(This is a fairly rough outline. Naturally, it is highly speculative, for none of us who walk the Earth know much at all about the angelic rebellion; so this is really more a work of imagination that any act of considered theology. We do not know what the causes were of the rebellion of the angels; it may have been over a matter of angelic theology that we cannot even begin to understand. But that being said, I think that meditation on these subjects can be interesting and beneficial.)
As a Catholic, I believe in angels and demons.
I sometimes speculate on how they view us.
I think that we must be, for the angels, a source of some wonderment.
Consider that angels were created first, before humanity existed. They are beings that are purely spiritual, and they have both intellect and free will; though their free will appears to be, from our point of view, a somewhat binary thing – they are, in the view of the Church, beings whose decisions to be on the side of good or evil were all-or-nothing, once and for all propositions. Our own choices between good and evil are somewhat different from that of the angels, mediated through time and in the consequence of having bodies prone to sin, and each of us potentially redeemed by Christ and transformed by grace (I say potentially not from the point of view that Christ does not desire it, but merely that we, in our free will, can reject it – we can choose to accept God’s grace or to refuse it.)
We know, from Scripture and from the theology developed around it that the angels had a choice to serve God or to refuse God, and that as many as a third refused service. Although I do not think it is known by the Church for certain, I have to think that the choice of the angels had to do with the creation of the physical universe and the desire of God to populate it with physical, living beings, souls incarnate and living in matter. To the angels, this must have been a profound mystery, for it demonstrates that God enjoys His creation in a multitude of forms; not only angelic beings with whom he converses, but also physical objects; the stars, the planets, the lesser creations of life, and then finally man, with an incarnate soul.
I think that creation must have been, for the angels, a profound intellectual challenge. For it is something vastly different from what they are. Some of them must have viewed creation, and the creatures known as man, as a kind of rebuke, as a statement that God was not entirely content with them. The first terrible doubts must have entered their minds; they were presented with the world, so different from them, and with the possibility or the reality of men, spirits chained for a time to flesh, and then they must, as I imagine it, have heard the great divine voice within their minds, saying to them the single word, “Choose.”
It may be that they were presented with the notion that God himself might choose to take on human form in a vision; they were presented with an image of Christ walking among men. To some the vision must have been a profound source of wonder – God walking in the form of a lesser being, and one chained to matter! To those who had not considered it, it must have been a profound surprise, even a shock. Some doubtless cried aloud in joy to consider God’s imagination, so far above that even of angels, that they must have considered the concept or the vision of Christ, and simply kneeled in respect and honor.
To others, though, they shock must have been of a different kind.
These angels had been perhaps meditating on themselves, and considering the wonder of their own creation. Limited in their imagination to themselves, they must have viewed the creation of the physical world as a profane thing; a thing different from themselves, and in their minds there must have entered a kind of false equivalence – these things that God proposes are unlike us, and therefore where we are great, they must be small; where we are glorious, they must be inglorious.
And then to consider the image that God put in their minds of God taking on this form; God marrying Himself to His Creation and taking on a form with physical limits. They must have viewed it with a kind of horror. God was taking a form different from spirit! These creatures, so enamored of themselves and so unable or unwilling to consider something other than themselves, must have viewed it as a betrayal, a rebuke, a criticism. When God revealed Himself to be capable of considering things other than the angels and the world of the spirit, they then must have evolved the notion that God had abandoned them, had supplanted them; that God was a traitor to Heaven in creating the Earth. They must have considered Earth a blasphemy of an unspeakable kind. God is spirit and we are spirit, so spirit is good; anything different must therefore be other than good, must therefore be less than good. And in considering God to be other than entirely good, they must have sinned. They did not trust in God’s goodness, and so they betrayed God, and became committed to the first lie – that they themselves were the highest thing in creation, the greatest good. They choose a simulacrum of God, themselves, over God himself. They chose the image over the reality, they chose the resemblance to the reality. So long had they been considering their own greatness that they had forgotten God’s. They did not consider that God might see good in a thing profoundly different from himself. They did not understand His greatness of vision, or the greatness of His power and majesty; that if He created something and chose to hallow it, it would therefore be hallowed, because He is God. They did not see the vision, they did not appreciate the power, they had not considered anything other than themselves. And then the voice came, and said to them, “Choose”.
And where they had mediated long on their greatness, they did not see that they were lesser beings than those that meditated longer on God’s greatness, and who, in that long mediation, had understood that what God might yet do might be greater than, or simply different from, what he had so far chosen to do. The good angels considered that God might yet create something different. They looked upon themselves with joy and wonder, and asked what yet God might show them. And although they knew that they had been created first, they understood that no matter how powerful they were, God was infinitely more powerful still, and might create something in power between their own ranks and that of God. And they understood that the least thing in creation, a creature made from clay, might be that creature, if God so chose to hallow it. The angels who had only considered themselves were shown to be lesser beings than those who had mediated on God’s greatness. And when the voice said "Choose," they chose what they already knew.
They chose themselves.
The good angels chose God, chose all the wondrous possibilities of what he might yet show them rather than just themselves. They chose the infinite, the possible, the unimaginable over just their own world. They trusted to God’s love, and knew that even if God chose an unnumbered choir of beings not yet in existence that ranked in power greater than themselves – that if they were only the least beings in creation, that they were loved by an unimaginably powerful God, that they were already blessed, and hallowed, and possessed of dignity, and made great. The good angels were told to choose, and understanding that the choice might therefore be to serve, still chose God and service over themselves. Shown an image of Christ, they who had pondered on God’s majesty trusted God and said “We will serve that Christ, for if you, God, choose to hallow matter, then matter is hallowed.”
The demons chose themselves, and rejected us. And in rejecting us, they rejected Christ, for God chose to hallow matter by taking a physical body and walking His creation.
They hate us for that. They hate us for God’s choice.
We are not greater than angels in any respect, except for one, the one that matters, because it was the choice of God – he chose to hallow us by taking our form, so we are hallowed. We cannot think like angels, we cannot act with the power of angels, we cannot be anywhere at a moment’s notice like angels, and we do not live in that ocean of pure spirit that they live in. We cannot hold in our heads the thousand different thoughts that angels do, we cannot commune with God as powerfully and directly as they do; we cannot see the immaterial world as they do. We are lesser creatures than them in every single respect, excepting one – God chose to take our form and nature onto his own person.
The demons see us as an insult to their existence. They see us as a mockery, as a joke. They see in us a betrayal, a dispossession, a rejection, and a crime. They would destroy us if they could; if God did not prevent it; they would have us worship them if we would, if only because they think this would injure God. They seek to harm us in every conceivable way, and in ways inconceivable to us. They attempt to profane and corrupt us in every way. They seek nothing but our harm, for our very existence is a rebuke to them, a reminder that they were measured in a balance, and found wanting.
But corrupt us, weaken us, injure us, enslave us, and they still are faced with the choice of God.
He wanted to take our form, and so he took it. No act of theirs could prevent it. To make his point even clearer, and to point out the profound height of his majesty, he took on our nature after the demons had corrupted it. The vision of Christ as a king walking among saintly men may have been defamed by our fall, may have been made impossible by the very fact that God gives us free will, but neither we not the angels can change God’s choice; once made, eternal. He chose to hallow his creation; his creation is hallowed. The angels who chose to serve God must have wept at his Incarnation tears of inexpressible awe – joy, sadness, wonder. They must have seen the Christ and understood that no matter how profound the vision they had been privileged to see when man was yet unmade, that his humble form, crucified on a cross by men made wicked by demons, was yet greater still than the simple notion of God hallowing clay – God hallowed ruined clay, God hallowed broken man. Truly the angels must have wept for joy in knowing they made the correct choice, that to serve God was to see wonders they had never considered or dreamed, to see sights that they could never have imagined. They must have turned to God, and kneeled, and said “Truly thou art great.”