Angels do not have free will, in the end Lucifer lacked the faith to keep his will and actions within God's grand design
From Isiah Scott
Angels and Free Will
Moses and Akkhenaton lived during the Aten spiritual reformation(1379-1262BC) in Egypt Judaism was impacted by Atenism, one area was the notion of angels and their will.
While angels clearly have will, understand scripture and are very powerful spiritual beings, their will is bounded by and subsumed by God’s will and design. A first approximation of the boundary of an angel’s will is that of a legal fiduciary of a guardian. That is, the guardian legally must always act in the best interest of the person they are charged with, not their own interests. But since angels are not corporeal, this definition is void of the real feeling of nature of angel’s incorporeal spiritual essence.
Unlike humans, angel’s interests are subsumed in God’s will and purpose. Even the bad angels are bounded by the limitations of God’s will and their incorporeal essence. The fact that the good angels are more powerful is evidence of the critical importance of their relationship to God in term of their will and power.
There was a good reason God elected not to give angels free will. We as Christian can only approximate God’s reasoning and should try to understand why God did not give angels free will within our fragmented and limited understanding of God grand design.
We must accept that most of why God refused to give angels free will is beyond our spiritual comprehension.
While there is a great debate about angels and free will that has raged for thousands of years, there is nothing in scripture to support angel having free will or more importantly God’s design that angels ever have free will. Angel’s role is that of a spiritual fiduciary and or operative of God. That is, the angels always act in the interest of God from whom they are, not their own interests.
Nor is there anything in pre-Christian, African, Nubian or Egyptian faith to support the notion of free will and angels outside of God’s grand design. In African faith the grand design takes precedence over the individual will. The notion of angels having free will appears to be an invention of Satan and later misguided men.
The danger of trying to graph free will onto angels is that it directly challenges God’s grand design. Secondary giving angel’s free will would change the critical spiritual relationship of man to God and their place in the balance of God’s grand design. The Bible is very clear on why God’s granted man free will. i.e. so man could completely surrender and submit his will to God freely. Man’s obedience to Jesus Christ as God was the key to his dominion over earth and his primary defense against Satan and other evil angels.
On a deeper spiritual level, to give angels free will, is to take our will back from God and open the door to Satan.
The dark side of the notion of angels having free will is that it is a cornerstone of a critical campaign by Satan and other to build a stronghold and wage spiritual warfare against Christian faith. Our children are being bombarded with books, videos and films that target the notion of angels and other spiritual beings having free will. This all out virtual reality attack on our children minds is weakening their ability to develop a strong spiritual connection with God.
Our collective lack of understanding of Angelology as a church and community weaken the shield of protection we should be providing our children and families.
Angelology a branch of theology that deal with a hierarch system of angels which relates to cabalistic Judaism and Christianity, is one of the ten major branches of theology, albeit a neglected one. Angelology as such suffers from a major lack of its foundations in African faith in general and Nubian and Egyptian god-consciousnesses contributions specifically. At the time of the development of the Bible, i.e. the Old Testament (Hebrew Bible), the notion of angels as being humanized was under serious attack by the Atenists and old guard within Hebrew thinking. The earliest Biblical books present angels as heavenly beings created by God, some whom appear to be endowed with free will. Later biblical books in the Tanakh present a stunningly different view of angels. The Jewish beliefs about angels and other spiritual bodies developed over the many years covered in the Bible. In the Book of Ezekiel, angels bear no relation whatsoever to the proto Zoroastrian understanding of what an angel was. In point of fact Ezekiel analysis share many elements common to Atenism. Moses was a historical person who lived in Egypt at the time of the Aten religion revolution by Akh-en-aton and was influenced by its momotheism. One of the aspects of Hebrew and Judaism most impacted was their notion of angels.
Christian mythology and folklore
I suggest this rejection of proto Zoroastrian by Ezekiel and other Jewish spiritual leaders is a function of the impact of Atenism. Our modern notion of angels is more impacted by books, videos game and films, than a serious reading of Ezekiel. Dante’s “The Divine Comedy” and Melton’s “Paradise Lost”, not reading the Bible has led to the common idea in Christian mythology and folklore of Lucifer as a poetic Satan.
Lucifer lacked the faith, not will
To study our fragile human spiritual struggle that daily fights the distortions of pride and arrogance is to start to understand the angels. Looking at the reality of angels via the human struggle and its insights remains only a crude approximation of the reality of angels. In the passage, Isaiah 14:12, it referred to one of the popular honorific titles of a Babylonian king: however later interpretations of the text of Isaiah, and the influence of embellishments in works such as Dante’s The Divine Comedy and Melton’s Paradise Lost, has led to the common idea in Christian mythology and folklore of Lucifer as a poetic Satan. Embedded in that mythology is the notion of free will as the basis of Lucifer’s rebellion. This falsehood had led to many misconceptions about free will and the will of angels.
Lucifer had a direct spiritual connection to God, but in the final analysis, his will, while not free, was still overcome by his pride and arrogance. In the end Lucifer lacked the faith to keep his will and action within God’s grand design. Lucifer’s rebellion was not will or free will, but the lack of will, i.e. pride and arrogance. Modern history and mythology has tried to replace his lack of faith, with reason, intellect and free will to explain away Lucifer lack of faith. The notion presumes the angels, however great their individual powers are, and they are limited powers within God’s design and will.
The Eurocentic view Christian mythology and folklore of will
I think therefore I am (have will) vs. God’s Grand design for angels and men.
St. Thomas Aquinas, in “The Summa Theologica” in answering the question of “whether there is will in the angels?” using the Philosopher, De Anima to notes that angels are immovable, and since they are incorporeal therefore there is no will in the angels. On the contrary, Augustine says (De Trin.x, 11, 12) that the image of the Trinity is found in soul according to memory, understanding, and will. But God’s image is found not only in the soul of man, but also in the angelic mind, and since it also is capable of knowing God. Therefore there is will in the angles.
In the modern debate on whether there is free-will in the angels the notion is offered by the writer St. Thomas Aquinas” the natural endowment of the angels belongs to them according to degrees of more or less: because in the higher angels the intellectual nature is more perfect than in the lower. But the free will does not admit of degrees. Therefore there is no free will in them.
In St. Thomas Aquinas model, angels are a higher order than man. And as such have free will. This modern deductive way of thinking about angels is traceable all the way back to the proto Zoroastrianism. But the St. Thomas Aquinas argument still misses the central point of departure, which is what is God’s grand design and where and how does endowment of angel fit in the design. The argument is framed around whether angels have will, not what God want to use it for.
Lost in the formal construct of the St. Thomas Aquinas debate is God’s will and God’s grand design for will. As stated above, this Eurocentic view Christian mythology logic of will is not found in African faith and understanding of angels and other higher spirits. African faith starts from an approximation of God’s grand design and cyclical relationships within that grand design as the primary point of reference, not the will or free will of the individual. Located within the collective will and task of the Grand design is the individual and submission to the greater purpose. The original and driving force of African and Nile theology is “God-consciousness” that differentiates it’s from an abstract concept will as the centralized agent of spirituality.
The problem of viewing angel’s behavior as free will
As best, trying to give angels free will is really trying to project human like elements to angels in order to see them through our eyes and experiences, rather than struggling to understand them outside of us. This task requires us to understand angels as some thing very different from us. Because we are human, we are limited in seeing God grand design and tend to reduce angels to our level of understanding.
The humanization via free will of angels, such as Lucifer took full form in the post Paul era western European Church. Central to this spiritual warfare is the challenge God design for angels and mankind. That is, the attempt to understand angels and their behavior in terms of free will is to limit the understanding of both free will itself and the will of angels. Also, the failure to see the direct consequences of pride on the human spirit and faith on both the will of man and angels leaves open the door to satanic thinking and action, commonly known as “do your own thing”.
History show us what happen when that happens.i.e. Human false pride i.e. do your own thing.
ProtoZoroastrian, Atenism and Judaism
The proto-Israelites struggle with polytheist and angelology like their neighbors in Canaan. Yahwism became the “official” religion at about the time of time the Davidic kingdom was established. While there is a good outline of angels in Ezekiel. The book of Ezekiel lack historical context with spiritual developments in Egypt, i.e.Atenism. The book of Ezekiel is said to have been written by Jews in captivity in Babylon around 571 BC. Ezekiel was a younger contemporary of Jeremiaken in Judah. It was only when the Biblical text began to be written down following the Babylonian captivity that the Israelite region began to be recognizable as Judaism as we know it. As such the Christian notion of angels is located during this period. But the issue of angels was already thousands of years old.
In the Book of Ezekiel, angels bear no relation whatsoever to the former Zoroastrian understanding of what an angel was or the free will beings we see in books or films today. The Ezekiel development of angel with no free will is very similar to the Egyptian Atenism notion of angel that become hegemonic around the time (1450-1410 BC) the story of Genesis was said to have been written.
There are too many parallelisms between proto-Israelites and Egyptian faith to over look the critical impact of latter on the former. While Atenism was a later attempt to reintroduce of the original Nile theology, Akhenaten rule, its genesis was thousands of years old. The Aten thinking both is embedded in and parallels Judaism development and its codification. As stated above, it was only when the Biblical text began to be written down following the Babylonian captivity that the Israelite region began to be recognizable as Judaism as we know it. The codification Judaism appears to follow some of the doctrine of the Atenism movement. Many of the Atentism followers would later form critical spiritual cells within the early Judaism.
Atenism notion of angel as spiritual operatives
Atenism notion of angel as only spiritual operatives of God was conditioned on the emphasis on man enlightenment a critical element of Akhenaten attempt to return to one God, i.e. the old way of faith. Because of the collective nature of all African notion of faith, free will has always been suppressed and replaced with either scientific enlightenment or collectivism. While there was the issue of many angels and gods, there was no issue of free will. In term of Atenisn there was a direct empower of man via scientific enlighten to his pace in God Grand design. The deeper understanding of the season, agriculture, math and sciences that was at the core of the Aten enlightenment was designed to bring man essence closer to God’s grand design via “God-consciousness”. This concept became the central force in Nile scientific thinking.
Amenemope (1900-1800 BC) believed that “God-consciousness was the determing factor in all conduct: that every moment should be lived in the realization of the presence of, and responsibility to God.” “Riches take wings and fly away.” “man propose, but God disposes” .His writing were purportedly translated into Hebrew and incorporated into the Old Testament book of Proverbs: Chapters 15, 17, 20, 22:17-24; and 22. The first Psalm was purportedly authored by Ameneope and was the heart of his teachings.
Because of the driving force of “God-consciousness” the Atenist spiritual faith there was a mark shift cause by Akhenaten and Atenist spiritual leaders from visual do anything gods and angels for sale in Egyptian theology to an abstract concept of Aten (Aton) centralized under his role. This was done in part to break the notion of free will and the political corruption controlling of the Egyptian affairs by the priesthood. The Jews who were in the Egypt at the times were very impacted by the rise of Atenism and the political transformation that led to it becoming state religion under Akhenaten. The notion God-consciousness was very powerful for the Jews. One of the strong Jewish reflections was the notion that the spiritual revolution would not have a political component like the Atenism did under Akhenaten. Rather the spiritual revolution would not directly threaten that Egyptian priesthood, like Atenism did but take roots first in the slave segment and consolidating the remains of Atenism and other Egyptian faiths. The early Christians were very careful to avoid the political mistakes of the Atenists, rather than try to take on the state reglion, they ask only to leave Egypt.
The impact of Atenism, I would suggest was later reflected in Ezekiel break with proto Zoroastrianism that also greatly impacted Jew thinking about angels. This break served to function as a spiritual organizing agent for the faith both in terms of Jews and other people in the Middle East and the Nile. One of the areas Atenism impacted was felt was an advanced concept of angelology that empowered man enlightenment via faith and love. These ideas were morally higher than other faiths surrounding them.
According to Ezekiel, Angels are reported to be spiritual operatives of God will, not free thinkers or policy makers of God.
The limiting of the understanding of angels historically is Zoroastrianism and other forms of Indo-European mythologies are the best-known case studies. African faith had the own problems, but the role of angels appears not to have been one. Free will as we know it was not a central aspect of African faith or society. Power is centralized in the King-God and the all powerful spiritual world access by the priesthood. The numerous gods and angels within the degraded Egyptian religion, was reflects of the evilness and corruption of the Egyptian priesthood and the general moral decline of the society. The Egyptian priesthood was imposing it will, not God grand design on the people of Egypt. The old faith had given way to spiritual corruption. The Atenist and other smaller spiritual orders understand the root or systemic spiritual issue, so did the Jews in Egypt.
The Nubians and Egyptians had an understanding of Angels depicting as God’s helpers and massagers that that predate both Judaism and the Persian influence of Zoroastrian and the notion of the Guardian angels comes from. During the Akhenaten, the Atenists attempted to reform and return Egypt to one God. There was a mark shift from visual gods and angels in Egyptian theology to an abstract concept of Aten (Aton). The reemergence of the one-God consciousness spiritual faith developed in the southern regions and urban cities and Nubian, moving north to the lower regions of the country. The capital was moved to the southern region by Akhenaten rule.
While Euro centric historians suggest this bold shift was a fundamental error on Akhenaten his Atenist spiritual leader’s efforts to consolidate his new faith, it was not lost on the Jews in Egypt at the time. Akhenaten forbade artist from making any images of Aton and related edicts he ordered that scribes use the simplified non-iconic form of writing, so more people could read the text. Angels were for Aton, abstract functionaries of God, not human-like free will beings. This very notion of free will and angels was what Akhenaten revolution was trying to move Egyptian away from.
I would suggest the Aten faith created a critical element in the organic and historical foundation of the Hebrews, Israelites and Islamic notions of angels as God’s operatives vs. free will agents.
The degree of borrowing from Atenism into Judaism is under debate, but that’s not the immediate point. The Jews own most of their culture and spiritual development to the Nile River imprint. The reality is that Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph rejected the notion of free will for angels because they witness first hand the destructive moral and spiritual consequences of free will. When thousand years later when Moses and other writers reduced to written words the first books of the Old Testament, Angels had no free will. The notion of free will was a foreign imported idea to Hebrew.
Central to the modern day argument for free will and angels is the story of the fallen angels. The fall of the Angels is not properly a scriptural doctrine, though it is based on Gen 6:2 and interpreted by the Book of Enoch. Abraham enters Canaan in 2091BC. The Exodus from Egypt took place in 1446. The development of the doctrine we know as an organized hierarchy of angels belongs to the Jewish literature of the period 200BC to AD 100. Tough superhuman, angels can assume human for: this is the earliest conception. In later Christian iconography, the use of wings is a conception used to denote the figure as a spirit. Depiction of angels in Christian art as winged human for, unlike classical pagan depictions of the major deities, follows the iconic convention of lesser-winged gods, such as Eos, Eros, Thanatos and Nike. In the Hebrew Bible, angels often appear to people in the shape of humans of extraordinary beauty, and often are not immediately recognized as angels. The various books of Enoch and the Ascension of Isaiah supply much information on the subject of angels. Isaiah is writing about 700 BC.