Q for the religious:
Are angels supposed to have free will?
The answer would seem to be yes, based on Paradise Lost and its source material. Did they retain this free will after Lucifer’s rebellion, specifically those angels who sided against God?
Along the same lines, do damned souls have free will in the afterlife? What does it mean for them, exactly?
I am Catholic.
That said (for purposes of identifying the denomination of Christianity . . Baptists, Lutherans etc may have differing views), we believe that angels are intellects . . . information, if I remmeber correctly from CD3, junior hear of high school, which was roughly 97-8. So they do have free wills, but as they are the instruments of the Lord, they do His will. Far as I can remember, anyway. Anyone who knows otherwise please do speak up. I am without the services of my father who is a monk and thus would be able to quote some scripture or Aquinas or such.
As for damned souls . . . again, Catholics believe in free will. So I think it would follow that damned souls have free will. It is a choice to go to hell (that one unforigable sin excepted) or heaven . . . the delay before you’ll get to heaven notwithstanding, at some point everyone who desires it will get to heaven, as far as I know.
I will try to remember to ask my father about this, but I’m not promising anything.
PS. IMHO, this belongs in GQ.
Yes, angels have free will.
As for the damned souls, where they end up in the afterlife is the result of having exercised their free will by choosing to reject God. Once you shuffle off this mortal coil, all bets are off.
So there’s no free will in the afterlife? Is that just for the damned, or for the blessed as well?
You get different answers depending on the sides. The side opposite the angel divided by the side adjacent to the angel is the tangent, for instance.
… and if that ain’t a tangent, I dunno what is.
Go ahead, tell me spelling isn’t important.
Just to clarify, an angel is not a “blessed soul”, meaning a saved human being. An angel is a different order of being, created to be with God.
“Angels are spiritual creatures who glorify God without ceasing and who serve his saving plans for other creatures: ‘The
angels work together for the benefit of us all’ (St. Thomas Aquinas, STh I, 114, 3, ad 3)”
See http://www.scborromeo.org/ccc/para/350.htm
Satan and other fallen angels freely chose to irrevocably defy God and His will.
WIll you marry me?
This link also covers the RCC doctrine:
As far as I can tell, the Angels seem hell-bent (if you’ll pardon the pun) on blasting their way into NERV headquarters beneath Tokyo-3.
It’s difficult to say why, but I believe they are intent on wiping out humanity by attempting to cause a “Third Impact” by coming in contact with Lilith or Adam (assuming such contact would cause such an event - I don’t know that it would or wouldn’t).
I can only hope our brave cadre of Eva pilots have the fortitude to defeat them all before it’s too late…
Pete
Long time RGMWer and ardent AOLer
Yes, I know. I’m talking about both.
So, jokes aside, what does free will mean in the afterlife? What exactly are you free to choose? You’ve already been assigned to heaven or hell, which is the usual “choice” of free will, i.e. choosing to follow God or not.
If souls (or angels) have free will, can those in heaven still end up in hell, and vice-versa? Doesn’t that run counter to the usual dogma?
APB9999 wrote:
Actually, you have it backwards. There may or may not be free will in Hell, but there cannot be free will in Heaven.
Why not? Simple:
It was man’s free will that allowed him to sin in the first place. Without free will, man would not sin. This is pretty much accepted doctrine in most Christian faiths.
When you are born a mortal, you have the option of sinning or not sinning. Overly simplifying the situation here, if you sin you go to Hell, and if you don’t sin you’ll go to Heaven. Having the free will means you might sin, so you’re not guaranteed to avoid Hell.
Everyone who gets into Heaven gets to stay there for all eternity. It is an eternal reward.
Heaven has no sin in it.
The only way to assure that you will not sin is if you have no free will.
Therefore, there is no free will in heaven. Q.E.D…
<<As far as I can tell, the Angels seem hell-bent (if you’ll pardon the pun) on blasting their way into NERV headquarters beneath Tokyo-3. >>
Not if I press the eject button on the VCR first. Which I do. Always.
But, according to Christian theology, Satan rebelled from God and then was cast out of Heaven (by the way, this is no where in the Bible). Last time I checked, rebellion against God is a sin, so the angels must have free will. Sure, they were kicked out, but they still had to have the will to rebel in the first place.
Then what is Satan doing in Heaven talking with God in the book of Job? This always posed a problem for me when I was a Christian. If God can’t stand the presence of sin (therefore the need for Jesus and his forgiveness), just what the heck was Satan doing there talking about Job with God? What, people who live good lives don’t get to go up to heaven because the didn’t accept Jesus, but Satan, God’s enemy, does?
Always seemed kind of stange to me.
According to tradition it is entities in heaven that can be damned by turning from God, but entities in hell cannot be saved in any way, AFAIK. Is this right?
My superhero battlecry: Troll On!
So do we retain free will in the afterlife under any conditions? Is heaven NOT an eternal reward?
It is impossible to sin in heaven because:
There are no other Gods there but God, there is nothing to steal or desire, you can’t kill anyone. Everyday in heaven is holy so forget the Sabbath. Etc. It is sort of strange to talk about a will in a spiritual metaphysic. I mean you are dead – think of it as eternal love instead of eternal fire.
Mystics essentially belief that a soul can be so perfect as for the ability of it to sin becomes impossible and these are the souls allowed into heaven. Also, concievable, those who so try to know and obey God’s will in life that though they may not have had the fullness of Truth, will instantly want to obey it once, in death, Truth is revealed to them (if they know God’s will and ignore it even though they may not know there is a God, that is generally insufficient for salvation).
I suppose therefore, unlike Lucifer who chose evil without knowing his choice, a soul that was human knows the consequences for choosing evil and thus have the required spiritual education so they would not fall. It is an interesting poser, though.
Job, BTW, is a comedy. Your inability to distinguish fact from fiction in the Old Testiment is understandable, El Guapo, but Satan being in heaven in the story should have clued you in.
God can not save those in Hell because he is separate from hell.
I read an interesting article in the Dallas Morning News about a rabbi who has been trying to educate gentiles who are interested in Judaism about the faith (interestingly, rabbis are supposed to discourage people from converting). Though Jews do believe in the existence of Satan, the idea of Hell isn’t there as Christians believe in it, and Satan is NOT a rebel against God - they believe all angels are extensions or tools of God’s will, they may have intellect but no free will, and therefore cannot rebel. Satan is seen more as an angel that has been assigned to test humanity, not an opponent of God.
That explains why Satan is conversing freely with God in Job. His duty is to question the faith of mankind. Note that God determines the limits on what Satan can actually do to Job.
Comedy?! What’s your idea of a good practical joke, guillitenes and hand grenades?
I should have been more clear that I was refering to those Christians who take the Bible as literal, Sola Scriptura and the like (I’m guessing FoG would fall in this category). It’s apparent that you don’t fall into this category jmullaney. Of course, how do you then distinguish what is story and what is actual? Or do you believe the whole Bible is just a group of stories to illustrate a point?
Badtz Maru: The Judaic concept of Satan makes much more sense than the Christian one, and I was going to mention the difference but you beat me to it. Again, I was refering to Biblical Christian Literalists. However, I would be interested in hearing the Jewish viewpoint on this, as free will seems very important in Judasim.
I still would like to see a convincing arguement for a Christian Literalist that explains away free will in heaven.