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Originally Posted by Our House
I'm sorry, but everyone keeps dodging this question in the other threads. I'm going to stay on the topic until I get an answer.
Good angels have free will and are 100% good.
Satan and his angels have free will and are 100% bad.
I didn't read the thread to see if anyone answered sufficiently...
OH, you make statements that are often incorrect but you make them as if they're agreed upon. I don't understand the framing of your question and what you mean by it since it's your world and who knows what you mean, BUT what is not defined biblically is "good angels", "free will", and "100% good" as well as "bad angels" and "100% bad". So I'm going to define them within a biblical standard with the hope that we can get somewhere.
good angels = elect angels
free will = the ability to choose to follow God or not
100% good = always follow God
If we can change your first statement to:
Elect angels have the ability to follow God or not and always follow God.
Then we can progress.
Second, your latter statement should be changed to:
The non-elect angels have the ability to follow God or not and always do not follow God.
We immediately run into problems. With the first statement, biblically it is false-elect angels
only have the ability to follow God, and they do. With the second statement, non-elect angels were created originally with the ability to follow God
or not, and chose to rebel, which is necessarily within the sovereign plan of God as well.
Your definition of free will and applying it to angels is not biblically derived. It is your philosophical misunderstanding but is not the orthodox position.
Human beings were created
in God's image; angels were not. I Peter 1:12 says that angels don't understand certain deep elements of spirituality (sorry for the ambiguous wording) that human beings do. Your assignment of "free will" (whatever that is-as it's disputed within Christianity as well as philosophy) to angels is misappropriated. Angels and human beings are ontologically different, and I don't believe
any angels had what would be agreed upon as "free will", since they were created holy (man was neither created holy nor unholy, so he most closely can be considered as having free will--Adam and Eve (not us, since we are a product of the Fall)--supposing that this free will is within the sovereignty of God as all things must be biblically). I realize you very much most likely do not understand what holy means, either, but it does not mean perfect or unable to sin but rather in the case of angels it means set apart to God, whereas man wasn't created with this inclination.
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The question Christians must answer to have any credibility on the issue of evil:
Since free will is constant for both types, exactly what is that makes good angels do 100% good and bad angels do 100% bad?
1. Free will is not constant for both types of angels, as the elect angels
cannot rebel just as elect people cannot disbelieve.
2. What makes elect angels do 100% good is God's electing of them as integrated into their nature--they can only do good, as I have said.
What makes non-elect angels do 100% bad is also due to their nature, but is a little more involved, namely that since they have such vast and profound understanding of God (being created holy, being in the presence of God frequently, etc.), their decision to rebel was in full knowledge of all that it meant, therefore there is no informational possibility that they could change their minds. There are a couple of Bible passages which speak of people who gain a great deal of knowledge and spiritual experience in the true gospel and then decide, having full knowledge of what it means, to disbelieve--not only were they never regenerate in the first place, but there is no hope for them to be saved in the future since there is nothing they have not yet considered in their decision. Hebrews 6:
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For in the case of those who have once been (J)enlightened and have tasted of (K)the heavenly gift and have been made (L)partakers of the Holy Spirit,
5and (M)have tasted the good (N)word of God and the powers of (O)the age to come,
6and then have fallen away, it is (P)impossible to renew them again to repentance, (Q)since they again crucify to themselves the Son of God and put Him to open shame.
And Hebrews 10:
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For if we go on (AZ)sinning willfully after receiving (BA)the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins,
27but a terrifying expectation of (BB)judgment and (BC)THE FURY OF A FIRE WHICH WILL CONSUME THE ADVERSARIES.
So to summarize, elect angels do 100% good because it is in their nature to do so, being like elect people (in the sense that elect people cannot disbelieve), and non-elect angels do 100% bad because they have made an eternal decision by the nature of having full knowledge at the time the decision was made, much like people who truly understand the gospel, live the life of a Christian, but ultimately choose against God.