Are We Fallen Angels?
Fallen Angel-Art created by author.
Are We Fallen Angels?
Exploring Gnosticism-the Cathars
Are we fallen angels? According to an early Christian sect that is just the case.
The Cathars shared many beliefs with other groups such as the “Gnostics”, such as shunning the physical world and aspiring for the spiritual. As well as believing in a whole pantheon of gods that make up the “fullness of God”, or “Pleroma”.
They also believed in Christ, and saw him as their savior, placing them under the umbrella religion of Christians. They did, however, differ in a lot of their beliefs about Christ. For example, they didn’t believe that he had a physical body, or died on the cross. (Likely a huge sticking point for most Christians) Basically, they believed that he was a sort of projection of himself into this reality and that he was a messenger from the true God to us, to help us figure out salvation and free ourselves of this physical world.
Most of this lines up with Gnosticism, who weren’t stuck on the idea of Christ being a blood sacrifice to an angry god, but rather a teacher of how to reach enlightenment. Whereas Gnostics believe that we are small pieces of a higher reality, or souls trapped here by the Demiurge, or architect of this physical world; the Cathars believed that the Devil basically rebelled against God, as Christians believe, and took one-third of the angels down with him, and we are those angels.
In their story, the Devil ended up asking for forgiveness for his transgressions against God, and God forgave him but sent him and the angels down into the physical realm for a time period as a sort of penance. While down in the physical world he crafted clay bodies to imprison his angels in and cause them to forget about heaven. He then made it his mission to keep those souls in an eternal reincarnation cycle into this realm by tempting them with pleasures of the flesh, as well as the Old Testament blood sacrifice laws, etc. (Cathars believed much of the Bible was Satanic inspired) They also saw the cross, baptism, and the eucharist as being Satanic inspired, and would destroy the cross when they came across it. They saw the cross as representing “worldly power”, and that the eucharist or communion, and baptism, as being evil rituals. I definitely can see the Eucharist idea as being evil, the whole drinking blood and eating flesh thing has always seemed a bit off to me.
This is their explanation of the creation story, as well as the source of human souls. I should also point out that in this theology the physical realm is eternal, having always existed, so the devil didn’t create the physical world like the Demiurge did in the Gnostic belief structure.
The Devil then deemed himself the god of this world, which actually lines up with this bible verse.
2 Corinthians 4:4 KJV in whom the god of this world hath blinded the minds of them which believe not, lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine unto them.
I find this theology very interesting because yet again it actually is a more cohesive storyline than the canon Bible that we’re presented with in church. First, it gives an actual purpose as to why human souls even exist, whereas any pastor can’t give you a straight answer on the purpose of God creating humans. Secondly it, like the Gnostic belief, explains why the Old Testament god is basically evil.
I feel the canon Bible talks out of both sides of its mouth, saying that God is loving and kind, but also wants you to sacrifice your child to him just to see if you’ll do it, or kill your wife and children and curse you with boils just because the Devil tempted him… If you are capable of thinking logically and not blinded by faith, you can see that this concept doesn’t make sense.
For those that aren’t familiar, here are some verses to show you the contradiction that I have mentioned, and that many early Christians had as well. Since those times I guess pastors have purposely just not bothered to really approach this topic. I included the verse about Jesus because most Christians believe he is one with the Father, although in this case, they may try to differentiate him from God the Father, to make a bit more sense out of this glaring contradiction. However, I’d still point out that God the Father from the Old Testament and the New Testament are supposed to be the same god. This is in fact the originating contradiction that caused both Gnosticism and Catharism to arise, among other sects.
Hebrews 13:8 KJV
Isaiah 45:7 KJV
1 John 1:5 KJV
Another factor that this group’s beliefs addressed was the necessity for redemption. Why in Christianity did God make man, put the temptation directly in front of him with the tree of knowledge, already knowing, since God is omniscient, that man would eventually fail and eat of the tree? Then subsequently God goes and curses all of mankind, for all time with this original sin. Of course, the Bible, yet again, contradicts this by saying the son shall not be responsible for the sins of the father.
Some pastors, and their brainwashed flocks, would argue that this is because god wanted entities who had free will, rather than his servant angels. My counterpoint would be, “How did the angels rebel against god in the first place then if they didn’t have free will?”. This normally just leaves them with a blank stare on their face, or they respond with one of two cop-out answers: 1. “Well God works in mysterious ways.” or 2. “Some mysteries we won’t know until we get to heaven.”
Yes, these are the sorts of answers you get from people who want to recruit you into their religion. Yet can’t even answer questions that pertain to their own book, which is supposedly “perfect”.
So if angels existed since the beginning of time basically, and have free will, then at least the story makes sense as to why God would want to get them back eventually by letting them redeem themselves in this reality and return to him of their own volition. It also makes reality make sense, that this would be a proving ground basically, a big test of some sort, to see who are just addicted to worldly pleasures, or those that seek out something more spiritual. In addition to explaining those who feel like “old souls”, and weird occurrences that may be real such as xenoglossia, “past lives” etc., since this religion seemed to meld Eastern religious ideas of reincarnation into a Christian framework. Of course, none of these ideas, or phenomena work within the traditional Christian doctrine.
Unfortunately, the Catholics saw this sect as highly heretical, and almost completely erased them off the face of the earth during the Albigensian Crusade (1209–1229). Some historians even argue the nature of their existence, whether they were highly organized with bishops or not, that perhaps what the Catholics do reference of them was overblown, to somehow justify their paranoia about “heresy”. So we unfortunately don’t know a huge amount about them, but thankfully some manuscripts did survive the purge.