Do angels have free will?

[Paladin]

Q,

I do not think anyone here would be so neglectful of common courtesy as to debase scripture with the intent to offend anyone, however it would be helpful if we understood that a literal interpretation of scripture was the underlying premise of the discussion. It appears that several contributions to this discussion assume that an allegorical approach to scripture is acceptable.
The difference might decide whether our logic is inductive or deductive, not so?

[dauer]

There is nothing in my chumash that says angels fell.

But let us say that angels did fall. If this is true, what is to say that God didn't let them? What is to say that this was due to free will, and not due to God's own willing? What would the effect be for God to let angels fall, looking from the big picture?

[Quahom1]

Originally Posted by Paladin

Q,

I do not think anyone here would be so neglectful of common courtesy as to debase scripture with the intent to offend anyone, however it would be helpful if we understood that a literal interpretation of scripture was the underlying premise of the discussion. It appears that several contributions to this discussion assume that an allegorical approach to scripture is acceptable.
The difference might decide whether our logic is inductive or deductive, not so?

Really...

[Geist]

I believe in Guardian angels and they have free will. But looking at angels from the Bible it also seems that they have free will aswell otherwise how could they fall from grace without freedom to choose? and freedom to choose implies that they have free will.

[Bandit]

Originally Posted by lunamoth

Hi All,

I saw this in another forum (Cross and Flame, for those of you who know it), and thought it might add to this conversation.

from: http://www.beingjewish.com/basics/satan.html

Note, I removed several paragraphs to keep it from being too long, but I found the whole read quite interesting and helpful in understanding this view.



Hmm, guess it's still quite long. It seems to support the idea that at least in some circles of Jewish belief Satan does not have free will, nor is he fallen, but simply doing God's will. Interesting.

lunamoth

the only thing with that one is, God would be telling Satan & the 1/3, to do evil and cause chaos & confusion. I dont think God does this because HE is not the author of those things...but rather allows all until the Great Day...

why dont we have an angel thread in Christianity?

[dauer]

Originally Posted by Bandit

the only thing with that one is, God would be telling Satan & the 1/3, to do evil and cause chaos & confusion. I dont think God does this because HE is not the author of those things...but rather allows all until the Great Day...

That would make sense if it were a quote to help understand the Christian position, but it's a quote to understand the Jewish position in which God makes peace and creates evil, in which all things are from God and there is no Ultimate Power besides God.

It is said that when anything happens in the world it is because an angel makes it so. When the grass grows it is because an angel is saying, "Grow! Grow! Grow!" But why does the angel say "Grow?..." God willed an angel and willed that it should say grow. Even with Hasatan.

It is silly to judge a Jewish view of angels by Christian texts or a Christian view of angels by Jewish texts. That is not to say we cannot discuss the similar and dissimilar nature of angels, or discuss the textual basis for views on angels, but clearly the Jewish view is not the Christian view and the Christian is not the Jewish.

why dont we have an angel thread in Christianity?

This was in the Christian section but it got moved.

Dauer

Edit: And the Muslim is neither Jewish nor Christian.

[mee]

"And the angels that did not keep their original position but forsook their own proper dwelling place he has reserved with eternal bonds under dense darkness for the judgment of the great day." (Jude 6)

Angels were created as spirit creatures, having the prospect of eternal life in heaven. (Psalm 103:20; 104:4; Hebrews 1:7) That was their beginning, their "original position." "Their own proper dwelling place," or intended habitation, was in the invisible heavens. But certain angels presumptuously forsook their proper heavenly home. The apostle Peter said that they "sinned," and immediately thereafter he cited events of Noah’s day. (2 Peter 2:4, 5) This draws attention to the preflood time when "the sons [the fifth-century Alexandrine Manuscript of the Septuagint Version says "angels"] of the true God," apparently by materializing fleshly bodies, disobediently took good-looking women as wives. (Genesis 6:1, 2) Since cohabitation with women was unnatural for spirit creatures, these angels sinned by yielding to what for them was totally wrong desire. (James 1:13-15) Similarly, the "ungodly men" of whom Jude spoke desired to have immoral relations with persons of the opposite sex.

What happened to the disobedient angels served as a warning to Christians of Jude’s day, and serves as a warning to christians of modern times. Although those angels could escape death in the deluge by dematerializing, they were prevented from returning to their "original position" as holy spirit creatures enjoying the light of God’s counsel and approval. Rather, they have been reserved with "eternal bonds," with God’s powers of restraint, until the divine "judgment of the great day" of their destruction. Meanwhile, there is no indication that they can materialize fleshly bodies, and they remain out of Gods service, in dense spiritual darkness, in so-called Tartarus.—2 Peter 2:4

[path_of_one]

I hope my post wasn't offending people. As this isn't in the Christian forum, I just answered based on my reading of the scriptures and based on the Jewish understanding of angels and Satan to the best of my knowledge, and answered also from my own viewpoint since it is in the "mysticism" area. I was not trying to debase scripture in any way, but simply pointing out what I had found based on rabbis discussing this subject. I was, in fact, trying to uphold what I felt to be the correct reading of the scripture. There are OT scriptures, for example:

"See I have set before thee this day life and good, and death and evil." (Deut 30:15) KJV

"I form the light, and create darkness; I make peace, and create evil; I the Lord do all these things."
(Isaiah 45:7) KJV
that indicate that God is indeed, according to the Bible, the creator of all things, both good and evil (evil as in "adversity" and "calamity"). That is not to say that God creates our sin, but that He created a world with both good and temptation, good and adversity, for us to choose with our free will the narrow path.

I do think there are other spirit beings that do have free will and may choose to turn away from God just as we can. That is based on a complex amalgam of mythology and what fits with my own intuitive experience, but I figure I can state that here since it is a mysticism forum.

It is indeed unlikely that a unified answer will come out of this, because as I understand it Jewish, Muslim, and Christian viewpoints on angels are quite different based on related but different religious traditions. I'm finding the various views quite interesting, though. I didn't realize this was originally in the Christianity forum- I'm guessing it really was meant to ponder on "in Christianity, do angels have free will?" In which case, according to the mainstream traditions I know of, yes, since some of them became Satan and demons in the Christian worldview.

[Paladin]

Originally Posted by Quahom1

Really...

Q,

I'm sorry, but I'm not sure what this means. I do wish to impress upon you how seriously I take another's beliefs and mean no offense!

"If we shadows have offended, think but this and all is mended..."

[Quahom1]

Originally Posted by Paladin

Q,

I'm sorry, but I'm not sure what this means. I do wish to impress upon you how seriously I take another's beliefs and mean no offense!

"If we shadows have offended, think but this and all is mended..."

No worries. It means I was thinking aloud about what you were saying.

You really can't see my head nodding in this forum...

v/r

Q

[I, Brian]

Originally Posted by Paladin

Q,
"If we shadows have offended, think but this and all is mended..."

That you have but slumbered here while these visions did appear...



As for Angel's and Free Will - the mystical tradition seems to have Angels possessing no Free Will as a given, while humans have Free Will as a given.

As a possible aside within the topic of the thread, is the perception that Angels may have Free Will a specifically Christian variation on a theme - namely because God being opposed requires instruments that have the Free Will to oppose...?

[dauer]

I wouldn't say mystical traditions say humans have free will as a given. I've seen it suggested, I forget by whom, that human free will is entirely illusory. But it was from someone who was most certainly a mystic. I don't remember the source but I do remember that the type of source would have had to have been that of a mystic. It might have been Arthur Green. Not sure.

As a possible aside within the topic of the thread, is the perception that Angels may have Free Will a specifically Christian variation on a theme - namely because God being opposed requires instruments that have the Free Will to oppose...?

Islam has the jinn. I am not sure if jinnis have free will. Judaism does have its own demonology that most Jews are unaware of and I am not sure whether or not they are supposed to have free will or where they come from or whether they might just have been created under the influence of medieval Christianity.

I know that if a demon resides in someone's home somewhere then they can kill someone who enters their space, but they can also be taken to court (how Jewish) and they must and do cooperate and abide by the rulings of the court. But I know almost nothing about demons in Judaism and it's certainly not very en vogue now. I don't know if they do have free will or how they were created. Maybe someone else can help with those answers.

I'm not sure I agree with your thesis entirely as to why angels have free will in Christianity though. I think you may be correct but that it may also have had to do with the early and intense Helenization of Christianity. Supernatural beings with free will are more like gods than angels, with one supreme god to watch over them. Why does God have to be opposed in Christianity? Lacking this idea, what is lacking? Looking at it now, certainly there is a basic belief about this in Christianity, but is this belief needed in order to maintain other Christian beliefs or is it simply one of many that all fall together?

Dauer

[Bandit]

Originally Posted by dauer

That would make sense if it were a quote to help understand the Christian position, but it's a quote to understand the Jewish position in which God makes peace and creates evil, in which all things are from God and there is no Ultimate Power besides God.

It is said that when anything happens in the world it is because an angel makes it so. When the grass grows it is because an angel is saying, "Grow! Grow! Grow!" But why does the angel say "Grow?..." God willed an angel and willed that it should say grow. Even with Hasatan.

It is silly to judge a Jewish view of angels by Christian texts or a Christian view of angels by Jewish texts. That is not to say we cannot discuss the similar and dissimilar nature of angels, or discuss the textual basis for views on angels, but clearly the Jewish view is not the Christian view and the Christian is not the Jewish.



This was in the Christian section but it got moved.

Dauer

Edit: And the Muslim is neither Jewish nor Christian.

OIC. each religion needs there own thread & just call it 'angels' IMO

it still does not make sense Dauer, no matter what religion. if God made the angels to be evil on purpose, then He would be telling or forcing the angels to do bad cruel mean, things & that would not be a just & fair God. He would be an all around evil God for doing that & it would make Him a respector of persons.

so when i plant the grass seed, an angel says GROW & it starts growing.

[dauer]

Originally Posted by Bandit

it still does not make sense Dauer, no matter what religion. if God made the angels to be evil on purpose,

But the angels are not evil in Judaism. They are doing God's will. They only seem evil to you because you don't like what they're doing. For example as shown in the wonderful Wonka illustration, Ha-Satan is not an evil guy. He just runs sting operations for God, testing people, and serves as prosecutor in the heavenly court, so to speak. I may not like what God has instructed Ha-Satan to do, but that doesn't mean there isn't a good reason for it. It's true that some of them get jobs that make us mad sometimes, like the angel of death. But the guy's just got a job to do, and an important one. It doesn't make him a bad angel, just a misunderstood one, an angel with a bad rep maybe. They're two very different approaches to theodicy.

so when i plant the grass seed, an angel says GROW & it starts growing.

Literalism doesn't work with God-talk in Judaism and the same is true for angel-talk usually. There isn't really an angel saying grow. Angels are the manifested expressions of God's power in the universe. You plant the grass seed, so why does it grow? You water it, so why does it grow? Why does any of the universe function this way at all? The metaphor used in Judaism to speak about these functions of the universe are the angels, the messengers of God. They don't wear white robes and have wings and a harp and live up in the clouds. But some more examples:

If the sun comes up, an angel said (not literally) "Rise!". If the rain pours down, an angel said "Pour!" If an old man dies an angel said "die!" If a person's cancer heals, an angel said "Heal!"

But angels have no free will of their own, and no real power. They are merely expressions of God's will in our world. And because we are the ones understanding God's power in the world, some are inclined to understand it in more human terms. Others would say that there really are no angels at all and it is just God, and this wouldn't really be wrong either. It might be the majority opinion, in one way or another, but I'm not sure.

Dauer

[dauer]

I saw this on Wikipedia and I'm quoting it because it's relevant. It quotes Maimonides explaining the typical Jewish view of angels:

In the Middle Ages, some Jews developed a rationalist view of angels that is still accepted by many Jews today. The rationalist view of angels, as held by Maimonides, Gersonides, Samuel Ibn Tibbon, etc., states that God's actions are never mediated by a violation of the laws of nature. Rather, all such interactions are by way of angels. Even this can be highly misleading: Maimonides harshly states that the average person's understanding of the term "angel" is ignorant in the extreme. Instead, he says, the wise man sees that what the Bible and Talmud refer to as "angels" are actually metaphors for the various laws of nature, or the principles by which the physical universe operates, or kinds of platonic eternal forms. This is explained in his Guide of the Perplexed II:4 and II:6.

II:4



"...This leads Aristotle in turn to the demonstrated fact that God, glory and majesty to Him, does not do things by direct contact. God burns things by means of fire; fire is moved by the motion of the sphere; the sphere is moved by means of a disembodied intellect, these intellects being the 'angels which are near to Him', through whose mediation the spheres [planets] move....thus totally disembodied minds exist which emanate from God and are the intermediaries between God and all the bodies [objects] here in this world."




II:6



"...Aristotle's doctrine that these disembodied spheres serve as the nexus between God and existence, by whose mediation the sphere are brought into motion, which is the cause of all becoming, is the express import of all the Scriptures. For you will never in Scripture any activity done by God except through an angel. And "angel", as you know, means messenger. Thus anything which executes a command is an angel. So the motions of living beings, even those that are inarticulate, are said explicitly by Scripture to be due to angels.





...Our argument here is concerned solely with those "angels" which are disembodied intellects. For our Bible is not unaware that God governs this existence through the mediation of angels...(Maimonides then quotes discussions of angels from Genesis, Plato, and Midrash Bere**** Rabbah)...the import in all these texts is not—as a primitive mentality would suppose—to suggest any discussion or planning or seeking of advice on God's part. How could the Creator receive aid from the object of his creation? The real import of all is to proclaim that existence—including particular individuals and even the formation of the parts of animals such as they are—is brought about entirely through the mediation of angels.





For all forces are angels! How blind, how perniciously blind are the naïve?! If you told someone who purports to be a sage of Israel that the Deity sends an angel who enters a woman's womb and there forms an embryo, he would think this a miracle and accept it as a mark of the majesty and power of the Deity—despite the fact that he believes an angel to be a body of fire one third the size of the entire world. All this, he thinks, is possible for God. But if you tell him that God placed in the sperm the power of forming and demarcating these organs, and that this is the angel, or that all forms are produced by the Active Intellect—that here is the angel, the "vice-regent of the world" constantly mentioned by the sages—then he will recoil. For he [the naïve person] does not understand that the true majesty and power are in the bringing into being of forces which are active in a thing although they cannot be perceived by the senses.





The sages of blessed memory state clearly—to those who are wise themselves—that every bodily power (not to mention forces at large in the world) is an angel and that a given power has one effect and no more. It says in Midrash Bere**** Rabbah "We are given to understand that no angel performs two missions, nor do two angels perform one mission."—which is just the case with all forces. To confirm the conclusion that individual physical and psychological forces are called "angels", there is the dictum of the sages, in a number of places, ultimately derived from Bere**** Rabbah, "Each day the Holy One creates a band of angels who sing their song before him and go their way." Midrash Bere**** Rabbah, LXXVIII. When this midrash was countered with another which suggests that angels are permanent...the answer given was that some are permanent and other perish. And this is in fact the case. Particular forces come to be and pass away in constant succession; the species of such forces, however, are stable and enduring....[Giving a few more examples of the mention of angels in rabbinic writings, Maimonides says] Thus the Sages reveal to the aware that the imaginative faculty is also called an angel; and the mind is called a cherub. How beautiful this will appear to the sophisticated mind—and how disturbing to the primitive."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angels#Jewish_views

I wrote something on the previous page in my own words.

Dauer