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

[Ghosty1981]

How could a sane person, designed by God for goodness , deliberately and knowingly choose to be unhappy, and reject the highest Good?

When I say designed by God, we’re not just talking about the fact that God made man to be in relationship with him, but, even more, that man’s very actions are built to seek the good. That’s how God made us to act from the start. We are prone to act on what we take to be good.

The being in question has neither perfect knowledge nor a pre-set will. The creature must consider the good and set their will following this consideration. Such a creature is closer to themselves than they are to God, and in the case of Lucifer his nature is as close to Gods as creaturely possible, so the risk of placing himself before God is actually reasonably high; a bright light shining directly in your eyes might block out the sun.

The important thing to remember is that creatures do not see God as He Is without a share in the Divine Nature through supernatural Grace. Even the keenest created mind can’t have a perfect knowledge of what it truly means to have God as their highest good.

Peace and God bless!

 

[EZweber]

How could a sane person, designed by God for goodness , deliberately and knowingly choose to be unhappy, and reject the highest Good?

That is a mystery, the whole problem of evil. Why do we do things that we know will make us unhappy? We do. I’ve done them myself. Why? I don’t know. But, it is a fact that we do.

 

[Magnanimity]

The will is involved. The prideful creature lives in an unreal state, wanting to believe something which isn’t true about himself-and something which is in conflict with the truth as it relates to himself and his surroundings: to God, to fellow created beings, and to the rest of creation, all of which the Church teaches fallen man is spiritually disconnected from in some manner. Pride even disconnects us from ourselves. Just some thoughts

I really like your thoughts here, very mature indeed. I probably should have been more careful in my choice of words. Yes, judgment and will are both involved in pride. Basically, St Thomas argues that the pride of the angels is reducible to their wills (since, presumably, they cannot make mistakes based on incomplete information as humans can). And yet, the judgment that an angel would make to self-determine his own beatitude is itself a mistake. Only God can bring about the angel’s beatitude. So, although this error is not one of ignorance, there is nevertheless a mistake (an erroneous belief that one can bring about one’s own beatitude independent of God). Do you think that sums it up?

 

[fhansen]

Yes, both the angels and Adam were seeking something “more”, not trusting that God had unimaginably more yet in store for those who love Him-and so stay with Him. After the Fall Adam and his descendants were given time, with experience, revelation and grace at hand to work this out, if we will; not so for angels tho. Either way pride is involved-and in the end the will is the obstacle, or the prize, and that which God seeks to win over without coercion. The highest good is to be God, so the endeavor, the bid for autonomy which effectively puts one in God’s place, wasn’t without reason or purpose in that sense. The unreasonable part is to think that such is even possible. So the catechism teaches, as you probably know:
"398 In that sin man preferred himself to God and by that very act scorned him. He chose himself over and against God, against the requirements of his creaturely status and therefore against his own good. Constituted in a state of holiness, man was destined to be fully “divinized” by God in glory. Seduced by the devil, he wanted to “be like God”, but “without God, before God, and not in accordance with God”.279

 

[RealisticCatholic]

That is a mystery, the whole problem of evil. Why do we do things that we know will make us unhappy? We do. I’ve done them myself. Why? I don’t know. But, it is a fact that we do.

Even so, there had to be some reason you did the mentioned thing – some attraction, some pull, some perceived good. Or else you wouldn’t have acted on it voluntarily. Intellect and will are connected.

 

[EZweber]

Even so, there had to be some reason you did the mentioned thing – some attraction, some pull, some perceived good. Or else you wouldn’t have acted on it voluntarily. Intellect and will are connected.

I knew that it was a lesser good, I did not enjoy it, and I knew it would make me less happy. We do that sort of thing.

 

[RealisticCatholic]

I think Aquinas would say you knew it was a lesser good in the abstract; but when it came down to the particular circumstance, something affected your reasoning to the extent that good seemed preferable — better — in that moment.

I forget the terminology, I think universal vs. particular knowledge. But anyway. I’m having a hard time sorting out how even here, the act is not due to ignorance of some sort.

 

[RealisticCatholic]

Like I can know fornication is wrong in the “universal” sense (whatever the terminology is I forget again).

But I I choose to do so in this particular situation, it’s because i perceive it as good in these circumstances. And there would be an error in reasoning here.

 

[EZweber]

The problem with Aquinas’s reasoning (I hope I’m not using a contradiction in terms) is that it leads to Determinism, since you can only chose one thing in any given circumstance.

 

[RealisticCatholic]

I think the problem is in my reasoning, which is why I want to better understand what he’s saying, and also why I’m asking these questions on hell.

Aquinas was so much smarter than I, yet he does not believe in determinism. He believes we are free precisely because we are not totally latched on to the complete good yet (like in heaven) but can instead use reason to determine what good we’d rather choose.

In other words I’m probably missing pieces to the puzzle. I have ordered like 4+ books on Aquinas within the last two weeks. lol

Unfortunately, three books I got by Brain Davies — one a commentary of the Summa, one a summary of Aquinas, and one a summary of his thought — don’t even talk about hell. They do talk about human action, but I wish they got into hell.

 

[Ghosty1981]

I think Aquinas would say you knew it was a lesser good in the abstract; but when it came down to the particular circumstance, something affected your reasoning to the extent that good seemed preferable — better — in that moment.

I forget the terminology, I think universal vs. particular knowledge. But anyway. I’m having a hard time sorting out how even here, the act is not due to ignorance of some sort.

Have you read Question 63, Article 3 of the First Part of the ST? If so, what aspect of Aquinas’ answer doesn’t fit for you?

Peace and God bless!

 

[RealisticCatholic]

But he desired resemblance with God in this respect—by desiring, as his last end of beatitude, something which he could attain by the virtue of his own nature, turning his appetite away from supernatural beatitude, which is attained by God’s grace. Or, if he desired as his last end that likeness of God

I get the general gist of what Aquinas is trying to say. But it leaves me thinking, from where does the devil get such a desire? So, obviously, St Michael and the good angels didn’t have this desire. The devil did. What causes the difference? Not passion. Not ignorance. What?

@Ghosty1981 @Wesrock @IWantGod

 

[RealisticCatholic]

Aquinas:

• "…since the object of the will is a good or an apparent good, it is never moved to an evil, unless that which is not good appear good in some respect to the reason; so that the will would never tend to evil, unless there were ignorance or error in the reason. Hence it is written (Proverbs 14:22): “They err that work evil.”

Sooo… All sin is due to error of reason? OK then why should anyone be damned through this error?

 

[IWantGod]

from where does the devil get such a desire?

Well, the devil does have a self-identity, and in having a self the potential for sin is there. This problem is intrinsic to creating a being with a self-identity. In my opinion to create a self-identity is also to create the possibility of self annihilation. When God created us he knew that propensity was there. In having a self there is a strong propensity to perceive existence as revolving around you alone. All kind’s of evil can come out of that if we reject the grace of God. His sin is that he essentially sought the glorification of himself and basically set himself up as his own God.

Why did he do that? Only God knows in my opinion.

 

[RealisticCatholic]

All this makes sense, but is hard to square with Aquinas’ own language, as I understand it.

Here he seems to be saying that every sin, whether through ignorance or passion or malice, is ultimately due to some kind of ignorance;

Ignorance sometimes excludes the simple knowledge that a particular action is evil, and then man is said to sin through ignorance: sometimes it excludes the knowledge that a particular action is evil at this particular moment, as when he sins through passion: and sometimes it excludes the knowledge that a particular evil is not to be suffered for the sake of possessing a particular good, but not the simple knowledge that it is an evil: it is thus that a man is ignorant, when he sins through certain malice.

 

[Ghosty1981]

All this makes sense, but is hard to square with Aquinas’ own language, as I understand it.

Here he seems to be saying that every sin, whether through ignorance or passion or malice, is ultimately due to some kind of ignorance ;

This is speaking only about the sins of humans, not the particular manner in which angels can sin. He discusses the manner of angelic sin in Question 63, Article 1 of the First Part.

I get the general gist of what Aquinas is trying to say. But it leaves me thinking, from where does the devil get such a desire?

He got it through his own will, though the desire for goodness and God in general was natural to him as a creature. The will is not only moved by outside forces like passions, it is also the engine of movement in the intellectual person. The Devil saw his own perfection, saw his natural closeness to God (and, lacking Grace/Beatific Vision, could only consider God according to his own natural knowledge), and knowing that his happiness could be found in God (the natural end of all creatures) chose to find happiness in the closest attainable object, which also happened to be the closest approximation to God.

Had he considered and willed that his natural end was outside of himself entirely, as is appropriate, he wouldn’t have sinned. He had sufficient knowledge to know that something was lacking in his own being but he willfully chose to grasp the good of himself rather than accept his own base nothingness. We can’t think like an angel, but imagine seeing all of the splendor and grandeur of universes upon universes and having to say “this is really nothing at all, beauty is something not directly visible here”. That is what Lucifer would have been forced to do when considering himself. Lucifer chose to find the goodness of God in what was readily visible and already attained, rather than go outside of himself and reject the near infinite splendor of creation which was already his own nature. He didn’t say “I am prettier than God”, he said “this near infinite beauty that I can see and have already is better than the invisible and possibly unattainable beauty that I do not see”. He refused to submit to the “other” outside of his own nature and sought God in himself instead.

It’s a catastrophic choice, and utterly inexcusable given his keen mind and vast knowledge, but it’s also understandable to a certain degree.

Peace and God bless!

 

[RealisticCatholic]

Interesting. I will have to chew on this a bit more.

Then is it possible Satan is not unhappy?

 

[IWantGod]

All this makes sense, but is hard to square with Aquinas’ own language, as I understand it.

I haven’t studied this topic in depth from Aquinas’ point of view, but i can see why a being clothed in such beauty and power would desire the good of God apart from God. That is to say he wanted to be the God of all the beauty and power he had received. He did not do this particular thing in ignorance, however he was most certainly a fool. Having said that, had he experienced the complete divine wisdom of God it’s seems impossible that he would have chosen sin, thus perhaps there is some kind of ignorance in being a fool. However he was not ignorant of the reality of what he was doing. He was choosing sin over God insomuch as he wanted to be God.

 

[Ghosty1981]

Interesting. I will have to chew on this a bit more.

Then is it possible Satan is not unhappy?

If Hell were nothing more than the lack of supernatural perfection (such as the Limbo of Infants) then he’d be the happiest creature this side of Heaven, I imagine. There is more to Hell than that, however.

Peace and God bless!

 

[meltzerboy2]

For Judaism, this is not an issue because the angels do NOT have free will; they MUST obey Gd, and that includes HaSatan: the tempter, the accuser, and the angel of death. What makes mankind unique is that he is the ONLY one of Gd’s Creation who has the free will to choose good or evil.

However, this is a Catholic Forum, so carry on…