Читать книгу Catholicism For Dummies - Rev. Kenneth Brighenti - Страница 57

After the angels were created but before they were in heaven, God put them to a test. To explain the point of this test, we first need to clarify what Catholics believe about heaven.

The Catholic Church teaches that once you are in heaven, you can never leave. (That’s a good thing!) You can never be tempted, either — whether you’re a saint (a human soul) or an angel. Heaven is being in the immediate, direct presence of God (called the Beatific Vision). Your intellect, which seeks truth, and your will, which seeks the good, are both perfectly fulfilled and satisfied in heaven. The same is true for angels. So, no one in heaven can sin or be tempted to sin.

Outside of heaven is a different story. Man and angel alike can be tested and tempted. Angels were created first, so their test was different than ours. We don’t know the exact nature of the angels’ test, but some theologians over the ages have speculated. Here are two such speculations:

 The angels were given a glimpse of the creation of human beings, and then God disclosed to them that out of pure love, He was going to invite the human race into heaven.

 God disclosed that men and women would sin, but God would forgive them and actually redeem them by becoming one of us.

No matter what the exact nature of the test, the end result is that one-third of the angels were unhappy with what God disclosed to them. Perhaps their pride resented that humans would be invited to heaven, or they were disdainful of the possibility that God would lower Himself to become a man and then raise human nature above angelic nature. Humans can look at Jesus as both King and as brother, but the angels in heaven see Christ only as Lord and King, surely another source of irritation to the rebellious angels.

Lucifer was the most intelligent of all the angels. He and one-third of the angels rebelled against God and refused to submit to His dominion. Saint Michael and the other two-thirds decided to remain loyal to God and fought against the angels who rebelled. Hell was created by God as a place of eternal punishment for Lucifer (who was thereafter known as the devil) and all the fallen angels who accompanied him.

It is not accurate to say that God created the devil. God created the angel Lucifer, who was intrinsically good and who freely chose to become bad. His evil decision cast him into hell.