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patrick457
Guest
I’ll try to search for it myself, but if you have citations, care to give them?
- Status
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Kaninchen
Guest
I honestly can’t remember - it was something I was (hobby level) interested in when I was a student (in the late 80’s) and it was in one of the books of translations from the Sumerian that were in the Uni library.
I found the Sumerians far more interesting than the Egyptians.
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glendab
Guest
Hello Cisco.
Glenda
Well, I’m no expert but here goes: The devils were created by God as angels and all these beings had various attributes specific to their “Choir,” there being nine total. They had free will in a unique sense, not the same as ours. They were put to a test of this gift of their free will and their choice to rebel against God was a once and done event in history. Now their will is locked into the choice they made forever. It cannot change. Angels aren’t human and sometimes the pictorial images we have seen of them as beautiful people with wings distorts unintentionally the subconscious notions we have surrounding them and so it gets confusing when we have only this image in our minds of what makes an angel. But they were beings created by God for a specific purpose and those who remained angels carry out God’s will perfectly. I suggest you get yourself some reliable books on the angels and get correctly informed on the subject and of course, pray about it to the Holy Spirit for understanding. And please keep this in mind: the fall of the angels was an event in time and our understanding of this isn’t complete, even among the greatest scholars of the subject because it is a subject in the supernatural order of things. That being so, we can only be enlightened on the subject and not know all there is to know about it. No angel or devil will ever be able to be placed under a microscope for study revealing their nature in this way. They aren’t like bugs or something. You will never be able to fully comprehend exactly how or why the devils fell. No one has the complete answer to that question, but there is some very good scholarship in the Church on the subject and it is worth it to do a little reading.
Glenda
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glendab
Guest
Hello everyone.
for those interested here is an excerpt from an article at New Advent, where the subject is covered pretty well. If you’re really interested in getting at the facts regarding this subject they are a good start. If you want to go deeper, read their articles and take the documents they source their articles from a search other sources on the Web for them too. EWTN has a really good library of documents that are hard to find as does the Vatican. You could probably find out all you need that a way. Here’s the excerpt and follow the link to the rest of the article.
As may be gathered from the language of the Lateran definition, the Devil and the other demons are but a part of the angelic creation, and their natural powers do not differ from those of the angels who remained faithful. Like the other angels, they are pure spiritual beings without any body, and in their original state they are endowed with supernatural grace and placed in a condition of probation. It was only by their fall that they became devils. This was before the sin of our first parents, since this sin itself is ascribed to the instigation of the Devil: “By the envy of the Devil, death came into the world” (Wisdom 2:24). Yet it is remarkable that for an account of the fall of the angels we must turn to the last book of the Bible. For as such we may regard the vision in the Apocalypse, albeit the picture of the past is blended with prophecies of what shall be in the future:
And there was a great battle in heaven, Michael and his angels fought with the dragon, and the dragon fought and his angels: and they prevailed not, neither was their place found any more in heaven. And that great dragon was cast out, that old serpent, who is called the devil and Satan, who seduceth the whole world; and he was cast unto the earth, and his angels were thrown down with him. (Apocalypse 12:7-9)
To this may be added the words of St. Jude: “And the angels who kept not their principality, but forsook their own habitation, he hath reserved under darkness in everlasting chains, unto the judgment of the great day” (Jude 1:6; cf. 2 Peter 2:4).
newadvent.org/cathen/04764a.htm
Hope this helps.
Glenda
for those interested here is an excerpt from an article at New Advent, where the subject is covered pretty well. If you’re really interested in getting at the facts regarding this subject they are a good start. If you want to go deeper, read their articles and take the documents they source their articles from a search other sources on the Web for them too. EWTN has a really good library of documents that are hard to find as does the Vatican. You could probably find out all you need that a way. Here’s the excerpt and follow the link to the rest of the article.
As may be gathered from the language of the Lateran definition, the Devil and the other demons are but a part of the angelic creation, and their natural powers do not differ from those of the angels who remained faithful. Like the other angels, they are pure spiritual beings without any body, and in their original state they are endowed with supernatural grace and placed in a condition of probation. It was only by their fall that they became devils. This was before the sin of our first parents, since this sin itself is ascribed to the instigation of the Devil: “By the envy of the Devil, death came into the world” (Wisdom 2:24). Yet it is remarkable that for an account of the fall of the angels we must turn to the last book of the Bible. For as such we may regard the vision in the Apocalypse, albeit the picture of the past is blended with prophecies of what shall be in the future:
And there was a great battle in heaven, Michael and his angels fought with the dragon, and the dragon fought and his angels: and they prevailed not, neither was their place found any more in heaven. And that great dragon was cast out, that old serpent, who is called the devil and Satan, who seduceth the whole world; and he was cast unto the earth, and his angels were thrown down with him. (Apocalypse 12:7-9)
To this may be added the words of St. Jude: “And the angels who kept not their principality, but forsook their own habitation, he hath reserved under darkness in everlasting chains, unto the judgment of the great day” (Jude 1:6; cf. 2 Peter 2:4).
newadvent.org/cathen/04764a.htm
Hope this helps.
Glenda
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cisco_1
Guest
I know that God created Lucifer and the angels and prior to the fall they were in heaven serving him. And the question goes, how can these high beings (since Satan was said to be the highest Angel) just develop the capability of sinning. As said in the past posts here, people (who are lower than angels) who are in heaven just lose the desire to sin making it impossible for them to sin, right?
My point is, that the whole story of Lucifer’s fall makes no sense and there is too many logic holes. Sinning in heaven, the area in where God’s grace is all over the place, just seems so impossible. If people sin due to falling into the temptations of Satan, then who tempted Satan to commit sin up there? And since he commited sin up there, which means that the first sin was in heaven (not in Earth) then why did Heaven become as dark and corrupt like the earth?
Another issue that is hard to understand is that Michael and his angels went to war with Satan and his angels in heaven. What kind of war exactly? Where they charging each other with weapons, hitting each other with projectiles, with angelic projectiles? I assume Angels can’t bleed, get cuts on their skin, get bruises, in short get physically hurt… so how does this war go? What is a spear or whatever weapon going to do, kill or hurt the person that it’s inflicted on?
These are the questions i’ve asked, i was never asking for the story of Lucifer because we all know that… it’s just a fill in on the logical holes of it.
IMO, and i’m not stating this as fact… i do doubt the existence of Satan. Maybe the Jewish beliefs of him are the right one, maybe he is still the Angel who’s job is to accuse and put people to the test just as described in the OT. I don’t know… It just makes more sense than the general Christian view.
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patrick457
Guest
Cisco, did you read my posts? What do you think about them?
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patrick457
Guest
No, the angels were not in Heaven. The angels were, as I mentioned on the last post, ‘on probation’ (as theologians would say it), on the way to Heaven. (As I noted, it’s better to think of ‘Heaven’ more as a states of being of a spirit or human soul, rather than ‘places’ as commonly perceived and represented in human language.) Only the good angels actually attained Heaven (= the fullness of communion with God); the fallen angels did not.
I think you’re taking the ‘War in Heaven’ story too literally. I think that itself is problematic, since (1) nobody was there to witness it so it’s highly unlikely that it really happened like in the popular story (which as I noted, owes more from John Milton than Holy Scripture or Church doctrine), (2) as you mention, thinking of this war in human terms - y’know, angels being armed with weapons and stabbing or hitting each other - is just unnatural, so I agree with you in that the popular conception has some holes in it, but then again, the ‘war’, if something of the sort did occur, should not be imagined as being the same thing as our - human - wars, which are fought with weapons and violence; and (3) the idea of a ‘War in Heaven’ ultimately derives from a passage in Revelation, which - seeing how it’s chock full of symbolic visions - isn’t really the book one should take too literally. (I mean, in that passage Satan is a big red dragon.)
meltzerboy
New member
So perhaps the so-called “war” of the angels was really a war of words, that is, a heated debate.
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patrick457
Guest
Or a war of minds/wills. That’s also another guess. Again, angels are creatures different from us humans (at least in our - Catholic - understanding), so we shouldn’t imagine them as functioning as we do. It’s kinda like animals, say dogs: we often tend to anthropomorphize animals - think of them in human terms - and link their behavior with what we think are their equivalent for us humans (though it’s not always the case that we interpret them correctly).
Excuse me for quoting this post again. It’s true that Satan (‘Lucifer’) is considered by many theologians to apparently be a high-ranking angel originally, based on inference from the Isaiah passage and Ezekiel 28:14: “You were an anointed guardian cherub. I placed you; you were on the holy mountain of God; in the midst of the stones of fire you walked.” Now in the common system of classifying angels into nine choirs (first proposed by a 5th-6th century writer who wrote under the name of Dionysius the Areopagite), the seraphim and cherubim are ranked as the two highest choirs - because Scripture describes them as being ‘near’ the presence of the Divine. But that’s hardly a universal opinion: some did consider Satan to have been originally a more low-ranking angel. From the old Catholic Encyclopedia’s article on the Devil:
The language of the prophets (Isaiah 14; Ezekiel 28) would seem to show that Lucifer held a very high rank in the heavenly hierarchy. And, accordingly, we find many theologians maintaining that before his fall he was the foremost of all the angels. Suarez is disposed to admit that he was the highest negatively, i.e. that no one was higher, though many may have been his equals. But here again we are in the region of pious opinions, for some divines maintain that, far from being first of all, he did not belong to one of the highest choirs–Seraphim, Cherubim, and Thrones–but to one of the lower orders of angels. In any case it appears that he holds a certain sovereignty over those who followed him in his rebellion. For we read of “the Devil and his angels” (Matthew 25:41), “the dragon and his angels” (Apocalypse 12:7), “Beelzebub, the prince of devils”–which, whatever be the interpretation of the name, clearly refers to Satan, as appears from the context: “And if Satan also be divided against himself, how shall his kingdom stand? Because you say that through Beelzebub I cast out devils” (Luke 11:15, 18), and “the prince of the Powers of this air” (Ephesians 2:2). At first sight it may seem strange that there should be any order or subordination amongst those rebellious spirits, and that those who rose against their Maker should obey one of their own fellows who had led them to destruction. And the analogy of similar movements among men might suggest that the rebellion would be likely to issue in anarchy and division. But it must be remembered that the fall of the angels did not impair their natural powers, that Lucifer still retained the gifts that enabled him to influence his brethren before their fall, and that their superior intelligence would show them that they could achieve more success and do more harm to others by unity and organization than by independence and division.
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cisco_1
Guest
But that is invalid because the verse in Revelation says “war broke in heaven”, so they were definetly inside heaven during this whole event. You even had Jesus saying "i saw Satan fall like Lightning out from heaven. There is no verse/scripture, neither a known apocrypha that ever stated that Angels were created in a “probation” state on their way to heaven. Where was this specific place they were in probabtion by the way because that would still go into one of my questions. I mean, if the Earth fell into mortality/corruption due to sin entering it, then wouldn’t the place the angels started at also be corrupted due to sin entering it?
Yes, i do take in mind that a war could have been a debate. Something like a trial at court… i’m just throwing all the different holes around. I have definetly read your post
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patrick457
Guest
That’s my point. For the passage in Luke, it is spoken in the context of the return of the seventy(-two) disciples who were sent by Jesus to preach.
The seventy returned with joy, saying, “Lord, even the demons are subject to us in your name!” And he said to them, “I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven. Behold, I have given you authority to tread upon serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy; and nothing shall hurt you. Nevertheless do not rejoice in this, that the spirits are subject to you; but rejoice that your names are written in heaven.”
In this case, IMO it’s better to interpret this reference to Satan’s fall not so much as literally referring to his original fall, but an expression referring to his overthrow by the faith of the disciples. Through Jesus’ coming, and specifically the mission of the disciples who were acting under Jesus’ name, the power Satan once had over the world was taken away from his grasp. Satan’s defeat here is likened to a ‘fall’. This is why in John (12:31-32), Jesus says: “Now is the judgment of this world, now shall the ruler of this world be cast out; and I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all men to myself.”
As for Revelation, just as I said, you do not (have to) take the description of the ‘War in Heaven’ literally. The passage does refer to the primordial fall of Satan on one layer (other layers of meaning is that it refers to (1) the struggle between the Church - ‘Heaven’ - and Satan, and (2) the defeat of Satan with the death of Jesus), but it does not have to literally follow that it happened exactly as in John’s vision, i.e. Satan was a red dragon, the angels waged ‘war’, etc.
I think the argument that the ‘probation’ is not found in Scripture is rather weak, especially considering that we’re Catholics and do not hold to sola Scriptura. I mean you could use that very same argument (and some do) against the Trinity, the Hypostatic Union, the Immaculate Conception, or the Assumption of Mary - all dogmas of the Church.
That’s the problem I think - you’re thinking of ‘places’. Well, you might say that the angels were in no ‘place’ when they were first created. (Especially if you consider that angels, being spirits, are bodiless - incorporeal - and immaterial.) In fact, Heaven and Hell are also not ‘places’, at least in the way we humans understand a ‘place’ to be.
(A brief tangent. Theologians even debate as to just how long it took before Satan and those who followed him disobeyed God. Some seem to imply that it took some time, but others say that it all could have happened in the spark of a moment, from our perspective. In any case, the Angels would require a much shorter period of probation than we do. We humans are relatively very slow in our physical development and in our mental operations, that’s why our ‘probation’ takes a whole lifetime, because while we’re alive, we’re continually in the process of learning. An angels, on the other hand, is created in full possession of his natural gifts from the very beginning, and his mental process is instantaneous and perfect, that’s why for them, it happened so soon.)
I should say that the reasons you give here are the precise reason why theologians say that the angels would have been in probation - not yet ‘in’ Heaven - when some of them fell: how could someone who enjoys the Beatific Vision sin, when the freedom of choosing what is evil or wrong does no longer exist in the state of glory?
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patrick457
Guest
About the passage in Luke: you can parse the sentence as “I saw Satan fall down | like lightning | from heaven.” (= “I saw Satan fall down from heaven like lightning.”) But it can also be parsed I think as “I saw Satan fall down | like lightning from heaven” (= “I saw Satan fall down like lightning (falls) from the sky.”)
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patrick457
Guest
I should just say this again: our concept of ‘time’ and ‘space’ is inapplicable when we’re talking of things that are not of this world, i.e. Heaven or Hell. We speak of ‘Heaven’ or ‘Hell’ as if they are locations (so we speak of somebody ‘going to’ Heaven or being ‘in’ Heaven) because it’s easier for our minds to visualize that.
But they are not really ‘locations’ according to our human definition of the term: they are in a way, ‘places’, but they are not particular ‘spaces’. ‘Time’ and ‘space’ are finite concepts - something God is not bound to. God does not live in one physical ‘place’, as we think of it, because the physical universe is His creation and cannot contain a being of His caliber. It is transcendent. More than that, Heaven and Hell are also states of being. As the late Pope St. John Paul II said:
In the context of Revelation, we know that the “heaven” or “happiness” in which we will find ourselves is neither an abstraction nor a physical place in the clouds, but a living, personal relationship with the Holy Trinity. It is our meeting with the Father which takes place in the risen Christ through the communion of the Holy Spirit.
===
The images of hell that Sacred Scripture presents to us must be correctly interpreted. They show the complete frustration and emptiness of life without God. More than a place, hell indicates the state of those who freely and definitively separate themselves from God, the source of all life and joy. This is how the Catechism of the Catholic Church summarizes the truths of faith on this subject: “To die in mortal sin without repenting and accepting God’s merciful love means remaining separated from him for ever by our own free choice. This state of definitive self-exclusion from communion with God and the blessed is called ‘hell’”.
[Note: The original Italian says, “(Più che) More than a place, hell indicates…” This suggests correctly that although hell is not essentially “a place,” rather the definitive loss of God, confinement is included. Thus, after the general resurrection the bodies of the damned, being bodies not spirits, must be in “some place,” in which they will receive the punishment of fire.]
The same thing could be said in our particular discussion. Speaking in terms of ‘time’ and ‘space’ in the context of the creation of angels is useless and even misleading since those concepts did not exist yet, and do not exist beyond our material plane. So when we speak of eternal things, the best we can do is use symbolic language, because we can never hope to describe them accurately and fully. I say it’s best simply to keep in mind that Heaven means being with God, and having a definitive, intimate relationship with Him. That’s what is enjoyed by the angels and the saints. And Hell, on the other hand, is eternal separation from God; that’s what is experienced by demons and the unrepentant.
When we say that the angels were on ‘probation’ and then attained ‘Heaven’ (some of them at least), it does not so much mean that they were at first in some literal limbo-like geographical area before a number of them were magically transported to a physical (cloud-filled
) spot somewhere beyond the far depths of space where God’s throne is. When we speak of the ‘fall’ of Satan and the disobedient angels, it does not literally mean they were thrown off a ‘place’ well above the sky into some fiery cavern underneath the Earth’s crust. What exactly happened ‘back then’ are beyond our understanding, all we can do is use symbolic language and stories to convey the concept.
I think, Cisco, that in your case you’re confusing the ‘story’ - which can only grasp an aspect or two of ‘what happened’ (so it’s natural that you’ll find holes in it) - with the ‘truth’, which one can never describe adequately in human language. All that we do can grasp for sure is: God created angels, but some of them disobeyed God by their own free will and became evil; they did not receive the full, intimate relationship with God that the good angels got (Heaven) - well, because they rejected God. All the other stuff - Heaven being a physical area up in the clouds, a literal battle of arms where St. Michael thrashes Satan and his lackeys, Satan and the rebel angels falling from the sky into a fiery subterranean pit - are just illustrations that try to convey the indescribable truth into something more ‘palatable’ for us.
(To answer your question, I have a gut feeling that this probably one of the reasons why the sin of Adam and Eve could affect our universe: we’re in a material, finite plane of existence. We have concepts of ‘time’, ‘space’, ‘place’. I could be wrong though - somebody please correct me here is I misstated anything.)
But they are not really ‘locations’ according to our human definition of the term: they are in a way, ‘places’, but they are not particular ‘spaces’. ‘Time’ and ‘space’ are finite concepts - something God is not bound to. God does not live in one physical ‘place’, as we think of it, because the physical universe is His creation and cannot contain a being of His caliber. It is transcendent. More than that, Heaven and Hell are also states of being. As the late Pope St. John Paul II said:
In the context of Revelation, we know that the “heaven” or “happiness” in which we will find ourselves is neither an abstraction nor a physical place in the clouds, but a living, personal relationship with the Holy Trinity. It is our meeting with the Father which takes place in the risen Christ through the communion of the Holy Spirit.
===
The images of hell that Sacred Scripture presents to us must be correctly interpreted. They show the complete frustration and emptiness of life without God. More than a place, hell indicates the state of those who freely and definitively separate themselves from God, the source of all life and joy. This is how the Catechism of the Catholic Church summarizes the truths of faith on this subject: “To die in mortal sin without repenting and accepting God’s merciful love means remaining separated from him for ever by our own free choice. This state of definitive self-exclusion from communion with God and the blessed is called ‘hell’”.
[Note: The original Italian says, “(Più che) More than a place, hell indicates…” This suggests correctly that although hell is not essentially “a place,” rather the definitive loss of God, confinement is included. Thus, after the general resurrection the bodies of the damned, being bodies not spirits, must be in “some place,” in which they will receive the punishment of fire.]
The same thing could be said in our particular discussion. Speaking in terms of ‘time’ and ‘space’ in the context of the creation of angels is useless and even misleading since those concepts did not exist yet, and do not exist beyond our material plane. So when we speak of eternal things, the best we can do is use symbolic language, because we can never hope to describe them accurately and fully. I say it’s best simply to keep in mind that Heaven means being with God, and having a definitive, intimate relationship with Him. That’s what is enjoyed by the angels and the saints. And Hell, on the other hand, is eternal separation from God; that’s what is experienced by demons and the unrepentant.
When we say that the angels were on ‘probation’ and then attained ‘Heaven’ (some of them at least), it does not so much mean that they were at first in some literal limbo-like geographical area before a number of them were magically transported to a physical (cloud-filled
) spot somewhere beyond the far depths of space where God’s throne is. When we speak of the ‘fall’ of Satan and the disobedient angels, it does not literally mean they were thrown off a ‘place’ well above the sky into some fiery cavern underneath the Earth’s crust. What exactly happened ‘back then’ are beyond our understanding, all we can do is use symbolic language and stories to convey the concept.I think, Cisco, that in your case you’re confusing the ‘story’ - which can only grasp an aspect or two of ‘what happened’ (so it’s natural that you’ll find holes in it) - with the ‘truth’, which one can never describe adequately in human language. All that we do can grasp for sure is: God created angels, but some of them disobeyed God by their own free will and became evil; they did not receive the full, intimate relationship with God that the good angels got (Heaven) - well, because they rejected God. All the other stuff - Heaven being a physical area up in the clouds, a literal battle of arms where St. Michael thrashes Satan and his lackeys, Satan and the rebel angels falling from the sky into a fiery subterranean pit - are just illustrations that try to convey the indescribable truth into something more ‘palatable’ for us.
(To answer your question, I have a gut feeling that this probably one of the reasons why the sin of Adam and Eve could affect our universe: we’re in a material, finite plane of existence. We have concepts of ‘time’, ‘space’, ‘place’. I could be wrong though - somebody please correct me here is I misstated anything.)
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bisco1
Guest
‘get thee behind me satan’!
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patrick457
Guest
Just a quick recap. What does the Church teach concerning Satan’s ‘fall’? From the Catechism:
(391) Behind the disobedient choice of our first parents lurks a seductive voice, opposed to God, which makes them fall into death out of envy. Scripture and the Church’s Tradition see in this being a fallen angel, called “Satan” or the “devil.” The Church teaches that Satan was at first a good angel, made by God …]
(392) Scripture speaks of a sin of these angels. This “fall” consists in the free choice of these created spirits, who radically and irrevocably rejected God and his reign." We find a reflection of that rebellion in the tempter’s words to our first parents: “You will be like God.” (Gen 3:5) The devil “has sinned from the beginning” (1 Jn. 3:8); he is “a liar and the father of lies” (Jn 8:44).
That’s it. The only things the Catholic Church actually says along those lines AFAIK are: that God created the spiritual/angelic ‘world’, composed of angels who are endowed by God with sanctifying grace which gave them a title to Heaven. However, some of these beings had rejected God of their own free will, losing the divine grace gifted to them and being punished with eternal torment - separation from God (= Hell) in the process. On the other hand, those angels who cooperated with God’s grace merited to see God face to face (= Heaven). One of the angels who rejected God is the one we call ‘Satan’ or the ‘devil’ (among other names).
On the other hand are stuff like Satan being originally named ‘Lucifer’, ‘Lucifer’ being the ‘greatest’ (in a matter of speaking) angel, ‘Lucifer’ saying ‘I will not serve’ to God’s face, St. Michael shouting to the angels ‘Who is like God?’, a literal war of arms between the good angels and the bad angels, Michael spearing/wounding ‘Lucifer’, the defeated ‘Lucifer’ and the rebel angels falling from the sky into a fiery pit underneath the Earth’s crust. The Church doesn’t teach as far as I know that those things are literally factual, or that they are a matter of belief.
(In any case, I don’t think angels have ‘names’ like we humans do; ‘names’ are after all human concepts. So I highly doubt that God actually said to the angels back then, “Okay, I’ll call you Lucifer, this one here’s Michael, and over there’s Raphael” or that ‘Lucifer’ had an actual name change after his fall. We just call them ‘Michael’ or ‘Gabriel’ or ‘Satan’ because for us, it’s easier to recognize and think of someone or something that has a name - that’s how important names are for us. I mean, saying ‘Michael’ or ‘Raphael’ is way better than saying ‘Angel A’ or ‘Angel B’. However, just because it’s important for us, does not automatically mean it’s important for beings different from us such as God or angels.)
Just as I said, you shouldn’t confuse the pious legend with the actual teaching. Just because the old tale of “Lucifer’s” rebellion and the ‘war in Heaven’ is, as Cisco says, kind of hole-y (pun intended) does not compromise the Church’s belief in fallen angels. Because it’s just that - a story, one that tries to convey the concept of angels disobeying God and falling from grace into something we can grasp more easily. That would be like saying those popular analogies which compare the Trinity to stuff like a three-leaf shamrock or an egg (which are imperfect) compromise our belief in one God in three persons, which they don’t.
(391) Behind the disobedient choice of our first parents lurks a seductive voice, opposed to God, which makes them fall into death out of envy. Scripture and the Church’s Tradition see in this being a fallen angel, called “Satan” or the “devil.” The Church teaches that Satan was at first a good angel, made by God …]
(392) Scripture speaks of a sin of these angels. This “fall” consists in the free choice of these created spirits, who radically and irrevocably rejected God and his reign." We find a reflection of that rebellion in the tempter’s words to our first parents: “You will be like God.” (Gen 3:5) The devil “has sinned from the beginning” (1 Jn. 3:8); he is “a liar and the father of lies” (Jn 8:44).
That’s it. The only things the Catholic Church actually says along those lines AFAIK are: that God created the spiritual/angelic ‘world’, composed of angels who are endowed by God with sanctifying grace which gave them a title to Heaven. However, some of these beings had rejected God of their own free will, losing the divine grace gifted to them and being punished with eternal torment - separation from God (= Hell) in the process. On the other hand, those angels who cooperated with God’s grace merited to see God face to face (= Heaven). One of the angels who rejected God is the one we call ‘Satan’ or the ‘devil’ (among other names).
On the other hand are stuff like Satan being originally named ‘Lucifer’, ‘Lucifer’ being the ‘greatest’ (in a matter of speaking) angel, ‘Lucifer’ saying ‘I will not serve’ to God’s face, St. Michael shouting to the angels ‘Who is like God?’, a literal war of arms between the good angels and the bad angels, Michael spearing/wounding ‘Lucifer’, the defeated ‘Lucifer’ and the rebel angels falling from the sky into a fiery pit underneath the Earth’s crust. The Church doesn’t teach as far as I know that those things are literally factual, or that they are a matter of belief.
(In any case, I don’t think angels have ‘names’ like we humans do; ‘names’ are after all human concepts. So I highly doubt that God actually said to the angels back then, “Okay, I’ll call you Lucifer, this one here’s Michael, and over there’s Raphael” or that ‘Lucifer’ had an actual name change after his fall. We just call them ‘Michael’ or ‘Gabriel’ or ‘Satan’ because for us, it’s easier to recognize and think of someone or something that has a name - that’s how important names are for us. I mean, saying ‘Michael’ or ‘Raphael’ is way better than saying ‘Angel A’ or ‘Angel B’.
However, just because it’s important for us, does not automatically mean it’s important for beings different from us such as God or angels.)Just as I said, you shouldn’t confuse the pious legend with the actual teaching. Just because the old tale of “Lucifer’s” rebellion and the ‘war in Heaven’ is, as Cisco says, kind of hole-y (pun intended) does not compromise the Church’s belief in fallen angels. Because it’s just that - a story, one that tries to convey the concept of angels disobeying God and falling from grace into something we can grasp more easily. That would be like saying those popular analogies which compare the Trinity to stuff like a three-leaf shamrock or an egg (which are imperfect) compromise our belief in one God in three persons, which they don’t.
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patrick457
Guest
Sorry for posting again, but I have another thing to add.
You have to consider the context in which this passage appears in Revelation.
(12:1-2) A pregnant woman “clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars” appears in the sky
(12:3-4) Ten-headed red dragon also appears, sweeps a third of the stars of heaven to the earth; waits before the woman to devour her offspring
(12:5-6) Woman gives birth to “a male child, one who is to rule all the nations with a rod of iron;” child is taken up to God; woman flees into the wilderness, into “a place prepared by God, in which she is to be nourished for 1,260 days”
(12:7-9) “War in heaven” (the sky?) between Michael’s forces and the dragon’s forces; dragon - “the ancient serpent, who is called the devil and Satan” - loses and is thrown down to the Earth
(12:10-12) Interlude featuring “a loud voice in heaven”
(12:13-14) Dragon pursues the woman; woman flies away to the wilderness using “two wings of the great eagle”
(12:15-16) Dragon spews water out of its mouth to drown the woman; the earth rescues her by “[opening] its mouth”
(12:17a) Dragon gets angry, goes off to “make war on the rest of her offspring, on those who keep the commandments of God and hold to the testimony of Jesus”
It’s true that verses 7-9 do refer in some way to the primordial ‘fall’ of Satan and the angels. But we Catholics believe that in Scripture there are different senses or layers of meaning - there is not just one ‘correct’ meaning the text carries. So this meaning is just one of possible others. And even then, it’s not the ‘main’ sense of the passage, if you go by the overall context (the conflict of the Woman - Mary/Israel/the Church - and the dragon). This ‘war’ can also be interpreted - this time taking the context into consideration - as symbolizing spiritual warfare within the Church: the dragon (= Satan) attacking the Church (= the woman / ‘Heaven’), whose protector is St. Michael (Michael is identified in Daniel 10:13-21 as the protector of Israel; since we Christians believe that the Church is a new Israel, isn’t it fitting that Michael be the Church’s guardian as well?)
In any case, divorcing these three verses from their context and oversimplifying them as being an actual, factual record of the primordial fall of Satan does not do justice to the text, where you have symbolism after symbolism popping up.
L
livingwordunity
Guest
See this thread:
Pope Francis talks about angels and demons in a morning meditation
Pope Francis talks about angels and demons in a morning meditation
meltzerboy
New member
Just a quick note: the multi-layered approach to textual interpretation (i.e. hermeuneutics) is certainly to be found in Judaism as well; but not in regard to Revelation.
Very informative. Carry on…
E
ericc
Guest
Theologian Frank Sheed described the testing of angels and humans before having Beatific Vision. In Job 4:18 angels failed that test. We don’t have much information about abode conditions in heaven pre-test. i.e. presume innocent till fallen into error. But we know that post-angelic fall nothing unclean can enter heaven.
The word satan in the OT wears different cloaks and progressed through the ages.
- It can be used as a description of an adversary, an accuser, a servant of God. In Balaam’s Donkey, Nums 22:22. God send an angelic adversary, a satan, to oppose Balaam’s journey. They are doing God’s bidding.
- In Job, Satan (with a proper name) appears in the heavenly court where he challenges God’s servant Job to determine whether he is truly a man of faith. Satan operates within God’s instructions.
- In 1 Chonicles 21, Satan has decidedly taken an opposing stance against God.
J
juliamajor
Guest
meltzerboy;12m572994:
Just a quick note: the multi-layered approach to textual interpretation (i.e. hermeuneutics) is certainly to be found in Judaism as well; but not in regard to Revelation. Who do you think us Catholics learned it fro
Very informative. Carry on…
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