this post was submitted on 22 Dec 2025
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This is not true; even using only the Quran and not the Hadith or later traditions, Iblis is a jinn and is a conscious and morally independent being, in contrast to angels, who have no ability to violate God’s commands.
There's some mentioning of angels rebelling in the Jewish Bible and the book of Enoch as well. Which Aquinas attributes to it being very early in the creation of angels and that they weren't perfect beings yet.
It's kinda obvious that when we go deeper into the study of texts referencing angels, there's all sorts of tellings of these stories.
In that sense I think you're right and the idea of angels having a will of their own has existed for a long time before Milton's Paradise Lost.
Mythology is really hard to follow and is definitely not clear cut as history.
I remember a teacher, a priest from the order of mercy, told me on a course I took ages ago: "You'd be a fool to take religious texts literally and as an accurate account of what happened."
The one example he used was that according to customs that were common in the region and things that were told of Jesus of what he did or saw happen. He'd be roughly 300 years old to have experienced them all not 30.