2.2 The Life Cycle of the Angels

by Ulrich Utiger

Abstract

Since Adam represents both the angels and humans, the history of the angels is also described by the history of Adam. Four phases can be extracted from this description: the first phase is dominated by peace, the second by sin, the third by judgment and the fourth by salvation, that is, by restitution of peace. This life cycle is not only valid for the angels, who were created in the beginning, and the first humans but also for humanity as a whole. So the details given by the Eden account have to be decomposed into the different events they are referring to.

Contents

The Fall and Its Consequences
The Salvation Phase
References

2.2.1 The Fall and Its Consequences

The first phase is described in Genesis 2:5-25 because this passage refers to the life of Adam and Eve in Eden before their transgression. When applied exclusively to the angels, what can be retained from this phase is that all angels – even Satan and his demons – initially lived in a celestial paradise in perfect harmony with God, as discussed in section 2.1.2. By analogy, this was also true for the first humans. But they lived in a terrestrial paradise. More on this in chapter 2.3 and part 3.

The second phase is characterized by sin and is thereby described by the eating of the forbidden fruit of the knowledge of good and evil (Gen 3:1-8). On all levels (angels, humans, humanity), this disobedience is an aspiration to independence because the desire to know good and evil signifies the critical questioning of well-established policies and the wish to live according to one’s own principles rather than to obey imposed external rules. It is the desire to emancipate from God and to become like him but independently from him (Gen 3:22; Blocher 1984 pp. 130-133; Ratzinger 1996 pp. 68-71; Houziaux 1997 p. 111; Waltke 2001 p. 46), which is particularly true for Satan and his angels.

As outlined in section 2.1.2, the story about the king of Tyre (Ez 28:12-19) implies that Satan first lived in Eden as a splendid angel symbolized by the still legged serpent, who was smarter than all the other animals (Gen 3:1). Thereby, he was the first to have eaten the forbidden fruit and has not been seduced by anyone. The seduction of Adam and Eve in this context means that he then tried to seduce the other angels with more or less success. Thereby, he bears the ultimate responsibility for the existence of evil in the world. This is also why he has the most extreme position in his aspiration to independence. He is the leader in trying to win everyone for his rebellion and to overturn God by the largest defamation campaign that has ever been conducted.

It is often believed that the fallen angels sinned from the start, at the very instant of their creation (Parente 1994 p. 59; Kreeft 1995 pp. 93, 116, 119; Aquilina 2006 p. 11), which seems to be based on John 8:44: “He [the devil] was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth.” As discussed in section 2.1.2, however, all what God has created is good. Thereby, the demons were also initially created good. As a result, “The beginning” in John 8:44 cannot refer to the time of their creation. Since murder is mentioned, this passage must be linked to humans because angels are immortal. Therefore, Jesus may refer here to the beginning of humanity when Satan told lies to Eve and inspired Cain to kill his brother. In addition, Jesus uses “in the beginning” in the context of the first parents (Mt 19:4).

It is indeed rather straightforward that the sin of the fallen angels developed gradually and thereby did not attract an eternal punishment from the start. In Job 1:6 Satan is depicted as joining a reunion of the “sons of God” who presented themselves before the Lord. They discuss about Job, so this happens long after his creation. Ezekiel draws a similar picture in the allegory of the king of Tyre (sec. 2.1.2). Hence, at this moment they were not cast into hell yet, which happened only during Jesus’ ministry (Lk 10:18; Rev 12:7-9). According to Parente (1994 pp. 44-45), the fathers and the theologians are unanimous in admitting a period of probation for the Angels. Such a period is unlikely to have lasted just an instant.

According to scholastic theology, which today is still widely held as authoritative, it is believed that the good angels never sinned and remained in their initial holiness and supernatural grace they received from God when they were created. After the time of probation, they were elevated to the beatific vision as recompense for their withstanding. On the other hand, the angels who sinned would have remained in their depraved state – unlike humans, who can repent – because they committed their transgressions with perfect knowledge (Parente 1994 pp. 9, 33, 46-47, 61; Kreeft 1995 pp. 93, 116).

However, this does not seem to correspond to what Scriptures says about the good angels. Adam indeed represents an angel, and it is evident from the Eden account that he sinned. But this was not a sin that led to eternal damnation since he was just cast out of paradise but not into hell. This is also implied by a gradual increase of sin. Furthermore, in Job 4:17-18 one reads:

Can mortal man be in the right before God? Can a man be pure before his Maker? Even in his servants he puts no trust, and his angels he charges with error.

Here the angels charged with error are not the demons but God’s servants, those who are supposed to have never sinned according to scholastics. This is even more explicit in Job 15:15:

Behold, God puts no trust in his holy ones, and the heavens are not pure in his sight.

This is sustained by the parable of the lost son, who asks his father for his inheritance but squanders it recklessly abroad. Getting in trouble, he returns to his father, who hurries to meet him, welcomes him joyfully, gives him the best robe and shoes, has a calf slaughtered and celebrates his return with the whole household. But this saddens the fathers’ other son, who always stayed with him and never disobeyed him, complaining that he has never been treated like this (Lk 15:11-32). This shows that in order to get closer to God, one has to repent. But this implies that one has to sin before. In other words, one does not get closer to God by always staying without sin. So what characterized the fallen angels is not primarily that they sinned but that they refuse to repent.

Since all angels sinned, salvation was offered to all angels and reopened the gate to paradise for those who accepted being saved, but also opened the doors to hell for those who refused it. This universal offer of salvation is referred to by 1 Peter 3:18-20, which describes Christ’s descent into hell between the time of his death and resurrection. Salvation was therefore even offered to the fallen angels. But they did not repent and accept it, which made their torment definitive. Their rejection was predictable, but it was necessary that salvation be universal in order for nobody to be excused, following the principle evinced by John 15:22-24, which can be universalized and thereby also be applied to the angels as well as to all humans. So even those who ignored and will ignore Christ for any excusable reason during their life on earth can be saved. This implies the possibility for humans to be saved even after death and the existence of the purgatory.

It is important to acknowledge that the self-destructible behavior of the fallen angels is absolutely irrational (Kreeft 1995 p. 120) and not understandable to someone seeking salvation in God. The only ones who are able to fully understand their motivations are the demons themselves. But they will take their secret with them to their graves. Thereby, a rational theory of evil is impossible to establish. If it were possible, God would be responsible for evil. Pastor Alain Houziaux (1997 pp. 116-119) indeed believes that evil was created by God himself, claiming that Adam was not only created by God’s breath but also from dust, which would incorporate his inclination to rebel against his Creator…

What is probably understandable for most people is that nobody is perfect and that everyone makes more or less grave errors, for which one has to take account. But the eternal damnation demons consciously take on them is so terrifying that it is beyond understanding. However, this is precisely what Satan tries to exploit in order to seduce people: by behaving evil, he provokes God’s judgment and thus attempts to make out of him a victim. He thus defames God as an aggressor who throws innocent people into hell out of bad mood or false judgment. Thus, he tries to mislead people in order to bring them to sympathize with him rather than God, and to make them believe that God is unjust and imperfect, in other words, that not he but God is the evil one.

Now, this is not a complete rational theory about evil because it lets open the question why Satan is so opposed to God. Pride is often mentioned. While certainly required, pride is not a sufficient explanation, otherwise it would be a justified reason, contradicting the postulate that God is perfect. Many failed attempts have been made to explain evil, involving free will, grace, and so on. So at the end of the day, it is probably best to regard evil simply as irrational and to keep in mind that it is logically impossible to make a rational theory about something that is irrational. In other words, one should just acknowledge that evil exists but circumvent it like a mud hole. And God’s goodness should be considered as this: a postulate that cannot be proven but only be experienced and believed in. This implies that we have trust and faith in God, by which we will be saved (Jn 3:16-18).

 

2.2.2 The Salvation Phase

If only a part of the angels had rebelled against God, either immediately after their creation or after a probation time, and if their sin had been immediately irrevocable, there would have been no need for God to undertake further action. The good angels would have needed no help from God, supposing that they never sinned, and for the bad angels any effort to turn them away from their evil behavior would have been in vain. So this situation would have led to a static situation, unless one supposes that the material world was already in place at the time of the angel’s fall. In that case, one could argue that Satan seduced Adam and Eve, which would have made a rescue plan necessary to save humanity from doom.

However, it does not make sense to simultaneously create a material world parallel to the spiritual world. For what purpose would God have created living beings consisting of both spirit and body if the spirit can live without the body like an angel (Mt 22:30; Aquilina 2006 p. 97)? Since the Eden story refers to both the angels and man by the same Adam, both are created in the image of God (Gen 1:27), which implies that both got initial grace, free will, high responsibility, and so on. So humans are in a sense angels living in a mortal body. This is why on the spiritual level God created nothing new with humans, which raises the question why God created them?

Aquilina (2006 p. xvi) claims that the angel’s only purpose is to serve us as messengers or guardians. This would imply that humans are more important than angels. However, as admitted by Aquilina in the same sentence, they are much stronger and smarter than we are. So this would be very unlikely, even if both worlds had been created simultaneously because humans emerged only billions of years after the big bang. It is equally unlikely if the material world was created after the angels. In both cases, the angels got indeed a life completely independent from humans. So the question has to be answered, why God would have subordinated superior beings to inferior beings very late in time? This doesn’t make any sense.

The picture radically changes if one admits that the angels’ opposition to their Creator slowly emerged and more or less involved all of them long before humans were around. When Satan seduced Adam and Eve, he was indeed already a troublemaker because he lied to Eve with bad intentions. But his punishment was only the loss of his legs, not yet hell. This implies that it was weak in the beginning and thereby not irrevocable from the start, as discussed in the previous section. Such a situation requires that God takes further action, that is, sets up a redemption plan in order to save a maximum number of angels from their fatal aspiration to independence. This salvation plan is the same as for humans:

For in him [Jesus Christ] God in all his fullness chose to dwell, and through him to reconcile all things to himself, making peace through the shedding of his blood on the cross – all things, whether on earth or in heaven (Col 1:19-20).

In other words, Christ washed away the sin of both angels and humans, which is also confirmed by other passages (Eph 1:7-10; Heb 9:23-24). This seems to contradict Hebrews 2:16, which is often rendered as if Christ did not come into this world to help the angels but Abraham’s offspring. A more accurate translation as in the KJV, however, is that the Son of God did not take on him the nature of an angel but that of a human, thus referring to his Incarnation. So here is confirmed what in the previous section was outlined: the good angels are not called good because they never sinned but because they accepted redemption and turned away from their evil behavior, contrarily to demons who refused to convert. Consequently, the whole creation sinned, not only all humans but also all angels, which may be called universal sin analogous to original sin, which concerns only humans (Rom 3:19-23; 5:12).

Now, it becomes clear why God created the material world and humans: it was for the purpose of salvation by Christ, which implies his incarnation. Thus God became vulnerable in order to give his own life by dying on the cross (Ratzinger 1996 p. 38; Ross 2001b p. 57). Giving one’s life is the utmost someone can do for someone else (Jn 15:13). But in the spiritual world God could not die because he is immortal. This is why God created the physical world with living beings depending on food in order to become human and give us eternal life by his Eucharistic flesh (Jn 6:27-6:58). Christ is diametrically opposed to the Devil, who opposes God out of pride, he who, as a created being, has no reason to be proud. God, on the other hand, demonstrated utmost humility while nailed on the cross, he who, as the Creator of everything, would have all reasons to be proud. God thus defeated the Devil in showing his absolute goodness – contested by the Devil – in giving his life.

So the salvation phase of the angels began with Christ’s sacrifice. It is likely that this phase was preceded by an anticipated revival already starting with the creation of the material universe, for the angels probably knew God’s plan to make himself human for the sake of everyone (Parente 1994 pp. 64-65). With this perspective in sight, a lot of them may have converted looking forward to the future sacrifice of Jesus, which made their salvation definitive. This revival is therefore marked by different steps, spreading over a very long period, which will only finish when the history of the present world comes to an end.

It is more difficult to determine the place where the salvation of the angels is described in the Eden story. As we are going to see, the revival of Adam and Eve occurred with their offspring, that is, with the birth of Cain and Abel (Gen 4:1-2). The redemption of the angels, on the other hand, is not described by this passage. Since their history spans over the whole time of the terrestrial world and humanity, there are three contexts that have to be taken into consideration: the angels’ presence 1) at the creation of the physical universe, 2) at the time of the first humans and 3) at Jesus’ sacrifice.

The Bible gives hints to these three events. Concerning 1), it is Job 38:4-7 that testifies this event, as mentioned in section 1.1.1. Regarding 2), this is the speaking serpent seducing Eve to eat the forbidden fruit. As for 3), Genesis refers twice to Jesus’ sacrifice, as seen in section 2.1.1. The first reference is made with the sleep of Adam in the context of Genesis 2:5-25, which describes the initial peaceful phase. As a result, the angels’ redemption is referred to by this same passage. But there are also the fallen angels who have to be taken into account. They have no salvation because they decided to continue living in sin when the physical world as well as the first humans were created. They also refused Christ’s redemption. In Genesis, this is expressed by the second reference to Jesus’ sacrifice, that is, by the protevangelium (Gen 3:15; sec. 2.1.1) within the context of the phases of sin and judgment.

By his death on the cross, Jesus has indeed defeated he who has the power over death, that is, the Devil (Heb 2:14). There has been war between Michael and his angels and those of the Dragon, “that ancient serpent, who is called the Devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world”, but they were expelled from heaven and thrown down on earth (Rev 12:7-9; Lk 10:18; Parente 1994 p. 59; Kreeft 1995 p. 89). So this war continues on earth, which is why St. Paul recommends that we put on the “armor of God” in order to be able to resist the temptations of the evil angels (Eph 6:11-17; Parente 1994 p. 62; Aquilina 2006 pp. 83-85).

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References

1. Aquilina, M. (2006). Angels of God : the Bible, the Church, and the Heavenly Hosts. Cincinnati: Servant Books.
2. Blocher, H. (1984). In the Beginning: The Opening Chapters of Genesis. (D. G. Preston, Trans.) Leicester: Inter-Varsity Press.
3. Houziaux, A. (1997). Le tohu-bohu, le serpent et le bon Dieu. Paris: Presses de la Renaissance.
4. Kreeft, P. J. (1995). Angels and Demons: What Do We Really Know about Them? San Francisco: Ignatius Press.
5. Parente, P. P. (1994). The Angels: In Catholic Teaching and Tradition. Charlotte: TAN Books.
6. Ratzinger, J. (1996). Im Anfang schuf Gott: Vier Münchener Fastenpredigten über Schöpfung und Fall. Einsiedeln: Johannes Verlag.
7. Ross, H. (2001b). The Genesis Question: Scientific Advances and the Accuracy of Genesis (2nd ed.). Colorado Springs: NavPress.
8. Waltke, B. K. (2001). Genesis: A Commentary. Grand Rapids: Zondervan.

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