Did any Church Fathers believe that angels could still choose to become demons?
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Accepted answer
Origen of Alexandria (184/185 – 253/254)
He was a passionate believer in free will.
Origen broaches the subject of the hierarchical arrangement of the world early in De Principiis in relation to the question of the celestial hierarchy of angels and demons. Are these rational beings essentially good or bad, or do they become so through free will? Origen argues, consistent with his doctrine of creation, that they were created equal and became angels or demons as a result of their exercise of free will. 1
Does that free will extend eternally for eternal beings? Bartlett says yes.
Origen had posited that wherever angles fall, which they could do at any time, depending on their own free will, they walk the earth as men. If they persist in their evil ways, they ultimately become demons, which have, according to Origen, 'cold and obscure bodies… in whom the divine love had grown cold’. 2 (emphasis mine)
1. Journey Back to God: Origen on the Problem of Evil (Mark S.M. Scott, 2012), p. 67
2. A Brief History of Angels and Demons (Sarah Bartlett, 2011), p. 90
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Source: stackoverflow.com
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