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Young Heretics

Ep. 48: Rebellion Against Reality

Young Heretics

Spencer Klavan

Society & Culture, Education

4.94.5K Ratings

🗓️ 13 April 2021

⏱️ 64 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Was Milton on the devil's side? The great revolutionary confronted the limits of rebellion in his masterwork, "Paradise Lost." In this episode of "Young Heretics," Spencer Klavan takes a first look at the epic to expose the logic of Milton's Satan and how it turns everything inside out.

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Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

How can a good God allow suffering?

0:08.2

That is a question that philosophers have puzzled over and theologians have tried to answer since they have been philosophers

0:17.0

since there have been theologians and

0:20.6

Obviously, I am not gonna answer it on this episode and the reason why I'm not gonna answer it is not because I don't think there

0:27.5

would be good philosophical attempt to answer that question with the logical arguments for it

0:33.0

But on some level, right, an argument, an answer that precedes logically to this question is gonna leave you a little bit cold

0:42.0

because you can argue your way into understanding intellectually how a good God could allow

0:47.4

suffering, but when you actually are in suffering when you really hurt when you have lost

0:53.4

somebody you love or when you've been forced to flee your home because of political persecution or

1:00.1

God forbid anything even worse happens, right? In those moments, you

1:06.4

aren't gonna argue yourself intellectually into trusting in God or into believing that God could still be good, right?

1:14.4

There is something emotional about this question

1:17.1

This is a question that is not just about how, as it from a purely theological perspective, that is how is a

1:25.3

as a matter of practicality, but how can this be, right? My God, my God, why have you forsaken me that

1:33.6

outcry of Christ on the cross is an outcry that we all on some level, no matter how

1:38.4

you know, pious we are, we all end up asking that question in a deep emotional way

1:44.1

and so in order to answer it, you need a quite an answer that takes in the whole of life

1:50.4

what you really need is a work of art, you need a poem or a song or a

1:55.8

depiction of this that kind of grasps the

1:59.0

inconsolable depths of your of your spirit and says nevertheless despite the fall despite sin despite pain

2:07.0

God is good and ultimately his designs are perfect and so that's what we are reading today

2:13.8

we are reading a poem that attempts to answer that question. It's a very famous poem people have asked for it a lot on the show

...

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