#gnashing teeth

The Simpsons - Maggie is angry

Here I am, writing one of these posts.

There are two fundamental Tenets of Aziraphale, equally weighted, and they are:

God is good.

Crowley is good (or at the very least 'not evil')

You will notice that these two facets to Aziraphale's existence are, of course, mutually exclusive; a benevolent God would never have caused Crowley to Fall, a 'Good' Crowley would never have disobeyed a benevolent God and Fallen.

But it is absolutely integral to Aziraphale's very self that he believes equally strongly in both of these things. A kind of double-think is required to achieve this: the tenuous idea that a perfect, omnipotent God made a mistake in allowing Crowley to Fall. Or, in the passive voice as Aziraphale would no doubt phrase it (when he doesn't avoid thinking too hard about the matter altogether): A Mistake Was Made.

A mistake was made, somehow, by a God that is simultaneously incapable of error. Obviously, Crowley never should have Fallen. There was some sort of oversight or administerial miscalculation. This is how his two fundamental beliefs remain in delicate balance, neither disproving the other (mostly because he does a whole lot of Not Thinking About It Too Hard).

To doubt either side would be to absolutely shatter him.

This is my explanation for the final fifteen (and a prediction for S3).

He asks Crowley to come with him to Heaven and become an angel again because he thinks it's perfectly obvious that he never should have Fallen in the first place; reinstatement as an angel (from Aziraphale's point of view) is not a fundamental change in Crowley's nature, but merely the righting of a cosmic wrong, a return to what should be the status quo. He doesn't even see that he's asking Crowley to change anything at all other than perhaps the colour of his robe, because to him, Crowley is already an essentially Good creature ("at heart, just a little bit, a good person").

When he says "We can be together. Angels! Doing good!" - it's because he understands this is basically what they've been openly doing together this whole time, at least since the birth of the Antichrist. To his perspective, nothing changes at all except for the label on the tin.

... The tragedy is that he's wrong, of course. Not about Crowley being Good, but about God.

And Crowley knows this - it's why the line "I understand. I think I understand a whole lot better than you do" is so gentle but so devastating. The audience, not being a victim of Aziraphale's desperately white-knuckled grip on his own double-think, understands just as Crowley does.

(The only thing I think that Crowley doesn't understand - and fair enough - is where his Angel is really coming from here. Hence the heartbreak.)

My season 3 prediction: The delicate balance of The Two Tenets Of Aziraphale will finally be broken beyond any hope of recovery. Aziraphale's self will shatter. He will have to choose.

And I think when it comes down to it, we all know where his faith truly lies.