Christian Pure

How Many Angels Fell With Satan? The Bible Gives No Number

Christian Pure Team

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Summary

  • The Bible never gives a number for the angels who fell with Satan; it says only that “his angels were cast out with him” (Revelation 12:9).
  • The familiar answer, one third, reads the stars swept down by the dragon’s tail in Revelation 12:4 as angels, and Victorinus of Pettau, martyred probably in 303, preferred that reading while noting another.
  • Thomas Aquinas believed “More angels stood firm than sinned,” and John of Damascus called the fallen “an innumerable host.”
  • The figure of 200 is the Book of Enoch’s count of angels who came down to earth in the days of Jared; most churches do not count Enoch as Scripture, and the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church is the best-known exception.
  • God made the fallen angels good, and they sinned and were cast out with Satan at their head (2 Peter 2:4, Jude 6, Matthew 25:41); Catholic, Orthodox and Reformed sources agree on that, and the Catechism, John of Damascus and the Westminster Larger Catechism add that the fall cannot be undone.
  • Scripture names very few of them: Satan, with Beelzebub, Belial, Legion and, in Tobit, Asmodeus; the longer lists come from 1 Enoch and Milton’s Paradise Lost.

The Bible never tells us how many angels fell with Satan. It says only that his angels went down with him: “he was cast out into the earth, and his angels were cast out with him” (Revelation 12:9). The familiar answer, one third, comes from reading the stars swept from heaven in Revelation 12:4 as angels. The chapter people search for that number is the story of a defeat. The dragon makes war in heaven and loses, and Revelation says…

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Bibliography (Click to show)
  • King James Version: Genesis 4:25; 6:1–4; 1 Kings 11:7; 2 Kings 6:15–17; Isaiah 14:4, 14:12–15; Daniel 8:9–10, 8:23; Matthew 6:24; 12:24–26; 25:41; Mark 5:9; Luke 10:17–20; John 8:44; 2 Corinthians 6:15; 11:14; Ephesians 6:12; 1 Timothy 3:1, 3:6; Hebrews 2:14–16; 12:22; 2 Peter 2:4; Jude 6, 14–15; Revelation 1:20; 5:11; 8:12; 9:11; 12:3–12; 20:10. BibleGateway. Douay-Rheims (1899 American edition): Tobit 3:8, BibleGateway.
  • Catechism of the Catholic Church 391–395 (the fall of the angels), vatican.va, and 120 (the canon of Scripture), vatican.va.
  • Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I, question 63, articles 2 and 9, tr. Fathers of the English Dominican Province (1920), New Advent.
  • John of Damascus, An Exposition of the Orthodox Faith, book 2, chapter 4, tr. E. W. Watson and L. Pullan, New Advent.
  • Victorinus of Pettau, Commentary on the Apocalypse, on Revelation 12, tr. Robert Ernest Wallis, New Advent.
  • Justin Martyr, Second Apology 5, tr. Marcus Dods and George Reith, New Advent.
  • Augustine, The City of God 15.23, tr. Marcus Dods, New Advent.
  • The Book of Enoch (1 Enoch) 1, 6–8, 10 and 12, tr. R. H. Charles, pseudepigrapha.com.
  • Bruk Ayele Asale, “1 Enoch in Jude and in the EOTC Canon”, doctoral thesis, University of KwaZulu-Natal, 2015 (abstract), UKZN ResearchSpace.
  • Orthodox Church in America, The Orthodox Faith, volume 4, “The Devil”, oca.org.
  • The Belgic Confession (1561), articles 6 and 12, Christian Reformed Church in North America.
  • The Westminster Larger Catechism, question 19, Orthodox Presbyterian Church.
  • John Milton, Paradise Lost, books 1 and 2, Project Gutenberg.
  • Catholic Encyclopedia articles on St. Victorinus, St. John Damascene and St. Thomas Aquinas (dates), Victorinus, John Damascene, Thomas Aquinas.

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