The fall of Satan and his angels is shrouded behind a veil and cloaked in mystery.1 Throughout the history of the church, Christian orthodoxy has regarded the devil and his minions as angels who were created by God but fell into sin and misery. William Gouge (1575–1653) wrote, “The devils by creation were good angels, as powerful, wise, quick, speedy, invisible, and immortal as any other angels.”2 The Puritans believed that demons shared the same nature as angels, but through rebellion against God they became subject to divine judgment. When these angels fell, Gouge said, “They lost not their natural substance, and essential properties thereof, no more than what man lost when he fell. . . . Only the quality of his nature and properties is altered from good to evil.”3 Accordingly, the Westminster Larger Catechism aptly states, “God by his providence permitted some of the angels, willfully and irrecoverably, to fall into sin and damnation, limiting and ordering that, and all their sins, to his own glory” (WLC 19).
Lucifer: The Anointed Cherub
Writing extensively on the fallen angels, Jonathan Edwards (1703–1558) believed that Lucifer—the name that many in church history have given to Satan before his fall—was created to be immensely superior to all the other angels and held a type of leadership, dominion, and strength over the other angels. Lucifer before his fall, Edwards writes, “was the chief of all the angels, of the greatest natural capacity, strength and wisdom, and highest in honor and dignity, the brightest of all those stars.”4 Edwards pointed to Isaiah 14:12:—“How you are fallen from heaven, O Day Star, son of dawn!”—as an indication that Lucifer outshined all the other angels that were created. Edwards believed the title of “the anointed cherub” (Ezek. 28:14) points to the fact that Lucifer was created as the highest of all the angels. Lucifer is also described in Ezekiel 28:14 as residing “on the holy mountain of God,” who walked “in the midst of the stones of fire.” In Ezekiel 28:16, there seems to be a reference to the “covering cherub” (KJV) who resides in the temple’s Holy of Holies and use his wings to cover the throne of God. In this context, Edwards believed this cherub to be the being who was in the closest proximity to the throne of God. Edwards noted that this was a great honor and caused him to be exalted above all other angels. Yet, Edwards quickly pointed out, as the second person of the Godhead, Christ is exalted supremely higher than Lucifer. In other words, Edwards speculated that while Lucifer was only near the throne, Christ, being supremely higher and more excellent in His being, sat down forever with God on the throne. This conclusion results in Edwards’ astonishing statement:
Lucifer, in having the excellency of all those glorious things that were about him all summed up in him, he was a type of Christ, in whom all the glory and excellency of all elect creatures is more properly summed [up] as the head and fountain of all, as the brightness of all that reflects the light of the sun is summed up in the sun.5
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Jonathan Edwards
A rediscovery of the contribution of the writings of Jonathan Edwards (1703–58) on the subject of angels propels him into the category of one of the most significant thinkers on angelology in the Christian tradition. While Edwards never constructed a systematic angelology, he wrote on the subject in nearly fifty entries in his varied collection of Miscellanies, and he alluded to the subject in multiple sermons and treatises.
Much of what Edwards wrote on angels, as well as on demons, repeats much of traditional orthodoxy. The angels were created by God and are bodiless spiritual beings. They are intelligent creatures who are spectators to God’s work in the universe from the moment of their creation up to the present church age. They are also moral creatures with a capacity to choose both good and evil. Edwards believed angels exist in vast numbers and have powers that greatly exceed those of human beings. Some angels fell, including Satan, through sin or disobedience. These fallen angels are called demons. Edwards saw the holy unfallen angels as servants and ministers of God’s providence, performing various functions throughout the physical universe and in the lives of human beings.
The History of Redemption
Between March and August 1739, Edwards delivered thirty sermons on the Old Testament text of Isaiah 51:8. The doctrine Edwards provides in his series is continuous from the first sermon to the last, and is basically stated, “The Work of Redemption is a work that God carries on from the fall of man to the end of the world.”1 The themes developed by Edwards in the framework of this discourse on redemption engaged him both directly and indirectly in most of the expositions he preached throughout this time period. These themes can be summarized under three traditional headings: heaven, earth, and hell.
Angels play a frequent role in the tri-world narrative that Edwards constructs. He draws these themes out of his Miscellanies and includes them in his sermons, reminding his congregants that “the creating heaven was in order to the Work of Redemption; it was to be an habitation for the redeemed and the Redeemer, Matthew 25:34. Angels [were created to be] ministering spirits [to the inhabitants of the] lower world [which is] to be the stage of the wonderful Work [of Redemption].”2
The angelology of Jonathan Edwards should be viewed as a corollary to his Christology. Throughout the sermons in his 1739 series, Edwards positions the angelic beings at the epicenter of his teachings: “Scripture is filled,” he says, “with instances when God hath . . . sent angels to bring divine instructions to men.”3 Angels, in heaven, “spend much of their time in searching into the great things of divinity, and endeavoring to acquire knowledge in them.”4 When they are not employed in ministration and singing, Edwards considers that angels may be studying. Regularly, Edwards asks his parishioners to follow the example of angels and imitate their diligence in the study of Scripture. Both angels and humanity, Edwards says, will find “the glorious work of redemption” at the heart of that study. For Edwards, the love of Christ in His redemption stands at the center of all angelic contemplation.