Angelology

A Primer on Angelology:

“Everything You Wanted to Know About Angels But Were Afraid to Ask”

September 30th, A.D. 2013 C

The majority of the material for this Christian educational forum comes from Dr. Peter Kreeft’s book, Angels (and Demons): What Do We Really Know About Them? (Ignatius Press, 1995)

Everything Old is New Again

Angels have become quite popular in our postmodern era, if indeed they ever went out of favor. Witness the plethora of books, films, and television series on the topic. Why this continuing fascination with angels? Perhaps we are simply willing to believe anything in New Age spirituality. Perhaps angels offer the comfort of heavenly support without the moral demands of God. Or perhaps we’re interested in angels because they are real and we have been encountering them quite a bit lately. This latter possibility proves intriguing, as angels in the Bible appear to folks before something big happens.

What is an Angel?

In orthodox Jewish, Christian, Muslim, and even much pagan understanding, angels are pure spirits. We encounter them as messengers from God; hence the term “angel”. They have no bodies, not even subtle or mental ones. As God is an infinite, eternal Spirit, so angels are finite spirits with a beginning but without end. They were created before the material world, and sang during the birth of our universe. God made angels not out of necessity but out of overflowing love and grace, though He employs them for all manner of task. This is true of all Creation, material or spiritual.

Hierarchy of Being

Angels are not dead or disembodied human beings. Men and women are the crown of Creation because humankind combines and straddles two worlds: the physical and the spiritual. We are neither bodies with souls nor souls with bodies; we are a psychosomatic union of both body and soul. In the words of C.S. Lewis, mankind is an “amphibian,” with one foot in the material and one in the ethereal. Our souls are not meant to be disembodied—ghosts!—and so we confess the Resurrection of the body. But angels, as pure spirits, are very different creatures indeed. Mentally and spiritually they are far above us, as we are far above other animals, animals above plants, and plants above minerals. We are both the lowest of spiritual persons and the highest of animals.

Personhood and the Three Souls

Animals and plants are spiritual beings of a sort. Plants have “plant souls,” which is rather like a sort of life force in all growing things. Animals have “animal souls” that sense and act and feel emotions, yet are slaves to instinct, impulse, and conditioning. Human beings alone amongst the animals have an immortal, rational soul, possessed of a true mind and free will. This gives human beings personhood, which animals lack. Because our souls also have the combined powers of plant (growth) and animal (sense) spirits, we are sometimes said to have “three souls.”

But the term “person” is not synonymous with “human.” Angels, too, have personhood. So does God, Who is three Persons in one Being. Personhood involves having a mind and free will. Just as human beings can choose between fearing, loving, and trusting God on the one hand, or fearing, loving, and trusting ourselves above all else (pride), so did the angels once choose, in the moment after they were created. Unencumbered by ignorance or instinct, they chose with their whole being, forever. And roughly a third of the innumerable hosts of heaven chose rebellion.

The Real Aliens

It seems nearly impossible for a human being to comprehend the nature of an angel, save in the most abstract of ways. This is largely because we cannot imagine a lack of a body, even as a mental image. But angels, as pure spirits, have no limbs, no senses, no organs. They exist wherever their minds focus: should they think of Rome, they are in Rome. Should they think of many places, they bilocate. Scripture tells us that they always have one face towards God, no matter where they are, and they do not “move” as we do but as our minds do. You, too, can send your mind to Mars or the Andromeda galaxy, though your body tethers you to the earth.

God is eternal, completely outside of Creation and space-time. Angels are not. They exist in time, but not time as we know it. Our time is material time, linked to physical objects and the progression of the clock. Theirs is a spiritual time, called aeveternity by philosophers. This is the sort of time that allows for a sequence of decisions and choices: angels are born in one moment, choose good or evil the next, and so on. Angels also lack instincts or emotions, but they are deeply loving. Their love is not the product of physical affection, but of the will. They choose to place the good of others first, in spiritual love. They choose to do the will of God with their entire being. Also, they, like God, seem to have a sense of humor.

The Nine Choirs

Human beings all share an essential spiritual nature. Deep down, a Man is a Man, and no one human life in and of itself is any more or less valuable than any other. Angels, however, are spirits, ideal forms without flesh, and so there are no “twin” angels. They exist in a perfect hierarchy, like a military chain of command, that begins with God and travels all the way down to the last invisible angel. Yet they are not unhappy with this state of being, for they see Creation as a whole and rejoice in the role that we each play in the symphony of God. The Bible speaks of many different ranks of angels, and the most popular system for expressing the angelic chain of command comes from Pseudo-Dionysius in the late Fifth to early Sixth Century A.D. He divided angels into nine distinct choirs, in three groups of three.

The highest choirs make up the council of heaven, the angels most like God: the Seraphim, Cherubim, and Offanim. The Seraphim, or “burning ones,” blaze with the reflected love and life of God. They are often portrayed as six-winged serpents. Cherubim, those “full of wisdom,” as described by the prophet Ezekiel, have four wings, bronze skin, and quadruple faces: those of a man, an ox, a lion, and an eagle. The Offanim, or “thrones,” make up the living throne of God, and are described as wheels within wheels, covered in eyeballs (!).

The middle choirs maintain the laws of Nature and reality. Why does 2 + 2 always equal four? Well, because God said so—and an angel maintains that natural, rational order. The middle choirs are the Dominions, Virtues, and Powers. Dominions are the commanding angels; the Virtues run the universe, and especially the heavenly bodies; and the Powers fight against evil and all that attempts to toss a monkey wrench into the Virtues’ plans.

The lowest choirs are the angels most like human beings: the Principalities, Archangels, and Angels. Principalities care for cities, nations, and kingdoms. Archangels carry God’s most important messages to humankind. And “ordinary” Angels serve as guardian angels for each and every human being on the planet. Some confusion of terminology comes into play here, as “archangel” can mean simply a very important angel, and “angel” obviously refers to the entirety of the nine choirs, as well as to the lowest. Keep in mind that this is a philosophical and artistic way of understanding angelic hierarchy, and probably represents the reality of angelic activity about as well as children’s books describe adult life.

Archangels

Whereas there are billions upon billions of guardian angels, there are only seven archangels. Three are named in Scripture: Michael, Gabriel, and Raphael. Michael, whose name means “Who is Like God?”, is the angel of justice. Gabriel, “Strong Man of God,” is the angel of mercy. And Raphael, “God Heals,” is the angel of healing. Gabriel announced the Incarnation of God to Mary, and will blow his trumpet at the End of Days. Raphael appears in the Book of Tobit in the Deuterocanonicals. And Michael deserves his own section. The other four archangels are given names in the book of Enoch: Uriel, Raguel, Sariel, and Jerahmeel. Of these nonbiblical angels, Uriel (“God is My Light”) has proven easily the most popular. He is said to watch over Tartarus—that is, Hell.

A Body of Work

If angels have no bodies, how can they appear to us in Scripture, history, Tradition and experience? According to St. Thomas Aquinas, the “Angelic Doctor,” angels appear in two ways. They come to individuals in visions, which are mental projections—a sort of telepathy from one angel to one man. But at other times they can assume a physical body as a disguise, and appear to many at once, even eating and breathing like a real human being. This is rare, as angels’ primary concern remains our spiritual rather than physical wellbeing, but many have hosted angels in disguise without knowing it. Interestingly, demons seem to lack this ability to assume any sort of physical body. As devils tempt us to sin and thus separate ourselves from God, so angels inspire us to holiness and repentance, urging us back to God. Just as no devil can force us to freely choose evil, however, no angel can force us to do good.

Fallen Angels

The angels who chose rebellion against God—better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven—were led by Lucifer, the “Light-Bearer,” a seraph or cherub from the highest choirs of angels. He was opposed by Michael, a lowly archangel, whose humility and love for God empowered him to unite the heavenly host and cast Lucifer—now Satan, the Accuser—away from God’s presence. Satan fell to the primal sin of pride, the worship of one’s self over God. As a serpent in the Garden of Eden, he presented this same temptation to Adam and Eve, who likewise sought to “be like God” rather than trust in God. Some traditions hold that God, in His foreknowledge, had revealed to the angels the arc of history yet to come, and His plans for the Incarnation and Resurrection. In this account, Satan was offended that God would so debase Himself for such lowly, wretched apes, and would not bend the knee to Christ (God Incarnate as Man) nor Mary (Man lifted up to perfect union with God).

While demons cannot take on bodily disguises, the phenomenon of demon possession is very real indeed. We encounter demons in three ways: temptation, oppression, and full-on possession. Everyone experiences temptation. Oppression, or infestation, occurs in those who suffer spiritual despair, and sometimes physical attacks: whispers, scratches, haunted stuff. Possession should be familiar to anyone who watches horror movies or paranormal witness programs. These harsher encounters with demons, however, aren’t simply random. Someone has to do something to invite in the demons. Never underestimate the power of prayer, or the simple, almighty Name of Jesus. Call on the angels of God to drive out the demons of Hell.

St. Michael

Satan, the Devil, is not the opposite of God. God is infinitely beyond any angel, even the most powerful angel of them all. Rather, Satan’s archfoe is Michael the Archangel. Michael is the guardian of guardians, patron of firefighters, police, and soldiers. As the angel of justice he has four chief duties: (1) he commands the heavenly host, the holy armies of God; (2) he serves as the angel of death, giving to sinners once last opportunity for repentance, and thus snatching souls away from Satan’s claws; (3) he will bring the scales of justice to the earth on Doomsday, weighing the worthiness of souls; and (4) he stands as the protector and patron of God’s people Israel, both in the Old Testament and in the Church today. Good is infinitely more powerful than evil, for Michael and the holy angels are bathed in the light and love of God. Even the lowliest guardian angel puts Satan’s mightiest monsters to flight.

The Lost Choir

Genesis refers to “Sons of God” who mated with “Daughters of Men” to produce the Nephilim, or Fallen Ones. This enigmatic tidbit is elaborated upon in the Book of Enoch, which speaks of a fallen choir of angel. The Grigori, or Watchers, were angels entrusted to watch over mankind in our earliest development as a species, but they became seduced by the material world and somehow took on bodies, teaching various sins of science and magic to human beings, and producing hybrid offspring. These were the Nephilim, the giants or supermen of old. Numerous cultures speak of heavenly beings mating with humans to generate unnatural monsters, giants—and demigod heroes. Nephilim were said to have both gigantic proportions and gigantic appetite, eventually running amok and falling to cannibalism. God sent the Flood to wipe out the Nephilim and the corruptions of humankind, binding the Watchers to earth until the end of time. Their leader was Samael, and this was the second fall of angels: the first to pride, and this to lust. Or so the story goes. Giants show up many times in the Old Testament.

It should be noted, however, that orthodox Jewish and Christian interpretation of Genesis 6 and Enoch has come to agree with that of the Ethiopian Church, the only religious denomination to include Enoch in the canon of Scripture. Ethiopian Orthodoxy understands “Sons of God” not as angels but as the superpowered (Numenorean, if you will) descendants of Enos, first son of Seth. “Daughters of Men” in this understanding thus refer to the descendants of Cain. This so-called Sethite interpretation became popular with St. Augustine and has become the dominant tradition of both Church and Synagogue.

Fairy Tales

Jewish folk tales, as well as the Islamic Quran, treat demons rather differently than Christianity does. For Muslims, demons are not fallen angels but a different sort of being entirely: djinni, or genies. Genies are creatures created by God from “smokeless fire.” They have great magical powers and are extremely long lived, but ultimately they are mortal and must die to face judgment. As beings with free will, genies may choose submission to God (Islam) or rebellion. Iblis, the Muslim version of Satan, is not a fallen angel but a genie. Christian tradition speaks of similar creatures, of spirits who don’t act much like spirits. They feast, mate, reproduce, and die. Angels do none of these things. Furthermore, these creatures, which come in wondrous variety, seem to have an invisible sort of subtle body, made from “coagulated air”. They go by many names: elves, goblins, trolls, pixies, sprites, &c. C.S. Lewis called them the longaevi, or “Long-Livers,” but we know them most commonly and collectively as the fey, or fairies.

There is no one explanation of their origins. Some claim them to be an offshoot of humanity, others a class of neutral or “grey” angel. Most seem to have regarded them as unique beings, placed somewhere between humankind and angels in the great celestial hierarchy. Greeks called such creatures of the air daemons, halfway between gods and men. Obviously this is the origin of “demon,” our most popular term for fallen angels. Much could be said about fairy lore and its connection to both Christian and pre-Christian religion, but it is notable that fairies were often divided into the Seelie (holy) and Unseelie Host. The former held allegiance to God; the latter paid tribute to Hell.

Why Believe in Angels?

The only real reason to believe in anything is because it is true. Holy Scripture, Jesus Christ, the teachings of the Church, and human witness the world over all testify to the reality of the supernatural and preternatural—and more specifically to angels. Angels instill in us humility and wonder, awe and trust. They are as much a part of God’s gracious work as we are. Remember, too, that in Christ humankind shares in the divine life of God’s own self. Christ (through Mary) unifies God and Man. Not even the mightiest, vastest, most godlike angels can claim a promise so powerful. Once an angel was the greatest being in Creation, second only to God. Now that honor belongs to a Jewish mother from the Galilee, and to all who share in her blessings through her divine Son. Thanks be to God in Jesus’ Name. AMEN.