Explaining the Fallen Angels

[Tessa30]

How would you explain this question asked by atheists:

IF God knows everything and can see the future, why did He create the angels who would rebel against Him? Isn’t decision to rebel against God considered a free will? (So, according to them, this teaching already contradicts itself).
Further, IF He knows what will happen with humanity with the fallen angels’ traps and snares – that men will lose their souls for eternity – why bother to create these angels anyway?, or even humans?

Their conclusions with these two questions are:

1. IF that’s what happened, God is mean and evil
2. OR, There’s no God at all, since all of those events are not logical.

I’d like to hear your opinions and explanation with formal Catholic teaching and references to recite. Your discussion on this topic will be very appreciated!

 

[Lunam_Meam]

In the angels — different in nature and perfection from all of us — there is, as in us, free will. God has created no one a slave. In the beginning there was in creation only Order. But that Order does not exclude freedom. Rather in that Order is perfect freedom. To be exact, in such order there is not even the fear of an invasion, an intrusion, of the anarchy of other wills which could produce collusion, and ruin that penetrate into the orbit and trajectory of other beings or created things. Thus it was for the whole Universe, before Lucifer abused his own freedom, and with his own will, put into himself the disorder of passions, so as to create disorder in that perfect Order. Had he been all love, he would have had no place in himself for anything that was not love. Instead he had a place for arrogant pride which could be called: the disorder of the intellect.

Would God have been able to hinder this deed? Yes. But, why violate the free will of the most beautiful, most intelligent archangel? Would not He Himself, the Most Just, then have put disorder into His own ordered Thought, by no longer wanting what He had previously wanted: that is, the freedom of the archangel? God does not oppress a troubled spirit in order violently to place it in the impossibility of sinning. Lucifer’s not sinning would then have had no merit. Even for the angels it was necessary “to know how to want the Good” in order to continue to merit enjoying the vision of God, infinite Bliss!

As God had wanted this sublime archangel at His side in His first creative works, and wanted him to know about the future of His creation of love, so God wanted him to know the adorable and sorrowful necessity that his sin would have imposed on God: the Incarnation and Death of a God to counterbalance the ruin from the Sin that would have been created should Lucifer not have conquered pride in himself. Love could not but speak this language. God’s first annihilation is in this act of wanting to bend sweetly, gently, this proud [archangel]; and with the vision of what his pride would have imposed on God, almost imploring him not to sin, and thus bring others to sin. It was an act of love.

Lucifer, already become a Satan, took this act as fear, weakness and an insult, as a declaration of war. And, he stirred up war against the Most Perfect, saying:

"You are? I also am. Whatever You made, it was for me You made it. There is no God. And, if there is a God, I am [he]. I adore myself. I detest You. I refuse to recognize as my Lord One Who does not know how to conquer me. You should not have created me so perfect if You wanted no rivals. Now I am and I am against You. Conquer me, if You can. But, I do not fear You. I, too, will create; and because of me Your Creation will tremble, for I will shake it like a shred of cloud caught by the winds. For I hate You and I want to destroy whatever is Yours, to create upon its ruins that which will be mine. I neither know nor recognize any other power outside of myself. And, I no longer adore, no longer adore, NO LONGER ADORE any other than myself."

Continued…

 

[Lunam_Meam]

Truly then in Creation, in all Creation, from the lowest [form] to the very depths, there was a horrendous convulsion from the horror of these sacrilegious words. A convulsion such as will not [again] be until the end of Creation. And, from it was born Hell: the kingdom of Hate.

Even God who created that place, tells us that when He descended into it to bring out of Limbo those who awaited His coming, He, God, experienced horror at the horror of Hell; and if something made by God were not immutable, on account of being perfect, He would have wanted to make it less atrocious, for He is Love, and He was pained by that horror.

Do you understand how Evil was born? From a free will, and, being respected as such by God, from one who was not ‘all love.’ Evil is a force that originated by itself like certain monstrous diseases in the most wholesome body. Lucifer was an angel, the most beautiful of all the angels, a perfect spirit, inferior only to God, and yet in his bright essence a vapor of pride arose, and using his free will, he chose to not scatter it. On the contrary, he condensed it by brooding over it, and evil was born of this incubation. It existed before man. God hurled him out of paradise, the cursed incubator of evil, who had desecrated paradise, but he is the eternal incubator of evil, and as he can no longer soil paradise, he has soiled the earth.

And, believe it: upon every fault which is committed from then on is this judgment: “Here there is not all love.” Complete love forbids one to sin; and without any effort. He who loves does not toil to reach justice! Love carries him above all the mire and dangers, and from moment to moment purifies him from barely apparent imperfections that are still there in the last step of consummate holiness: in that state in which the spirit is so [far] developed as to be truly a king, already united by spiritual marriage to its Lord, enjoying but one step less than that which is the life of the blessed in Heaven: so much does God give Himself and reveal Himself to His blessed child.

Continued…

 

[Tessa30]

Thanks for your response! One question though: you mentioned that

Thus it was for the whole Universe, before Lucifer abused his own freedom, and with his own will , put into himself the disorder of passions, so as to create disorder in that perfect Order

But as far as I know, in Catholic teaching, we believe that angels don’t have free will. And this is basically the root of the problem I exposed here. Help?

 

[Vico]

How would you explain this question asked by atheists:
…

• God does know everything and can see the future.
• God knows what will happen with humanity with the fallen angels’ traps and snares.
• God is perfect.

God permits free will of angels and humans that there may be an expression of charity (which therefore also permits expression of malice) – through which charity a human can become a partaker of the divine nature. Both angels and mankind may receive the Beatific Vision.

Catechism of the Catholic Church

460 The Word became flesh to make us " partakers of the divine nature ":“For this is why the Word became man, and the Son of God became the Son of man: so that man, by entering into communion with the Word and thus receiving divine sonship, might become a son of God.” “For the Son of God became man so that we might become God.” “The only-begotten Son of God, wanting to make us sharers in his divinity, assumed our nature, so that he, made man, might make men gods.”

Catholic Encyclopedia

The immediate knowledge of God which the angelic spirits and the souls of the just enjoy in Heaven. It is called “vision” to distinguish it from the mediate knowledge of God which the human mind may attain in the present life. And since in beholding God face to face the created intelligence finds perfect happiness, the vision is termed “beatific.”

Pace, E. (1907). Beatific Vision. In The Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton Company. http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/02364a.htm

 

[Lunam_Meam]

Continued…

The Supreme Mind has always known that man would have committed against himself the crime of killing Grace in himself, and the theft of robbing himself of Heaven.

Why then did He create man?

Certainly many ask themselves why. Would you have preffered not to exist? Does this day, in itself, not deserved to be lived, although so poor and bare, and rendered harsh by our wickedness, so that we may know and admire the Infinite beauty that the hand of God has sewn in the universe.

The stars and planets…
sea…
lakes…
rivers…
streams…
ponds…all pure springs…
countless families of animals…
countless families of plants and flowers…
minerals…
etc.

It is worth while living to see such a work of God, and to be grateful to His power that us the opportunity. We must be grateful to be alive. We should’ve been grateful even if we had to wait until Doomsday to be redeemed, because we have been prevaricators, proud, lascivious, and murderers in our First Parents, and we are still so individually. Yet God allows us to enjoy the beauty of the universe, the goodness of the universe; and He treats us as if we were good children, who are taught and granted everything so that our lives might be happier and more pleasant. What you we know, we know by the light of God. What we discover, we discover through the guidance if God. In Goodness. Other knowledge and discoveries that bear the mark of evil, come from the Supreme Evil: Satan.

The Supreme Mind, that knows everything, before man existed, knew that man would be a thief and self-murderer. And, as the Eternal Goodness has no limits in being good, before Guilt existed, He thought of the means to obliterate Guilt. The means: Jesus, the Word. The instrument to render the means an efficient instrument: Mary. And, the Virgin was created in the sublime mind of God.

 

[Lunam_Meam]

Thanks for your response! One question though: you mentioned that

Lunam_Meam:

Thus it was for the whole Universe, before Lucifer abused his own freedom, and with his own will , put into himself the disorder of passions, so as to create disorder in that perfect Order

But as far as I know, in Catholic teaching, we believe that angels don’t have free will. And this is basically the root of the problem I exposed here. Help?

The Catholic Church does teach angels have a free will — see 391-395 in the Catechism.

 

[TominAdelaide]

St Alphonsus Liguori (in his work “What Will Hell Be Like?”) addresses a related question, “Do the Damned Desire to Be Destroyed?” (the work has the nihil obstat and imprimatur):

Do the Damned Desire to Be Destroyed?

We ask, finally, whether the damned would prefer to be annihilated and deprived of existence, than to submit to the punishments which they endure. St. Thomas, considering the question in itself, answers in the negative for, as he says, a state of nonbeing is never desirable, for it implies a deprivation of all good. But if this annihilation be considered as an end of all punishment, St. Thomas says that, from this point of view, the state of nonexistence presents itself as a good. It is in this sense that Jesus Christ spoke this sentence of Judas: “It were better for him, if that man had not been born.” (Mt. 26:24). St. John seems to say the same thing when speaking of the damned in the Apocalypse: “In those days men shall seek death and shall not find it: and they shall desire to die, and death shall fly from them.” (Rev. 9:6). This will of the damned, however, is uncertain, for they wish to continue to exist, that they might always hate God.

Fr Delaporte (in his work “The Devil: Does He Exist and What Does He Do?” includes a discussion between an occultist and 2 demons on this topic also (the work has the recommendation of the bishop of St Denis):

“Give us,” said a person to spirit-rappers, “some idea of Divine goodness.”

“How could I, since it is infinite?”

“It is infinite, and yet you suffer, unhappy one!”

“Cruelly.”

“And for ever?”

“For ever.”

“But, wretched as you appear to be, and God being as good as you say, suppose you tried to soften Him—who knows?”

“You ask what would be absolutely impossible.”

“And why?”

“He cannot pardon me, since I do not want him to do so.”

“And if He proposed complete annihilation, would you accept it?”

After some hesitation one of the spirits replies:

“Yes, because being is the only good I still hold from Him, and then, being no longer anything, I should be free of Him.”

The other said: “No, I would not accept, because I should no longer have the consolation of hating Him.”

“Do you, then, hate so?”

“Do I hate? . . . Why, my name is hatred; I hate all; I hate myself.”

https://www.amazon.com/What-Will-He...=what+will+hell+be+like&qid=1594021461&sr=8-1

https://www.amazon.com/Devil-Does-H...ist+and+What+Does+He+Do&qid=1594021486&sr=8-3