have you read book 1 of paradise lost by john milton?

Need more to add my previous Post :) The same rule of suffiency should be applied to Paradise in a slightly mofified form. God is the greatest of planners because he knows all. knowing all, he makes plans for every consequence of every action. Had Adam and Eve resisted Satan in the garden, then it would proved sufficient for two beings who did not know good or evil. That would have proved enough of a mockery to the aims of Satan, but after the fall God ordains it necessary to show that everything Satan ever does to mankind is utterly futile and leads only to more punishment and increase of pain. The fact that he will make the supreme greatness of mankind come from evil means shows his power to be without end, and Satan's unwillingness to accept this is what will ultimately destroy him and his host of rebels at history's conclusion. The entire question of suffiency of all virtues is the meditation of Milton from the poem's beginning to the Close. What is constantly necessary to remember in this is the distinction between virtue, or power, and true virtue, power used to celebrate and defend good. Milton uses this distinction to turn epic virtues on their head by investing Satan with so many of them. Satan is fearless, uncompromisingly defiant, willing to fight by whatever means and provided to him and he is inspiring. We can see shades of Aeneas, odysseus, Scaevola, the Earl of Kent from King Lear, and numerous other literary and historical figures that seethed with defiance and did everything their power to defy and defy and defy. What all characters put forth have in common though is that they used their powers in defense of people, home, freedom, and friendship. Satan uses the power still invested in him "courage never to submit or yield" to try to destroy, not create. Comically, he seems to realize that he can, at best, be a mld irritant to God this way : ....If then his Providence Out of our evil seek to bring forth good, our Labour must be pervert that end, And out of good still find means of evil, which oft-times may succeed, so as perhaps shall grieve him, If I fail not, and disturb His inmost counsels from their destined air. (I, 162-68) This is power so completely abused that it barely requires further explication. Suffice it to say though, this is the same valor that we find in Adam when we are introduced to him for the first time in book IV, and that he disdains using in book IX when he chooses to follow Eve's lead by eating the forbidden fruit. Where the true virtue of the obedient angels and the classical epic heroes lies in their motivation for undertaking feats of violence,Satan's hatefulness, which grows as he further resists God, lies in the fact that he uses all his powers and intellect in the service of conquest, destruction, and wickendness. As becomes clear by the poem's end, when Michael shows Adam the tyranny of Nimrod, valor when in the service of wickedness is not a true virtue. True virtue and greatness can only come through God's favour. Here it seems appropriate to move from suffiency in beings and their actions to the suffiency of paradise. As Raphael points out in book VII, creation of the world and mankind took place in order show Satan and the rebel angels their superfluousness by filling what they could have defined as a void when they were banished from Heaven. God loves all his creatures for the obedience and love they show him. But part of ature of being omnipotent is that nothing in extendibles and no thing is outside of his purview. Existence itself is by God's sufferance and for any permanence of good to come of a beings existence this must be accepted as indisputable. Milton's Satan would not be Milton's Satan if he accepted this necessity. He even had a chance to accept it in book II had he advised the Stygian council to accept the advice of Mommon--one who hates God as much as Satan;

no not yet.. how is it?

sufficiency is fluid. There is nothing that in paradise lost that can be described as simple. But Sufficiency in the eyes of God, Adam and the various obedient angels consists of doing God's will and using the gift of free will given to all his sentient creatures to extol his greatness. Before the falls, both of the rebel angels and of Adam and Eve, the relation between God and his creations is almost always one to one and direct. God makes his creatures sufficient to withstand any and all evil, but by investing all with free will gives them the choice of whether or not the embrace the evil. Sufficiency lies within all sentient creatures to do God's will, but one can only be proved sufficient by doing God's will. In short, to be sufficient in God's eyes is to do his will-- no matter what ! That sufficiency is fluid is vaguely clear through out the poem. There is never one definition of perfectly righteous or good behavior. Satan and the rebel angels needed only to accept messiah as Got and Kind; Adam and Eve needed only not eat of the tree of knowledge; Michael Gabriel and company had to take part in that farce of fight for heaven; Enoch, Noah, Moses and Jesus showed their sufficiency by standing up for God against humanly impossible odds. The lists of lesser examples in the poem are too numerous to recite and keep this eassy readable, but it is more than reasonable to conclude that depending on the situation anything form indifferent obedience to militant martyrdom will be sufficient. But, constant obedience is always the rule.