W
White_Tree
Guest
I voted two different things, though it’s a bit of a semantic issue.
As I’ve been taught, demon is a bit of a catchall term for any soul divorced from God. That could be fallen angels, regular people in hell, or even people on earth who are completely divorced from the Father.
Fallen angels, on the other hand, are those who had previously had the angelic state, but which gave it up, for one reason or another. They can be considered demons, but are not the only type of demon.
So one might say that fallen angels are demons (assuming they fell far enough), but not all demons are fallen angels.
The debate is also somewhat confused by the fact that the word demon was actually used to refer to different (and unrelated) spiritual phenomena. The first way of using the term (souls divorced from God) is, I believe, what you had in mind when you asked the question. However, the term demon was also used (by the Desert Fathers, for instance) to refer to the individual egos, or infra-human elements in man, such as the demon of lust, the demon of anger, etc. In that latter context, the word demon does not mean anything outside of man, but rather is referring to sinful aspects of our own psychology.
As I’ve been taught, demon is a bit of a catchall term for any soul divorced from God. That could be fallen angels, regular people in hell, or even people on earth who are completely divorced from the Father.
Fallen angels, on the other hand, are those who had previously had the angelic state, but which gave it up, for one reason or another. They can be considered demons, but are not the only type of demon.
So one might say that fallen angels are demons (assuming they fell far enough), but not all demons are fallen angels.
The debate is also somewhat confused by the fact that the word demon was actually used to refer to different (and unrelated) spiritual phenomena. The first way of using the term (souls divorced from God) is, I believe, what you had in mind when you asked the question. However, the term demon was also used (by the Desert Fathers, for instance) to refer to the individual egos, or infra-human elements in man, such as the demon of lust, the demon of anger, etc. In that latter context, the word demon does not mean anything outside of man, but rather is referring to sinful aspects of our own psychology.