John Milton's Paradise Lost And Acts Of Free Will

Paradise Lost and acts of Free Will John Milton, in his work Paradise Lost, dramatizes the book of Genesis into an epic poem focusing on Satan and the eventual fall of humankind. God condemns mankind for being tempted by the devil and blames their fall on their own free will, saying “ I formed them free and free they must remain, Til they enthrall themselves..” (Book III, Line 124). However, are Adam and Eve truly to blame for original sin and the destruction of Paradise? In Paradise Lost, God gives humankind “free will” and thus takes all guilt off of himself. God manipulates free will into a scapegoat for his own shortcomings; he created Satan and thus his own actions lead to the creation of sin. But why does an omnipotent God let his own

The creation of Satan and his rebellion lead to the fall of Adam and Eve and the creation of original sin. So how can one deem all of God’s creation good when it in turn becomes evil? Jafar Mirzaee Porkoli and Mohammad-Javad Haj’jari in their article, “Double-Effect Reasoning in Paradise Lost: An Investigation into Milton’s God’s Will in Humankind’s Fall” explain God’s actions through double-effect reasoning. Double-effect reasoning is way to explain the permissibility of any action that causes harm as a side effect of promoting some good end. Even though God can see all possible outcomes and could have prevented the rebellion of Satan and fall of humankind, one can argue that these actions must lead to a foreseeable positive end. To use double-effect reasoning, one must assume God intended something good from the fall of man and that although he could foresee the evil that his plan would open, he did not intend it. Milton begins to use the double-effect reasoning argument and explains why God did what he did in Book X, but does not complete his argument. He never fully discusses how God’s acts can be both good and evil at the same