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17 December 2006
The Devil is Bad.
So I’m talking to a friend during the latest meeting of the ‘Three Mile Dissertation Club.’ For all you non-members out there, basically it’s a bunch of guys from work who spend our mandatory physical training run talking about all sorts of arcane theories, from philosophy to engineering to theology. I know it’s not as witty a name as ‘the Inklings,’ but we’re not as smart as they were. They got paid to be professors. I get paid to drive airplanes. So sue me. I would pay money, though, to have seen Tolkien and Lewis talking about Middle Earth while trying to run. I bet we’re faster. Anyways, so the topic of the day was Theology. The question comes up ‘can the devil be saved?’ Which is, after all, a pretty interesting question. Why is redemption applied to only one order of creation? To the golf course sign and back… ready, set, go.
Problem number one: anthropomorphism. Before we can even meaningfully approach this question, we have to construct a platform from which to ask the question. Maybe they’re not the same as we are. In order to work forward, we’ll have to look backwards and unravel some of our species’ inherent assumptions about the universe. Guess what? You and I and pretty much everyone reading this are terminally human. So we get to argue by analogy. Good times.
Big deal difference number one: progression of time. Human beings generally experience time as a sequence ordered by set astronomical (hence agricultural) cycles. Our metronome is tied to the physical. The earth rotates on its axis in a physically constant period of time, and many of those periods can be ordered into a new period where the earth revolves around the sun in another physically constant period of time. The relationship between the number of rotations in a revolution remains constant, so there is a hierarchy of ordering. A thing happens during a rotation, in a certain revolution. That thing is now meaningfully located inside our frame of reference. In physical time, that thing now has an address.
Human beings are physical beings. It is fitting that our metronome would be grounded in the physical. Biologically, we need to eat and drink and engage in less pleasant activities a certain number of times per day in order to sustain our flesh. Therefore, we allocate different portions of the rotation to the individual daily needs (already briefed,) and different portions of the revolution to the long term sustainability of the cycle (planting, harvesting, being cold and miserable.) A system of ordering involves both hierarchies and positions. Our positions are set by rotation and revolution of the earth. Our hierarchy uses rotations to subdivide revolutions. By numbering both, we can fix a location.
Spirits are not physical beings. So it stands to reason that their metronome would be different. Perhaps events. Perhaps logical necessities. Perhaps something metaphysical. If metaphysical events are the constant, time looks very different. Thing are assigned locations by their positions within the working out of metaphysical imperatives. Surely, they adapt to their battlefield and manifest in human (physical) time. But I do not think it is their native ordering. Strangely, even for us the passage of time bleeds around the edges between metaphysical and physical orderings of things. There are days that take lifetimes. But we live at the intersection of the metaphysical and the physical. We should be about to feel and interact in metaphysical time, at least to some degree. This may be that sense that God is at work in something. Like a plant on the banks of a river, we are firmly rooted to the soil, but we have a sense of the movement of the stream. But the natural environment of the angels is the river itself. They can step onto the shore, and manifest themselves in physical time, but it is something they put on, not something they are. Therefore, they will experience the effects of time far differently than we will. Hence…
Big deal difference numero dos: Growth. Physical time seems to deliberately have empty space built into it. As if the rotations and the revolutions force time apart, prying apart events to make room for quiet. This has something to do with what we are. We need the empty space as much as we need the events themselves. In that space, we reflect, and we change. We grow. The very ordering of physical time seems to imply growth. Not just a logical unfolding of a mathematical equation, but a drama where the characters are changed by playing their roles.
We are unique in this regard. We were built with the capacity to become something more and more completely over time, to grow into bigger and bigger shoes. Which is appropriate, given Whose shoes we are supposed to fill. With infinite time, we can infinitely pursue God, becoming more and more like Him, yet always still have an infinite distance to go before we catch Him. And this is why we are the viceroys, and not the angels.
Angels are more crystalline. They are created the way they are. So even if they are created initially with much more glory, they do not grow like we do. Hence, they can not be made in His image the way that we are; if God were to create them to be like Him, they would be like Him since eternity, and like Him in His completeness. This is impossible, for there can be only one ‘I AM.’ So if God is going to recreate Himself, He must give that recreation the capacity to grow and the room to grow. Our grounding in the physical gives us the capacity to grow. Physical time gives us room to grow. Our capacity to infinitely approximate but never quite reach the Most High is our crown as kings and queens, and it is intimately wrapped in our physical existence.
This leads us to an interesting aside: the garden. We all remember the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. I think I’ve heard it implied that it was put there solely as a test. In a certain sense, this is true. Like in Perelandra, such a thing allows us to move outside of our own will. Still, it seems inconsistent that a God who makes all good and perfect gifts would make a Pandora’s Box just to tempt us. There has to be a better answer. Let’s look to growth. A six year old is very different from a sixteen year old. Imagine that the six year old finds his parents car keys. The parents will tell him ‘no’ if he tries to start the car. They don’t need to explain why. It is not that the keys are bad, it is just that the child is not ready for them. When the child is sixteen, he is ready to learn how to drive, and the ‘no’ becomes a ‘yes, and let me teach you how.’ But if the six year old does not listen to the ‘no,’ he will crash the car and hurt himself. The car, intended for joy, becomes a cause of suffering when the child takes it without permission. So it was, I think, with the tree.
Anyways, so we grow. Angels don’t grow, or at least they don’t grow the way we do. They are what they are. Their capacity to change is limited, compared to ours. We incorporate new information over time, and hence we grow. But we are not some cold, iterated dialectic resolving itself. We are not all electricity, but flesh and blood as well. And flesh changes much quicker than minds do. Which brings us to…
Big difference number threve: Emotions. They change a lot. And they are very tied to the physical. Moods come and go, and are affected by the weather, by things we ate, and by biological cycles. They change how we look at things. Our emotions interface with reason in harmony or dissonance. As they play off each other, they shape both. Ideally, emotions provide us the fire to propel us on our journey, the fuel to move the engine of reason. After the fall, they may try to tear that engine apart when unchecked. They are the motive force behind growth. Reason cannot be moved in the same way that the heart can. In order to change reason, you either need new information, or you need to have your errors explained. If neither of these things happen, you will make the same difference over and over again as long as you remain the same person. And here we see our answer begin to take shape.
Imagine we made a decision once. What could happen to change that decision? For starters, our emotional frame of reference could change. That won’t happen for a purely rational being. We could learn something new, and that could change our mind. Which wouldn’t ever happen to a being who already sees clearly. We could grow into a different person, who would make a different decision given the same set of data. Which would never happen for a being who was created complete. All the things that can make us change our mind would never change the mind of an angel. They would make the same decision over and over and over again. So it would not really matter much if they could come back or not. They would not change their mind even if they were invited back to heaven. The decision they made once is the decision they would make always. Hence, fallen angels cannot be redeemed the same way fallen men can.
It is not that the door to heaven is necessarily locked to them, although it may well be. It is their own natures that bar them from reconciliation. Imagine a malformed lump of clay. It will never be able to reform itself into something beautiful, but it can be reformed by a master’s hand. Now imagine a piece of glass, shattered on the ground. The glass must be swept up and thrown away, for it cannot be reformed. The steel in the angelic nature that makes them such effective servants also bars them from redemption. And this is why it is such a grave offense for man to harden his heart. If we become brittle, we become like the broken glass. In Lewis’ words, we become impenetrable and unredeemable.
Which leads is to a far more important question than the mere academic concern over the redemption of angels. There has to be a motive to the angelic fall. Or at least a cause. We generally chalk it up to thinking the enemy thinking he could take the Throne. But I think this is wishful thinking. I don’t think we really grasp the depths of the fall. So we must ask ourselves, if our enemy saw things clearly, why would he go after the throne? He must have known he would lose. I mean, even us foolish humans can see that there was never any no hope for that at all. Even with all the wishful thinking in the universe, that plan is doomed to failure. So it must have been something else.
Satan becomes a slave to pride. Pride causes him to start taking good things and placing them in incorrect order. He is a good thing, a beautiful angel of light. Until he places the good thing of himself above the higher good of God. And this leads to war. Satan wants to hurt God. He can run the numbers. God is God. The Throne is untouchable. There is nothing he can do to take away from Him. So the only thing he can do is hurt someone whom God loves. And the target closest at hand is himself. God loves Lucifer. Lucifer hates God. Therefore, the best way for Lucifer to hurt God is to hurt himself. This is the mind of the enemy. This is nihilism. Death just for death, destruction with no end but itself. This should terrify us. But it should not be unfamiliar to us.
I’ve heard it said that the creed of a truly honest atheist goes something like this: ‘There is no God (and I hate Him.)’ In my experience, most atheists have been angry with God on some deep level. One girl I knew blamed God for the death of a friend, and decided that a God that would let her friend die was no God at all. She went to war with Him, because He took from her something that she cared about. Denying relationship was her way to get back at Him. She was right. This is the only weapon in a Divine rebellion. But it is a horrible one. This is the ultimate irony. To try to place yourself above God is to fight a war where your only effective tactic is that of the Kamikaze. You must destroy yourself in order to win, which will ensure that you lose. Find your life and you will lose it.
Of course, there is a complimentary and much better irony. Lose your life and you will find it. But it means that you have to surrender your unwinnable war. And this is our privilege as members of the human race. We can change our minds. We feel. We learn. We grow. Through the blood of Christ, we can change the worst choice we ever made into the best choice we ever made. May we take advantage of that opportunity.
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