/christian/ - Christian Discussion and Fellowship

>>820800

Pride and survival. The longer they try and get people the abandon God, the longer they get to not be damned. They know the time will come, but they are delaying it, with success (as long as God let's them, and He will).

Satan is the original reprobate.

Because Satan gets results. He still gets souls.

>>820800

Misery loves company. The devil itself want to spite our Lord as much as possible so it wants to damn as much people as possible.

>>820800

Because it is in satan's nature to lead people away from Jesus, by any means nesscary.

>>820800

Thomas Aquinas said that angels have such perfect will treat once they have made up their minds, they cannot change them. This, since Lucifer’s rebellion and loss of his title, not he or any of the angels who chose to follow him have even tried to repent. They only dig their heels in deeper.

>>820833

*that once they have made up their minds

>>820800

Because he is/was an angel with no Free Will. Once the choice was made to rebel against God he is sort of hard wired to rebel against God until the final Judgment.

It’s kind of complicated but basically all the angels were created as soon as they are created they are given a choice follow God or disobey them. They choose based on the nature of their will or some thing. Also they make this decision knowing full well they will suffer and eventually lose. They would make the exact same choice to rebel against God despite knowing all this.

Satan is the worst though because he HATES us he hated us so much because we would reach higher places in heaven then even the highest angel.

>>820800

Have you ever read Notes From Underground? The devil is kind of like that, I think. He's so miserable and twisted that, even though he knows his struggles are ultimately pointless and self-destructive, he's still going to keep them up til the end of time. Imagine a mad bull smashing its horns against a brick wall, forever.

Knower of divine things reporting in. I just want to say when we die we lose our free will too (in the majority of cases) in the same way angels have no free will. By free will I mean, in particular, the ability to self-reflect and change course. We lose that ability, that is something we only have while we are alive here on Earth. I don't mean free will in the philosophical definition. Anyways you are committed to a course that you can't change after you die. What separates people is that some are set upon a course to God (Heaven-bound) and others away from him (Hell-bound). Those who are to be separated from God in particular shall for awhile go upon their own strength, until eventually, they burn out and the second death happens.

The short answer to OP's question is simply this: It is the nature of Satan and his fallen angels. They can not do otherwise.

Be glad that for as long as you are in the flesh you may at least self-reflect.

>>820852

No you have free will still after you die. It’s more you won’t desire anything else if you go to heaven for you will be with the Lord. Those in hell on the other hand are corrupted beyond recognition and begin to despise God this process is apparently shockingly fast according to Saints who have been give visions of hell.

>>820901

I said not in the philosophical definition of it.

Here is how it works. You ever had a dream where you just can't think about what you're doing and you're behaving in an automatic fashion? It's exactly like that. A sort of stupor. You forget about yourself and act out a set course. It is a mercy unto those who have left behind their sin and it is absolutely horrible for those who abide in their sin still.

I know this from firsthand experience.

Your way of putting it is the same I just have one objection:

As for how fast it is, that varies. It can be very fast or it can be a process taking a very long time. It seems to me that, and this is partly influenced by the writings of others and partly my own observations, those who are particularly saintly and elevated in their consciousness and those who are particularly primitive and simpleminded tend to be the fastest. Whereas those who are greatly conflicted seem to take a really long time.

I would like to add: There's different stages you go through too and each stage can take a varied amount of time. There is also a process of continual revelation for those who are saved that goes on through their whole life and the next, which is AWESOME. We'll get to know more and more of God and sing his praises forever. Some people imagine this as this dreary, boring, terrible monotony but it's not like that at all. It's full of life, truth, and glory.

>>820906

The idea of slowly despising God is absolutely repulsive and terrifying. A slow, eternal decay into nothing.

>>820846

(Please keep in mind what I'm about to say is from Catholic angelology's perspective, Your Theology May Vary)

That's sort of in the ballpark of correct but still quite far from correct.

The Angels do have free will but they are extra-temporal, the words "still", "once", "eventually" and so on make no sense in this context.

The choice of opposing God is made but it's not made in any point in time, as there is no time.

For us I guess the closest approximation would be to say they choose continuously, but that too is only a projection of their reality onto ours, like a 2D picture of a 3D object, only gives you a rough idea.

To answer OP's question: it cannot be answered, because it's not a question that makes sense when you cross out time.

btw: we'll get to be extra-temporal as well, the Second Coming will be the last event to happen in what we understand to be time, after that (or perhaps: "as a result of that", as there is no "after") we'll experience God in all His timeless glory

Pretty sure Satan et al were created outside of time, so his perspective on the mortal plane is much different.

Have some Fr Chad Ripperger explaining angels and demons.