5. Good and evil angels.
All angels were originally created by God positively good, not merely indifferent or even with an inclination to evil. Since we must understand the creation of the angels as having taken place within the six-day work, we cannot avoid referring God's testimony "very good" (Gen. 1:31) to the angels as well. That there are now two classes of angels, good and bad, comes from the fact that a part of the angels did not remain in the status originalis, but fell away from God, thus into sin. If we also translate Jn. 8:44 the εστηκε not: "He [the devil] is not existed in the truth", but: "He does not stand in the truth", so the case is nevertheless not denied, but taken for granted.1518) The good angels are those who have remained good in the fall of others and have been so confirmed in goodness by God's further work (in bono confirmati) that they can no longer fall away. This status of non posse peccare is not to be declared an "invention", but to be recognized as a self-evident presupposition. God would not have appointed the angels for the service of those who are to inherit the salvation, if the angels themselves were not perfectly safe servants and protectors. The evil angels are those who became evil by apostasy from God and cannot become good anymore (in malo confirmati). If at pretty much all times the opinion has been expressed that even the could still convert and be delivered from eternal
1517) Luther, St. L. I, 27: "Therefore it came about that, after people had nothing certain about it [from the Scriptures], that they invented the nine choirs of angels, and that there were so many of them that their fall granted nine days. … But so it goes: where one has no public and certain testimonies of the Scriptures, there rash and presumptuous people commonly think that they have power to write poetry and to conceive what they desire." Quenstedt I, 681: Esse determinate novem ordines sive choros angelorum, hosque in tres classes seu terniones, quas hierarchias vocant, esse divisos — de quibus ex Pseudo-Dionysio Areopagita scholastici et pontificii, praesertim Becanus, multis philosophantur — ut incerta et falsa reiicimus. [Google]
1518) So correctly Luthardt on the passage in Zöckler's commentary.
611 ><w:t xml:space="preserve"> Angels. [English ed. 505-506]
damnation, the devils themselves know better, Matt. 8:29:"Hast thou come hither to torment us before the time?" The fire prepared for the devil and his angels is το πυρ το αιώνιον, Matt. 25:41. — When a part of the angels fell cannot be exactly determined. It is certain that the fall of the angels occurred before the fall of men, because men fell through the seduction of the devil (Gen. 3:1-14; John 8:44: the devil is άνϑρωποκτόνος [“man-killer”]). Nor do we get beyond conjecture with respect to the particular sin by which the devil apostasized from God. Most probably take pride as the original sin.1519)