_5_Good and Evil Angels

Originally all angels were positively good, not merely morally indifferent or even with a proclivity toward evil. Since the angels were created within the six days, God’s verdict of “very good” (Gen. 1:31) necessarily applies also to the angels. The existence of two classes of angels, good and evil, is due to the fact that some of the angels did not remain in the status originalis, but fell away from God into sin. Even if we do not translate the in John 8:44 with “The devil abode not in the truth,” but with “He stands not in the truth,” the fall is not denied, but presupposed as self-evident.12 The good angels are those who, when the rest fell, remained good and were by the gracious action of God so confirmed in the good (in bono confirmati) that they can no longer sin and fall away. Let others declare this state of non posse peccare to be a “fiction”; our faith is greatly strengthened by it. For God would not have appointed the angels to minister to us, the heirs of salvation, if the angels were not perfectly safe ministers and protectors. The evil angels are those who by their defection from God became evil and can nevermore become good (in malo confirmati). The opinion has been voiced in practically every age that also the devils might be converted and saved from eternal damnation; but this opinion is not shared by the devils themselves. They declared Matt. 8:29: “Art Thou come hither to torment us before the time?” The fire prepared for the devil and his angels is “the everlasting fire” (Matt. 25:41).

We cannot determine the exact time when some of the angels fell. We know, however, that the fall of the angels occurred before the fall of man, since man fell through the seduction of the devil (Gen. 3:1-14). John 8:44: “He was a murderer from the beginning”; the devil is the . As to the particular sin by which the defection of these angels from God took place, we cannot offer more than a surmise. The majority assume that pride was the original sin.13