Scornful Satan Scorned

         In Book IV of Paradise Lost, two angels find Satan whispering his devious temptations into sleeping Eve’s ear. Only, they don’t realize they have caught the ringleader of Hell—they simply know he is a fallen angel. Angered they do not recognize the once-glorious Lucifer, Satan haughtily refuses to answer their interrogating questions, answering “filled with scorn / Know ye not me?”[1] But “once-glorious” is key, for his appearance had diminished since he fell from Heaven. Zephon the Angel, “answering scorn with scorn,”[2] rebukes him:

Think not, revolted Spirit, thy shape the same,

Or undiminished brightness, to be known

As when thou stood'st in Heav'n upright and pure;

That glory then, when thou no more wast good,

Departed from thee, and thou resemblest now

Thy sin and place of doom obscure and foul.[3]

And, lo and behold, Satan, for a short time, sees the error of his ways: “Abashed the Devil stood, / And felt how awful goodness is, and saw / Virtue in her shape how lovely, saw, and pined / His loss[.]”[4] But such feelings of internal remorse are short-lived, for he quickly is incensed and “overcome with rage[.]”[5]

         This tableau demonstrates both the power and potential pitfall of scornful rhetoric. The very same being who shone in the heavenlies is now debased in his form, the self-mockery of it all undermining Satan’s derisive retort and justifying Zephon’s response. Temporarily shocked out of hardness of heart, the Devil sees and feels the beauty of truth and goodness. And yet, soon after, his heart again callouses in rage.

         Brendan Case, meditating on Blaise Pascal’s defense of rhetorically principled Christian mockery, argues that scornful ridicule must be reserved for “conflict with those who are both powerful and unreasonable,” mockery being “an attempt to confront a dangerous foe with his own irresponsible folly.”[6] By these criteria, a dialogue with a petulant Satan certainly qualifies, and this appraoch proves its effectiveness in Zephon stunning the Devil out of his stupor. Admittedly, success is short-lived as Satan rebels against truth’s purchase in his heart. But reasonable discussion is fruitless when speaking someone who is too far gone, and none is too far gone as the Devil himself.

         Seeing Trinitarian echoes within Hebrew parallelism, Erasmus argued that the second Psalm is a “revelation of scornful inter-Trinitarian laughter.”[7] He concludes that the “Father laughs, the Son laughs to scorn—but it is the same laughter, the same scorn.”[8] In some sense then, all diasyrms participate in the same derision the Godhead holds for the wicked. Milton agrees. When Michael recounts the Babel episode to Adam, he depicts the entire Divine Council laughing at the chaotic confusion.[9]

         When a person, like Satan, is too hardened to be helped by the aid of mockery, the ridicule is not for them but for the onlooker, the one tempted by evil. Seeing evil disparaged in such a way highlights the absurdity of it and renders sin unappealing. The potency of this tactic ought to attract the attention of Christians, and while loving care must be taken, “answering scorn with scorn” can be a valuable way of discrediting wickedness and revealing the truth.

Bibliography

[1] John Milton, Paradise Lost, IV.827-828 (New York: Penguin Books, 2000), 95.

[2] Milton, Paradise Lost, IV.834, 95 (emphasis added).

[3] Milton, Paradise Lost, IV.835-840, 95.

[4] Milton, Paradise Lost, IV.845-849, 95.

[5] Milton, Paradise Lost, IV.857, 95.

[6] Brendan Case, “Pascalian Mockery as Love of Enemy,” Church Life Journal, June 15, 2022, https://churchlifejournal.nd.edu/articles/pascalian-mockery-as-love-of-enemy/. For Pascal’s full elucidation of this subject, see Blaise Pascal, “The Provincial Letters,” in in The Great Books of the Western World, vol. 30, ed. Robert Maynard Hutchins, trans. Thomas M’Crie (Chicago: Encyclopædia Britannica, 1952), 81-90.

[7] Peter Liethart, “Laughing into Modernity,” First Things, March 10, 2017, https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2017/03/laughing-into-modernity.

[8] Desiderius Erasmus, “Expositions of the Psalms,” in The Collected Works of Erasmus, vol. 63, ed. Dominic Baker-Smith, trans. Michael J. Heath (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1997), https://archive.org/details/expositionsofpsa0063eras/page/100/mode/2up, 101.

[9] Milton, Paradise Lost, XII.59-62, 273.