How come I never see Christians talk about their myth about the etiology of sin?
In the beginning God created all the angels good. One of these archangels, Lucifer, who was likely a cherub, wanted to usurp the position of God out of pride, introducing sin into creation for the first time. Lucifer rebelled against God and his law, lost a war in heaven, and became a fallen angel. 1/3rd of the angels in heaven followed him in their rebellion and became the demons. Lucifer, as the author of sin, came to be known as Satan or the Devil. It was he who corrupted the rest of God's creation with sin and death when he tempted Adam and Eve in the garden of Eden in the form of a serpent.
How come no one discusses this myth? It's like one of the last hints of a Gnostic myth in mainstream Christian theology that Catholics, Orthodox, and Protestants all hold a variation of.
How much of that is actually in the bible?
Most of it is just extra-Biblical legends. Angels and the spiritual realm in general are actually a very obscure subject in the Bible.
None of this is directly narrated in the Bible, but pieced together from information presented in Job 1-2, Isaiah 14, Revelation 12, and other snippets of what Jesus and Paul say in the NT.
Isaiah 14 is widely misunderstood. Firstly, it was an insult directed to the King of Babylon and Lucifer there was in reference to the planet Venus, the literal morning star, essentially saying, "how even the brightest star in the sky has fallen below the horizon"
Paradise Lost =/= Biblical canon. Nowhere in the Bible is Lucifer / Venus equated with Satan
There actually is a general consensus among scholars that Isaiah 14 is making reference to an old Canaanite myth about the god Helel and comparing it to the fall of Sargon II. So the Christian midrash isn't without precedence, it just never got much elaboration by the rabbis as it did by the Church Fathers.
Either way the idea of "Lucifer" being an ultimate enemy of God is a much later invention with no real Biblical basis
Why would God talk about Venus for no reason? I swear some people will believe anything.
This section of Isaiah is a song of triumph over Babylon. The idea of Venus as the Morning Star as the brightest star in the sky isn't an esoteric reference even by today's standards. You just don't know the reference the authors were using
Why would God liken an infidel nation to one of his most beautiful creations? Sounds self-deprecating.
Again, God didn't write the Bible. Human authors using metaphors / poetic imagery that people of the day would've immediately understood did. And the point of the verse is that the Babylonian King is being shamed for his pride in light of his fall. It's essentially a condemnation of an Icarus figure.
When the planet Venus is visible it is not necessarily visible for an entire 24-hour period. This means that it appears that there's a planet in the sky in the morning, it disappears, and then there's one in the evening that also disappears. The Sumerians understood the "morning star" (the light bringer) as a separate planet from the "evening star" (the dark bringer). At one point in the Torah narratives, the israelites try to attack the kingdom of Babylon, which is lead at the time by a king named "Helel", a reference to a Babylonian Goddess.
The israelites wrote about how this evil Antisemitic king wasn't letting them enslave his people, and how evil he was for it. Later Christian authors would combine every antagonist figure into one single entity (this also included the snake in the Garden of Eden, which up until this point was just a normal snake, the entity that tempts Jesus in the desert, the demons that live in the herd of swine, the Pharaoh from Exodus, every other Pharaoh ever, and so on). This is the start of the mythology surrounding "Satan" as the second, evil, deity of Christianity.
So, Yahweh didn't, later theologians did.
The Bogomils, predecessors to the Cathars, basically had the myth OP described except they also equated Satan with the creator and considered him the demiurge.
Almost none of it. The whole mythology of the fall of Lucifer is bullshit made up centuries later by Christians. The israeli scripture and israeli tradition has no such myth, for them, Satan is an angel of God that does his will, he tempts humans to sin in order to test their moral character
Bullshit Judaism has many diverse views on the character of Satan and demons. Judaism has a much larger mythology than Christianity does, especially Kabbalah. But early Christians also had a larger mythology until the religion converged on the orthodox viewpoint today, that demons are angels that fell.
What more is there to talk about? They used their free will to permanently turn against God, and will be separated from God eternally (hell) as a result.
>How come no one discusses this myth?
Because Paradife Loft's author is known to the historical record and as such it is considered to be a work of fiction rather than scripture.
Also, as time moves on the myth of "Rabbi gets crucified for Antiroman agitation, rises from the dead, he'll eventually come back and turn your meatsack back on" is increasingly less meaningful. To cope, Christian Churches have had to adopt the myth of Moralistic Therapeutic Deism ("there's this one deity, and ONLY one, that subtlety interferes in your life depending on how Good or Bad you are"), which is firmly monotheistic. As such, the cryptopolytheisms of angelology and demonology are increasingly suppressed as they get in the way of the power of the single deity.
Many sola scriptura protestants believe this myth. Many Baptists do.
That's because it was one of the 6 books available in America along with the Bible, the Book of Common Prayer, Pilgrim's Progress, Shakespeare, and Foxe's Book of Martyrs.
But muh angels have no free-will so how did lucifer rebel?
It's a rhetorical question, obviously free-will existed before the fall of adam.
Christians believe angels have free will in contrast to Muslims.
Why would angels, who experience God directly and know that he's all-loving and all-powerful, rebel against him?
I don't know, probably because they were having a good time until humans came along. Something to do with honour and glory also.
Because God gave the angels free will, just as he gave man free will. Fallen angels cannot be redeemed from their sins like fallen man can, demons are all condemned to hell.
>Fallen angels cannot be redeemed from their sins like fallen man can
Why not?
It's not Gnostic. Why is it always the Gnostics? Gnostic this, Gnostic that. You could at least mix it up a bit. There's all kinds of heretics you could base your reinventions of the wheel on, but it's always the Gnostics for some reason.
Better yet, just submit to the Church who always givr you the truth, and forget your conspiratorial mindset that needs third players and secret mystery cults.
In Revelation 12, Satan knocks down a third of the stars. They are symbolic of the angels who joined him. He's not just a cherub, but the annointed (Mashiach/Messiah) cherub.
>You were the anointed cherub who covers;
>I established you;
>You were on the holy mountain of God;
>You walked back and forth in the midst of fiery stones.
>You were perfect in your ways from the day you were created,
>Till iniquity was found in you.-Ezekiel 28:14-15
Fallen angels are not demons. Demons are the spirits of the bastard offspring of angels. This isn't Gnostic teaching either. It's intertestamental (Enoch, Jubilees, Dead Sea Scrolls, etc).
This is contrary to the teachings of mainstream Christianity which teaches that Satan and his demons are fallen angels. Enochian cosmology is rejected.
Exactly this only makes sense if you accept the LXX which I don't because it's full of contradictions to the rest of the OT
>Better yet, just submit to the Church who always givr you the truth
You believe that the current Pope is not in fact the Pope and is actually the Antichrist and that everything he says is a lie.
>""""""""""trad""""""""""cath
>immediately starts reinventing ancient heresies on the fly the moment he opens his mouth
like clockwork
Schizopost.
said the dude advocating taking the book of enoch over the fucking bible
The Book of Enoch is in the Bible if you're Ethiopian Orthodox.
The Mormon version is whackier. They think Lucifer was Jesus's brother and that angels in general are really just pre-pre-existing human souls. Mormomism also used to teach that the souls of black people were neutral during the war in heaven between Lucifer and Michael.
Bump
What are you bumping? We established angels have autonomy, which is arguably free-will.
/thread
This website is such a beacon of hope for Christians worldwide. You can view all the multitudes of young people who are converting every day, who wants to let Christ into their hearts and it just makes me so happy. Back in 2010 you would hardly see people larping as Christians, but now its viewed as just kind of weird or unsightly, and not completely cringe.
Aren't you excited to finally rebel from your library parents, and start going to church too, helping the poor, tithing income, and having respectful family values?
What does that have to do with anything in this thread?
It doesn't, like 90% of monotheistic religions believe in angels.
aren't you happy to be a Christian too and share in God's grace? We live in good times where Christians are involved in every matter of daily life and the state
I'm not a Christian, and I doubt he is either. Are Christians in the room with you right now?