, without exterior help sustained?" (ll. 335-336).  No progression is possible without knowledge.

Problems and False Starts

I was so excited about the concepts concerning the implications of communicated knowledge in Areopagitica that I had all but decided on restricting my study of Milton to an exploration of that text. At first, I was mainly interested in how Milton's rhetoric might inform libertarians in our current age, as demonstrated by this false-start I never posted:




But I'm also fascinated by the concepts that intersect with Book IX of Paradise Lost, especially as they pertain to Mormon studies in a digital age (a preoccupation of mine evidenced by Ships of Hagoth).

If time were not an issue, I would explore the following subjects:

1. Milton's thoughts on the ethics and implications of personal and communicated knowledge, as expressed in Paradise Lost and Areopagitica
2. Doctrines, attitudes and histories of the LDS Church and it's members on the ethics and implications of personal and communicated knowledge
3. Challenges and implications of the above in a digital world

As it stands, that list looks like an elephant so large, it would take years to digest, even at the rational rate of one bite at a time.

[Blogger sighs with exaspiration.]