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Oh gosh the fall of my goodness We've got to stop this how can I stop this from happening is my question trying the next one so you I can shoot and I just be like well, we're just doing it. No Graham I believe you have prepared for some more information. Fantastic the fall of man. Yeah, so tonight today in the podcast we are going to talk about book nine of Paradise Lost the fall of man and We'll talk about the fall of man, but also just a couple of the things that Milton that you can sort of derive of what Milton thinks about human nature from the fall of man and Especially when you look at sort of Adam and Eve before they fall to Adam and Eve after they fall the kinds of things that they begin to emphasize For example, they're still in love after the fall, but they emphasize different things than they would did before the fall and these things are kind of interesting to think about The yeah, just to think about how since sin is twisted good according to Milton We can still recognize good things but post-lapsearian their twist anyway, but before we get into that I'm just gonna give a little brief Sort of context reminder of everybody of what we're sort of talking about So Milton was British poet he wrote Paradise Lost and his job what he wanted to do was he wanted to justify the ways of God to man Especially when it came to mankind's fall.
So why did the common question asked by any high schooler? I've had in my leadership classes, which is why did he put the tree in the garden? That's right. Especially if he's outside of time and he knew we would fall.
Why is the tree there? The question is honestly He does answer that. Yeah, yeah, it's not a book nine It's in book 12 where he answers it and the the last book after the fall Adam super depressed and he says I all I'm gonna give birth to his death or I mean all he's gonna get birth to his death All we're gonna do is give birth to things that are creatures that are falling and they're just gonna suffer Why and then they're just gonna curse my name. Why should I do that and Adams considering killing himself?
And so Gabriel has to come down and say like all right buddy I'm just gonna tell you what the rest of history is gonna be so you kind of know what to expect Yeah, cuz I mean if you put yourself in his place Like if you're Adam and you just fell and you knew you brought this horrible thing into the world and only strife was to come of it You had cursed all of creation if you know That's a good reason to sort of like think about how much pain you would stop by sort of often self You bring out all those wars all that pain and so Gabriel has to come down and he tells him that he basically works up to the big Moment and he says the big moment is that God is going to come down and dwell with us as a man He's and and Gabriel sort of walks through him the Old Testament and sort of God's relationship with the Jews and then Jesus the crucifixion the gospel And then he says and after this God is going to dwell in the hearts of man So the the same presence the same spirit that created the universe is going to live in your human breast and Adam freaks out And he says that's absolutely amazing and Adam kind of has this moment where he says maybe it was even better that this happened this way Which is coming that's up There's a whole tradition called phalix culpa which is a fortunate fall But Milton just has that saying that God can take the bad and can work it into greater good And then Satan takes the good and tries to work it into greater bed and God comes back Flips it on him and then God flips it on him. That's gotta be frustrating. Yeah, it is right It's super frustrating. I would just be like I mean even think about the crucifixion You're like he came down and I got him and they're like oh it was all that was all yeah Yeah, just helped him affect the salvation exactly gosh darn it I'm gonna be so frustrated and see realizes it too.
He says whatever I do it down upon my rebellious head and So he knows it, but he just can't help himself by doing it So I'm sorry So then Gabriel tells him what happens and Adam says this is amazing Then I will continue to live because I know that God is going to dwell with man And that seems to be better and then Gabriel says this having learned that has attained the sum of wisdom He says you now know it and he says don't worry about what stars were made of don't worry about like trying to number everything or know everything Only add deeds to thy knowledge answer will ed faith and virtue patience wisdom I'd love by name to come called charity the soul of all the rest then will doubt not be loath to leave this paradise But she'll possess a paradise within the happier far. This is what Gabriel says that you can Remember that was remembering remember palace I've memory palace a small section of paradise lost Anyway, so that answer your question God takes the fall and works it into a in this thing where Now the church lives in the fallen world But those who have the spirit of God are meant to continue to do the task that Adam and Eve did which is to turn the world into a garden But it's not a physical garden of Eden. It's God's kingdom and his church militant in the world coming in And eradicating sin anyway, so that's the so that's good news But let's talk a little bit about the fall because it in book nine. It's got some interesting things to say about just sort of human nature so So in book nine Satan comes back to the garden after having sort of for some reason he decides to circumnavigate the world seven times And he comes back and you got nothing else to do Well, he was first he was running away from angels that were chasing him when they found out he was a garden and then he comes back and after this time The angel Raphael has come down to Adam and has told Adam He said listen there's a devil in your garden I want you to be aware that this is happening and Adam's like cool That's great and everything but can you tell me what stars are made of and Raphael says I don't think you're really paying attention To what I'm saying There's a devil in your garden and Adam this is true and this gives my students no end of the light asks if angels do it He's like do angels do what even I do and Raphael's like buddy listen you are focusing on the wrong things There is a devil in your garden you need to be careful about this anyway I mean isn't it implied in scripture that they do like every Milton says they don't or I think Milton's wrong Isn't there stuff in Genesis well there's angels coming down and dwelling with man and then creating the race of giants the Nephilim Yeah, that's not so they're not supposed to be doing that so the question is whether they're supposed to the question is whether they do I'm very risk to tell you know Because the old medieval arguments like angels can you fit on the yeah, not risk to you know very like Thomas equine is But I mean if it happens in scripture it sure seems like you're falling into the same trap Adam did we shouldn't be talking about There's this a devil prowling around wow I'd be like that be something you could say about anything like you could be talking to our high schoolers We're talking about their fortnight scores and be like why are we talking about fortnight?
There's a devil playing around you just don't mind my teaching It's just threatening your students with demons yeah anyway Pretty much you didn't say no so okay so then this is important because halfway through the conversation when Adam starts asking about stars Eve like politely excuses herself and Goes and continues to do work And that same day doesn't Adam tell her like you need to stay nearby no that's been book nine Oh, so and this is where Adam makes there's this sort of this interesting mistake so Adam and Eve are coming together and They the garden is getting a little bit bigger and they have a lot of work to do and Eve's Has really her mindset on the thing that God has asked them to do Which is turn the earth into a garden and the promise is is that when they turn the earth into the garden God says Your task on earth will be gone will be done and you will come and you will dwell with the heavenly beings and quote you shall be as gods That's kind of God's plan for humanity was Adam and Eve were to have lots of children and those children were to fill the earth and subdue it and take Eden this little seed That looks like heaven and fill kind of this brushy waste landy earth with it Right and turn the this planet into a garden and then we will sort of Apotheosis up to God and be like be like gods So this is Adam and Eve's mission and Eve is a character that seems more focused on that task and Adam is a character That is more focused on just the glories of everything that there is to discover about this and not that Adam is wrong or lazy It's just they are reflecting different natures of God and we talked about this if you go and listen to the theology of Milton podcast Adam is really concerned with abundance and just sort of understanding everything and naming everything and he's just completely stoked that this world is so abundant and Eve is one who is more resonates more with God's order and then she is going and she is making the beautiful things more beautiful and Just as a quick little footnote when Adam Eve come together in the marriage bed Those two natures order and abundance create life and so Adam's abundance with Eve's order creates a new a new child So order then becomes sort of an integrated necessary aspect of life That's right. Yeah, and creation is ordered abundance If you just have abundance without order of chaos and if you have order without abundance you have sort of one rigid law Does this kind of reflects sort of a medieval understanding of the world that is different from our modern one right? We look at nature we might see Randomness where the medieval's looked at nature and what they saw was ordered Ordered harmony and abundance and part of that was just the their view of the cosmos part of that is just what they saw in nature Right? They saw an ordering you know Kingdom filing that sort of thing.
They didn't see evolution They saw order and categorization. Yeah, it's always fascinating that if you go into the subatomic level it is Randomness like the quarks and quarks are going around at certain Unpredictable thing but you zoom up a couple levels and you can say predictable things about what a what a an atom is going to do What a carbon atom is going to be you can say if I mix it with this this will always happen So there's this interesting like even The basic level you have the sort of chaos but when you come up a couple of degrees you have order isn't it really about certain Subatomic articles you can't say where they are exactly yeah Yeah, like they are never in one spot. Mm-hmm. You can either know where they are or where they're going but you can't test for both Yeah, the test for one will move it or change it's yeah, so you only know one thing or the other crazy So that yeah anyway, so you are not physicists You should know Anyway So Adam and Eve are In the next so yeah, so they wake up one morning and Eve wants to do more focused work and Adam says I don't really want to split up let's stay together And Eve says that's fine But if we split up we can probably get him done more efficiently and Adam doesn't want to do this And he doesn't want to do this for two reasons And both of those reasons are good, but he puts them in the wrong order So the real big reason that Adam doesn't want to leave Eve is he kind of just really likes her And he just wants to be around her all the time He loves Eve and he doesn't want her to go off by herself because he's just gonna think about her And he's not gonna get any work done.
He's wants to be near her which is a good thing sounds like some dudes I'm in high school. That's right and then the other reason and then Eve sort of kind of you know basically says Well, that's not I mean we can just think of all the work we can get done. We'll meet up I'm here for eternity like we're gonna talk tonight and they're gonna kind of say like our absence will make the heart go Fonders actually way a little while and that'll make you so much more glad to see me when I come back and he's like And then he comes up. He's like, oh, I know why we should stick together.
There's a devil out here So that's why we should stay together and then she has this but he doesn't really emphasize it very much It's very much his secondary argument and she says well if we're living in fear Then it's not paradise and God must have given us enough to resist the devil. So we shouldn't We shouldn't have that be an excuse to never be apart like that's not a sustainable answer Is basically what she says we're gonna have to be a part of eventually because as this job continues in scope and scale But she's assuming that the devil is always gonna be in the garden. That's right. We're gonna get Raphael's never gonna come down and boot him out That's right.
So and so Adam sort of allows her to go off And but so as a student pointed out this in class like Adam has made he's he's ordered things wrong Like he's focusing on the wrong thing and my student's question was is that a sin? And so we debated this back and forth and I think the conclusion we came to at least one that I find somewhat satisfying is that Making logical mistakes is not sinful and so if you it's but it's part of growing and understanding. So if you learn By failure like in a math class when you when you don't get the right answer you have not like sinned against God And so when Adam is so like if Adam and Eve came together and they said what's an efficient way to cut down this tree? And then they did it and they realized it was not a very efficient way like scraping it until it was a toothpick was not efficient That's not a sin.
It's just they made the wrong mistakes That's and the fact that Eve so this is why God blames Adam more than Eve after the fall is because Eve was tricked And she kind of got her head twisted around with the devil's lies and ate the fruit even the fruit was a sin The disobedience was a sin but Adam knew they had said this was God's plan all along yes And once you do this and so she was and so she gets tricked But she does it but Adam when he is doing he's like I know exactly what I'm doing and he eats it and so this is why God comes down and he says that like Adam is Is blameworthy for this so this is why the sin is associated with Adam And anyway, so there's this idea that yeah So that's the first kind of interesting thing is like logical mistakes aren't sinful or the fact that we have to work in Math class is not because we've fallen So this student also asked me said so does this mean that Jesus who is without sin made mistakes in math? And he was like learning his sums or learning to like make a carbon making cabinets. Did he make a bad cabinet? He grew up in knowledge, so he must have learned over time and is sort of learning always imply mistake making I kind of feel like it does it has to either that or his dad his family instantly became the most Yes famed wealthy carpenters ever because he could never make an imperfect chair But is that is that what it means to be like?
Without sin I don't know well here. Here's a good question like Jesus be a great at skateboarding Can you meet someone who is perfectly good and yet bad at skateboarding? Yes, I think you can yeah, right? I can meet a carpenter who is the best person ever known and still can't make a chair to save his life Yeah, I don't think that necessarily making perfect objects is innate in goodness Mm-hmm, so I pointed this out because it was something I think all students need to hear is that their their growth in learning the mistakes that they make or the grades that they Don't make that they are dissatisfied with is not some kind of sin on their lives or it's not it could be but that is a A secondary thing so it could be because of laziness it could be because of lack of work It's not willing to do it but but but the honest effort with the mr.
Mark of perfection in an essay or math class is not it's not a sin against God Yeah, and mistakes like that can be an opportunity for sin if you become jealous of someone else who did it correctly the first time Or you do it right every single time and never have a mistake and you're You're a little hard to singing you are indeed a tiny God right that is you know That's a simple thing to I am a ninth grade God Anyway, that's the first little interesting thing to put to see this is Adam makes this mistake in his affections But it for what at least according to Milton it was not a mistake that like pulled the trigger on the fall Anyway, so second little interesting thing that happens in book nine something oh by one of the first one Is that something that this your sophomore is brought up or is that something you normally talk about this is something we've never normally taught Yeah, this is something I can't remember who think came up with it first did it Often times what happens in this class is we read a section out loud and some part of the section that I've read over and over and over Just pops out and I'm like oh that's interesting And I bring it up as a question And I honestly can't remember this year if it was something that popped into my head or if it was prompted by a question from a student But that happens all the time and that's why these books continue to be able to be read year after year is because I've been reading it in class with everyone there Yeah, yeah, you are looking at the text instead of my memory of the text from the night before you know the morning Yeah, yes or the spark notes. Yeah, I love the text Danny listeners out there Anyway, so the next thing is is that when Satan comes back to earth He sees the beautiful Garden of Eden and it looks like a tiny heaven and he's like oh man. I'm missing Hey guys I know this is kind of coming at a weird time what happened was as we recorded I was trying to fiddle with the recording program and I fiddled poorly and I accidentally stopped the recording mid-sentence and Try as I might I can't find a good way to put things back together in a way that sounds natural So I'm gonna stick myself in the middle of things here and just say I'm sorry And instead of having bees and Graham rerecord entire episode Which would mean our conversation is stilted and repetitive and because we're doing it for the second time I just decided you know I'm gonna stick myself in here apologize and then let the audience continue on After my apology, so I'm sorry some a little in the middle of the episode here to kind of break things up But here we go. We're gonna jump back into it, and I know the transitions a little goofy.
Sorry about that So this has happened a couple times Yeah, with Satan sees a beautiful thing and it cuts him to the core But there's a different thing that happens when he sees Eve and when he sees Eve Adam Sorry Milton makes reference that there's a change that actually happens on the inside of Satan for a brief moment So I'm just gonna actually read the scene read the section of when Satan sees Eve and this is the next little kind of interesting Titbit or take away from book nine, so He sees Eve and in her look sums all delight Such she most I know some's all the light such pleasure took the serpent to behold this flowery plat the sweet recess of Eve thus early Thus alone her heavenly form angelic but more soft and feminine her graceful innocence her every air of gesture or at least action Over-odd his malice and with Ray Pines sweet bereaved his fierceness of the fierce intent it brought That space the evil one abstracted stood from his own evil and for the time remained stupidly good of Enmity disarmed of guile of hate of envy of revenge But the hot hell that always in him burns though in mid-heaven soon ended his delight and tortures him now more the more he sees of pleasure Not for him ordained so basically what is being said here is Satan sees Eve and for a second Satan it says that he is abstracted from his evil. He is stupidly good So it's like that moment when you've been having a really really terrible day, but on the ride home It's kind of pretty the wind is blowing through your heart and you have that moment We just sort of forget about everything else. Yeah, that's good. So Satan yeah There's a second where cuz Satan is good deep in his creation like as it created being he was created good So his sin is not something where he is now a completely different kind of entity from everything else He's just an entity with all of his loves and all of his orders and all of his desires are so twisted and messed up that That he's just he's just a mess He's all like the the Christmas lights are also intertwined that you can't intertwine you can't untangle them and it's just you know It's not what it was supposed to be But for the second one he sees Eve he is abstracted from his evil and he feels for a moment what it was like to have been Heavenly again it feels for a moment being a heavenly being again And that's what it means when it says that he was abstracted from his own evil stupidly good not stupid that he's an idiot But that his goodness is coming Sort of apart from his effort But then the moment passes and all his hatred and envy and anger rush back in and he's even more angry because he can't stay being This good thing and he has that feeling of when he sees a beautiful thing He just wants to smash it because he's guilty of who he is I was like that moment if I was maybe if I was some sort of Street urchin and I looked in a window and saw this beautiful expensive, you know car or a happy family Thanks for having family and for a second.
I was just I was sort of transported to that place and then when I returned to myself I was like oh, that's something that's beautiful, but I will never have it and then you're angry towards that thing right? And then I'm compelled to break the window or you know blow up their melbox. Yes exactly similar kind of thing and so What we talked about in class and this little tidbit is that like even so even in creation beauty has this moment to Almost untangle the fall for a second and give you a sense of what the unfallenness would have been like and The students really want to talk about that in class when we mention it because they themselves as human beings have Undoubtedly had that kind of experience with music or with nature or with people friends are with just lovely beautiful things Is that the thing we call deep joy and that's a thing we call deep joy and we save that for our romanticism unit I'm gonna save a big discussion about that for a podcast on romanticism, which I fully understand is not classical or whatever But we'll talk about that we'll talk about romanticism and classicism a little bit later But anyway, so Milton has this thing where yes beauty has this capacity to Bring us out of the fall for a moment And this is also why people fall in love with chasing after beautiful things So this is something we'll talk about when we read Dorian Gray in senior English that people fall in love with the beautiful thing As opposed to what the beautiful thing is telling them to fall in love with which is the author of beautiful things So I remember a while back we you and I had a conversation about why how can a Christian justify art? Yeah, right art doesn't necessarily help people it doesn't necessarily feed people or clothe people It seems like I could be better using my time in prayer or in service or in volunteering It seems like I mean I kind of ended ended the conversation in a place where I said art is justified because We universally view it as good and we find interacting with it as good And it's a part of our nature that just it's good So we can't kill it but this seems like a bit perhaps a better argument for yeah That what this can do is help to break us out of the fall for a moment and experience what the world should be It's a little taste of heaven that leaves you wanting for more so Seeing the beautiful thing and you have that sort of transcendental moment of oh my goodness.
This is beautiful It makes you long for the place where that beauty sort of comes from its source Yeah, I feel like we talk about truth goodness and beauty a lot but end up teaching more on truth and goodness I was wondering where that place of beauty comes in we take the freshmen on trip to Colorado in the get to have these beautiful nature scapes and So there are small experiences like that. Yeah, and when we talk about kids growing up or maturing I think a lot of time we think about just them being good students academically or being able to you know Think about are they going to be respectful on their first job? And you know those are two things but there is a deep big part of maturity that comes with how do you rightfully have Reverance to beautiful things how can you or being able to say this thing is more beautiful and more worthy of my time and attention and affections Then these other things and usually we tend to modern in the modern world We tend to just dismiss that by talking about tastes I just like this you just like that you can't tell me that the thing that I like is better or worse than thing that you like It at least for Milton in the classical world That's not true there were things that were that were just sort of better for the human person to dwell on live in and be Observing and absorbed into than other things and I think that rubs us the wrong way today Yeah, and if you didn't like them it wasn't a fault in the art or just a different taste it was a fault And you if you cannot recognize the beauty in this work is you that are deficient rather than something else Yes Lewis talks about that he doesn't like kids and like when he hangs out with kids he finds them kind of annoying But he realized that's a deficit or that's a deficiency in his personality as opposed to something wrong with kids guys This is basically what I'm gonna be talking about in our next episode. Oh, so then I will then I will stop talking next all this connects It's a web it's a lot of our Anyway, so Satan has this moment, but then The other thing that we should be very careful to point out so that we can remain orthodox Christians is that beauty It does not sanctify you like beautiful things cannot undo the fall Beauty cannot save you only the spirit of God can save you That's the problem with a lot of folks is they get completely waylight and way laid by something beautiful They say I've dedicated my life to music and chasing after the thing So I haven't found what I'm looking for a bono, right?
And I think that's where that huge despair comes for celebrities and famous people every once in a while is the guy who there's a guy Who recently won the Super Bowl he went home and was super sad because he's like this is it This is why I gave my life to and it's when you've chased this thing that you thought contained the beauty and come to find that it doesn't it simply Yeah, so and and Satan reflects that as well And so that makes him even angrier towards enemy even wanting to destroy them The third little thing that we can take away from book nine That's kind of interesting is why Satan goes after Eve and I can't remember if I mentioned this in the other Milton podcast And it's because so very briefly Satan is the first straight thing and he thinks he's the best even the last created thing And so in Satan's mind She's the worst like God just ran out of the good flower and so you know She's just made of poor stuff right yeah Woodshavings Anyway, so in his mind she's the easiest to take down and this but this so feeding to something this view of hierarchy and this view of inequity or inequality Is something that is a big driver of the fallen mentality? So when Eve falls she starts thinking about Things in terms of superior and inferior whereas before they fall they think about they think about who they are in terms of Sort of like conforming to their creatureliness God made us implanted us here for a reason and we are happy if we Kind of submit to that and we are unhappy if we try to fight it anyway the next interesting thing is so Satan comes to Eve as a snake and And he goes inside the snake and there's this hilarious scene where he's about to jump in the snake's mouth and he has this moment where he just goes I Used to be the glorious prince of heaven and now I'm jumping and mixing myself with bestial slime That's what he says and he's like but you know You got to do what you got to do when you're like ripping the system So when you're when you got to get angry with God sometimes you got to roll around the mud so he jumps into the snake's mouth The snake is upset about it. Understandably But he doesn't have a say in it doesn't say and he doesn't really have a shot and then when Satan is in there He doesn't realize but he learns two books later that he can't get out Oh that God sort of shuts the door on him and so Satan gets stuck in the snake So when we talk about me a bad realization And so it's a stuck in the snake out it's like that moment when your mom's like keep making that face It's gonna stay that way and he made the face and it's stuck It's not moment when you realize your keys are in the car and everything's locked You know just that kind of moment so Satan's stuck in the snake and he can't get out and he's a little embarrassed going back to hell because They're all glorious angels at least in his mind and he's a snake and he kind of slithers back But he but he did the thing so they should praise him But he's very relieved that when he gets back to hell He finds out that all of the other demons have made similar mistakes And they have jumped into different kinds of creatures and most of them are lobsters and a lot of them are millipedes and scorpions and stuff And so every time he gives speeches when they clap it's just click click click click click click click click click click click I'm wondering if the guy whose idea it was to like inhabit lobsters for the day He's like I know we're all in hell, but let's have a rave and be lobsters and he sold it to everybody and they were all lobsters And so then I hate that guy Denny Anyway, so that's not that interesting part about now So he jumps into this next mouth and when he goes to tempt Eve It says that he likes stands up like an orator, but it's kind of adorable because he's a little snake and he goes to eat and he offers many different kinds of arguments why she should eat the fruit and there's a bunch in there And I don't know how much we want to get into the arguments that he has But that's but there's one argument that convinces her So then he says here, so he Well first talks to the tree maybe I'll read a little bit He says first this is so this is the famous passage of one Satan causes Eve to fall Oh sacred wise and wisdom giving plant mother of science now I feel thy power within me clear not only to discern things in their causes But to trace the ways of highest agents deemed however wise So it's first argument is he goes to the he starts talking to the tree and he's a snake and Eve was like how can the snake be talking? You're just a beast and he says like the fruit and so when he talks as he says to the tree mother of science because I hate you I can now understand the heavens and this is a thing that Adam has wanted to do the whole book He wants to understand the heavens You can assume that if Adam was present this would be the argument that would cause him to want to eat the fruit not so much with Eve I understand the heavens is not as big a deal for her But we spent a lot of time in class talking about how Satan calls the tree of knowledge and the thing that causes mankind to fall the mother of science You know I feel that science I That's one of the arguments it gives you knowledge of the things in their causes You're not going to die because I eat the fruit and I'm still alive Eve and also yeah Maybe you're going to die But the thing that dies is your humanness because you're gonna be a god So that's what God meant when he said you're gonna die humans are gonna die you're gonna be gods And then and then he basically says the argument sec yeah He's got one argument that convinces Eve and he starts with it by saying I This fruit and I went from snake to man If you eat the fruit you will go from man to God and you know what Eve This has kind of been God's plan all along.
He put this here as a test because what's your job What are you supposed to do well? You're supposed to fill the earth and so do it and then turn into and then you will be like gods if you eat the fruit You will be like gods God is just wanting he put this here and he's gonna be so proud that you guys Decided that you weren't scared of death and so you ate the fruit and now you're gonna be gods That's the test it's a test within the test This is the way gods testing you to see if you have what it takes to be gods He's giving you the thing But he's telling you not to do it and he's just trying to see if you have like the cone is to take it This is essentially Satan's argument and the thing that convinces Eve is this idea that if I eat this I will Complete my mission if I eat this I will get my last task on my checklist done Which is to be like gods and so she goes for the shortcut well also I mean she had no conception of the deception exactly there's no sin in the world So why would this fun little snake lighter? Yeah, and so she's like oh You mean like and you learned this all yourself. Yeah.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, you're figuring this out mr Snake, yeah, we'll be a little skeptical of what was going on but that's because we have a conception of sin right She had never hit anything like that everyone she knew loved her and was good and one of good things for the world She knew Adam and she knew Raphael that was it God And all the animals appreciate her whenever she comes around everyone's just like you are the mother of creation and everyone is very And they would please leave is reverently held in high esteem because she is the only thing in all of creation that can create another Thing that bears God's image. This is a high Calling for Eve Adam can't do it the angels can't do it and none of the beasts can do it So Eve has this capacity to recreate things that are in God's image and everyone's like that's that's a different to new thing We don't talk too much about in this class But I always want to talk about like love your mom when we talk about this passage because I mean just motherhood and childbearing Is something that I think a lot of people kind of you know look down upon as well You're not contributing to like the marketplace or whatever and we you know We as Christians always need to realize remember that like the capacity for life is More should be one of those beautiful things that we love more than wealth and ease and prosperity and any other pretty much almost any other thing In our temporal existence and so our or you know our order of factions I know I just want tons of brownie points with all the moms that are listening to our podcast Like that little clip is gonna be sent in Like on a Christmas like you didn't call yeah, oh yeah, exactly yeah anyway, so So the thing that gets Eve thinking that this is good. Yeah, her head just gets all twisted and turned around It's like these half truth sound convincing. Oh, this was God's plan all along.
Well, didn't I see that before? Yes, this completes the mission and maybe there's a little bit of like we can get this done a little bit faster Isn't that great? And so then she eats the fruit and So the big thing to take away with this is Eve is true attempted and falls according to the things that her nature The things that she resonates more deeply with the knowledge thing doesn't hit her. I can know the heavens No, thanks And and actually all of his attempts at flattery don't work.
She's not flatter and she's like I am gorgeous So why not be more gorgeous like those things don't resonate with her because there's no there's not a lot of pride there Yeah, I mean yeah, so there are scenes where Eve has the potential for it when she sees her image in the waters She's like I'm gorgeous And she has a desire to want to just look at herself forever Which is a natural desire for beauty and God has to say you will be more beautiful if you mix with Adam and she sees that And she's like he's not as gorgeous as me But then she realizes that being able to make a child is better than being able to stare at yourself in a mirror forever Anyway, the lesson narcissist didn't learn did not learn So Eve falls according to her nature and the thing that deeply resonates with her is the thing that is pretty much central to her character And I think this is an interesting thing because we've talked about besetting sins before yeah, and we've talked about I think that Each individual person the the place where you are going to fall hardest or have the hardest sin to untangle in your life Is gonna be that thing that is more central to your character so Like somebody who who gets addicted to gambling it's because they're a risk taker Mm-hmm, which isn't necessarily a bad quality I can be a really good quality they are willing to do things that have unsure outcomes that can benefit everybody right? They start a good business They do service they're willing to ask a girl out that's way out of their league like those things could end really well But but it's or they're people users maybe they aren't like charitable by nature and they just say I've had some money like I can you know Really turn the situation around like I get my family back on its feet I can do this kind of thing and you know that's coming from a charitable heart But it's turned it's being twisted into a vice and I think so like a fruitful exercise is that if each person can really think about like What's that thing? I just can't just get out of my camera this fallenness of my character Follow that rabbit trail and you will find the thing that you are strongest in and maybe a method for turning it from sin to goodness Like okay, my my propensity for this thing is coming out in this negative way Maybe I can re-channel that to something positive and because it's coming out of me I won't have to have this any the coward is actually the leader the person who would be a great leader the the The leturist or the person that loves based things is actually somebody that will appreciate and can create beautiful things I don't know. I'm I don't know what the I'm sure there's a medieval monk somewhere who's done the pike done the chart to talk about like these various things But behind whatever that setting sentence.
There's something that is good There is something that is not just good But maybe the thing that is really central to your care to who you are as a person and for Eve as the mother of humans as a mother of creation It is this desire to to create beautiful things and to improve beauty So good thing to improve that which God has given you. Um, you see it again reflected in The personification of wisdom in Proverbs 31 like wisdom is this person Symbolized by this woman this good wife who can take good things and can amplify the good things of the family through her industriousness He was kind of that way Anyway, so she falls going to her nature and then when she falls she begins to Frame things in let's see if I can find it. Oh Yeah, the best part is not the best part, but when she eats the fruit nature size I don't know what that sounds like but it must have been heartbreaking to hear and it says that she blocked she ate Earth felt the wound and nature from her seat sighing through all her works gave signs of woe that all was lost So I don't know what nature sighing sounds like but it must have been terrible And then she's got this big old speech where she's like I don't think God can see me And she's kind of concerned that she's naked And then she begins her first fallen act as she begins to think about Where she ranks in relation to Adam Wow and she gets real kind of concerned that Adam is superior to her That hierarchy that hierarchy thing so she begins to see her relationship with Adam in terms of who's better than who and Adams and she's like what didn't God put Adam in charge And he's not superior and she says for inferior who is free Isn't it the same sin Satan had like she instantly falls into the same sin that made him fall in the first place Yeah, so the very argument about like her saying that so she basically says I'm gonna level the playing field by me causing Adam to fall First she says maybe I could really just troll him like I'm now I can really turn his head because he loves me and because I know the knowledge of good and evil I can really just get him to do what I want to do But then she says but eventually God's gonna figure that out and maybe create a new perfect eat for him to love and then blast me into Nothingness, so it's better to cause him to fall and so she says um Where was it? Confirmed then I resolve Adam shall share with me in bliss or woe so dear I love him that with that with him all deaths I couldn't do her without him live no life So the other little tidbit besides just once she begins to fall she begins to become obsessed with rank and hierarchy and who's better And who's in charge and who's not in charge and who's given in taking orders?
She begins to see she has this her love for Adam changes from what it was before to like this We're going down together and there are students in the class that kind of think that's romantic They're like oh that's so romantic like they're just gonna you know hand in hand walk into the darkness together And then there seems they're like that's not that's not romantic at all that's terrible That's not love because it's bad for Adam's bad for Eve. How can what's bad for somebody wishing that on Adam beat actual love Yeah, yeah, there's no bliss. It's whoa Exactly I think about it every time I hear I'll follow you into dark heaven and hell have no vacancy signs I think about all the time using that It's true and anyway Play that song for the kids. I do not I do not I do not I want to you know I feel like that's drifting into weird English teacher territory We're like hey kids I found the song that I think really hammers home this point.
It's from a hip band called death Caprocute I'm they're like oh my goodness my dad likes that music right or whatever We're getting older Hanenburg don't give me that look he's still putting out Right there really yeah, they actually got married and got divorced. Oh So he's getting born yeah, they're still making you they were on the twilight soundtrack. Okay. Hey, you know Alright point tannenberg anyway, so there's still love in post-lapse-airian world But it's this love that is now completely twisted in with this sort of like sickly sticky sweet We're going down together if the darkness is coming I'm taking you with me which teenagers find kind of romantic until they sort of Take a step back and I usually say like all right, but what happens in 15 years?
And they're like oh yeah, that's not yeah It's romantic until they live it once yeah, and they have alienated themselves from their families their work their school They're everything and all they have is this other person and then you begin to know it the other person Yep, it's the same problem that Francesca and Paulo have in perfect You know right they they fell because they it was lost and they literally followed each other into the dark and now They're stuck together and she doesn't refer to him by his name Mm-hmm. She's like this one I'm stuck with this one all eternity and kind of points at him And it's just you can tell it's awkward and he sort of like cries and doesn't look at her and they're not happy They're not happy together. Yes before But I mean same kind of concept I have students who always say that sounds like something Romeo would do I'm like yep, that's exactly something wrong We would do say that kind of thing No, the last little thing to note is when Adam sees Eve it's kind of heartbreaking So when he wasn't with her he didn't end up doing a lot of work He actually made her like crown of flowers that he was gonna give her it's kind of sweet And so when he sees Eve and she's coming towards him and she realizes that the best way to get Adam to fall is she basically Can't do some she's like he loves me. He's crazy about me.
I can get him to do anything And when she comes she comes like guns blazing and when he sees her It's like he literally has a like record scratch vava voom moment like what has happened to her the cartoon eyeball Yeah, and he and then the crown of flowers falls from his hand and Milton says it when it hits the ground all the roses with her And then Eve says the tree was not what we were told she still is sort of believes what's saying says she doesn't eat it She's like oh No, this is actually I've actually fallen and done a bad thing. She doesn't sort of realize that she has sinned she realizes that something's changed But she just is like so this is what being a god feels like and and so she comes and she says the tree is not what we were told It has actually opened my mind. You should eat it with me and Adam knows exactly What is happening and he so and he falls according to his nature too now His nature was to know things and he'll unbundance and understand the heavens and he just is curious and He reasons that he has two options He can reject the fruit and Eve will die and he won't have her anymore And he's gonna go back to that position when he was by himself with just the animals or He can eat the fruit and be with her and the reason why Adam wants to be with her Yes, it's because of love but it appeals to his nature in that Adam conversing with Eve He realized has expanded his understanding of the world and so I tell my students like you Understand things more when you have conversations about them Then if you just sit and think about them yourselves This is why we do English class this way is because when we go back and forth and we talk about stuff It is expansive we can learn more things together than we could buy ourselves and this is what Adam has learned with Eve So the very thought of him not being with her makes him feel like his world is gonna get narrower and smaller and then the other reason is Because of their sexual union There's a level of knowing one another that he would not have by himself and you know in the Bible They talk about when Adam lay with his wife and knew her There's this idea that that act of sexual Congress is something that Where you in that intimacy can know something and be with that person in a way that no one else can and not no one else is in that marriage union So Adam is so this is interesting because it makes me think of a couple things first the Enorms and nobility. Yeah, the author talks about how we all imagine our childhood as this Idyllic time and educators always try to meet kids where they are but the truth is kids want to be adults They don't want to be where they are they want to be adult like and one of those things is they know that we know more than they do Right, we have at least many of us lost our innocence at some point And they might see that as a part of adulthood and one of the things where they fall is they think if I can know this thing That I don't know this sin gambling pornography whatever.
I will become Yeah, mature. I'll know more about it. It's I think part of it is a temptation towards maturity knowledge and just knowing more about the world and so because I don't think that they necessarily buy the truth that We're like if you listen to this and if you go down that road It's not gonna be healthy and they're like but you did you know it It's gonna make me more like an adult and and it's I mean pretty artists curiosity killed a cat, right? They the more they know about the world the more complete they feel and or the other we warn kids against that or the other lie that they have Which is if I know it and experience it I'll know why I shouldn't do it in the future and actually Satan gives that argument He's like if you know if you know evil well, what's the line that he actually says he says basically if you know evil you can avoid it Yeah, and he says She wears it I'm sorry, I'm gonna be able to find quick enough, but he essentially gives the argument that he says If you know evil it'll be easier Yeah, here we go Of good how just of evil if what is evil be real why not known since easier shun So he basically gives you argument like if you can know evil you can avoid it faster And that's a thing a lot of students are saying like I just need to make mistakes so I can learn like for myself I mean, I understand I understand the reason behind it But what I told him I said that is only true if evil can remain just in the head But if you fill your head with knowing evil it is eventually going to bleed into the heart and into the actions and into the habits and then into the character So it is it is It is an infection that will spread it's not something you can contain just in a knowledge Just in knowing something like father Brown says you can only maintain a level of evil like you can maintain a level of good But you cannot maintain a level of evil you will either turn away from it or become more even yeah exactly What are you gonna say I quoted it before it's that experience with the teacher of fools and so Someone who someone chooses sin will still have that consequence you will learn the lesson one way or the other you choose whether it's the lesson of winning that sin in the first place or of experiencing And so Adam chooses to fall with Eve because of a fear of narrowing his horizons essentially if I don't know He basically says I will not have someone to talk to and therefore I will know less things and I will not have someone to To know I will not have someone to love and know and he definitely means it in sort of a sexual way And so a lot of people when they read it they're like oh, he's just a 17 year old boy And he can't imagine a life without sex and it's not that at all It's it's that the intimacy is that that sort of the wind when he when he meets Eve and is with Eve and is married to Eve There's a window in his heart that opens that he didn't know was there and there's this whole other landscape of knowing that is beyond just what he can observe in the heavens and the animals It's the knowing of loving a person and if that is taken away He thinks that that is so intolerable so Adam's mistake is literally he loves Eve more than God That's that's the sin and that's what God condemns him for and that's that fancy word that a j-likes We're love of love of partner trumps love of other things A joriousness you love your your partner overly much and it's like it's specifically man to wife Yeah, you love your wife more than students have a hard concept with that They're like how can love be if it's just really intense How can it be wrong and it's because it's it's it's directed in the wrong in the wrong way or it trumps the This ordered love it becomes more important than your love of God Mm-hmm, and you see the seeds of that planted earlier like when Adam was warning Eve his motivation was her as opposed to God's command anyway, so those are just little tidbits in book nine that I think are really fascinating and When you have the sort of framework of thinking about Adam and Eve now if you just read it I mean That died for C.S.
Lewis and this idea that Adam and Eve have these natures that are appeal to really opens up these windows into Sort of understanding understanding this human nature. Did you read the intro from Lewis before you? I think oh definitely yes I'm the one last thing I'm gonna I'll say about just the nature of Adam and nature of Eve is just a bit of interpretive warning a lot of students think like oh Milton saying girls are this way they and Milton saying boys are this way and that's not really what Milton saying Because when Adam and Eve have children their natures get mixed into a child and so human beings have Both of these aspects so what Milton's not saying girls are this way boys are this ways what Milton is saying is what Eve represents is Almost like the feminine we can call what she is the feminine and what Adam represents We can call the masculine and the feminine and the masculine are both things that they represent better reflections of something in God So and then those things together are mixed in in their progeny so I Have not ever tackled that sort of thorny issue to talk about the concept of feminine and masculine Classically versus the sort of the concepts of what what we talk about in terms of Gender and and what it means to be a boy when it means to be a girl in our modern age Which is a real thorny issue for lots of people and maybe something for another podcast But but suffice to say at least in ancient Rome there were Attitudes and dispositions and aspects that they were that they called feminine attitudes and dispositions and aspects of the called masculine and they were of different Mixtures and different everybody Yeah, anyway, we can talk more about that in other time. So this is the quote that I wanted to pull out from Shakespeare last time So just a little commonplace there is a tide in the affairs of men which taken at the flood leads on to fortune Emitted all the voyage of their life is bound in shallows and miseries.
There's a little quote on timing Good stuff. You can use it to encourage yourself. Yes. I want to ask somebody out There's a moment you got a season.
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Oh my god, but I think that's it anything else for me. Oh for me. I was bled. We will talk again soon Okay, check that back