Exactly what it says on the (dramatic) title.
We always hear about Biblically accurate angels: the burning wheels with tons of eyes, the strange looking creatures that sound like they come from the anime “Evangelion”, the cherubim with 4 faces, but I had a thought while watching The Exorcist: Believer (it was…not good for anyone wondering. At all. The disrespect Regan’s mom had towards Merrin and Karras after they died saving her daughter was baffling to listen to, especially…but i digress) a couple of days ago, specifically, if that’s how the demonically possessed are said to more or less act in the Judeo-Christian scriptures, or if they’re they completely different to what we see in movies and games. I’m guessing it’s more than likely the second one, right, but I’m curious about the details like the signs someone’s possessed, the demon’s endgoal, and what they look like, basically everything you can gimme to sate this curiosity or to send me on a rabbit hole, if you’d be so kind?
I kind of vaguely remember something from my Catholic upbringing that angels didn’t have free will, that was gods gift to us or something about eating the apple or something like this. That angels were emanations of god or automata under his control.
Is that a concept? It could be that I’m misremembering or that I just absorbed some ad hoc rationalization for the existence of evil, quite likely, but if it’s true that angels don’t have independence of action then how can they rebel?
And if the answer is that they actually do have freedom of action then what even are they? God made some entities on the astral plane before he made humans?
Ah yeah, there is some of that? Not totally unfounded, although my understanding is more that Angels know God is there, and always have, so they don’t have to have faith, and they don’t have the “sin nature” we do as a result of Adam and Eve eating that apple. Basically they don’t seem to have that natural selfishness we do, so their relationship with God isn’t as personal, and obedience to him comes much more easily. We are more “like God” (“made in his image”, in Genesis terms). As such, those who do follow God will “rank higher” than angels, whatever that actually looks like.
That said… it’s a bit ridiculous to assert that they don’t have any free will, because a bunch of them rebelled against God. It wouldn’t surprise me if Catholic ideology disagrees with me here though, although I don’t think there’s much of that in the actual text of the Bible.