Why did the angels rebel if they were absolutely sure they cant win?

[Glomung]

This is my own supposition, based on nothing more than my own somewhat educated musings but here goes:

the angels were created in all their multitudes and everything was going just peachy,
at some point God revealed His intention that another (Jesus) should be revered just as He is and that all should “bow the knee” (show reverence),

here is where pride and lack of trusting God comes in

2/3 of the angels said “sure Boss whatever you say, who’s the new guy?”

1/3 said “forget it, I bow to no upstart!”

But we probably won’t know the real answers til judgement day.

 

[sophion]

You don’t understand what pride is.
Enjoy your debate.

from webster:

Pride:

a : inordinate self-esteem : conceit
b : a reasonable or justifiable self-respect
c : delight or elation arising from some act, possession, or relationship

Conceit:

excessive appreciation of one’s own worth or virtue

i think conceit best describes the kind of pride we are discussing here. right?

 

[MarcoPolo]

Why did the angels rebel if they were absolutely sure they cant win?
its suicide.

Pope John Paul II reflected on this very question in his catechesis on the angels. Here’s what he said:*How are we to understand such opposition and rebellion against God in beings endowed with such profound and enlightened intelligence? What can be the motive for such a radical and irreversible choice against God? Of a hatred so profound as to appear solely the fruit of folly? The Fathers of the Church and theologians do not hesitate to speak of a “blindness” produced by the overrating of the perfection of their own being.*Read his whole Catechesis on Angels in context for more info. It also speaks of free will and whatnot.

Think of it how we sometimes stay out late while having fun even though we “know” we will be exhausted and grumpy in the morning, but we turn a blind eye to that, overrating the short term effect at the expense of the long term. On a grander, far more serious scale, this is what happened to the fallen angels.

 

[empther]

1. In a sense, the devils did win. They wanted to be like God in the sense of being independent. They wanted to do things their own way. They didn’t want to serve God.
   They got what they wanted. Independence. They would not change their minds now.
2. Being created with great intellects that thirst for knowledge, they are now miserable because they are cut off from that knowledge. Still, they want their independence.
3. While not omniscient like God, they fully understood what they were doing,
   and they were under no compulsion to do what they did, as humans are subject to stresses in this life. The devils had no excuse.
4. The “war” in Heaven, vaguely referenced to in Scripture, was probably an attempt to get more angels to rebel. We cannot know the exact nature of this war. But is certainly was not a war to take over Heaven. The devils knew perfectly that tha was impossible.
   Their pride would not let them attempt something they knew was impossible and would lose.

 

[R_C]

1. In a sense, the devils did win. They wanted to be like God in the sense of being independent. They wanted to do things their own way. They didn’t want to serve God. They got what they wanted. Independence.

This one I never heard

I can imagine them in hell, amidst weeping and gnashing of teeth, saying: “yay, we won!!”

Jokes aside, the demons do think, in their pride, that he is winning. Someone kindly admonished me not to quote the saints out of context, however I’d like to quote a statement by Padre Pio:

“do you think that Satan, under the foot of St. Michael, considers that he has been defeated? No, he claims to have defeated the archangel.”

 

[Sacred_Heart_1]

so they thought they could overthrow god? interesting.

It may be that they are just trying to overthrow God since they lack absolute certainty of whether they will succeed. It is perhaps that they see something within their own corruption that fortifies their attempt to overthrow God.

 

[Linusthe2nd]

men are not absolutely sure that god exists. thats why there’s faith.

even people with faith, they commit sin believing that god would FORGIVE them. right?

Du hast recht. !

 

[Robertanthony]

1. In a sense, the devils did win. They wanted to be like God in the sense of being independent. They wanted to do things their own way. They didn’t want to serve God.
   They got what they wanted. Independence. They would not change their minds now.
2. Being created with great intellects that thirst for knowledge, they are now miserable because they are cut off from that knowledge. Still, they want their independence.
3. While not omniscient like God, they fully understood what they were doing,
   and they were under no compulsion to do what they did, as humans are subject to stresses in this life. The devils had no excuse.
4. The “war” in Heaven, vaguely referenced to in Scripture, was probably an attempt to get more angels to rebel. We cannot know the exact nature of this war. But it certainly was not a war to take over Heaven. The devils knew perfectly that tha was impossible.
   Their pride would not let them attempt something they knew was impossible and would lose.

I don’t agree with your 4th point. Isaiah 14:13-14 seems to contradict your view.

 

[Robert_Sock]

Why did the angels rebel if they were absolutely sure they cant win?
its suicide.

before you answer ‘pride’ please think about how pride is applicable against a certain sure death. in every case fear wins.

The “bad” angels rebelled because they were being demoted, to serve man.

 

[HansTrappist]

The “bad” angels rebelled because they were being demoted, to serve man.

In his 1948 Life article “The Devil” books.google.com/books?id=skgEAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA77&lpg=PA77&dq=the+devil+%2B+whittaker+chamber+%2B+life&source=bl&ots=E7TMGQ9xOR&sig=enNJ5I4W-hh1Vjf7F1ufbC6Dvuc&hl=en&sa=X&ei=TXybUJOcIeSn0AGjp4HYDw&sqi=2&ved=0CDwQ6AEwAw#v=onepage&q&f=false) Whittaker Chambers overhears a conversation between the Devil and a Pessimist. Part of it stood out as relevant to the subject of this thread:

“Just what do you get out of it?” asked the pessimist.

“My friend,” said Satan, “you do not understand the Devil’s secret. But since shamelessness is part of my pathos, there is no reason why I should not tell you. The Devil is sterile. I possess the will to create (hence my pride), but I am incapable of creating (hence my envy). And with an envy raised to such power as immortal minds can feel, I hate the Creator and His Creation. My greatest masterpiece is never more than a perversion - an ingenious disordering of Another’s grand design, a perversion of order into chaos, of life into death.”

“Why?” asked the pessimist.

“If I knew the answer to that one,” said Satan, “perhaps I should not be the Devil. Perhaps it is simply, as every craftsman knows, that nothing enduring, great or small, can ever be created without love. But I am as incapable of love as I am of goodness. I am as insensitive to either as a dead hand is to a needle thrust through it.”…

…The Devil’s voice grew less harsh and he dropped his hand to his side in a gesture of weariness. “Goodness,” he said, “is a perpetual benediction, the seed within the minute husk which is the promise of the summer, the unmultiplied image of the harvest. Not to know goodness is not to understand creation. In no way is my mark more clearly on the modern world than in the death of the creative imagination.”

“And yet it is at this very point that man, the monstrous midget, still has the edge on the Devil: he suffers. For at the heart of all human suffering is the anguish of the chance that that creative seed of goodness, that little flash of inward light, however brief, may not perpetuate itself, that a man can leave this life, this light, without communicating that one cell of himself which is real. Not one man, however base, quite lacks the capacity for this specific suffering, which is the seal of his divine commitment - this suffering which I cannot feel because of that light which in me is dark. Intellectually I can understand it since, by my origin, I share the intellect of angels. But I cannot feel it or I would not be the Devil. That is the source of my frustration and root of my rage against the breed. That is why I shall never cease working to entangle man in evil until the world becomes one universal graveyard whose lifeless peace is broken only by my shriek of triumph as I plunge into a deeper pit than Hell. For only One knows better than I that should I succeed in making man destroy himself, I will destroy myself with him, having destroyed my function. It still lies with man to make the choice (after all, the filthy beetles have free will): a skeleton beside a broken wall on a dead planet purged of all suffering because purged of all life; or Him, with all that that entails.”

 

[R_C]

1. In a sense, the devils did win. They wanted to be like God in the sense of being independent. They wanted to do things their own way. They didn’t want to serve God.
   They got what they wanted. Independence. They would not change their minds now.

Actually I have to get back to you on this one. I was just reading a book by St. Louis de Montfort, “the Secret of Mary”, one free from doctrinal errors, on which S. Pius X, Pope, wrote with his own hands “we fully approve the diffusion of this booklet”, that there are three kinds of slavery, and here is an excerpt:

The second is a slavery of compulsion. The devils and the damned are slaves of God in this second sense.

Is there any independence in slavery?

 

[zro_x]

I know I’m a little late for this thread, but I only came to catholic answers two days ago, and this seems like a fascinating topic.

They rebelled because they could not accept the fact that they were mere creatures. They refused to obey and worship their Creator.

Remember, Lucifer was the most powerful, beautiful, intelligent creature ever created by God. Yet he had a free will. Lucifer refused to take all that power, and beauty, and intelligence and worship and obey God.

As to what caused Lucifer to rebel, theologians still debate that. Most think it had something to do with the man’s creation and God’s incarnation.

Huh? that makes no sense. God became incarnate in order to die on the cross. God would not have needed to die on the cross if not for original sin, which happened because adam and eve were tempted by the devil. The devil tempted adam and eve because he had become evil by rebelling against god, and he rebelled because he didn’t want to worship a human/god hybrid? this seems a lot like circular reasoning to me.

 

[zro_x]

2/3 of the angels said “sure Boss whatever you say, who’s the new guy?”

1/3 said “forget it, I bow to no upstart!”

just out of curiosity, where did you get these numbers?

 

[Wandile]

just out of curiosity, where did you get these numbers?

Revelation 12:3-4

Then another sign appeared in heaven: an enormous red dragon with seven heads and ten horns and seven
crowns on its heads. 4 Its tail swept a third of the stars
out of the sky and flung them to the earth. The dragon
stood in front of the woman who was about to give birth,
so that it might devour her child the moment he was
born.

The stars are angels. Oh and just so you know who the “dragon” is :

Revelation 12:7-9

Then war broke out in heaven. Michael and his
angels fought against the dragon, and the dragon and
his angels fought back. But he was not strong
enough, and they lost their place in heaven.The
great dragon was hurled down—that ancient serpent
called the devil, or Satan, who leads the whole world
astray. He was hurled to the earth, and his angels with
him.

 

[zro_x]

Revelation 12:3-4

Then another sign appeared in heaven: an enormous red dragon with seven heads and ten horns and seven
crowns on its heads. 4 Its tail swept a third of the stars
out of the sky and flung them to the earth. The dragon
stood in front of the woman who was about to give birth,
so that it might devour her child the moment he was
born.

The stars are angels. Oh and just so you know who the “dragon” is :

Revelation 12:7-9

Then war broke out in heaven. Michael and his
angels fought against the dragon, and the dragon and
his angels fought back. But he was not strong
enough, and they lost their place in heaven.The
great dragon was hurled down—that ancient serpent
called the devil, or Satan, who leads the whole world
astray. He was hurled to the earth, and his angels with
him.

I see. Thanks!

 

[Alindawyl]

Huh? that makes no sense. God became incarnate in order to die on the cross. God would not have needed to die on the cross if not for original sin, which happened because adam and eve were tempted by the devil. The devil tempted adam and eve because he had become evil by rebelling against god, and he rebelled because he didn’t want to worship a human/god hybrid? this seems a lot like circular reasoning to me.

Some theologians have speculated that God’s way of letting the angels choose for or against submission to God was first telling them that creation was going to include creatures who have rational souls like the angels but also material bodies, and then telling them that the second person of the Blessed Trinity would, at the proper time, incarnate as one of these spiritual/material hybrid creatures in order to elevate and divinize material existence. Some of the angels, Satan chief among them, then rebelled at the thought of God uniting the spiritual to the material because they viewed it not as a divinizing of the material but as a dilution of the spiritual. Thus the source of their rebellion was not a simple “I will not serve because I want to be in charge” statement of pure pride, but a far more complex action rooted in a lack of trust in God. It basically boils down to, “God wishes to lower himself to the level of mere matter. I cannot worship matter. As God no longer deserves our worship, it falls to us to remain true to the pureness of the spirit and fight against this disgusting mix of the pure and impure that calls itself God. THAT is what I will not serve, this God who has left perfection behind and turned himself into what is base and disgusting. I may be turning my back on true charity, but that’s only because true charity turned its back on me first”.

It would also mean that the incarnation and ascension were part of God’s plan regardless of our actions, but the crucifixion and resurrection then became necessary as a consequence of the fall.

I don’t know that I agree, but I do find it plausible. We fell from grace basically because we didn’t place our trust in God (God warned us to not do this, but do I trust what he says?), and Satan fell from grace because HE didn’t trust in God either (God says that this is good, but do I trust what he says?). It would also suggest that beliefs such as gnostic dualism, about the spirit being inherently pure and good but the flesh being inherently evil, are rooted in Satan’s influence. Of course he would want to influence us to view the material as base and disgusting and impure, but the spirit as pure, because Satan’s actions seem to indicate that that’s exactly what he believes.

 

[RobbyS]

We can only project from what sacred scripture has revealed to us on the mind of God but…

…lets say some angels got rebellious and started murmuring against God over his attention and love shown to man. At a certain point God had enough and confounded the dissidents by putting the idea into their minds that they could win. Thus then the open rebellion.

Thanks a traditional explanation. But angels don’t”think” as we do. They from the moment of their creation would make their choice.

 

[RobbyS]

Some theologians have speculated that God’s way of letting the angels choose for or against submission to God was first telling them that creation was going to include creatures who have rational souls like the angels but also material bodies, and then telling them that the second person of the Blessed Trinity would, at the proper time, incarnate as one of these spiritual/material hybrid creatures in order to elevate and divinize material existence. Some of the angels, Satan chief among them, then rebelled at the thought of God uniting the spiritual to the material because they viewed it not as a divinizing of the material but as a dilution of the spiritual. Thus the source of their rebellion was not a simple “I will not serve because I want to be in charge” statement of pure pride, but a far more complex action rooted in a lack of trust in God. It basically boils down to, “God wishes to lower himself to the level of mere matter. I cannot worship matter. As God no longer deserves our worship, it falls to us to remain true to the pureness of the spirit and fight against this disgusting mix of the pure and impure that calls itself God. THAT is what I will not serve, this God who has left perfection behind and turned himself into what is base and disgusting. I may be turning my back on true charity, but that’s only because true charity turned its back on me first”.

It would also mean that the incarnation and ascension were part of God’s plan regardless of our actions, but the crucifixion and resurrection then became necessary as a consequence of the fall.

I don’t know that I agree, but I do find it plausible. We fell from grace basically because we didn’t place our trust in God (God warned us to not do this, but do I trust what he says?), and Satan fell from grace because HE didn’t trust in God either (God says that this is good, but do I trust what he says?). It would also suggest that beliefs such as gnostic dualism, about the spirit being inherently pure and good but the flesh being inherently evil, are rooted in Satan’s influence. Of course he would want to influence us to view the material as base and disgusting and impure, but the spirit as pure, because Satan’s actions seem to indicate that that’s exactly what he believes.

So the devil find all matter repugnant, which means that all that in the universe is disorderly May be a result from his rebellion?

 

[Alindawyl]

So the devil find all matter repugnant, which means that all that in the universe is disorderly May be a result from his rebellion?

The devil being repulsed by material existence is a reasonable speculation, but it’s still speculation. So I can’t present it as certainty.

What is certain is that God gave dominion of the earth to man, not to Satan. Angels are pure spirit with no bodies, so Satan can only cause disorder in the material world if he can get us to cooperate with him first. The disorder we see around us is our fault for willfully turning away from the responsibility with which God charged us and handing that dominion over to Satan when we fell from grace. If we were faithfully exercising our responsibility, as God intended from the beginning, Satan would have no power whatsoever over the earth.

 

[djames99]

The site www.newadvent.org explains everything about angels and why they chose the way they did. Aquinas is the most knowledgeable on this subject.

Select the “summa” link, then PRIMA PARS

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