94chem said:
The Banned said:
94chem said:
The Banned said:
94chem said:
The Banned said:
ramblin_ag02 said:
FTACo88-FDT24dad said:
94chem said:
FTACo88-FDT24dad said:
PabloSerna said:
They may have limited knowledge, however, what they know, they know perfectly.
Which is also why there is no possibility of redemption for those who said "non servium" to God and why the other angels were immediately confirmed in grace and welcomed into the beatific vision.
I don't understand all of those words you just used, but the reason all of the angels aren't fallen is because they no longer have a will. There's only one perfect will. Every other will is in rebellion.
The angels still possess free will, just as they did at the moment of their creation. However, it is essential to understand the nature of their will. At their creation, angels were endowed with free will and faced a fundamental choice to either serve God or reject Him. This choice was definitive and irrevocable. Those who chose to serve God became the heavenly angels, while those who rejected Him became the fallen angels, led by Satan.
After this initial choice, the will of each angel became fixed. Heavenly angels are confirmed in grace and continually choose to serve and worship God. Their wills are aligned perfectly with God's will, and they do not sin. Angels' choices are always in harmony with God's plan for creation.
So the angels (as opposed to the fallen angels) have free will and NEVER rebelled against God. They are confirmed in grace such that they always do God's will and that makes them perfectly free because true freedom is not merely the ability to choose whatever one desires without constraint, but rather the capacity to choose the good, to act in accordance with God's will, and to align oneself with the truth of one's nature as created by God. In that sense angels are perfectly free creatures.
The only way I buy this is if all angles are human. After all, an angel is just a messenger from God. It would not be wrong to call all of the prophets angels, as their entire job was delivering messages from God. Could God use supernatural entities as messengers? Sure he could. IIRC though, every instance of an angel seen in the Bible outside of a vision appeared as human. So I guess in that case angels would have free will as long as they are human.
I don't buy that supernatural entities have free will. Man was made in God's image, and God's existence is defined more than anything by His irresistible Will. Therefore, man being the image of God means that man has limited will. It's not like we're patterned after his physical form as God the Father doesn't have one. Nowhere do we see supernatural entities incontrovertibly sinning against God, which is what would prove they had free will
So are you and 94chem saying that God made Satan because he wanted sin and evil to enter into the world? Satan rebelled and instigated the fall of mankind. If God made him with no will, it means he was created with this express purpose in mind. This is a step even Calvin would not take, even if his view of monergistic salvation required it.
Are you saying that Satan is THE cause of sin in the world? Not sure St. James would agree with that. Or M. Night Shyamalan.
I do find it odd that those who outright object to the allegorical possibility of the Genesis story don't typically address the topic of what this abject evil demon is doing in the middle of a perfect garden. But I digress...
Satan is evil. God created him that way. That means God created evil. Or do you not believe Satan is evil?
I guess we could say God didn't technically create sin in this situation if Adam and Eve were truly free to make a choice and the devil wasn't, but I don't see that as any better than God being the creator of evil.
I'm not saying he was created evil. I'm saying he was created with a will. Isaiah 14 and Ezekiel 28 seem to address how he chose to use it.
so when you say
Quote:
I don't understand all of those words you just used, but the reason all of the angels aren't fallen is because they no longer have a will. There's only one perfect will. Every other will is in rebellion.
you're saying Satan still has a will but the other angels don't?
Demons have wills that are incapable of repentance. Angels have wills that are incapable of rebellion. They were free at one time, but I do not think they are any longer. And by "free," I of course mean in the paradoxical context of an "omni" God...good luck working that one out.
I 100% agree with your first two sentences. I think that is definitely the case. The way I understand it is that the angels were not yet permitted into the beatific vision prior to the test that would determine their fate. So before being allowed into the beatific vision, God had infused them with natural knowledge that gave them understanding far beyond anything we can comprehend and then gave them a choice to serve or not serve him knowing all that they knew by virtue of their natural, angelic knowledge. This is why their choice in response to the test was fully determinative and permanent. God gave them all the knowledge they needed to able to make a fully informed and free choice so once they did, their fate was sealed. I think where you and I might be disconnected is in whether the angels (as opposed to the demons) continue to enjoy free will after making their determinative choice. I think perhaps the key to clearing that up is how we understand freedom in the context of beings that are fully confirmed in grace, like the angels.
True freedom consists of choosing what perfectly conforms to God's will and is perfectly consistent with your nature. I think that is true whether we are talking about angels or humans. From the perspective of that definition of freedom, angels are perfectly free, even though they are not capable of choosing anything other than doing God's will and fulfilling their natural duties/ends.
Compare all that to our situation where we were created in a less informed condition (our knowledge was/is significantly less than what the angels had before the test) and God's plan seems to have been to bring us along in due course according to his plan helping us to grow more and more in understanding and in depth of relationship with him until such time as we would be able to be admitted into the beatific vision. [side-note - this is why I think the Incarnation happens even if we never sin]. He gave us the Garden and ALL that it had to offer (which is much more than metaphorical fruit) but restricted us from accessing the tree of the knowledge of good and evil because he knew once we went there without him, we were headed for the same permanent end that the demons chose. Instead, God graciously cut us off from that permanence and then sent us down a different path that is the salvation history we all know today. Our free will is intact but it's definitely not what it was before the fall and it's much less than it can and will become as we grow in holiness, which is just another way of saying as we partake more and more of God's divine life and become more and more conformed to Christ.
No human being has been freer than Christ nailed to the cross. It's paradoxical to us but it's the clear truth of the spiritual physics of the Incarnation and the passion, death and resurrection of Jesus. He was perfectly and freely conformed to God's will in that moment of unimaginable suffering and that is why his sacrifice of himself perfectly atones for all sin, past, present and future. The first person of the Trinity is not punishing the Second Person of the Trinity in that moment. He's looking at how the Second Person willingly took for himself the consequences of sin that he didn't deserve out of love for those who did deserve them and acknowledging the infinite merit of such a selfless, loving act by a perfectly innocent and just man, an act of perfect agape love. And the First Person accepted that sacrificial, agape love as an atonement. It was a perfect sacrificial love offering, given in perfect freedom on behalf of the world.
Our freedom and our love increase as we are conformed to God's will. And let me preempt any thoughts about Pelagianism. I am with Augustine in that while we're able to freely choose to do good and merit in God's eyes, we can only do so because of God's grace working in us.
The more I freely choose to do what God wants, the more free I am and the more truly loving I become and the more conformed I am to God's will the more free I am and the more loving I am and the more I am conformed to God's will, ad infinitum.
We will spend eternity growing deeper and deeper in love with our Creator, worshipping him, praising him and doing his will and doing all of that in an ever freer state, which is what he created us for from the beginning and when we think we have plumbed the depths of God's goodness, truth and beauty we will realize that we haven't even begun to begin to plumb those depths and we will continue to grow freer and more loving forever.
