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

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Without reading through the entire thread, so I apologize if this has been answered already, but what I don’t understand is this:

Lucifer was an angel. Angels are heavenly beings. I have been taught that it is not possible for sin to occur in Heaven. Yet Lucifer, a heavenly being, rejected God and sinned, beginning the War in Heaven. How is this possible with him being a heavenly being? It would seem that sin did indeed occur in heaven! If Lucifer (a spirit) sinned in heaven, is it possible for our very own souls for that matter (our spirits), to reject God after we have died and entered Heaven? Have I been taught wrong?
 
Magnanimity said:
People today are generally good at understanding that they in fact do possess intrinsic value/dignity/worth.
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It’s true, but this idea can be distorted. And i would say, because we begin to exist, that we inherit our value and worth. Even those in hell are loved by God. But we have no intrinsic value or worth outside of God’s existence. Neither do we merit heaven with God’s existence. Heaven is simply something God eternally will’s for us all. Hell is only a possibility because we can reject God’s will in favour of our own selfish agenda and God permits it out of love.
 
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Patagonia1 said:
Lucifer was an angel. Angels are heavenly beings. I have been taught that it is not possible for sin to occur in Heaven. Yet Lucifer, a heavenly being, rejected God and sinned, beginning the War in Heaven. How is this possible with him being a heavenly being?
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The traditional answer is that angels were not yet in Heaven with God when the demons sinned. Like all creatures they were made without Divine Grace and had to choose to accept or reject God. Those that accepted were united with the Divine Nature and Beatified, and this is what we call Heaven. Lucifer and the other demons never experienced Heaven.

Peace and God bless!
 
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The traditional answer is that angels were not yet in Heaven with God when the demons sinned. Like all creatures they were made without Divine Grace and had to choose to accept or reject God. Those that accepted were united with the Divine Nature and Beatified, and this is what we call Heaven. Lucifer and the other demons never experienced Heaven.

Peace and God bless!
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Thanks for the reply. If angels were not yet in Heaven when they sinned, how can there have been a “War in Heaven” between those angels who accepted God and those who rejected God?
 
Is it really so hard for you to believe that there are people in the world that are not interested in being servants of perfect love? Is it really so implausible to you that there really are evil people in the world?
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But why are they evil. That’s the point.
 
Patagonia1 said:
Thanks for the reply. If angels were not yet in Heaven when they sinned, how can there have been a “War in Heaven” between those angels who accepted God and those who rejected God?
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Heaven is used to describe a lot of different things, from the vision of God to the starry sky. The Heaven in which it is impossible to sin is the vision of God and possession of Divine Life, not to be confused with a place where a war could take place.

Angels and demons fought in some non-material realm, so it is referred to as Heaven.

Peace and God bless!
 
RealisticCatholic said:
But why are they evil. That’s the point.
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Have you ever sinned? I dare say that you have, unless of course you are the second coming in which case i humbly apologise.😆

In that moment of sin, as painful as it is to admit, we wanted the sin more than we wanted to love. But as a Christian, you would seek repentance and try your best not to repeat that sin because ultimately you really do want to be a servant of love, but because of vices or some other problem you keep falling down.

The evil man, the son of perdition, simply takes the problem one step further than the Christian. He or she loves their sin more than God to the extent that they are willing to reject God entirely in favour of that sin and even glorify their self centred decision. And that problem can continue for an entire life time until death.

Personally i don’t see any incomprehensibility in the act, because in essence they have simply stopped caring about anything but their sin.

But perhaps that’s just me.

God Bless.
 
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In that moment of sin, as painful as it is to admit, we wanted the sin more than we wanted to love.
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But we only sin because we judge that good to be better. Or else our will would not incline us to sin.

The only way out of this dilemma would be to show that that person is at fault for not considering everything that needs to be considered when he or she deliberates about choosing an evil under the guise of some sin. For example, deliberately choosing to ignore that robbing hurts somebody else, or whatever.

My issue is not that sin never occurs, or that there is never some culpability. Rather, it just seems hard to say that any sin could justify an eternity of punishment, once we acknowledge that all sin is due to some kind of ignorance — whether in the loose sense via the passions, or what have you.
 
They set their wills against God. The will is moved by the person; it is not predetermined.

I’m not sure how many different ways this can be repeated.
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And I keep finding myself repeating that the will inclines itself to what the intellect perceives as good. So if the will is set against God, it is because the intellect shows the will that that is good.

But we know that this is NOT in fact good. Therefore, the intellect is in error.
 
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RealisticCatholic said:
But we only sin because we judge that good to be better.
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We judge it to be better for ourselves, that is, our own self interest and gratification. Whereas love isn’t just about our self gratification. Love requires sacrifice.

I know that heaven is eternal happiness, but like fast food the pleasure of sin can become our priority and in that moment one simply does not care about love or heaven or being healthy.
 
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We judge it to be better for ourselves, that is, our own self interest and gratification. Whereas love isn’t just about our self gratification. Love require sacrifice.
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But Love, and not self-interest, is what ultimately brings human fulfillment. So if we truly did what was for our own good, why would we choose self-destructive ends and means knowingly and deliberately?
I know that heaven is eternal happiness, but like fast food the pleasure of sin can become our priority and in that moment one simply does not care about love or heaven or being healthy.
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In a way, this is one way to answer the question I just asked in the reply to the first quote^ However, I would say it does not really answer it. Aquinas would say that this only happens because the passions are not in line with the will, and that they disrupt the reasoning process. Because of Original Sin, sensual pleasures (and the senses in general) distract us from what is truly good and what ought to be considered.

But how is this the person’s fault?
 
RealisticCatholic said:
But Love, and not self-interest, is what ultimately brings human fulfillment. So if we truly did what was for our own good, why would we choose self-destructive ends and means knowingly and deliberately?
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Love requires sacrifices that a person is not willing to make.

If you get a Job, you have better security and more stable options, (although that is not necessarily true anymore in our day and age) but it can be hard work to maintain especially if you have to work 12 hour shifts for little return. But if you sell drugs, you make more money, more quickly, and you are your own man. Despite the dangers involved in drug dealing, and despite it ultimately leading to a dead end, some would rather lose their lives or possibly take another life than work in a 9 to 5 on minimum wage. You can see the reason why they would do it, can you not?
 
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RealisticCatholic said:
And I keep finding myself repeating that the will inclines itself to what the intellect perceives as good. So if the will is set against God, it is because the intellect shows the will that that is good.

But we know that this is NOT in fact good. Therefore, the intellect is in error.
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It seems that you think that the will is somehow compelled by the intellect, but this is not the case. As I’ve repeated the will is not pre-determined by outside forces but rather moves the person. The intellect proposes, the will moves.

If a creatures had no knowledge of God whatsoever then obviously the will would not be culpable for choosing something other than God as the object of its happiness. This is not the case with Lucifer nor humans, however, as we have sufficient (though not perfect) knowledge of God to enable us to embrace Him as the object of our happiness. We can’t know the mystery of this Happiness without first attaining it, because Divine Nature is above all creaturely comprehension, but we can know that our Happiness rests in God alone.

To use an example, I can know that my child is my wife’s womb, but I can’t know who my child is before they are born and I meet them. I know enough to act as a father and choose to parent them before their birth, but I don’t know much about who they are. I can make a true, valid choice even with some ignorance; my knowledge of the child is sufficient, but hardly perfect or even significant. If I were to reject fatherhood and walk away on the grounds of “not even knowing the kid” I would be culpable for abandoning them even though they could technically be called a stranger.

Ignorance does not always remove culpability.

Peace and God bless!
 
And to illustrate my point in another way, imagine two different people. They could each choose a stable job or being a drug dealer (per your example).

Now pretend one person chooses the stable job.
And the other chooses to be a drug dealer.

What makes the difference? Why does one choose one, and one choose the other? Of course, I’m not asking about specific but just the general principle — why would one person choose one option and another person choose the other?
 
Ghosty1981 said:
It seems that you think that the will is somehow compelled by the intellect, but this is not the case. As I’ve repeated the will is not pre-determined by outside forces but rather moves the person. The intellect proposes , the will moves .
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But isn’t it true the will follows what the intellect proposes as the best good in a situation? For example, even if the will decides to no longer consider an action, this must be because the intellect first proposes that it is good to no longer consider an action.
 
IWantGod said:
In a very real sense only love ought to exist. So it follows true that we do not merit existence in and of ourselves . We are not perfectly good, thus the very act of God’ sustaining us in existence
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Yes, I like the way you’ve put this, you’re perfectly right in noting that all the language of meriting and owing and indebtedness is all perfectly alien to God with respect to his relation to his beloved creatures. As ipsum esse subsitens existence and goodness are proper to Him (though not to us). It seemed like you were advocating a negative anthropology, but in this post, it appears that you’re more advocating a proper sense of our own humility when faced with our infinite Creator. All of this is well-said, and I quite agree with it.

But although we derive our existence and our goodness from pure Existence and Goodness Himself, still and all, that derivation entails certain truths about us—not least of which is that we are His beloved image-bearers, created for (and destined for) beatitude in Him.
 
RealisticCatholic said:
What makes the difference? Why does one choose one, and one choose the other? Of course, I’m not asking about specific but just the general principle — why would one person choose one option and another person choose the other?
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I’m out of answers. Perhaps someone else can help. God bless
 
Wouldn’t we have to say it is because one person perceives the first option as better; and the second person perceives the other option as better?
 
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