Original Sin, Human Freedom, and His Dark Materials Aaron Garber …

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that the modern evangelical mind resonates with his ideas concerning human freedom. Commenting on His Dark Materials trilogy, Daniel P. …

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Original Sin, Human Freedom, and His Dark Materials
Aaron Garber
Why are the nations in an uproar
And the peoples devising a vain thing?
The kings of the earth take their stand
And the rulers take counsel together
Against the Lord and against His Anointed,
Saying, “Let us tear their fetters apart
And cast away their cords from us!”
He who sits in the heavens laughs,
The Lord scoffs at them.
Psalm 2:1-4
For Philip Pullman, Satan is the great hero of Milton’s Paradise Lost. It is Satan,
after all, who dared cast himself against the Almighty in a rebellion of epic proportion. It
is Satan who refused to “[s]tand in [God’s] presence humble, and receive Strict Laws
impos’d, to celebrate his Throne with warbl’d Hymns, and to his Godhead sing Forc’t
Halleluiahs; while he Lordly sits, Our envied Sovran.”1 Satan, partly because of his
boldness in the face of an insurmountable task, is certainly a likely candidate for a hero.
However, the problem with Satan as a heroic figure is that at the end of Paradise Lost,
God remains Lord and Sovereign. Thus, for Pullman, a second battle must be waged and…