When did Lucifer fall?

According to Meredith Kline, Gen 1:1 includes an allusion to the creation of the angels. Cf. Kingdom Prologue, 23-25.

http://www.god-centered.com/resources/kingdomprologue.pdf

This raises some questions about the timing of Lucifer’s fall. The Bible doesn’t have a lot of explicit information on the fall of Lucifer. As a rule, it's more of a presupposition of Bible history. The Book of Revelation has the most systematic demonology in Scripture, synthesizing a number of OT and NT motifs.

Kline’s position generates the following chronology:

Lucifer was created on day 1. He tempted Eve on day 6. Therefore, he had to fall sometime between day 1 and day 6.

That, in turn, raises the question of whether this chronology allows enough time for Lucifer to become dissatisfied with his station in life and rebel against God. It also raises parallels questions about the other fallen angels.

In principle, there are several different ways of finessing this issue:

1.Since Kline didn’t regard the days of Genesis as consecutive calendar days, there’s a sense in which the framework hypothesis buys him extra time. Of course, that harmonization is only as good as the framework hypothesis itself.

2.We could also challenge the premise of the argument. Maybe God didn’t create the angels on day 1. Maybe their creation antedated the events recorded in Gen 1.

On that view, time antedates space. The creation of time antedates the creation of the physical universe. There’s a spiritual realm of angelic creatures which predates the material realm of physical creatures or embodied creatures.

In that case, he didn’t have to fall during the interim (between days 1-6). Both his initial creation and subsequent apostasy could antedate day 1.

If you opt for this interpretation, then that would introduce a chronological refinement to the YEC/OEC debates.

3.We could draw a distinction between psychological time and real time. For example, time seems to be accelerated in a dream. I’m sure most of us have had the experience of waking up at night, glancing at the clock, going back to sleep, having a long dream, then waking up again to see that only a few minutes have passed. We appear to experience or process time at a different rate in that altered state of consciousness (i.e. dreaming).

Since angels are discarnate beings, the rate of time may seem different to them, just as it seems different to a dreamer. Absent the physical universe, they have no other frame of reference.

(Right now I’m discussing the perception of time, and not the objective structure of time)

4.Scholastic theologians had a somewhat analogous idea. For them, there was a momentary delay (moracula) between the creation of Lucifer and the fall of Lucifer.

In Scholastic angelology, angelic knowledge is totally innate. Angels don’t learn. For one thing, they have no sense knowledge–for they have no senses.

5.There’s a grain of truth to the Scholastic account. Since angels have no a childhood, they don’t undergo the same learning curve as human beings.

At the same time, there’s no obvious reason why they can’t acquire knowledge. Their knowledge is finite. God could reveal additional things to them. They could also reflect on what they already knowledge. Introspection is a source of knowledge.

Moreover, if ESP is true, then it’s possible to acquire information about the sensible world without recourse to the five senses.

OBEs and NEDs would furnish an analogous experience, where the subject seems to perceive the sensible world apart from his body.

If that’s true of human beings, then angelic beings might have an equivalent faculty. And in that event, angelic knowledge is not wholly innate.

6.There’s also the question of whether all the apostate angels fell at once.

7. Another possibility is that Lucifer fell sometime after the 7th day. Although his creation could antedate day 6, his fall could postdate day 6.