Word
Gems
What is a
man but the sum of his thoughts?
- Mortimer Adler's
- Syntopicon
Essays
Angel
Influenced by a long tradition of religious symbolism in painting and poetry, our
imagination responds to the word "angel" by picturing a winged figure robed in
dazzling white and having the bodily aspect of a human being.
This image, common to believers and unbelievers, contains features which represent
some of the elements of meaning in the abstract conception of angels as this is found in
the writings of Jewish and Christian theologians and in related discussions by the
philosophers.
- The human appearance suggests that angels, like men, are persons;
that they are essentially characterized by their intelligence. The wings suggest
the function of angels -- their service as messengers from God to man. The aura
of light which surrounds them signifies, according to established conventions of
symbolism, the spirituality of angels.
- It suggests that to imagine angels with bodies is to use a
pictorial metaphor.
Another interpretation may be put upon this aura of light if one considers the
role which the notion of angel has played in the history of thought. Wherever that notion
has entered into discussions of God and man, of matter, mind, and soul, of knowledge and
love, and even of time, space, and motion, it has cast light upon these other topics.
- The illumination which has been and can be derived from the
idea of angels as a special kind of being or nature is in no way affected by doubts or
denials of their existence. Whether such beings exist or not, the fact that they are
conceivable has significance for theory and analysis.
Those who do not believe in the existence -- or even the possible existence -- of
utopias nevertheless regard them as fictions useful analytically in appraising accepted
realities. What an ideal society would be like can be considered apart from the question
of its existence; and, so considered, it functions as an hypothesis
in political and economic thought.
What sort of being an angel would be if one existed can likewise serve as an
hypothesis in the examination of a wide variety of theoretical problems. The idea of
angels does in fact serve in precisely this way as an analytical tool.
- It sharpens our understanding of what man is, how his mind
operates, what the soul is, what manner of existence and action anything would have apart
from matter.
Hence it suggests how matter and its motions in time and space determine the
characteristics of corporeal existence. Pascal's remark -- that "man is neither angel
nor brute, and the unfortunate thing is that he who would act the angel acts the
brute" -- points to the different conceptions of man which result from supposing him
to be either angel or brute rather than neither.
Such views of human nature, considered in the chapters on ANIMAL and MAN, cannot
be fully explored without reference to theories of the human mind or soul in its relation
to matter and to body.
As the chapters on MIND and SOUL indicate,
- theories carrying the names of Plato and Descartes, which
attribute to the human mind or soul the being and powers of a purely spiritual substance
or entity, seem to place man in the company of angels. In this tradition Locke
applies the word "spirits" equally to human minds and to supra-human
intelligences.
It would be misleading to suppose that the idea of angels is primarily a
construction of the philosophers -- a fiction invented for their analytical purposes; or
that it is simply their conception of a supra-mundane reality, concerning the existence
and nature of which they dispute. In the literature of western civilization, angels first
appear by name or reference in the Old and the New Testaments. Readers of the Bible will
remember many scenes in which an angel of the Lord performs the mission of acquainting man
with God's will. Among the most memorable of such occasions are the visits of the angels
to Abraham and Lot and the angelic ministry of Gabriel in the Annunciation to Mary.
In one book of the Bible, Tobias (Tobit, as it is called in the
King James Apocrypha), one of the leading characters is Raphael. Through most of the story
he appears as a man, but at the end, after he has accomplished his mission, he reveals his
identity. "I am the angel Raphael," he declares,
- one of the seven, who stand before the Lord. And when they had heard these
things they were troubled; and being seized with fear they fell upon the ground on their
face. And the angel said to them: Peace be to you. Fear not. For when I was with you,
I was there by the will of God: bless ye him and sing praises to him. I seemed to eat and
to drink with you; but I use an invisible meat and drink, which cannot be seen by men. It
is time therefore that I return to him that sent me... And when he had said these
things, he was taken from their sight; and they could see him no more.
As a result of scriptural exegesis and commentary, the angels become a fundamental
topic for Jewish theologians from Philo to Maimonides, and for such Christian theologians
as Augustine, Scotus Erigena, Gregory the Great, Aquinas, Luther, Calvin, Pascal, and
Schleiermacher. They figure in the great poetry of the Judaeo-Christian tradition -- in
the Divine Comedy of Dante, in Paradise Lost of Milton, and in Chaucer's
Canterbury Tales and Goethe's Faust.
- The philosophers, especially in the 17th and 18th centuries,
are motivated by Scripture or provoked by theology to consider the existence, the nature,
and the activity of angels.
Hobbes, for example, attacks the supposition that angels are immaterial on the
ground that the notion of incorporeal substance is
self-contradictory, and undertakes to re-interpret all the scriptural passages in
which angels are described as spirits. After examining a great many, he says that "to
mention all the places of the Old Testament where the name of Angel is found, would be too
long. Therefore to comprehend them all at once, I say, there is no text in that part of
the Old Testament, which the Church of England holdeth for Canonical, from which we can
conclude, there is, or hath been created, any permanent thing (understood by the name of Spirit
or Angel) that hath not quantity ... and, in sum, which is not (taking Body for
that which is somewhat or somewhere) Corporeal."
All the passages can be interpreted, Hobbes thinks, simply in the sense in which
"angel" means "messenger" and "most often, a messenger of
God," which signifies "anything that makes known his extra-ordinary
presence." If, instead of existing only when they carry God's word to men, the angels
are supposed to have permanent being, then they must be corporeal. As "in the
resurrection men shall be permanent and not incorporeal," Hobbes writes, "so
therefore also are the angels ... To men that understand the
signification of these words, substance and incorporeal" -- and
mean by "incorporeal" having no body at all, not just a subtle body -- the words
taken together "imply a contradiction."
Hence Hobbes argues that
- to say "an angel, or spirit, is (in that sense) an
incorporeal substance, is to say in effect that there is no angel or spirit at all.
Considering therefore the signification of the word angel in the Old
Testament, and the nature of dreams and visions that happen to men by the ordinary way of
nature," Hobbes concludes that the angels are "nothing but supernatural
apparitions of the fancy, raised by the special and extraordinary operation of God,
thereby to make his presence and commandments known to mankind, and chiefly to his own
people."
Locke seems to take the exactly opposite position. Asserting that
- [since] we have "no clear or distinct idea of substance
in general," he does not think spirits any less intelligible than bodies. "The
idea of corporeal substance," he writes, "is as remote from our
conceptions and apprehensions, as that of spiritual substance or spirit;
and therefore,
- from our not having any notion of the substance of spirit, we
can no more conclude its non-existence, than we can, for the same reason, deny the
existence of body."
Just as we form the complex idea of bodies by supposing their qualities, such as
figure and motion, or color and weight, to co-exist in some substratum; so by supposing
the activities we find in ourselves -- such as "thinking, understanding, willing,
knowing, and the power of beginning motion, etc." -- to exist in some substance,
"we are able to frame the complex idea of an immaterial spirit."
Not only does Locke think that "we have as clear a perception and notion of
immaterial substances as we have of material," but he also finds the traditional
doctrine of a hierarchy of angels quite acceptable to reason. "It is not impossible
to conceive, nor repugnant to reason, that there may be many species of spirits, as much
separated and diversified one from another by distinct properties whereof we have no
ideas, as the species of sensible things are distinguished one from another by qualities
which we know and observe in them."
Locke goes even further -- beyond the mere possibility of angels to the likelihood
of their real existence. His reasoning resembles the traditional argument of the
theologians on this difficult point. "When we consider the infinite power and wisdom
of the Maker," he writes, "we have reason to think that it is suitable to the
magnificent harmony of the Universe, and the great design and infinite goodness of the
Architect, that the species of creatures should also, by gentle degrees, ascend upward
from us toward his infinite perfection, as we see they gradually descend from us
downwards."
Such speculations concerning the existence and the order of angels are usually
thought to be the province of the theologian rather than the philosopher.
But Bacon, like Locke, does not think it unfitting for the philosopher to inquire
into such matters. In natural theology -- for him a part of philosophy -- Bacon thinks it
is improper "from the contemplation of nature, and the principles of human reason, to
dispute or urge anything with vehemence as to the mysteries of faith." But "it
is otherwise," he declares, "as to the nature of spirits and angels; this being
neither unsearchable nor forbid, but in a great part level to the human mind on account of
their affinity."
He does not further instruct us concerning angels in the Advancement of
Learning, but in the Novum Organum he throws light on their nature as well
as ours by touching on one characteristic difference between the
human and the angelic mind. Discussing there the theory of induction, he holds that
"it is only for God (the bestower and creator of forms), and perhaps for angels or
intelligences at once to recognize forms affirmatively at the first glance of
contemplation."
Unlike most of the great ideas with which we are concerned, the idea of angel
seems to be limited in its historical scope. It is not merely that since the 18th century
the discussion has dwindled, but also that the idea makes no appearance in the great books
of pagan antiquity -- certainly not in the strict sense of the term, whereby
"angel" signifies a creature of God, spiritual in substance and nature, and
playing a role in the divine government of the universe.
- There are, nevertheless, analogous conceptions in the
religion and philosophy of the ancients; and in philosophy at least, the points of
resemblance between the analogous concepts are sufficiently strong to establish a
continuity of discussion. Furthermore, elements in the thought of Plato, Aristotle, and
Plotinus exercise a critical influence on Judaeo-Christian angelology.
Gibbon relates how the early Christians made the connection between the gods of
polytheism and their doctrine about angels. "It was the universal sentiment both of
the church and of heretics," he writes, "that the daemons were the authors, the
patrons, and the objects of idolatry. Those rebellious spirits who had been degraded from
the rank of angels, and cast down into the infernal pit, were still permitted to roam upon
the earth, to torment the bodies and to seduce the minds of sinful men. The daemons soon
discovered and abused the natural propensity of the human heart towards devotion, and,
artfully withdrawing the adoration of mankind from their Creator, they usurped the place
and honors of the Supreme Deity."
In the polytheistic religions of antiquity, the demi-gods or inferior deities are
beings superior in nature and power to man. "The polytheist and the philosopher, the
Greek and the barbarian," writes Gibbon, "were alike accustomed to conceive a
long succession, an infinite chain of angels, or daemons, or deities, or aeons, or
emanations, issuing from the throne of light." In Plato's Symposium, for
example, Diotima tells Socrates that Love "is intermediate between the divine and the
mortal ... and interprets between gods and men, conveying and taking across to the gods
the prayers and sacrifices of men, and to men the commands and replies of the gods; he is
the mediator who spans the chasm which divides them." Love, Diotima explains, is only
one of "these spirits and intermediate powers" which "are many and
diverse."
Such demi-gods are intermediate by their very nature. Although superhuman in
knowledge and action, they still are not completely divine. Occupying a place between men
and gods, they are, according to Plato, "by nature neither mortal nor immortal."
Their existence is necessary to fill out the hierarchy of natures.
- They are links in what has come to be called "the great
chain of being."
The analogy with the angels rises primarily from this fact of hierarchy. Both
pagan and Christian religions believe in an order of supernatural or at least superhuman
beings graded in perfection and power. In both, these beings serve as messengers from the
gods to men; they act sometimes as guardians or protectors, sometimes as traducers,
deceivers, and enemies of man.
But this analogy cannot be carried much further than this. The angels, according
to Christian teaching, are not inferior gods, or even demi-gods. As compared with the
"intermediate spirits" of pagan religion, they are less human in character, as
well as less divine. Nevertheless, the readers of the great poems of antiquity will find a
striking parallelism between the heavenly insurrection which underlies the action of Prometheus
Bound and the angelic warfare in Paradise Lost.
In the writings of of Plato, Aristotle, and Plotinus,
philosophical inquiry turns from the sensible world of material things to consider the
existence and nature of an order of purely intelligible beings. As there is an inherent
connection between being perceptible to the senses and being material, so that which is
purely intelligible must be completely immaterial. If ideas exist independently -- in
their own right and apart from knowing or thinking minds -- then they constitute such an
order of purely intelligible entities.
At this point a number of difficult questions arise.
- Are the intelligibles also intelligences,
i.e., are they an order of knowers as well as a realm of knowables? Can
they be regarded as substances? And if so, do they have a mode of action appropriate to
their mode of being -- action which is other than knowing, action which in some way
impinges on the course of events or the motions of the physical world?
Plotinus answers affirmatively that the purely intelligible
beings are also pure intelligences, but he does not conceive them as having any power or
action except that of knowledge.
Another answer to these questions given in antiquity and the
Middle Ages is that
- the intelligences are the celestial motors, the movers of the
heavenly bodies.
"Since we see," Aristotle writes, "that
besides the simple spatial movement of the universe, which we say that the first and
unmovable substance produces, there are other spatial movements -- those of the planets --
which are eternal (for a body which moves in a circle moves eternally), each of these
movements also must be caused by a substance, both unmovable in itself and eternal."
These secondary movers, Aristotle thinks, are "of the same number as the movements of
the stars," and not only must they be eternal and unmovable, as is the prime mover,
but also "without magnitude" or immaterial.
- Plato offers an alternative hypothesis -- that the celestial
bodies are alive and have souls.
This hypothesis, like Aristotle's, tends in the Middle Ages
to be restated in terms of the theory of angels. Aquinas reports Augustine as thinking
that "if the heavenly bodies are really living beings, their souls must be akin to
the angelic nature." He himself holds that "spiritual substances are united to
them as movers to things moved," the proof of which, he says, "lies in the fact
that whereas nature moves to one fixed end, in which having attained it, it rests; this
does not appear in the movement of the heavenly bodies. Hence it follows that they are
moved by some intellectual substances."
The question whether intelligences govern the planets also
occupies the attention of an astronomer like Kepler. Although he denies any need for such
intelligences -- among other reasons because planetary motion is not circular but
elliptical -- he argues that the celestial movements are the
work either "of the natural power of the bodies, or else
a work of the soul acting uniformly in accordance with those bodily powers." But
whether or not they are to be regarded as movers, as well as knowers and
knowables, the intelligences represent for ancient and mediaeval thought a mode
of being exempt from the vicissitudes of physical change even as it is separate from
matter.
When modern philosophers consider spirits or spiritual
being, they seldom deal with the ancient speculations about pure intelligibles or separate
intelligences without being influenced by the theological doctrine of angels developed in
mediaeval thought.
The extent of this doctrine may be judged from the fact that
the Summa Theologica of Aquinas contains a whole treatise on angels, as well as
additional questions on the speech of angels, their hierarchies and orders, the division
between the good and the bad angels, and their action on men -- the guardianship of the
good angels and the assaults of the demons. That these additional questions are contained
in the treatise on divine government throws some light on their theological significance.
- The primary fact about the angelic nature is immateriality.
An angel is immaterial both in its substantial being and in
its characteristic activity which, says Aquinas, is "an altogether immaterial mode of
operation." Being immaterial, they are also incorruptible. "Nothing is corrupted
except by its form being separated from the matter ... Consequently," Aquinas writes,
"a subject composed of matter and form ceases to be actually when the form is
separated from the matter. But if the form subsists in its own being, as happens in the
angels, it cannot lose its being." To signify that they are intelligences existing
apart from matter, the angels are sometimes called "subsisting forms" and
sometimes "separate substances."
Although they are imperishable in being and have immortal
life, the angels are not, like God, truly eternal. "That heaven of heavens
which Thou createdst in the beginning is some intellectual creature,"
Augustine writes, but it is in "no ways coeternal unto Thee." As created, the
angels have a beginning. Yet, while not eternal, neither are they temporal creatures in
continual flux, but, according to Augustine, they "partake of Thy eternity ...
through the sweetness of that most happy contemplation of Thyself ... cleaving close unto
Thee, placed beyond all the rolling vicissitudes of times." It is for this reason
that the angels are spoken of as "aeviternal."
The familiar question concerning the number of angels able
to stand on a needle's point -- if it was ever asked by mediaeval theologians -- merely
poses the problem of how an incorporeal substance occupies space. The way in which Aquinas
discusses "angels in relation to place" discloses how the question serves to
raise generally significant issues concerning the nature of space and quantity, and their
relation to causality. He points out that a body occupies place in a circumscribed
fashion, i.e., its dimensive quantity is contained within the space; whereas "an
angel is said to be in a corporeal place by application of the angelic power in any manner
whatever to the place ... An incorporeal substance virtually contains the thing with which
it comes into contact, and is not contained by it."
To an obector who thinks that since, unlike bodies, angels
do not fill a place, several can be in the same place at the same time, Aquinas replies
that two angels cannot be in the same place because "it is impossible for two
complete causes to be immediately the cause of one and the same thing." Since an
angel is where he acts, and since by the power of his action he contains the place at
which he acts, "there cannot be but one angel at one place."
- Angels are also said to go from one place to another without
traversing the intervening space and without the lapse of time. Considering their
immateriality, such action is less remarkable for angels to perform than is the action of
electrons, which, according to modern quantum mechanics, jump from outer to inner orbits
of the atom without taking time or passing through inter-orbital space.
The immateriality of angels has other consequences which
throw comparative light on the conditions of corporeal existence.
In the world of physical things we ordinarily think of a
species as including a number of individuals. While all men have the same specific nature,
they differ numerically or individually. But because angels are immaterial substances, it
is held that each angel is a distinct species. "Things which agree in
species but differ in number," Aquinas explains, "agree in form but are
distinguished materially. If, therefore, the angels are not composed of matter and form
... it follows that it is impossible for two angels to be of one species."
Furthermore, as Aquinas states in another place, among
"incorporeal substances there cannot be diversity of number without diversity of
species and inequality of nature." Each species is necessarily higher or lower than
another, so that the society of angels is a perfect hierarchy in which each member
occupies a distinct rank.
- No two angels are equal as, on the supposition that they
share in the same specific humanity, all men are.
Yet such names as "seraphim" and
"cherubim" and the distinction between archangels and angels indicate an
organization of spiritual substances into various groups -- according to the tradition,
into nine orders or subordinate hierarchies.
The nine orders or ranks of angelic being are described by
Dante in the Paradiso as distinct circles of love and light. Using these
metaphors he thus reports his vision of the heavenly hierarchy. "I saw a Point which
was raying out light so keen that the sight on which it blazes must needs close because of
its intense brightness ... Perhaps as near as a halo seems to girdle the light which
paints it, when the vapor that bears it is most dense, at such distance around the Point a
circle of fire was whirling so rapidly that it would have surpassed that motion which most
swiftly girds the world; and this was girt around by another, and that by the third, and
the third then by the fourth, by the fifth the fourth, and then by the sixth the fifth.
Thereon the seventh followed, so widespread now in compass that the messenger of Juno
entire would be narrow to contain it. So the eighth and ninth."
Beatrice explains to him how the relation of the circles to
one another and to the Point which is God depends upon their measure of love and truth,
whereby there is "in each heaven a marvelous agreement with its Intelligence, of
greater to more and of smaller to less." She then amplifies her meaning: "The
first circles have shown to thee the Seraphim and the Cherubim. Thus swiftly they follow
their own bonds, in order to liken themselves to the Point as most they can, and they can
in proportion as they are exalted to see. Those other loves, which go around them, are
called Thrones of the divine aspect, because they terminated the first triad ... The next
triad, that in like manner bourgeons in this sempiternal spring which the nightly Aries
despoils not, perpetually sing Hosannah with three melodies, which sound in the three
orders of joy ... first Dominations, and then Virtues; the third order is of Powers. Then
in the two penultimate dances, the Principalities and Archangels circle; the last is
wholly of Angelic sports. These orders all gaze upward, and downward so prevail, that
towards God all are drawn, and all draw."
- The theory of angels raises many questions regarding the
similarity and difference between them and disembodied souls.
But for comparison with men, perhaps the most striking
consequence of the theory of angels as bodiless intelligences concern the manner of their
knowledge and government. The comparison can be made on quite different views of the
nature of man and the soul. In fact, diverse conceptions of man or the soul can themselves
be compared by reference to the angelic properties which one conception attributes to
human nature and another denies.
Lacking bodies, the angels are without sense perception and
imagination. Not being immersed in time and motion, they do not reason or think
discursively as men do by reasoning from premises to conclusion. Whereas "human
intellects," according to Aquinas, "obtain their perfection in the knowledge of
truth by a kind of movement and discursive intellectual operation ... as they advance from
one known thing to another," the angels, "from the knowledge of a known
principle ... straightway perceive as known all its consequent conclusions ... with no
discursive process at all."
Their knowledge is intuitive and immediate, not by means of
concepts abstracted from experience or other-wise formed, but through the archetypal ideas
infused in them at their creation by God. That is why, Aquinas goes on to say, angels
"are called intellectual beings" as contrasted with such rational
natures as "human souls which acquire knowledge of truth discursively." If men
"possessed the fullness of intellectual light, like the angels, then in the first
grasping of principles they would at once comprehend their whole range, by perceiving
whatever could be reasoned out from them."
- It would appear from this that conceptions of the human
intellect which minimize its dependence on sense and imagination, and which emphasize the
intuitive rather than the discursive character of human thought, attribute angelic power
to man. The same may be said of theories of human knowledge which account for its origin
in terms of innate ideas or implanted principles.
Still another example of the attribution of angelic properties to man is to be
found in the supposition that human beings can communicate with one another by telepathy.
The angels are telepathic; one angel, it is said, can make its ideas known to another
simply by an act of will and without any exterior means of communication.
Lacking bodies, the angels are without bodily emotions, free from the human
conflict between reason and passion, and completely directed in their love -- or the
motion of their will -- by what they know. In the Divine Comedy Beatrice speaks
of the angelic society as one in which "the Eternal Love disclosed himself in new
loves." Adverting to the division between the good and the bad angels, she tells
Dante, "those whom thou seest here were modest in grateful recognition of the
Goodness which had made them apt for intelligence so great, wherefore their vision was
exalted with illuminant grace and by their merit, so that they have full and steadfast
will."
Yet their vision and love of God is not equal. In heaven "the Primal Light
that irradiates it all is received in it by as many modes as are the splendors with which
the Light pairs Itself. Wherefore, since the affection follows upon the act that
conceives, in this nature the sweetness of love diversely glows and warms."
Such a society, governed by knowledge and love, has no need for the application of
coercive force, for angels are ordered to one another in such a way that no
misunderstandings or disagreements can occur among them. The philosophical anarchist who
proposes the ideal of a human society without restraint or coercion seems, therefore, to
be angelicizing men, or at least to be wishing for heaven on earth.
- Conceiving government on earth in other terms, the writers of
The Federalist remark that "if men were angels, no government would be
necessary." If they had considered that the angelic society is governed by love alone
and without force, they might have said, "if men were angels, no coercion would be
necessary in their government."
One of the great theological dogmas asserts that, from the beginning, the angels
are divided into two hosts -- the good and evil spirits. The sin of Lucifer, or Satan, and
his followers is that of disobedience, or rebellion against God, motivated by a pride
which refuses to be satisfied with being less than God.
As Satan himself says, in Paradise Lost,
- ... pride and worse Ambition threw me down Warring in Heav'ns matchless King... All
his good prov'd ill in me, And wrought but malice; lifted up so high I 'sdeind subjection,
and thought one step higher Would set me highest, and in a moment quit The debt immense of
endless gratitude... And that word Disdain forbids me, and my dread of shame Among the
spirits beneath, whom I seduc'd Then to submit, boasting I could subdue Th' Omnipotent.
The theologians try to define precisely the nature of Satan's pride in wishing to
be God. "To be as God," Aquinas explains, "can be understood in
two ways: first, by equality; secondly, by likeness. An angel could not seek to be as God
in the first way, because by natural knowledge he knew that this was impossible ... And
even supposing it were possible, it would be against natural desire,
because there exists in everything the natural desire to preserve its own nature
which would not be preserved were it to be changed into another nature. Consequently, no
creature of a lower nature can ever covet the grade of a higher nature, just as an ass
does not desire to be a horse."
It must be in the other way, then, Aquinas thinks, that Satan sinned by wishing to
be like God. But this requires further explanation. "To desire to be as God according
to likeness can happen in two ways. In one way, as to that likeness whereby everything is
likened unto God. And so, if anyone desire in this way to be Godlike, he commits no sin;
provided that he desires such likeness in proper order, that is to say, That he may obtain
it from God. But he would sin were he to desire to be like God even
in the right way, but of his own power, and not of God's. In another way, he may
desire to be like God in some respect which is not natural to one; e.g., if one were to
desire to create heaven and earth, which is proper to God, in which desire there would be
sin."
In this last way, Aquinas asserts, "the devil desired to be as God. Not that
he desired to resemble God by being subject to no one else absolutely, for thus he would
be desiring his own non-being, since no creature can exist except by participating under
God." But he "desired as the last end of his beatitude something which he could
attain by virtue of his own nature, turning his appetite away from the supernatural
beatitude which is attained by God's grace."
In the original sin of Lucifer and the other fallen angels, as well as in all
subsequent intervention by Satan or his demons in the affairs of men, lie the theological
mysteries of the origin of evil in a world created by God's
love and goodness, and of the liberty of those creatures who, while free, can only do
God's will. As indicated in the chapter on SIN, the fall of Adam from grace and innocence
involves the same mysteries. Man's destiny is connected with the career of Lucifer in
traditional Christian teaching, not only on the side of sin, but also with regard to man's
redemption -- salvation replacing the fallen angels by the souls of the elect in heavenly
choir.
Among the most extraordinary moments in our literature are those in which Lucifer
talks with God about mankind, as in Paradise Lost; or about a particular man, as
in the Book of Job or in the Prologue in Heaven in Faust. Their pagan parallel is
the speech of Prometheus to a silent Zeus, but Prometheus, unlike Satan, is man's
benefactor and he can defy Zeus because the Fates, whose secret he knows, rule over the
gods. Lucifer, on the contrary, seems always to be in the service of
God. When he appears to Ivan in the Brothers Karamazov, he protests,
"I love men genuinely ... and against the grain I serve to produce events and do what
is irrational because I am commanded to."
If it were otherwise, the warfare between the powers of light and darkness would
have to be construed as a battle between equals, which, according to Christian orthodoxy,
is the Manichean heresy that regards the world as the battle ground of the forces of good
and evil.
The word "angelic" usually has the connotation of perfect moral
goodness, but that must not lead us to forget that the demons are angelic in their nature
although of a diabolical or evil will. Nor should the fact of Satan's subservience to God
cause us to forget that Christian theology tries not to underestimate the power of the
devil in his goings and comings on earth. Satan tried to tempt even Christ, and throughout
the New Testament the destruction of the diabolical influence over men occupies a
prominent place. The intervention of the devil in man's life provides, if not the theme,
the background of Goethe's Faust.
As the theory of demonic influences and diabolical possession is an integral part
of the traditional doctrine of angels, so, in modern times, demonology has been a major
focus of attack upon theological teaching concerning spirits. Moralists have thought it
possible to explain human depravity without recourse to the seductions of the devil, and
psychiatrists have thought it possible for men to go mad or to behave as if bewitched
without the help of evil spirits. The idea of the devil, according to Freud, is a
religious fiction -- "the best way out in acquittal of God" for those who try
"to reconcile the undeniable existence ... of evil with His omnipotence and supreme
goodness."
The characteristic skepticism of our age has been directed against the belief in
angels generally. It casts doubt by satire or denies by argument the existence of spirits
both good and evil. Yet, all arguments considered, it may be wondered whether the
existence of angels -- or, in philosophical terms, the existence of pure intelligences --
is or is not still a genuine issue.
- Or are there two issues here, one philosophical and the other
theological, one to be resolved or left unresolved on the level of argument, the other to
be answered dogmatically by the declarations of a religious faith?
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