Do angels have free will?

[17th Angel]

ARGH!

I forgot to mention Rev: 2:28.... I am slipping.

 

[InLove]

Will the real morning star, please stand up! Please stand up! Please stand up!

This bothers me, too, Angel. My best understanding so far is that in the Isaiah passage, either Jerome's transliteration of the Hebrew phrase does not work, or that he was actually pointing a finger at the Bp. of Calgliari, whose name was Lucifer, therefore comparing him to the king of Babylon. The rest of the Scriptures that use the term do appear to be describing Christ.

You probably already know all of this, but I thought I'd post to bump the thread because I was hoping for a number of Christian responses. I want to understand the issue better. Should we ask on that board? (It isn't that I mind hearing the non-Christian viewpoint, just that I am trying to narrow it down a bit.)

InPeace,
InLove

 

[Thomas]

According to the New Jerome Biblical Commentary, and the notes in the New Jerusalem Bible, the most part of Isaiah 14 (4-21) is a 'masal', a Hebrew term which the Greek translates as 'metaphor' (although in the Hebrew has a much broader meaning), and in this case comprises a Taunt-Song against the King of Babylon.

The terminology used, specifically the reference to the Day Star, 'shining star, son of the dawn' (v12) which the Vulgate translates as Lucifer, is in Hebrew 'heylel' which is a pun on the name Helel ben Shahar, a figure who, in Canaanite mythology, ascended Mount Zaphon, the mountain of the gods, to make himself equal to Elyon, 'the Most High' (Elyon is used in v14, and as 'Most High' is a name of The Lord, but it is also the name of El, the Canaanite divinity), and for which presumption he was cast down into the netherworld.

Isaiah is then likening the Babylonian king, probably Nebuchadnezzar (Jerusalem's destroyer), or Nabonidus (the last king of Babylon) to Helel ben Shahar. The previous verse "Thy pomp is brought down to the grave, [and] the noise of thy viols: the worm is spread under thee, and the worms cover thee" (v4) signifying that in the end even he is destined for the grave.

+++

The Patristic Fathers sought always to bring out the spiritual reading of the text (explicit to the Hebrew), a metaphysical context more acessible to the Hellenic mind rather than an apparently cosmological one (apparently because Hebrew cosmology is founded on the Immanent and active Presence of God, something absent in Hellenic philosophical cosmology).

So they translated 'Day Star' as Lucifer ('light bearer'), and as some scholars saw the principle of the fall in the account ...

"For thou hast said in thine heart, I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God: I will sit also upon the mount of the congregation, in the sides of the north: (Canaanite myth) I will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will be like the most High. Yet thou shalt be brought down to hell, to the sides of the pit." (v 13-15).

... Lucifer became a name, and largely the name, of the devil.

Since in Abrahamic belief there is no evil in God, then the devil must be a created being which became corrupt, and in this sense the only form of corruption is that which is contrary to the Divine Will, for it corrupts what is essentially good, and does so at the level of the will. So Satan, or Lucifer, was created as an angelic being, but fell. The sin of Satan and the sin of Adam are essentially the same – in putting one's self-will before the Divine Will.

Thomas

 

[Thomas]

Jean Danielou SJ wrote:

"The word angel has an essentially concrete value. It designates a supernatural being which manifests itself. However, the nature of this supernatural being is not determined by the expression, but by the context."
"Theologie du judeo-christianisme"

The nature of an angel then must be determined by its context. Abraham is approached by three angels (Genesis 18), and he speaks to them as Lord and to one as God, and that angel appears to make a decision that rightly only God can make.

The angel who appears to Mary (Luke 1) is without question an envoy, the archangel Gabriel. In fact, Gabriel is linked with the Holy Spirit, whereas Michael is linked with the Word.

The angel who enters the waters at the Pool of Siloam is not an envoy, but would appear a nature spirit.

So it depends on what kind of angel as to what degree of free will.

It's worth mentioning that the generalised idea of angel today bears little resemblance to theology, but is more the invention of the Romance Movement of the 18/19 centuries, based on the idealised anthropomorphism of Renaissance art.

Thomas

 

[InLove]

Hi Thomas,

Thanks for responding regarding the name "Lucifer". I had looked into all the study material I have, including the Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, and had not found all of that. I did, however, come to an independent reasoning that the way it was being used might be as a kind of refutation for anyone attempting to set themselves up in a false authority. It really can be quite confusing for readers unfamiliar with these details. Appreciate it....

InPeace,
InLove

 

[Phyllis Sidhe_Uaine]

[Originally posted by Thomas[/i]
Since in Abrahamic belief there is no evil in God,

Um, actually, in Judaism, G!d does contain evil since He "contains" everything. Ha-Satan is just the prosecuting attorney, not the embodiment of evil that shows up most frequently in Christianity.

bananabrain or dauer can expound more upon this topic since they're more familiar with the more traditional aspects of Judaism on more than one front.

Sorry.

Phyllis Sidhe_Uaine

 

[Thomas]

Hi Phyllis –

Um, actually, in Judaism, G!d does contain evil since He "contains" everything.

A fair point. I should have been more precise.

Ha-Satan is just the prosecuting attorney, not the embodiment of evil that shows up most frequently in Christianity.

Does that not then support my thesis, that there is no evil in God?

Christianity shifts the understanding of the adversary towards the idea of resistance to the Divine Will – "And (Satan) saith unto him, All these things will I give thee, if thou wilt fall down and worship me" (Matthew 4:9).

Now Satan might, as the prosecuting attorney, make such a case to show human fallibility, but the offer made is a lie, as soon as man succumbs Satan triumphs before God "See, I said I could break him," and none of the promises are forthcoming, that was never the object. So what Christianity brings out is that the lie only works if man is susceptible to its offer ... and this is the bit that Jesus concentrates on, He speaks of evil not as an abstract entity, nor as its experience as a test of faith, but as a reality of the fallen human psyche, and one that needs to be faced and overcome.

Mark alludes to the temptation of Christ in just two verses – basically it happened, but without a full knowledge of Jesus' inner experience and consciousness one cannot say precisely what happened.

Matthew and Luke's account (attributed to Q) goes into greater detail, as a means of pastoral exegesis, and Christ's forty days in the wilderness echoes the forty years in the desert – the parallels are there, notably that all Jesus' answers are quotations from Deuteronomy 6-8.

The three temptations of Christ are basically to cause him to sin against the Deuteronomic commandment to love God 'with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your might' (6:5) as such Jesus moves the adversarial thinking on, from an Hebraic question as to why bad things happen to good people, to a more pointed and profound tendency of the will to self-determination.

Thus the three temptations are those which all must face, and must overcome, by the Grace of God, if they are to enter into the Divine Life – a life in which sin and suffering has no place.

Thomas

 

[Dondi]

you see, that's where you and i would disagree - i don't think the two can be separated. riding your bike is not a morally neutral act if:

a) the place you choose to ride is wrong: on a busy road, across someone's pristine lawn, down a pedestrian street
b) how you ride it: cutting people up, running over stuff, going the wrong way up streets, jumping lights
c) associated acts: if you ride without a helmet and someone hits you in a car, you're more likely to be hurt, which causes them some degree of guilt because you didn't take care.

i don't agree that there is such a thing as a morally neutral act, therefore it is impossible to separate an act of freewill from one with some kind of moral consequences. bear in mind that what may seem "good" or "evil" to us may look completely different on G!D's moral compass, hence theodicy.

b'shalom

bananabrain

Even so, your only attaching these consequences to the possible result of the act, not the act itself. The mere fact of riding a bike has no moral law. What has moral consequences is my use of the bike. It is still my decision whether to ride on a busy street or alone in an empty parking lot.

Some of the examples you gave implied that I had a malicious intent, in which case I would agree that the choice would have moral implications. But in the example of riding without a helmet, or riding in a busy street could cause consequences attributed to stupidity, not moral intent.

 

[dauer]

Thomas,

In one sense the metaphor of God as Electrical Tower works to approach the Jewish concept of angels. There are power lines that carry His electricity down to the village. I've presented this material before from Rambam's Guide for the Perplexed, but it seems worth presenting again:

"...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."

"...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 find 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 Bereshit 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 Bereshit 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 Bereshit Rabbah, "Each day the Holy One creates a band of angels who sing their song before him and go their way." Midrash Bereshit 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/Angel#Jewish_views

 

[Live Laugh Love]

Ok, I'm not sure what this has to do with angels and free will, but I'll bight. In order for the earths magnetic field to weaken, the earth's core must begin to cool...oh wait. I see. Earthquakes will begin, the atmosphere begins to escape, continental shelves shift, radiation burns, weather patterns shift radically...(the angels carrying out the plagues...). and the beginnings of "birth pangs" of the world, as it did once before...

But isn't that mixing Christianity and evolution? And are you saying there are no angelic influences in this? (such as carrying out orders from God)

I see both sides of this "coin", but I'm curious which side you are looking at...



v/r

Q

No, this would not be mixing Christianity with Darwin's theory of evolution. Of course we have evolution to an extent... but not to the extent of Darwin's theory. EX: If a type of amphibian lives in a dark cave for hundreds of years, yes, that particular sect of amphibian will likely go blind. But, I'm sorry, bacteria cannot turn into a fish, then into a lizard, then into a bird, then in to a monkey, and finally into a human. The theory is ridiculous and has NO HARD PROOF (which drives me nuts because schools teach it, and Evolutionists preach it, practically as a "fact" in stead of a "theory"). Evolutionists have just as much "faith" in Darwin's theory than Christians have in Creationism. In the end, I guess we'll find out who's right. If us Christians lose, well, it won't really matter. If Evolutionists lose, well, they will have "hell to pay," so to speak. I like my end of the deal better ;-)

As for Revelation 8:10 and Earth's magnetic field...

Earth's magnetic field is weakening slightly, but that is due to the poles changing. We have no idea what this change will do to earth. We do see the changes happen on the Sun every 11 years, I think. When it happens on the Sun, it happens quickly. Earth's pole change will happen at some point--maybe quickly, or maybe a gradual event (our poles have been shifting for the last couple of years--"Magnetic North" is actually moving towards Russia at nearly 40 miles a year). But our Magnetic field is not "dying," it's weakening (or, more accurately, becoming distorted) due to the shifting. One day, our compasses will show north being south and south being north. HOW our earth will react to the changing of poles will probably depend on how fast it happens. If it continues at the current pace, we will probably have few changes. If it were to one day shift quickly, as it does on the Sun, we don't know what may happen. The weakening of the magnetic field opens Earth up to the Sun's devastating SOLAR STORMS more than space rocks--it is the effect of the solar storms that will be catastrophic to us, if it weakens much more (a bad one could send the entire world back into the dark ages).

Revelation is a very confusing book to read. I've read it more times than I can count, and I believe that the author himself was having trouble putting his experience into words. He went to a place not of this world, saw things that were beyond his comprehension, and I don't even know if the things written in Revelation are in chronological order due to the fact that there is no time in the place that God took him... back here in our world, he may have had trouble sorting out what things came first. But maybe not. Just a theory. Another thing to consider is that in the days that the author of Revelation lived, it was normal to compare events, people, and nations to a mixture of animals and figurative stories. So it is possible that Revelation is a mixture of literal and figurative events (due to the fact that the author may not have completely understood all of the things he was seeing). For instance, how would one from those days explain a nuclear bomb? To me, Revelation 6:12-14 sounds like a nuclear bomb, if if that's so, he did a really good job explaining it. But again, these are theories (not all of my own).

Nobody but God (not even Jesus or the Angels) know the day or time of "the end" (Matthew 24:36). When things start to happened, I'm sure Revelation will start to make more sense to us. And yes, Rev. 8:10 does sound like like a space rock of sorts that breaks apart high in our atmosphere, or causes acid rain, and poisons many of our waters. The "great star" could also be figurative for someone of power that falls during a war (and a nuclear bomb causes a great amount of fallout that poisons our waters--we've come a long way since Hiroshima).

All I know for sure is that when "the end of days" arrives, we'll have a better understanding of the events happening in Revelation.

 

[donnann]

No, this would not be mixing Christianity with Darwin's theory of evolution. Of course we have evolution to an extent... but not to the extent of Darwin's theory. EX: If a type of amphibian lives in a dark cave for hundreds of years, yes, that particular sect of amphibian will likely go blind. But, I'm sorry, bacteria cannot turn into a fish, then into a lizard, then into a bird, then in to a monkey, and finally into a human. The theory is ridiculous and has NO HARD PROOF (which drives me nuts because schools teach it, and Evolutionists preach it, practically as a "fact" in stead of a "theory"). Evolutionists have just as much "faith" in Darwin's theory than Christians have in Creationism. In the end, I guess we'll find out who's right. If us Christians lose, well, it won't really matter. If Evolutionists lose, well, they will have "hell to pay," so to speak. I like my end of the deal better ;-)

As for Revelation 8:10 and Earth's magnetic field...

Earth's magnetic field is weakening slightly, but that is due to the poles changing. We have no idea what this change will do to earth. We do see the changes happen on the Sun every 11 years, I think. When it happens on the Sun, it happens quickly. Earth's pole change will happen at some point--maybe quickly, or maybe a gradual event (our poles have been shifting for the last couple of years--"Magnetic North" is actually moving towards Russia at nearly 40 miles a year). But our Magnetic field is not "dying," it's weakening (or, more accurately, becoming distorted) due to the shifting. One day, our compasses will show north being south and south being north. HOW our earth will react to the changing of poles will probably depend on how fast it happens. If it continues at the current pace, we will probably have few changes. If it were to one day shift quickly, as it does on the Sun, we don't know what may happen. The weakening of the magnetic field opens Earth up to the Sun's devastating SOLAR STORMS more than space rocks--it is the effect of the solar storms that will be catastrophic to us, if it weakens much more (a bad one could send the entire world back into the dark ages).

Revelation is a very confusing book to read. I've read it more times than I can count, and I believe that the author himself was having trouble putting his experience into words. He went to a place not of this world, saw things that were beyond his comprehension, and I don't even know if the things written in Revelation are in chronological order due to the fact that there is no time in the place that God took him... back here in our world, he may have had trouble sorting out what things came first. But maybe not. Just a theory. Another thing to consider is that in the days that the author of Revelation lived, it was normal to compare events, people, and nations to a mixture of animals and figurative stories. So it is possible that Revelation is a mixture of literal and figurative events (due to the fact that the author may not have completely understood all of the things he was seeing). For instance, how would one from those days explain a nuclear bomb? To me, Revelation 6:12-14 sounds like a nuclear bomb, if if that's so, he did a really good job explaining it. But again, these are theories (not all of my own).

Nobody but God (not even Jesus or the Angels) know the day or time of "the end" (Matthew 24:36). When things start to happened, I'm sure Revelation will start to make more sense to us. And yes, Rev. 8:10 does sound like like a space rock of sorts that breaks apart high in our atmosphere, or causes acid rain, and poisons many of our waters. The "great star" could also be figurative for someone of power that falls during a war (and a nuclear bomb causes a great amount of fallout that poisons our waters--we've come a long way since Hiroshima).

All I know for sure is that when "the end of days" arrives, we'll have a better understanding of the events happening in Revelation.

If Jesus appears as a man well he does know because he is in ascended condtion no longer separated from his prehuman divine self but utilizes all aspects of himself so yes he does know times whatever. its the end of the world as we know it progression through acts of kindness , compassion ect. Its a healing thing.....get it? Its knowledge to know life processes which the world was lacking. It first starts with how you treat people but also how they treat you. One thing....god never tests you in bad processes its the good ones that show how much divine power you have as a human divine, Your judged on gods tests. Take Jesus as an example he healed the sick he didnt make people sick.

 

[Thomas]

Hi Dauer — how are you?
And thanks for this.

...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 here in this world."

This is the Aristotelian view, but not the Christian view.

Rocks are created pure matter,
Angels are created pure spirit,
Man is created as the unifier of the two ... man needs no mediator between himself and God, and the purpose of man is to mediate between God and creation.

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 ...

Christian doctrine would agree with this view.

"We are given to understand that no angel performs two missions, nor do two angels perform one mission."

Interesting. Aquinas demonstrated that each and every angel is the one and only instance of its species.

God bless

Thomas

 

[Etu Malku]

Interesting. Aquinas demonstrated that each and every angel is the one and only instance of its species.

Very interesting, exactly 'how' did Aquinas demonstrate this?