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johnnyjones
Guest
Christ died for humanity, not the angels. Where there is no salvation, there is no repentence. Once you made the choice as an angel, you bought it.
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Cirdan_XII
Guest
So in other word’s Lucifer’s rebellion was not due to choice but was inevitable?
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johnnyjones
Guest
No. As an angel you could make a choice but there was/is no forgivness for whatever the evil act may be. Have you ever read that Christ died for the angels? He died for the human race, not spirit beings (angels).
If it was the case that Christ died for angels, then of the miriads of demons (fallen angels), there would have been the possibility of returning to God in the third heaven. A demon is a fallen angel, they don’t come back to God and it looks like they can’t because there is no salvation for them.
It was stay or go with the angels, if you chose “go”, your gone for good.
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Della
Guest
Angels are not mortal beings who are limited to/live within time. They were created and live within the eternal “now”–there is no passage of time. So, when an angel was created he made up his mind then and there if he was going to serve God or not. Being an intelligent being, God gave him free will, but being a being who does not live within time, he cannot change his mind since there is no time in which he can do that. He simply is what he is and cannot change.
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tafan
Guest
I don’t disagree with any of this; but I have a question which I always struggle with. I noticed you said "when"an angel was created; which implies time. Is this not a delima? Yet an angel lives within the etermal now. If time is the sequence of events, what constitutes the sequence of events in the eternal?
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Della
Guest
Unfortunately, being limited by time and a language that requires time to express oneself, it’s the only way I could describe it. I think it is impossible for us humans to understand the eternal now. For us everything happens in a sequence of events. When we no longer live in time we will probably understand how it works. I imagine our limitation is one of the reasons we love time travel stories and wish we could “go back” to fix things or go forward to a “better world”–we want to be able to live in all times, but can’t. Angels do live in all times, so it is impossible for us to understand their creation, but no doubt they do.
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JDaniel
Guest
Tafan:
Actually, according to the Church, an angel is eternal but has its own duration measure. God is Eternal but does not have a duration measure. An angel has a beginning but no end. God has neither beginning nor end. (Obviously) So, an angel does not live in an “eternal now.” Why? Because they are not “infinite.” Only that which is infinite can exist in an eternal now. And this obviously makes sense, although it is very difficult to understand. (Source: The Teaching of the Catholic Church, Vol. I, Angels.)
God bless,
jd
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Della
Guest
Surely angels live in the eternal now, but they are immortal beings not eternal ones. The souls of the dead are in the eternal now, but they too are not eternal but immortal. Or am I missing something here?
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John_Martin
Guest
Angels are creatures of the creator, but not “physical” or bodily creatures as we are. However, being creatures, they were created “in the beginning” with the heavens, since they are “heavenly” beings.
As for Time, the “sequence” of creation of an angel and his beatification (as with the “good” angels) or his Fall (as with Satan and the “bad” angels) were all instantaneous - these things all happened instantaneously (creation, knowing all they knew, the will to love God or the will to love themselves above God, the turning to God or away, beatification or fall ). St. Thomas emphasizes that there is an order to things, even things that happen instantaneously - Being is created, the Intellect knows, logically followed (but not temporally followed) by the Will loving what it knows, and then the orientation toward what is loved.
From the instantaneous beginning Satan Fell, - in his being it was a logical sequence, but not in time - it took no time (literally) to move from knowing to willing to loving to turning away in the acting out of his love for himself.
John Martin
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JDaniel
Guest
Della:
I think a true eternal “Now” is that which is only attributable to the Infinite.
We live only in the Now, but ours is a rolling Now. It is pushed forward, so to speak, by the outermost forward wall of the past continuum and as it is it is continuously pushing ahead the outermost aft wall of the future continuum. Our awareness is only of the Now. So, in that sense, it can be thought of as “eternal-like.” Angels likely exist in a Now that is similar to ours. And, like ours, is, in my opinion, fleeting.
What are the differences? These are very hard to precisely define. For one thing, I think that angels are aware of duration from the very moment of their creation. The human soul’s awareness of its duration starts probably around the age of reason, if not older, and is precisely due to the motions of mobile beings in our environment. Secondly, I think we lose awareness of segments of time, for example, during periods of sleep or unconsciousness. I don’t think angels ever lose awareness of their duration. Thirdly, we are aware of time only because of our awareness of the motions of mobile beings in our environment. The duration measures of angels is probably not correlative with any motion of mobile beings, but is likely a function of their awareness of beginning.
God’s eternal Now is a function of His infinity, and not because of any correlation with the motions of mobile beings, or of any beginning. Neither does an infinite being move. Pseudo self-motion is a function of finite beings consisting of parts (-inside of parts). No amount of finite things or parts can ever add up to infinity. There is no exterior to Infinity, so there’s no “where” to move to. There are no “parts” interior to Infinity, so there is no internal movement of any kind. Thus we conclude to infinite eternality.
If by, “Surely angels live in the eternal now, but they are immortal beings…” you mean that angels live within the Eternal Now of God, then I would concur. All things that are, have their being “within (so to speak) God’s Eternal Now.” The *Oxford English Dictionary online * defines “eternal” as: “[SUP]1[/SUP] lasting or existing forever; without end.” So there’s no real problem in understanding it in terms of finite or infinite eternality. There’s no law that says it must be synonymous with “infinity.”
God bless,
jd
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John_Martin
Guest
When I was 6 yrs. old, introducing myself, I said, “I am John”. And now when I am 60 and introducing myself I say, “I am John”.
It is / was the same person, the same me, speaking. And, if you can visualize it, I am still that 6 year old speaking when, at 60, I speak.
When we go to mass, we are not repeating what we did last week, we are not continuing what we did last week, we are actually “in last week” and in the week before, and before… and “in the upper room”. Our souls contain all our “now moments” in one “understanding of ourselves”. Over time we learn about ourselves and reality and God, but we have one understanding of ourselves that is transcendent of time. Part of that understanding is that we are dining at the Lord’s table, and in time we weekly make our physical reality mirror what is truth in our understanding of ourselves, because our bodies move through time.
John Martin
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