Signing in...
This was my response to a question in my English class concerning John Milton's Paradise Lost.
The question was this: Line 63 says that the fire of Hell has no light, but "darkness visible." This phrase seems to contradict itself. What do you think Milton means?
Here was my answer. I think I started rambling a bit, hopefully you can follow my train of thought.
In this line, darkness means more than merely the lack of light. The darkness mentioned is evil manifest. The darkness visible is less of something that can be seen with the eye and more of something that is seen, or felt with the soul.
There's a simple logic that can be followed to determine what Hell is. All things that God has made are good. Although many of these good things have been corrupted by sin (this includes Lucifer and the demons), they are still good at their roots. Hell is the lack of all that is good.
Putting these two facts together brings about the following conclusion: Since Hell lacks all that is good, and everything God has created is good, then Hell is nothing. More specifically, Hell is the lack of essence to make it something and only contains those that have condemned their selves to it's existence. If Hell is "anything" at all, then it is purely sin. It is the very essence of sin, or evil.
To go a little deeper, think of this. There is God. God is love. Think carefully about that statement. God equals love. He is love. God and love are one in the same. In complete opposition to love, or God, is Sin. Now, everything we experience (except the effects of Sin) is creation. Creation is made by God. This includes people, angels, animals, inanimate objects, space, time, feelings, thoughts, etc. Parts of this creation were corrupted by Sin, most importantly, Lucifer (the devil) who became Sin's herald to the rest of creation. Lucifer brought Sin's corruption to the other demons (who were angels, like Lucifer [which means light-bearer]) as well as to man-kind, who in turn brought Sin to the rest of creation.
Keep in mind, God and Sin are far beyond complete human comprehension, or even an adequate partial comprehension. Here's an analogy to help understand my thoughts. There is that which is Truth and that which is False. If it is not Truth, then is False. God equals Truth. In turn, Sin equals False. Lucifer chose to oppose God, who is Truth, and so fell into that which is False, or into Sin. Lucifer tempted Mankind to follow what was False instead of what was Truth (with a lie of course) in order to steal man away from God, or Truth.
To get back to the original idea then, the fire of Hell is the complete absence of good, aka Love, aka God. Of course, this fire puts off no light since light is both symbolically and literally good. The darkness visible then is, again, the "pain" of the absence of good. This complete absence is a reality that we could never even begin to comprehend within this realm.
Another way of thinking about it is that evil, aka darkness, is something that you can "see" when it is performed.
Make sense?
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That's the end of my answer, if you didn't already figure that out. It should be noted that I'm a Roman Catholic and everything I said is based upon both things I know as a Catholic man and things I've speculated upon as a Catholic man. I'd be intrigued to hear what you guys think on the idea.
Thx.
...Signing out.
