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Do Angels Exist?

Do angels exist? Many today are denying that fact. The Church in the Fourth Lateran Council in 12 15 (DS 800) defined: "God from the beginning of time, made both kinds of creatures, spiritual and bodily, out of nothing, that is angelic and worldly." But some persons can be remarkably rigid: they say that this definition teaches infallibly only that God made everything -to add that that includes spiritual and bodily creatures is not part of the definition. Even if we grant that, the existence of angels is part of a major teaching, and does call for assent of our minds. However, in addition, Vatican II taught in LG 12 that if the whole Church, authorities and people, have ever believed something, that is accepted it as revealed, that belief is infallible. There can be no doubt that the Church for centuries has believed in the existence of angels.

How then can it happen that some doubt or deny their existence? Some merely do not care what the Church teaches, and even say on many things that it teaches the opposite of what it really teaches.

But others point to problems about angels in earlier parts of Scripture. The usual Hebrew word which we translate as angel is "malach", "messenger" of God. The Greek word for "messenger" is "angelos", hence our word angel. However at times other expressions are used, and we merely gather from the whole picture that God is employing some other non-human but intelligent being as His agent or messenger.

So, what we need to do now, is to explore these problems.

We begin with asking the help of the Church. In DV 1 1 taught: "Since then, everything that the inspired authors "assert" is asserted by the Holy Spirit, for this reason, the Scriptures are to be confessed as teaching firmly, faithfully, and without error, that truth which God for our salvation willed to have consigned to the sacred writings."

We underlined that word "assert". If someone asks: Are there errors in Scripture? We reply: No, if you look at just what the sacred writer "asserts".

We need to keep this in mind constantly in dealing with scriptural passages on angels.

What does that word "assert" mean? To illustrate, let us think of a modern historical novel about the Civil War. Being natives of this culture, we know how to take it. We expect the main line to be history, and we expect that the background descriptions will fit the period, e.g., there may be steam trains and telegraphs, but no planes or TV. But there are other things in such a novel that are not asserted. We may find word for word discussions between important persons; we may find a bit of romance going on between some of the lesser characters. Now the writer does not assert that these fill-ins are historical. Nor do we charge him with ignorance of deception for writing them. That is the way one writes an historical novel, that is the way one should understand it.

We have just seen a pattern of writing, which is called a genre. We have many such patterns or genres in English, each with its own rules for how it is to be understood. We inherited most of our patterns from Greece and Rome. So as long as we read things in that large culture stream, our instinctive adjustments work well: we know how to take things - we know as it were what are the rules for each genre.

But suppose we move into a very different culture, ancient Semitic. May we, should we expect they will write the way modern Americans write? Of course not. The very thought is silly. Yet many today in the US and elsewhere act that way. There are Open Bible Churches, which think anyone just off the street can understand everything, and get it right. They came to think this way because Luther wanted to use Scripture as a club to hit the Church. Of course, he had to claim Scripture is clear at least on the main things. Really, he got it wrong on many of the main things, on justification by faith. 2 Peter 3. 16 had warned that in St. Paul's Epistles, and other Scriptures too, there are many things hard to understand.

One special source of the problem is found in chapter 6 of Judges, the incident of an angel appearing to Gedeon. If we read it carefully, we find at times the text says that the angel of the Lord spoke to Gedeon. But at other times we read "I", meaning God Himself. Not strangely, many have asked: Is that expression "the angel of the Lord", just a literary variety, so that it really means God Himself is speaking in all instances?

If we had nothing clearer than that passage we might be left uncertain.

However, as we turn to other scriptural incidents, we see gradually that the sacred writer certainly did mean to assert that there was some being other than God present.

For example, a messenger of the Lord came to Hagar, Sara's maid, whom Sara had cruelly sent into the desert (Gen 16). The angel rescued her. Now of course God Himself could have appeared, but it is more in line with His wisdom to use created angels to do things when they will serve just as well. Similarly, He uses us to do things He Himself could do directly, such as preaching to the people, or offering sacrifice, or hearing confessions: - but for Him to work so directly would be miraculous. For us to do these various things is not a miracle. So He will use the extraordinary, miracles, where needed, but not where not needed.

We might draw a parallel. In the Patristic age there was a tendency to think that Christ consisted of a human body, but that He had no human soul- could not the Divine Word perform all the functions of a soul? Of course He could. But the Church rejected that idea, and insistently taught that Christ did have a fully rational human soul, including mind and will. In fact the Church has accepted what Isaiah 11 tells us, that |He also had the Gifts of the Holy Spirit, and was even guided by this means. Again, the Divine Word, His Divinity could have carried on all these things. But the Father prefers that His humanity be complete, and will a full complement of powers and aids.

In this light we see again that it is to be expected that God would use spiritual beings many times instead of just doing things Himself.

Another incident: Abraham in Genesis 18 had three visitors. In verse 1 we read that God Himself appeared to Abraham. But soon there were three. After eating, two of them went on separately, while one, seemingly God Himself, stayed with Abraham. It is clear that one of the visitors was God, but the other two seem to have been angels. The only other possibility would be that each of the Three Persons of the Holy Trinity appeared in human form. Very unlikely at this period when the Trinity was completely unknown.

After God told Abraham He meant to destroy Sodom, as we know, Abraham appealed repeatedly to spare the city. Finally, God would have spared it for ten just men: but they were not found.

Before the actual destruction of Sodom, two angels come to visit Lot in Sodom (Genesis 19). If it were just a paraphrase for God Himself, there would not be two angels "malachim". At first the wicked men of Sodom wanted to have homosexual relations with them, but the angels struck them with blindness. In passing, we note that God did not destroy Sodom for lack of hospitality -- to want to abuse guests in that way was not right. And the Jewish Intertestamental literature makes quite clear that the ancient Jews knew God destroyed Sodom for homosexuality.

Still later (Genesis 22). when Abraham has 99 years old. God ordered him to kill his son Isaac in sacrifice. This was a great trial of faith for Abraham. God has previously told Abraham that he, Abraham, would be the father of a great nation through Isaac. Now God told Abraham to kill Isaac. Abraham might reasonably have said to God: I recall you told me I would be the Father of a great nation through my son Isaac. Now you tell me to kill him. I will gladly do either one. Which do you want? But Abraham asked no questions, he simply got going, his faith holding on in the dark, as it were - we mean he held on when it seemed impossible to hold to God's will. He came right up to the point where he was about to plunge the knife into Isaac. But then the angel of the Lord stopped him (Genesis 22.11-18).

During the departure of the Jews from Egypt, God promised, in Exodus 22.20: "Behold, I am sending my angel before you, to prepare your way before you."

The oldest mention of what seem to be angels is in Genesis 3.24. God stationed cherubim at the entrance to paradise to keep Adam and Eve out. Cherubim are also mentioned in Ezekiel 28, 14 and 16. Golden images of cherubim were on top of the ancient ark of the covenant. They were figures with outspread wings. Were there really such beings? No doubt the sacred writer meant to assert that they were, though the use of wings was just a way of saying in art that they could fly.

Now we find images of cherubim in ancient Near Eastern art going back to the 9th century B.C. On either side of the throne of King Hiram of Byblos there were figures of animal shape, with wings. The word cherub maybe the same as the Mesopotamian word "karibu", meaning intercessors.

Therefore, at once we need to ask: Did the Jews get their notion of angels from these pagan sources? It is not impossible that they got the idea for images of them from pagan sources. But that is not the same as saying they got the belief in the existence of such beings from Mesopotamia. The idea that they might have taken the idea of images of some kind from pagan lands is not impossible to think. Pope John Paul II, in his conferences on Genesis, said that he thought that the first three chapters of Genesis were basically an ancient story, either made up or taken over by the writer of Genesis. The Pope meant that the genre of Genesis 1-3 could include the use of an ancient story to bring out some things that were really true and historical. He might have taken such a story from Mesopotamia. The chief things to be conveyed by the means of such a story would be chiefly these: God made all things. In some special way He made the first humans. He gave them some sort of command - we would not be certain if it was about a fruit tree or if that tree was part of the stage dressing, as it were. Whatever the command, they violated it, and so fell from favor or grace. Since Adam and Eve lost, or rather, threw away, God's favor or grace, they did not have that favor/grace to pass on to their children. Hence children arrive in the world without the grace He intended they should have: that is the sense in which we say there are in original sin.

But in saying this, the Pope did not mean that the story in Genesis was mere fiction. No, it was a means - different from what we use - of bringing out some things that are historically real.

So we could admit - we are not certain - that the ancient jews did get some ideas for images and stories from other lands. But we still ask: what did they mean to "assert" -- we are following up on DV 1 1. It is clear they meant to assert that Adam and Eve did violate God's command and that they fell from favor/grace. Did they also assert that in some way God barred them from the earthly paradise? Clearly yes. DId He station some special kinds of beings there to keep them out? He did intend to keep them out, whether or not He made use of such a help.

We move ahead to a mysterious passage, Genesis 6.1-4. There we read that the "sons of God" saw the daughters of men, became amorous, had children. The children were the "Nephilim", which some translate as giants.

Were the sons of God angels? Some of the early Fathers of the Church seem to have thought so. Thus St. Justin Martyr, around 150 A.D. in his Second Apology 2.5 wrote: "The angels transgressed this arrangement and were caught by love of women and begot children who are those that are called demons." St. Justin clearly did not know about the principles of literary genre. In fact, those principles were not known until our own century. So he could make a mistake like this. He clearly thought angels have bodies. But he had company. St. Fulgentius seems to have thought angels have bodies. St. Augustine was uncertain. So was St. Bernard. Much later, the great Dominican theologian Cajetan in one place said angels have "a subtle body unknown to our senses," though elsewhere he seems to think they are pure spirits. (Others rule out bodies: Lactantius, Eusebius of Caesarea, St. Gregory of Nyssa, St. John Chrysostom, Theodoret, St. Gregory the Great.

The notion that angels have bodies was also, for St. Justin, influenced by the idea that they had food. In his Dialogue with Trypho 57: "It is clear to us that they eat in the heavens, even though it is not by food like that which we use. For about manna... the Scriptures said that men ate angels' food.

Again, the lack of knowledge about genres led to these mistakes.