How was it even possible for Satan to fall/reject God?

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Oh, I accept the development of doctrine, in the sense that Cardinal John Henry Newman meant. I just don’t see it as an authorization to constantly produce new doctrine which was never present in the deposit of Faith. As for moving forward toward the fullness of divine truth, it can be taken as the Church moving steadily toward the Parousia, not necessarily adopting every new thing that comes along.
 
JimG said:
Oh, I accept the development of doctrine, in the sense that Cardinal John Henry Newman meant.
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Yes, that’s what I’m referring to.
JimG said:
As for moving forward toward the fullness of divine truth, it can be taken as the Church moving steadily toward the Parousia, not necessarily adopting every new thing that comes along.
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Ok… One of Newman’s qualifiers for what could count as something that would possibly be a true development was that it needed to be present (in some way) from the beginning. As anyone at all familiar with the eschatology of the patristics will admit, the restoration of all things was present from the beginning and was, in fact, the majority view prior to St Augustine. That’s not a slam dunk in favor of the position of course, but it certainly puts it within the realm of Newman’s development. So, I’m not sure what the problem is here.
 
Magnanimity said:
God created all these angelic beings and maybe 1/3 of them fell? And if they are irredeemable bc they cannot change their minds/wills, then the implication is that He created all these creatures fully knowing that they would succumb to pride and be eternally separated from Him as a result. This is so very odd, if not bizarre.
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If God refused to create anyone who chose to reject Him, how could it be said that we have free will? We couldn’t reject Him. I don’t think it’s a good idea, but a vital part of love is the ability not to love.
 
EZweber said:
If God refused to create anyone who chose to reject Him, how could it be said that we have free will? We couldn’t reject Him. I don’t think it’s a good idea, but a vital part of love is the ability not to love.
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I think you’re right. I don’t really have an issue with God creating rational, free creatures, unless there is no hope for those creatures. If there is no hope for a good or redemptive end, then I do have a problem. It would entail that God created some who he knew would be ruined for all time. That is not a hopeful message. It’s almost like anti-hope.
 
Magnanimity said:
I think you’re right. I don’t really have an issue with God creating rational, free creatures, unless there is no hope for those creatures. If there is no hope for a good or redemptive end, then I do have a problem. It would entail that God created some who he knew would be ruined for all time. That is not a hopeful message. It’s almost like anti-hope.
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When God created the angels, He gave them a choice: be happy with Him forever in Heaven or be miserable without Him forever in Hell. They could have taken the first.
 
EZweber said:
When God created the angels, He gave them a choice: be happy with Him forever in Heaven or be miserable without Him forever in Hell. They could have taken the first.
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I choose misery!! Who wouldn’t?! Just kidding, I know what you’re getting at. But, this classical picture presented by the Western church seems grossly inadequate on about a hundred different levels.
 
Magnanimity said:
But, this classical picture presented by the Western church seems grossly inadequate on about a hundred different levels.
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What are some that I haven’t answered yet or you’re not satisfied with my answer on?
 
There are too many to list. If you search my contributions on these forums re the topic of Hell over the last few months, you’ll see them aplenty. But, let’s just stay within the limited scope of this thread regarding the angels. I don’t know how to precisely articulate the intrinsic dignity/value/worth of an angel. We use scriptural language to describe our own–we bear the image and likeness of God (which is a big deal). At least part of what follows from our own intrinsic human dignity, is something like Kant’s categorical imperative–you must always treat another person as an end in himself and never as a means only.

So, let’s consider this group of angels who fell. Were they created as ends in themselves? The natural end of an angel would be similar to that of a human, according to Aquinas, which is beatitude. However, on the classical, Western view of eschatology, the story is that God created these glorious beings (angels) with full awareness of their fate to be forever thwarted of their destiny–their beatitude in God. So, the questions entailed by this picture are quite natural. What kind of god would create doomed creatures who would never manifest their glorious destiny? It would seem that these angels are not treated as “ends in themselves” but perhaps as means to some further end. According to Aquinas, to love another is to will and work for the good of the other, as other (and not merely as a means to an end). So, how could it be be said that God loves these fallen angels? He created them knowing that they would fall and be irredeemable. That act seems to edge closer to what we mean by sadism than by love.

These are some initial thoughts, but they are enough. The classical picture in the West doesn’t seem to stand up to scrutiny, but maybe I’m wrong.
 
So let’s consider the alternative - no free will. No heaven either.
 
I have no issues with free will, neither for us nor for the angels. The question is whether we serve a God who would create many of us fully knowing we are destined for destruction and ruin (neverending torment and suffering and separation from Him). That vision of the afterlife is what I find wanting, not the creation of rational, free creatures.
 
Magnanimity said:
I have no issues with free will, neither for us nor for the angels. The question is whether we serve a God who would create many of us fully knowing we are destined for destruction and ruin (neverending torment and suffering and separation from Him). That vision of the afterlife is what I find wanting, not the creation of rational, free creatures.
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But if God only created us if He knew we would love Him, then we would not really love Him. What is He supposed to do? If you hate Him, spending eternity with Him isn’t exactly so wonderful. He allows us to choose misery. If he refused to create those who want misery, then we couldn’t chose misery.
 
EZweber said:
If you hate Him, spending eternity with Him isn’t exactly so wonderful. He allows us to choose misery.
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I appreciate the engagement. Just so we don’t begin talking past each other, let me try to provide real-world examples. Parents routinely do not allow their children to choose things that would result in their ruin and would irrevocably lead them down a path to their own selfish destruction. I myself do this everyday, several times a day. “No” is a word that is ever on the lips of any caring parent. Why? Because we know better than our children what actions will tend toward their beatitude (and which actions will work against their beatitude).

Parents (and teachers and religious leaders) actually coerce the behavior of children. They do not allow children to behave any way they wish–they prod them toward that which will lead to their own beatitude (allowing for the beatitude of others outside of the children too, which is a social morality). Schools, parishes, families and laws themselves are entirely oriented toward a social morality. But, this isn’t confined to children. We do this for the elderly too. We do this for the cognitively disabled. We do this for folks strung out on substances. We intervene when it is necessary.

But, we also do this in the lives of our friends as well. When our closest friends misbehave, do we remain silent and do nothing? Or do we prod and nudge? And is not the reason for our prodding and nudging because we love our friends? We want what is best for them.

OK, so far I’ve merely described the way our current western civil society is structured and how we all actually behave in the real world. So, how could God fail to be any less than this? To leave someone to their own misery could hardly be called love. No human would define love that way toward their fellow man. But, you’re suggesting that with God it is somehow different. He can leave a creature to his own misery…?
 
Again, what do you expect Him to do? Force us to spend eternity with Him? When you see a friend doing something that he knows will hurt him, you try to convince him not to, but in the end, you respect their first will. We cannot love God if He will not allow us to refuse to.
 
EZweber said:
Again, what do you expect Him to do?
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This is an excellent question that we all must answer. For me, I expect God to never stop loving all his creatures, but especially his rational ones (angels, humans). Never stop loving.

I also expect God to not play a high-stakes game with rational creatures as the pieces on the board.
EZweber said:
Force us to spend eternity with Him?
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Spending eternity with Him is quite literally what you and every other rational creature was made for. You have no other natural end. It is the origin and destiny of the human race. I can only hope it is the same for the angels.
 
Magnanimity said:
This is an excellent question that we all must answer. For me, I expect God to never stop loving all his creatures, but especially his rational ones (angels, humans). Never stop loving.
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He doesn’t (stop loving)
Magnanimity said:
Spending eternity with Him is quite literally what you and every other rational creature was made for. You have no other natural end. It is the origin and destiny of the human race. I can only hope it is the same for the angels.
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Totally agreed, but Satan hates Him.
Essentially, in choosing to go to Hell, a creature refuses to be happy. It’s insane, but that’s what it is.
 
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When Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit even though God told them that they would die, what were they thinking. I will be like God! What an intoxicating thought!
 
The issue is how could anyone hate God if we were made for God, the ultimate Good?
 
Spending eternity with Him is quite literally what you and every other rational creature was made for. You have no other natural end. It is the origin and destiny of the human race. I can only hope it is the same for the angels.
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This, right here, is the issue. This is why eternal hell seems absurd. If every rational creature – angel, human, (alien? lol) – is designed FOR the Good, and, in fact, desires goodness in general, then hell is a mistaken decision.

Augustine, professing hell, still said “you have made us for yourself, and we are restless until we rest in you, O God.”
 
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He chose the lesser good of his own absolute self-determination. Though not ignorant or weak, he became willfully blind by his own pride. The first being the Father of Lies deceived was himself.

Some sources speculate that he was particularly offended by the destiny of humanity as it was revealed to him … either simply the fact that humans, despite their inferior origins, would eventually leapfrog the angels in status, or specifically the means by which God intended to so elevate humanity (by becoming one of them in the Incarnation and so making them partakers in the divine nature, letting them join with Him on a level the angels never would).

Basically, while God was still his ultimate good, the devil decided that God was wrong about something and needed to be shown so (see, for example, their dramatized conversation in the Book of Job —“they’re not that great, they don’t deserve what You give them”).
 
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