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At a writers’ meeting I attended recently, the challenge was to write some familiar story from the point of view of the villain. One did Wile Coyote. One did Voldemort. Someone did Pontius Pilate. Someone tried to write about the fallen angels from the Devil’s point of view. Nothing especially shocking about that; Milton did the same. I do not recall the details.
But then someone piped up, “That’s not the way it really happened.”
“What actually happened was that Lucifer was God’s first son. Before Jesus. He was God’s favorite. But he objected to angels not having free will. So God threw him out of heaven.”
Someone else across the table raised an objection: “No, that’s not right.”
And she responded firmly. “You can’t dispute that. It’s the real history.”
The meeting just moved on.
I too was in no mood to challenge something so mad. Especially since she was so adamant. But I was left wondering where this came from, and how she could possibly feel such certainty.
Of course Lucifer’s fall from heaven is not “history.” No historical account is beyond dispute, saying something is history does not end an argument, but even so, history is based on written records from the relevant time. No one was present at the war in heaven, taking notes. It is supposed to have happened at the beginning of creation, before the first man.
Nor does this woman’s account of Lucifer’s motive make any sense. If angels lacked free will, how could Lucifer himself rebel against God?
The Bible says Lucifer rebelled seeking to “make himself like the Most High.”
The Catechism of the Catholic Church says, para 392-3:
“This ‘fall’ consists in the free choice of these created spirits, who radically and irrevocably rejected God and his reign. We find a reflection of that rebellion in the tempter's words to our first parents: ‘You will be like God.’ …
It is the irrevocable character of their choice, and not a defect in the infinite divine mercy, that makes the angels' sin unforgivable. ‘There is no repentance for the angels after their fall, just as there is no repentance for men after death.’”
Lucifer and the fallen angels rejected God’s authority while in his presence. Just as the damned each individually and consciously choose hell at death, in the divine presence. This makes it unambiguous and irreversible. And for the reason Milton gives: “I would rather rule in hell than serve in heaven.”
So, this strange idea does not come from history, as claimed. It is not from the Bible. It is not from Church tradition, and it is not a logical thought. Perhaps this woman was getting her “facts” from some gnostic tradition? But I can’t find anything like it in the gnostic texts. There do seem to be references to Satan as God's elder son in some Mormon scripture; but not the part about free will.
How can someone be so certain of something so strange and counter to traditional understanding, something she might have read somewhere once, that she would assert it adamantly to a room of perhaps twenty people?
Was I dealing with a madwoman? Yet some at the table knew her well, and nobody thought her insane.
It seems to me a symptom of the present age. We have generally become untethered from any sense of truth or reality, so that anyone is free to believe anything, and impose it on those around them by strength of will.
Thus men can decide to be women, or women men. People can continue to believe debunked claims like the mass graves hoax, or the January 6 insurrection hoax, or the Charlotte “fine people” hoax, or the Russia hoax. When you do not believe in God, you can believe in anything, and people believe what they want to believe. Or become paranoid.
This idea of Lucifer as the righteous rebel does sound like something someone might want to believe, if they wanted to deny sin, deny the authority of God, and claim the right to do what they will.
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