De Moor IX:23: The Cause of the Wickedness of Demons, Part 3

[A fundraising update: We are about 30% of the way to our fundraising goal 25 new $100/month subscribers! Thanks be to God. If you are being blessed by the translation work, please consider supporting the work and speeding it on its way.  Click here to watch a brief video on the project.]

The fount of Evil is their Fall, Voluntary and Impudent, whereby these Angels defected from God, because they wanted to defect:  now, they were able to defect, because they were created mutable and liable to fall.  But the blame for this Fall is by no means to be cast upon God, who indeed foreknew the Fall of Angels, but the foreknowledge of God is not the cause of things; He decreed this Fall, but only to permit it, not to effect it; He permitted the same, not ethically, but only physically, through non-obstruction, which He was not obligated to do; neither did He subtract previously conceded Grace from them before the Fall, but only denied to them the Grace of Preservation, whereby He could have preserved them actually; but this is clearly not owed, which God by office owes to no man, but rather bestows upon whomever He pleases according to His good pleasure alone.

Should you ask, how were Spirits so excellent first able to induce themselves to so shameful a Fall from God? I respond, From this, that they, not rightly attending to their dependent state, neglect to solicit by continual prayers the preserving Grace of God; and so, left to themselves, they ran headlong into evil.  Thus the Most Illustrious ODÉ, de Angelis, section IV, chapter II, § 11:  The origin or principium of that sin was the abuse of free choice.  For, since they were furnished by God with a free will of acting, from which their natural faculties, which they had received as sufficient and consistent with their happy condition, or were able to use well or ill, yet in such a way that they were obliged not to confide solely in their own strength, but to ask of God help, whereby they might use their strength rightly, and thus to acknowledge their dependence, both physical and moral, on the Creator God as their Lord; these, with the help of God spurned, were left to themselves, and inclined and determined their own freedom of judgment and will unto that wickedness, of which we previously spoke, and thus in judging and then in willing and acting they abused their Free Choice.

Should you additionally ask, Whence were the same perverse thoughts of defecting from God able at the same time to occur to so many Angels?  For all the Evil Angels appear to have sinned altogether at the same time, and to have been cast down at once, not some now and others at another time.  I respond, that this is able to be conceived without much difficulty, that a certain One, according to the conjecture of the Majority, is held to have been the Leader of the Rebellion, under whose auspices the rest, having been incited by him, and having entered into the conspiracy, defected from God.  For, although TURRETIN, in his Theologiæ Elencticæ, locus IX, question V, § 3, prefers to leave this undecided, because he thinks that the affirmative position is able to be demonstrated by no solid reason or firm evidence from Scripture; yet he admits that the opinion just now set forth appears not improbable.  And rightly indeed, 1.  for Scripture makes mention of the διαβόλου/devil in the singular κατ᾽ ἐξοχὴν, pre-eminently, who is remembered to have sinned from the beginning, and to have seduced man to sin, John 8:44; 1 John 3:18; and so this one appears to have been the Leader of the rest in sinning.  2.  The Prince of devils is mentioned in Matthew 9:34, and to him a Kingdom is attributed, Luke 11:15, 17, 18.  That Principate and this Kingdom that Beelzebul appears to have obtained, when those joined themselves to him as his associates in the defection from God and rebellion; the same proceeded to obtain the same Principate after the Fall by the just arrangement of God, for no other reason, as it appears, than that in the Fall he was the one Captain and Leader of the rest; to whom the rest were delivered into servitude, in such a way that now they are neither willing because of wickedness, nor able because of impotence, to cast off the yoke of his rule, which they willingly assumed in the beginning.  3.  These rest are reciprocally called the Angels of the Devil and of the Dragon, as if marshaled for war under him, Matthew 25:41; Revelation 12:7, 9.  4.  That Prince, as the primary adversary of the kingdom of Christ, proceeded to incite the rest to evil, whence it appears that a conjecture is also able to be made concerning the first sin:  but, since he is the perpetual author of evil and the one Leader of the rest in the ongoing rebellion, that very Principate also makes for the aggravation of his final judgment, as it appears, above the rest, Revelation 20:10; Matthew 25:41.