A rather more detailed argument- and yet a very powerful one- that Angels don't sin is actually provided by considering the passages in 2 Peter 2 and Jude which are used by some to prove that Angels sin. We have here what we meet many times in Holy Scripture- a series of allusions to a contemporary, uninspired, popular piece of literature in order to show that it is in fact wrong. This point may easily be lost on us, reading as we do from our distance from the original context. It's been observed that there are "more than thirty" allusions to the popular first century BC 'Book of Enoch' in 2 Peter and Jude (1). This book claimed that 200 Angels were expelled from Heaven and then married beautiful women on earth. Peter and Jude allude to it in order to show how wrong it is. Here are some of the allusions:
|
Jude |
Book Of Enoch |
|
"Enoch the Seventh from Adam prophesied" Jude 14 |
Enoch 60:8 |
|
"dry springs" Jude 12 |
Enoch 48:1,96:6 dried up fountains |
|
"waterless clouds" Jude 12 |
Enoch 18:5,41:4-5,100:11-12 |
|
"reserved for blackest darkness" Jude 13 |
Enoch 21:3 "darkness shall be their dwelling" Enoch 46:6 |
|
"trees without fruit" Jude 12 . |
Enoch 80:3 |
|
"plucked up" Jude 13 |
Enoch 83:4 |
|
"raging waves" Jude 12 |
Enoch 101:3-5 |
|
"See the Lord is coming with thousands upon thousands of his holy ones to judge everyone and convict the ungodly of all the ungodly acts they have done'." (Jude 14-15) |
"See the Lord is coming with thousands upon thousands of his holy ones to judge everyone and convict the ungodly of all the ungodly acts they have done" (Enoch 1:9) |
|
"reserved unto the judgment of the great day" (Jude 6) |
Reserved unto the day of sorrow Enoch 45:2 |
In the Book of Enoch, it is claimed that the righteous Angel Michael brings accusation against the 200 supposedly rebellious Angels But Peter consciously contradicts this by stressing that "angels do not bring slanderous accusations against such beings in the presence of the Lord" (2 Pet. 2:11), and Jude is even more specific by saying that this is true of Michael the Archangel (Jude 9). According to the Book of Enoch, the man Enoch judges the sinful Angels, but 2 Peter 3 warns that actually Angels will come with Lord Jesus in order to judge men. We can now understand why Peter claims that "bold and arrogant these men (the false teachers) are not afraid to slander celestial beings" (2 Pet. 2:10)- i.e. the Angels. The Book of Enoch slandered Angels by claiming 200 of them sinned. As Jude 8 puts it, the false teachers "reject authority and slander celestial beings". The idea that the 200 Angels had sexual encounters with enticing women was therefore a slander. We need to reflect on the implications of all this- for claiming that Angels sin is actually spoken of by Peter and Jude as if it is serious blasphemy. Those early Christians were returning to their earlier Jewish and Pagan beliefs, which according to 2 Pet. 2:22 is to be seen as a dog returning to its vomit. This is how serious the issue is.
It should be noted that the Book of Enoch and other such writings are frequently alluded to in the Apocalypse- again, to deconstruct them and show a first century readership the real meaning of the terms used in the popular uninspired literature of the time. Thus the descriptions of the Heavenly "Son of man" in Enoch 47:3-7 are alluded to in the description of the Lord Jesus in Rev. 1:15-17 (2).
Notes
(1) Steven Cox, The Angels That Sinned (Hyderabad: Printland, 2000).
(2) This and many other such allusions are to be found tabulated in Hugh Schonfield, The Original New Testament: Revelation (London: Firethorn Press, 1985) .