Mel Gibson's recent film, The Passion of the Christ, opens with a disturbing scene in which Satan attempts to dissuade Jesus from carrying the cross to the entire human race. What is peculiar to Satan's temptation are the questions he asks the Son: "Who are you?" and "Who is your father?" It seems militarily imprudent for Satan to even attempt to challenge an adversary whose identity is as dark to him as the night fog. Likewise, John Milton's audience sees the same ignorance in Satan, which inflames his animosity toward the Son in the vast epics Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained, in which Satan's incomplete knowledge of the Godhead profoundly influences his thoughts and actions. In particular, because Milton's Satan believes himself to be another son of God, his interaction with the true Son makes a dramatic impression on Milton's reader: the brotherly conflict between the disgraced prince and the king's rightful successor. While Satan's initial combat with the Son in Paradise Lost ends in his defeat, the Prince of Darkness resumes his confrontation with the Son in Paradise Regained, revealing his identity behind a human mask. Like the futile struggle of an illegitimate prince, Satan's vision of the status and nature of the Father's heir is clouded by his prejudice and ignorance, spelling his pathetic defeats in both epics. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay To begin discussing Satan's attitude toward the Son, it is essential to first examine the event that arouses Satan's awareness of the threat that endangers his princely status; it is in this atomic event that his envy and prejudice towards the Son of God explode. In essence, Milton's paradise in Paradise Lost is like a peaceful adoptive home in which God plays the role of a benevolent father who adopts the angelic children entrusted to his care. On New Year's Day, the father presents his legitimate son to the family for the first time, making him inherit all the legitimate privileges and asking that the other children give him their toys: an act of favoritism that transforms God's bedroom into a desk. -hammering parliament. This is the scene that describes the Son's exaltation to Heaven, where Satan shows the impulse to defend his overshadowed status and compete for the Father's recognition. Indeed, Satan presents a justification of his relationship with Omnipotence in this statement: "The Son of God I also am, or was, And if I was, I am; the relationship remains." With these powerful words, the satanic prince passionately claims his birthright and offers just cause to be envious of the Son, even though in truth he has limited knowledge of the Son's status at this time. The setting of Paradise Lost is therefore the stage on which Satan launches his anguished cry of illegitimacy. It is clear that Satan's ignorance of the Son's filial unity with God is what convinces him to believe that he is an illegitimate prince. Because Satan fails to recognize the fact that the Son is the true representation of divinity, in which the Father takes "greatest pleasure," one of his preconceived impressions of the Son is that he is simply an ordinary servant who receives an unworthy promotion at a higher level. royal status. This is shown in Satan's words to his peers: "Another now has all the power unto himself, and we are eclipsed under the name. Of the anointed King." Undeniably, Satan despises the nature of the Son by sayingthat he has no direct kinship with the Father, but is simply an angel who has been arbitrarily bestowed with the kingship of God. Furthermore, the word “other” implies that anyone can potentially be chosen as a candidate for the throne of God. "This is why Satan,” writes Michael Bryson, “regards the elevation of the Son as such a grave affront: Satan's is a 'whoever makes this 'Son' thinks he is, anyway?” Enraged by his disqualification of legitimacy, Satan's "injured sense of worthiness" reflects the resentful curses of Edmund, who also engages in an internal conflict with his social status in Shakespeare's tragic play King Lear: My Services Are Bound . Therefore should I resist the plague of custom and allow the curiosity of nations to deprive me?...Lag of a brother? Why bastard?...With baseness, bastardity? Baseness, baseness? This passage highlights the psychological turmoil that Satan suffers as God's illegitimate son. If God the Father refers to all angels as his "Own Offspring of Light," it is plausible that Satan feels frustrated at not being able to gain approval of the Father even if he is the most powerful and beautiful. of all the angels, in addition to Satan's prejudice towards the nature of the Son, believes he deserves equal status, power and authority, purposely overlooking the fact that the Father has already proclaimed the transcendence of the Son above the angels:Who can reason At that time. or law assumes monarchy over those who live according to law. His equals, if less in power and splendor, equal in freedom? Satan complains that the elevation of the Son literally upsets the notion of equality in the ranking of the heavenly hosts. It also reveals his narrow perspective towards the supremacy attributed to the Son from the beginning of creation. In particular, Milton's poem offers another interesting passage to Satan's false view of the Son: soon after the Son's coronation, Satan furtively whispers to his peers: "new laws you see imposed; new laws from him that reigns, new minds can arise." . In us who serve." Evidently, the word new imposes on Satan a revolutionary conception that convinces him to believe that the Son is a new creation of the Father who imperiously - and unjustly - claims to be adored. Neil Forsyth, author of The Satanic Epic, presents a brilliant analysis of Satan's inaccurate perception of the essence of the Son: Satan sees that God the Father violates the pre-existing hierarchy in the celestial kingdom by commanding the angels to worship a newly created man, not his Son, thus arousing Satan's rebellious reaction to God's decree. Like Satan's partial knowledge of the Son, his concept of the Godhead proves to be equally objective. To be precise, Satan's immature understanding of Divinity is like that of a child whose judgment is often misled by outward appearances and who fails to recognize the intrinsic value beneath the surface. In other words, the problem with Satan's theological perspective lies in his belief and experience that God's nature is not innate, but rather manifested by external qualities such as his sovereignty and power. In Paradise Lost, the formation of Satan's misconception of the Godhead is best illustrated by Satan's testimony of the sacred anointing of the Son hosted by the Father, in which Satan sees that God's power and authority are externally transferable . This is shown when God proclaims before multitudes of people angels: "My only begotten Son, and in this holy mountain. Ye have anointed him, whom ye now see. At my right hand; I will make him your head." It appears that divine power is transferred directly to the Son in the anointing process, just as the blood istransfused from one to another. Returning to the image of the illegitimate prince, Milton describes Satan's gloomy withdrawal from the celebratory feast following the enthronement of his Son: "he resolved with all his legions to dislodge and leave Unworshipt, not to obey the supreme Throne". Next, the heavenly war after the anointing of the Son describes the painful price inflicted on the rebellious prince due to his ignorance of the Son's power. Indeed, the War in Heaven paints the most fascinating picture of the conflict between spiritual forces, in which Satan receives the privilege of being the first among the angels to taste the shocking power of the Son's fury. Milton's poetry offers a concrete manifestation of the the unstoppable energy of the Son that generates a compulsive defeat of the Prince of Darkness: Among them [the Son] came; in his right hand holding ten thousand thunders, which he sent before him, like wounds stuck in their soul; every lost resistance, every courage amazes; their idle weapons fell. In this image, not only do the flashes of fire and thunder dazzle Satan to the point of running away like a mouse, but the wounds inflicted upon him leave indelible evidence of the Son's superior strength - just one aspect of the Godhead that creates uncertainty of Satan in the incarnate form of the Son in Paradise Regained. After his fall into Hell, Satan's ignorance of the Son's power is fully revealed in the following verse: "He with his Thunder and until then whom he knew. The strength of those terrible weapons." Because of Satan's miscalculation of the Son's superior strength and unawareness of the crucial fact that the "Second Omnipotence" is God's chosen victor, he reaps only shame and dishonor from his fruitless struggle against the chosen one. Stella P. Revard offers this commentary on Satan's tragic Harartia: "For the first time since he fought in Heaven and encountered the greater power of the Son, Satan is forced to bow and acknowledge his illegitimacy and the Son begotten of God ". the reincarnated Son in Paradise Regained are more complex than the simple prejudice witnessed in Paradise Lost, although Milton consciously retains Satan's ignorant quality for the effect of dramatic irony throughout the second epic. First, Satan shows signs of anxiety regarding the prophecy about the serpent wound inflicted by the descent of a woman. "That mortal wound," Satan nervously observes, "will be inflicted by the Seed of Eve. Upon my head." Evidently the arrival of the Messiah gives Satan a sense of fear because the prophecy exposes the truth about the divine vengeance that the Son will bring upon him. Secondly, it is the divine splendor that shines from the face of the Son that arouses Satan's curiosity to explore the identity of his enemy: «We must know who this is, because he seems to be a man. In all his features, even in his face. may the glory of his Father shine." This feeling of wonder becomes the impetus that drives Satan to observe the Son from the day of his birth until his adulthood. Interestingly, unlike the angry prince of Paradise Lost, Milton recasts his satanic antagonist of Paradise Regained as a detective desperately trying to expose the secret agent that God the Father sends to earth. Despite the fact that Satan's attitude has undergone significant changes, his absolute ignorance regarding the Son once again disappoints the reader of Milton in Paradise Regained. That is, Satan's objective view of the manifestation of the Godhead is based on extrinsic qualities, as mentioned above. Specifically, the way he interacts with the Son involves exclusively external elements, causing the imprudentinvestigator overlooks the clues that point towards the presence of Divinity in the Son. Satan, for example, believes he can induce the Son to show ardor towards the possession of power, stating that "great deeds require great means of enterprise" and implicitly referring to power. To make his offer more tempting, Satan takes on the role of an expert in geography by presenting several regions where kingdoms thrive: The City you see no other esteem Of the great and glorious Rome, Queen of the Earth Hitherto renowned, and with the spoils enrichTo the great Emperor of Rome, whose vast dominionIn a large territory, wealth and power.It is not surprising, therefore, to realize that the stratagems that Satan uses to reveal the identity of the Son concern only tangible elements such as wealth and power. As pathetic as it may seem, Satan's ability to see the truth is corrupted by superficial images and his belief that God's power is only physical. In summary, "Satan simply does not know for certain who [the Son] is, and can only imagine the mission of this 'Seed of the Woman' in terms of the external, hierarchical categories in which he has lived, moved, and been" (Bryson 160). Equally naive is Satan's partial opinion regarding the outward appearance of the Son. Believing that he was born of human flesh, he wrongly assumes that the Son will likely succumb to basic human needs and reveal his weakness as an ordinary human being. In fact, one of Satan's most disarming temptations appears in the form of a food banquet in which he hopes to obtain proof from the confessing tongue of the Son that he is truly the descendant of God: "What do you doubt, Son of God? Sit down." and eat." The effect of this test, however, is only to make Satan even more frustrated and at the same time to reveal the irony inherent in the poem. In Stanley Fish's essay "Inaction and Silence", Fish offers a vision penetrating ignorance that builds the structure of Milton's dramatic irony: No amount of "bad success" will make Satan reconsider his strategy and the assumptions behind it learns anything from experience and is therefore a perfect example of someone who is "morally so indisposed towards the truth that nothing would be enough to make him see", a mind so complacent in its own [ignorance] as to be unattainable, even for the scrutinizing man. irenic method of dialectics (Wittreich 36) The fact that Satan does not seem never fully understanding the true identity of the Son is the irony that Satan's own quote throws at him: "From then on I thought you were worth my closer view / And narrower scrutiny, that I might learn." Indeed, Satan's ability to learn never seems to reach maturity, despite his zeal to determine the true nature of the Son. As a result, the miserable taste of defeat returns to haunt the satanic prince on the temple pinnacle, where he finally discovers the true identity of his target. In the crucial scene atop the temple, all of Satan's questions about the identity of the Son are resolved in an epiphany in which the Son simultaneously reveals his divinity and proclaims his judgment on Satan. As if awakening from a nightmare, the illegitimate prince is forced to confront the truth of his mistaken preconceptions. To illustrate this culminating moment, the Son's solemn words, "Do not tempt the Lord your God," are like a piercing ray of light piercing the cloud of ignorance in Satan's mind. In other words, the Messiah that Satan sees in the form of a human being is not an angelic host, a heavenly warrior, nor a newly created man, but God himself: God the Son. The ultimate defeat of Satan at the pinnacle of the temple is equally pathetic when compared to the, 1971.