I dunno where to put this. It is vaguely about religion, so I’ll start here.
Can the Fallen Angels repent and be forgiven?
As I understand it, anyone can be forgiven, if they truly repent.
The Catechism of the Catholic Church has a section covering the *Fall of the Angels * (paragraphs 391-395). It teaches that fallen angels **cannot ** repent. The relevant paragraph is paragraph 393 which stresses the **irrevocable ** nature of their rejection of God.
*272 St. John Damascene, De Fide orth. 2,4: PG 94,877.
Interesting. I got the idea (mostly from reading Paradise Lost, I suspect) that some angels were lead astray by Satan’s promises and wiles and not really out of any genuine hatred or rejection of God. Is this true in the Catechism?
IIRC, Thomas Aquinas regarded angels as beings of exact reason, able to see the logical outcome of any thought or act. Thus, those who fell did not do so from being deceived but out of pure rebellion against the God Whom they know to be Pure Reason. Therefore, they have no excuse and cannot repent.
Now, 1000 years before Aquinas, Origen did indeed speculate about the pre-existence of souls, their fall into sin & mortality, and the eventually reconciliation of all, including Satan, through the Grace of the Lord Jesus Christ.
When I was in college, I was involved in a New Agey C’tian Pentecostal group that taught Origen’s view (tho it held back from Universal Salvation.) Alas, it was
getting kinda cultic & left the area before I totally fell into the group. The teachings may have some validity, but the group did not.
Some relevant Biblical passages are:
1 Cor 6:3 - “Know ye not that we shall judge angels?”
1 Peter 3:19-20 - “… (Christ) went and preached unto the spirits in prison; which sometime were disobedient.”
2 Peter 2:4 - “For if God spared not the angels that sinned, but cast them down to hell, and delivered them into chains of darkness, to be reserved unto judgement.” (My emphasis)
These passages may be taken to support the view that the fallen angels will face the same judgement (by “the saints”, if we take the passage from 1 Corinthians literally) as humanity. I think it’s plausible to assume that there would be no need for such a judgement if the angels’ fates were already determined, and I’m not aware of any Biblical passage that says angels are incapable of repentance - what point would there be in Jesus’ preaching to them (see the passage from 1 Peter) if it couldn’t affect their ultimate fate?
I thought traditionally angels are understood as not having free will, which obviates the ability to choose to repent and accept Christ.
Of course, I don’t believe in angels, the redemptive power of Christ, or free will – so what am I doing in this thread?
–Cliffy
If that were the case, they could not have chosen to Rebel and therefore would not be Fallen.
I don’t know if this has any theology behind it… I remember thinking of the notion that, while mortals had been given free will throughout their lives, the angels were given free will for a single moment, to choose what path they would follow for the rest of eternity.
Not sure if I believe in angels anymore either.
We (Catholics, anyway) are taught that being in Heaven is being in eternal bliss.
How could it have happened, then, that Lucifer rebelled against God, and was thus cast into Hell, along with all his followers?
Could the same thing happen to one of us, i.e., getting to Heaven, then somewhere along the line, rebelling against God and getting tossed into Hell?
Your presence here was predestined.
I don’t think this is necessarily so. Humans, who have free will, Fall without choosing to do so – we are all born damned due to Original Sin. You don’t have to choose to defy god to Fall, you only have to act in defiance of god’s will. That you can do without choosing.
–Cliffy
But surely the angels aren’t subject to Original Sin, not being descendents of Adam?
For that matter, if angels are pure “spirit” or “mind” or “soul”, is there anything left of them if you deny them free will? Can there be such a thing as a disembodied spirit that’s still subject to causal determinism?
Sorry but I didn’t folow that last bit. Can you clarify for me? If you don’t have free will, how can you do anything that God doesn’t want you to do?
This is a big problem with any view of Christianity that supports predestination. It implies that God intends us (and, presumably, the fallen angels) to be evil, that He does want us to go to Hell. Such a God doesn’t, in my view, deserve to be worshipped; it would be an evil God to which all rational creatures should be opposed.
In The Silmarillion, one of the water spirits rebelled against Ulmo, but repented and was forgiven. And in one of the appendices of The Lord of the Rings, Sauron himself is said to have repented for a time.
Before Qadgop or one of the other Tolkein scholars flay me, I should point out that I’m specifying the book, not the tale, because I can’t remember in which tale the former rebellion occurs.
Angels do not have free-will because they are spiritual being constructs. There is no such thing as a fallen angel, the idea of a fallen angel is a fallacy based upon limited understanding of spirit world structures.
There are angels for every archetype that is conceivable. The human will decides which archetypes in the hierarchy it chooses to impose upon itself, and how it chooses to view those angels. Good and Evil are completely and totally individually subjective. What is good for me is not necessarily for you, for you are not me, and vice versa. So an angel you perceive as fallen is not necessarily fallen to me. Remember the heavens go in every direction around a SPHERICAL Earth. Human beings are under the control of angels only as they form their own identity with which to navigate the infinite eternity.
The idea of the fallen angel, which in our modern lexicon is referred to as Lucifer, Satan, Samael etc… who rebelled against God and tried to usurp God is really an archetype of what happens to one laboring under the false assumption that there is anything superior to God. It reflects what the blnidness of believing that one can surpass God inevitably brings about.
Angels are archetypes that can be anthropomorphized and spoken to and used as tools for learning, they are eternal, but they do not have a will of their own. They are the machinery of God, or the parts that make up God’s spiritual body. For instance, Metatron is God’s voice.
However, there are individuals who have gained great power by taking upon themselves one of these archetypes who do have a will, but cannot repent unless they choose to give up the fallen angel as a necessary part of their identity. Overcoming these sorts of quandaries are what the Buddha teaches about.
Erek
There is only one unforgivable sin.
Cool - can you elaborate on how that pertains to the thread?