Paradise Lost: The Nature of God

Another Bookie emails:

Let me just throw another question out.... Is Milton's idea of God's nature significantly different than Dante's? (and therefore Thomas Aquinas's)? Does Milton, under the influence of William of Occam and Duns Scotus see God not so much as Being itself, as Aquinas would, but as the most powerful entity in the cosmos--yet one entity among others?

I ask this, because it seems to me to relate directly to Lucifer's rebellion. To rebel against God the cosmic dictator seems possible--Christopher Hitchens says if he could bring himself to believe in such a god, he'd have to rebel against it; but to rebel against Being itself seems like a mistake in logic.

Fr. Robert Barron's account of how reformation theology differs from Catholic theology focuses on this divide in medieval philosophery; he claims that Luther and Calvin were greatly influenced by Occam and Scotus. I have no independent idea on that. Still, Dante's vision of Satan as deprived of being, frozen in the lake at the bottom of hell, is at least different in degree from Milton's conception of a still very lively Lucifer.

I don't know enough about the theology to comment on the Occam vs. Aquinas distinction. That would be Peter's department.

However, the questions posed in the email brought to mind Abdiel's speech (Book V, lines 823-849) in opposition to Satan's plan to fight God.

Abdiel restates Satan's argument: "Flatly unjust, to bind with laws the free, and equal over equals to let reign." (Book V, lines 819-820.) Clearly, Satan (in Abdiel's summary) views God as one among other beings, perhaps just one among equals.

Abdiel retorts, "Shalt thou give law to god, shalt thou dispute with him the points of liberty, who made thee what thou art...?" (Book V, lines 823-824) and "Our happy state under one head more near united." (Book V, lines 830-831) Abdiel's response to Satan seems to reflect the view more like God as Being. At least, God is not just another entity, but the creator of all entities.

THEN, because he's Milton and he can, the author throws in a line that I find incomprehensible, which seems to scramble the nice dichotomy described above (Book V, lines 843-844):

... since he the head
One of our number thus reduced becomes,

At present, I don't even have a theory as to what Milton was saying there, except perhaps, "stick that up your smoke and pipe it!"

Anyone care to help out here?