Temporal Perfection and Angelic Free Will

    As I thought about Lucifer's fall, specifically its depiction in "The Fall of the Angels" from the York Mystery Plays, I was captivated by the part of the play in which God instructs the remaining angels to "give light to the earth, for it faded when the fiends fell" (lines 147-8). The incorrect exercise of free will here leads to a loss of light, both for the heavens and the earth and for Lucifer, who mourns that "my brightness is blackest and blo now" and "my misery is endless kindling" (lines 101-2, I changed the second quote based on the glosses in our text to make it more readable). Not only does Lucifer lose his light, but his misery becomes kindling. The idea that Lucifer's misery becomes fuel for a fire is significant in that fire is an element linked to the angels in Ezekiel and Isaiah. In Ezekiel, fire is connected to the physical appearance of the angels. When the angels appear to Ezekiel he says that "their appearance was like that of burning coals of fire and like the appearance of lamps. This was the vision running to and fro in the midst of the living creatures, a bright fire, and lightning going forth from the fire" (Ezek. 1.13). Lucifer's misery, then, provides kindling for an element which emanates from the angels and is intimately associated with their appearance. In Isaiah, fire plays more of a purificatory role in relation to the angels, as a seraphim uses a burning coal to cleanse Isaiah's "unclean lips" before Isaiah communicates with the Divine (Isa. 6.5). Here the fire is connected to the angels' roles as mediators between the human and the divine - the use of it enables communication between the two parties, and the angels are the intermediary third party who know how to facilitate the communication. It is ironic, then, that even when Lucifer falls he is still in some way fulfilling his role as an intermediary - though he is no longer close to God, his suffering is kindling for the fire associated in Isaiah with communication between human and divine. 

Fall of Rebellious Angels, Georgios Choumnos, 15th cent.

    Another aspect of "The Fall of the Angels" that I found interesting was the implication that the fall of Lucifer occurs temporally in the moment during Genesis between the creation of the angels and the separation of light from darkness. As we discussed in class, there is no moment in Genesis when it is clearly stated that the angels were created, but "The Fall of the Angels" in likening angels to light, suggests that angels were created when light was created. This association between angels and light is established when Lucifer and his fellow fiends fall, resulting in a "murkness" over the earth (Fall of the Angels line 150). If light is a physical feature associated with the angels, we can assume, consistent with the writings of Hugh of St. Victor, that the angels were created along with light. In "The Fall of the Angels" God subsequently names the murkiness resulting from the fall of the angels "night" in an allusion to the moment in Genesis when God "called the light Day, and the darkness night" (Gen. 1.5). This suggests that the episode concerning Lucifer occured before the naming of light, suggesting a longer stretch of time and the occurence of a major event between the creation of light (and angels) and the separation of light and darkness (itself catalyzed by Lucifer's fall). 

    The problem I ran into with the conception of events presented in "The Fall of the Angels" is that the play appears to stretch time in the creation story to be longer than it seems when reading Genesis. When I read Genesis the events of creation have always seemed to take place one after another to me, without pauses or events in between. It is interesting to consider that the time between the different creations could be longer than this, but time in Genesis also does not have to bend to our normal conceptions of it (except to follow the structure of days laid out). While I might get an idea of the amount of time it took for Lucifer to fall in "The Fall of the Angels" based on my human idea of how long these monologues and conversations would have taken to play out, these events could have taken place in a single instant, as suggested by Hugh of St. Victor in On the Sacraments of the Christian Faith. Hugh does not address the fall of Lucifer, specifically, but does examine how and when the angels were created. Hugh says that "in the first beginning were made simultaneously all corporeal things in matter and all incorporeal in angelic nature" (Hugh 76). I am troubled by this idea because, having read Genesis, I struggle to visualize creation as a simultaneous creation of corporeal and incorporeal things, since Genesis lays out a very clear order and structure of creation. Hugh, however, says that "all things, both visible and invisible, were created simultaneously" (Hugh 77). The suggestion in "The Fall of the Angels" that angels and light were linked, and therefore created simultaneously, seems to resolve some of my confusion around Hugh's statements, as I am able to visualize light as a material creation and the angels as immaterial creations made with light. Yet there is still the issue of Lucifer's fall–did it occur in an instant, just like creation of the angels, or did it follow a more regular time course? How soon after the creation of light was darkness divided from it? 

The Choirs of Angels, Hildegard of Bingen

    Adding to this confusion is the fact that time and the angels are inextricably linked by Hugh. Time is a major theme when Hugh expands on the creation of the angels, stating that although spiritual and angelic natures were formed, they had yet to be perfected because their perfect form would be received afterward "through love and conversion to its creator" (Hugh 77). The idea that angels are not formed perfect but are perfected later seems to me a link between the fall of Lucifer in the York Mystery plays and Hugh's ideas. Hugh speaks of three levels of perfection: perfection in time, perfection in nature, and universal perfection (Hugh 82). Angels, he says, are created in the first perfection to aspire towards the second perfection, which is attainable for them. They can never reach the third perfection because only God exists in this perfection. "The Fall of the Angels" suggests that whether or not angels reach the second perfection is linked to how they exercise their free will. Lucifer uses his free will incorrectly, falls, and is detached from the temporal perfection he once resided in. One the other hand, an angel who utilizes their free will correctly will move from the first perfection to the second, transcending time to reside in perfection according to nature. Nature is above time, supporting the supposition that bodies are not responsible for sin, since sins are committed first in the temporal perfection. Although human beings possess moral bodies that are beholden to the decay brought along by time, the angels show us that true perfection exists outside of temporal perfection, and Lucifer's fall shows us that temporal perfection cannot make us impervious to sin or punishment for it.

    Since the angels are so linked to time, and at their creation exist in temporal perfection, it makes sense that the nature of time is uncertain. What is certain is that in "The Fall of the Angels", Lucifer's fall is an event which causes a notable progression in the Genesis story, as if his tumble from the land of temporal perfection actually caused a shift in time, just as it caused a loss of light. This suggests that existence within temporal perfection causes a pause in time, but falling out of it causes a shift. What I am curious to know is whether elevation of an angel from temporal perfection to natural perfection, as Hugh discusses, also causes some kind of shift. Or, on the other hand, would it cause a shift in nature, considering an angel is being added to the ranks of natural perfection? These shifts, likewise, are influenced by the direction free will is exercised in, suggesting that humans may also have a hand in shifting the realms of time and nature (although I was uncertain after reading Hugh as to whether or not humans exist in any kind of perfection at all, or if we fell out of perfection with the fall of Adam). 

-Aethelthryth

Hugh of St. Victor. On the Sacraments of the Christian Faith, edited by Roy J. Deferrari, Medieval Academy of America, 1951.

"The Fall of the Angels." York Mystery Plays, edited by Richard Beadle and Pamela M. King, Oxford UP.

The Holy Bible. Douay-Rheims version, Saint Benedict Press, 2009.