Quest For An Earthly Paradise And The Anticipation Of A Heavenly One

In the Chapter 3 entitled “The Fall”, Plantinga calls God’s creation a paradise that was turned into a paradise lost because of sin. Sin has affected everything – plants, animals and human beings. Sin and evil are described in vivid detail and spoil the way things are supposed to be. From the beginning, humans have been choosing wrong thereby polluting and perverting our gifts from God. The chapter concludes with the question “who’s to blame?” for our fall. Did God, the devil or other unforeseen powers cause sin? No, we sin because we are sinners and we choose to. Our hope today is in Jesus Christ.

The Counsel of Heaven on Earth is a book written by Ian F. Jones on the topic of Christian counseling. Jones makes sure to let his readers know that this book is not meant to be a guide for Christian counseling; he in no way means to advocate a particular methodology, system, or school of thought. Instead, Jones is “[trying] to identify and explain the essential features of Biblical Christian counseling. No attempt has been made to engage in formal theory building or to develop systematically any counseling strategies or techniques. [His] intention is to show how the Bible, from Genesis to Revelation, provides counselors with the blueprint for developing an effective counseling ministry”.

“...in the hope of eternal life, which God, who cannot lie,...” (Titus 1:2). The Bible gives the exact account of the history of the world.  John Milton’s Paradise Lost is a play off of the account given in The Bible of the war in Heaven, the creation of the world, and the fall of mankind.  He used the Bible as his inspiration and altered the events told in Genesis.  Though The Bible and Paradise Lost tell different accounts of the same story, they have many things in common, such as: Satan’s fall from Heaven, Adam and Eve’s fall from Paradise, and Adam and Eve’s dismissal from the garden.

But the love of the wilderness is more than a hunger for what is always beyond reach; it is also an expression of loyalty to the earth, the earth which bore us and sustains us, the only paradise we ever need--if only we had the eyes to see. Original sin, the true original sin, is the blind destruction for the sake of greed of this natural

Have you ever seen a big red button that says do not push and then pushed it? We have all been there; it was just too tempting to not push it, right? In John Milton’s Paradise Lost, mankind presses that big red button. Through Adam and Eve’s free will to eat from the Tree of Knowledge, they fall from Paradise. It is not like God did not warn the pair; he made it abundantly clear that their one rule was to not eat from the tree. God, being omniscient, knows that they will fall, but makes their choice of disobedience an easy decision. Although God foresees the expulsion of Adam and Eve from the garden, they have free will and fall on their own; however, God makes it too easy for Satan to succeed.

In the novel More Joy in Heaven, written by Morley Callaghan, Kip Caley has a quest for a new life after prison. As he gets used to being a freeman he learns more about what he really wants in life. When Kip finds out what it is that he is searching for in his new life, like in all tragedies, it is too late. Because he is not sure if Julie, the girl, or the parole board is what he wants, he spends too much time trying to find out and when he knows it is too late. In his search for a new life Kip knows that he is a free man and wants to show it to the people while he says that he does not want to be viewed constantly by the public.

The theme of desire has been portrayed in many novels and stories. Perhaps the most well-known depiction of desire can be found in the Bible. In the Book of Genesis, a snake tempts Adam and Eve to eat the forbidden fruit of the Tree of Knowledge after he convinces them that they will gain God’s knowledge of good and evil and be protected from death. Despite God’s word to not eat of the fruit, Adam and Eve did so anyway. Surely, this story portrays temptation; however, beyond the theme of temptation lays the theme of desire. Knowing it was wrong, Adam and Eve ate the fruit because they had the desire for what the snake promised them. Similarly, Toni Cade Bambara and John Updike also display the theme of desire in their short stories. In

The world is advancing so rapidly today, it seems that it will never stop growing in knowledge and complexity. In the novel “The Time Machine” by H.G. Wells, The Time Traveler, as Wells calls him, travels hundreds of thousands of years into the future through time. He arrives at a world that, at first glimpse, is peaceful and clear of any worries. As The Time Traveler explores the world, he discovers that the human race has evolved into 2 distinct forms. Although the world appeared to be the Garden of Eden, it was, in reality, the Garden of Evil. Wells uses three aspects of the futuristic world to illustrate this: the setting, the Eloi, and the Murlocks.

Paradise Lost shares many parallels with Frankenstein. Two different characters from Milton’s poem can be compared to Victor Frankenstein’s monster. The first of the characters is Lucifer; the fallen angel can closely relate to the creature from Shelley’s story. Both were forsaken by their creators,

Both Gerald Manley Hopkins and William Blake explore the conflicts between one’s opinions and the faith which they devoutly believe. The poems The Garden of Love and Hopkins’ Thou Art Indeed Just, Lord each show the persona doubting the philosophical qualms of life surrounding Catholicism and whether spending “life upon thy cause,” is meaningful. As a child, Blake read the Bible to enhance his reading skills, however developed views correlating to the Swedenborgian church which holds the Catholic church’s views without the institutionalised feeling which Blake despised of in Catholicism. The Garden of Love intertwines his beliefs into the poetry, as depicted with the strong imagery between the vibrant childhood memory of the surroundings in comparison to the older man’s views. However,

Paradise Lost, Milton’s epic poem narrating “things unattempted yet in prose or rhyme” builds on the subject matter of the Biblical story of the Genesis and sings of Satan’s temptation of “man” and his consequent fall. Having invested the first three books in revealing the rebellion in heaven and fall of Lucifer, and the divine plans concerning the fate of human kind, it is in the fourth book that Milton first takes the reader to the hallowed setting of the best part of the action, the Garden of Eden, and introduces two of his arguable protagonists, Adam and Eve, the general parents of mankind.

     Great works of literature have been written throughout history. However, The Divine Comedy and Paradise Lost have the inept ability to stir the soul and cause a person to examine and re-examine their life. The brilliant descriptions, use of imagery, metaphor and simile give a person a vivid picture of the creation of man and the possibilities for life in the hereafter. This is done, as a person is able to see, full circle, from the beginning of time to the end of time, the consequences of turning away from God. The ability to see a life full circle is apparent through the examination of both of these poems. Although written many years ago, the morals and principles that

We can see the poem deals with the entire story of man's fall from grace, including background for Satan's motives. In Paradise Lost, Eve was tricked by Satan, who assumed the form of a serpent, into eating from the Tree of Knowledge. Satan had whispered into her ear when she was asleep, and when he spoke to her later, he used his cunning to mislead her:

Both Adam and Eve were tricked into believing that the fruit will present them with a more fulfilling existence, but instead it proved lacking and disappointing. Furthermore, the narrator soon after says, “ Thousands of greedy individuals abandoned their sweet native hexagons and rushed upstairs and downstairs, spurred by their vain desire to find their Vindication.” (Borges 115) The “greedy individuals” the narrator speaks of are a symbol of humankind’s dissatisfaction with its existence, and its constant need to search for something more divine. Thus, the narrator describes Adam and Eve’s fall from Grace, which was “spurred by their vain desire to find their Vindication.”

Blake wrote these same lines in his poem The Divine Image. In his innocence, "…Mercy has a human heart,/ Pity a human face:/ And love the human form divine,/ And Peace the human dress." This represents the acts and feelings associated with Heaven. To be with God and obtain peace, humans must show mercy, pity, and love for others. That is the direct opposite of the secrecy of cruelty, jealousy, and terror humans begin to feel.