Monday, September 30, 2019

Religious Dilemmas & Spiritual Death

It was strange that as Faustus goes through a religious dilemma in lines 80 to 100 that God never shows up to him in person (at least not yet, if it ever does happen) but Lucifer himself pulls out all his minions to come and visit Faustus. The most God does is send a Good Angel but that waste of space is always losing to the Bad Angel. Based on this I'm not quite sure what Marlowe's idea of free will is because it almost seems like he is implying that the body doesn't have free will but the spirit does. This comes from the fact that the Good Angel doesn't try to persuade Faustus with earthly goods but says to "repent, and they shall never raze thy skin" (ll. 89). By choosing to repent, free will is possible. Maybe because God is so powerful the devil has to work harder to obtain spirits/souls? Also, the footnotes said that the "Seven Deadly Sins [were] (so called because they cause spiritual death)" which I thought was interesting because I always assumed they led to physical death or moral degradation but I didn't know Christians believed in spiritual death (ll. 110). This was a new concept for me to think about.

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