The Meaning of the word "Angel"The Meaning of the word "Angel"
The meaning of the word Angel is messenger. That name is given to those pure spirits because such is the relation they bear to God and us. Their principal duty, however, is the same as the office of the blessed in heaven - to see, love, bless, and enjoy God for ever and ever.
Among the ancients there were many who believed there was nothing in the world but what could be seen or perceived by the senses. The Sadducees, for instance, did not believe in the existence of spirits.
It is the boast of modern atheists and rationalists that there is nothing but "Nature" and "the forces of Nature"; with them there are no angels.
Some of the Greek philosophers held that there were angels, but that these angels had bodies; not, indeed, corporeal, dense bodies like ours, but bodies suitable to their nature - thin, airy, star-like bodies. Some, even, of the Fathers, on account of the angels being represented as having the appearance of men, seemed to favour the theory of their having bodies. Petavius says that Irenaeus, Tertullian, Origen, and others held this doctrine.
Now, Catholics say that the angels are pure spirits because, wherever in the Scripture they are introduced they are simply called by the name of spirit. "Are they not all ministering spirits?" (Hebrews 1:14) "Who makest Thy angels spirits?" (Psalm 103)
The Fourth Council of Lateran has defined that "God created together, at the beginning of time, out of nothing, both classes of creatures, spiritual and corporal the angelic, to wit, and the material; and then the human, as a composite of both spirit and body."
Even Aristotle says: "All nations believe that there are individual intelligences beyond the skies that these are subject to no change and to no passion; that they are in enjoyment of the fullest and most perfect life, which consists not so much in action as in contemplation; that they have a king, that they differ from men, and are inconceivably more excellent".
How did the ancients arrive at the idea of angels?
We can only answer by conjecture. Perhaps from the responses of idols or their prophecies; perhaps from the motions of the heavenly bodies, or from some extraordinary facts which were not to be explained by any knowledge they had of Nature; or, better, and more likely, from the ancient tradition of the patriarchs.
Cardinal Newman's notion of the angels before he became a Catholic will prove interesting: "It was, I suppose, to the Alexandrian school and to the early Church that I owe in particular what I definitely held about the angels. I viewed them not only as the ministers employed by the Creator in the Jewish and Christian dispensations, as we find on the face of Scripture, but as carrying on, as the Scripture also implies, the economy of the visible world. I considered them as the real causes of motion, life, and light, and of those elementary principles of the physical universe, which, when offered in their developments to our senses, suggest to us the notion of cause and effect, and of what are called the laws of Nature. This doctrine I have drawn out in my sermon for Michaelmas Day, written in 1831. I say of the angels: Every breath of air, and ray of light and heat, every beautiful prospect is, as it were, the skirts of their garments, the waving of the robes of those whose faces see God." - Apologia
Now, what would our reason tell us? This: we are persuaded of the innate nobility of spirit - but as it exists in us it is united with a strange and (to it) repugnant nature, hampering, fettering, clouding, perplexing it. Then, we say, if there be a just God, putting everything in due order - order being heaven's first law - there ought to be a world of spirit alone. Again, we look at ourselves and find that we are a compound of material and immaterial; the material we find existing outside us, by itself, alone; we look, there fore, for the immaterial existing by itself alone, in this order (1) material, (2) material and immaterial united, (3) immaterial. If we look to the visible world we find this gradation: mineral world (in the lowest grade), vegetable world (nobler), animal world (noblest).
"God, who is a pure Spirit," says the great Bossuet, "wished to create spirits like Himself pure and immaterial - like Him, living by intelligence and love - spirits that would know Him and love Him, as He knows Himself and loves Himself; and who, like Him, would be happy in simply knowing and loving the first great Being (and He is Himself happy in knowing Himself and loving Himself); and for that very reason they bear on their nature a divine character, which makes them after His image and likeness."
By whom were immaterial substances created? or, is it possible to create them?
It was God made the angels. Says Bossuet: "O God, who can doubt that You could create spirits without a body? Or, is there need of a body that one might understand, love, and be happy? You, who are Yourself so pure a Spirit - are You not incorporeal and immaterial? Are not intelligence and love spiritual and immaterial operations which can be exercised without the need of a body? Who doubts, then, that You could create intelligences of this kind? And You Yourself have not left us in doubt, but have revealed it to us."
At what point of time were the angels created?
(1) It is a matter on which all theologians are agreed, that the nine choirs of angels were created at one and the same time.
(2) That they were not created after the creation of earthly bodies.
(3) Some of the ancient Fathers, following the opinion of the great and learned Origen, have held that the angels existed for a long space of time, or at least for some time, prior to the point of time indicated by the Book of Genesis, where (in its opening verse) it says: "In the beginning God created heaven and earth". Among the Eastern Fathers holding this opinion were such holy and venerable names as Saint Basil, Saint Gregory Nazianzen, Saint Chrysostom, Saint Damascene; and among the Latin Fathers, Saint Hilary, Saint Ambrose, Saint Jerome, etc.
(4) That is no longer held. On the contrary, the common opinion which it would be rash to deny teaches that the angels were created at the same time with the corporeal world. The Scripture (Eccl. 18:1) says: "He who liveth for ever made all things together". Saint Augustine infers from this that God created all the things of the world in one moment; nevertheless, it seems the more acceptable opinion that the word "together" means about the same period, without any notable interval of time elapsing; and is, per haps, to be understood of collection or community rather than of time. The phrase "in the beginning" seems to be taken here, as also in the first chapter of Saint John's Gospel (see Maldonatus), as meaning "in the commencement when created things began to be". Now, since angels are created things, they seem to be included in this description of the inspired writer. It is thus that Epiphanius, Theodorotus, Venerable Bede, Saint Thomas, Suarez, and almost all modern writers, write and teach. The definition of the Fourth Council (Lateran) has been already given. It says: "God created together, at the beginning of time, out of nothing, both classes of creatures, spiritual and corporal the angelic, to wit, and the worldly; and then the human, as a composite of both spirit and body". The Vatican Council has repeated these same words, and embodied them anew in a definition. Now, the juxtaposition of the words together and then seems to point out the angelic and the corporeal worlds were created at one and the same time, but that it was some time afterwards when the human came into existence.
Saint Thomas argues: The angels are a part of the universal creation, and form a regular grade in that creation. Now, no part can be perfect separated from its belongings, and God's works are said to be all perfect. But, the angelic world would have stood by itself, separated from the rest of creation, if it had been created before the sensible world; and therefore, to the eye of the metaphysician, would have been much less perfect than if formed conjointly and simultaneously with the corporeal world.
It is, therefore, all but a matter of faith that angels were created at the same time, i.e., simultaneously, with the pre-Adamite world, out of whose "chaos and void" God drew the beauty and order of ours.
Objection - But why did not Moses mention the angels in Genesis, when he was relating the works of the Creation? Why did he not give them first place, as they were the most excellent of God's works?
(1) Saint Jerome says: Moses omitted them because he was treating of the visible world only.
(2) Saint Cyril says: Because all he proposed to write about was what had reference to man.
(3) Saint Augustine says: That the angels are meant in the word heaven, and even in the word light. If this were not well understood among the Hebrews, that people would come to believe that the angels were never created, and therefore eternal.
(4) Saint Thomas thus explains the secrecy of the great Law-giver on the matter: "That if it were openly told to a rude and uncultured people, as the Hebrews were, and so especially prone to idolatry, that beings of such an exalted and beautiful nature existed, possessing such an influence in the world's providence and economy, they would, without doubt, have raised altars and sacrificed to them". Even Moses own dead body had by God's providence to be kept secret from them.
It is true that in many places in the Pentateuch Moses speaks of angels, but in such a manner as above all to declare that there is but one God, and to testify that these are no more than His ministers, servants, messengers - and with such care that nowhere do we find it related that the Jews raised idols to them.
"God created the angels and the stars. How ancient the angels are we do not know; though we know that spiritual and material natures were created at the same moment. In all ways the angels are wonderful to think of, because they are so strong, so wise, so various, so beautiful, so innumerable." - Father Faber, Precious Blood
What is the number of the angels?
It cannot be given. Nothing is known exactly of their number; it is beyond human calculation, like the stars at night. The number is indefinitely great, and all but infinite. The Holy Scriptures pretend but to give a vague idea of the immensity of their numbers.
Daniel (7:10) says: "Thousands on thousands ministered to Him, and ten hundred times a hundred thousand assisted before His throne".
The Apocalypse (5:11): "And their numbers were thousands on thousands".
Job (25:3): "Whether is there a limit to the number of His soldiers".
There is a fitness in the multitudes of the heavenly hosts,
(1) God created beings to be happy around Him. His omnipotence and His beneficence would not be expressed by a scanty number. The vaster and more incalculable their numbers, the greater the manifestation of His power and His blessedness.
(2) It is written in Proverbs (14:28): "In the multitude of his people lieth the glory of the king, the ignominy of the prince in the scantiness of his nation".
(3) If we make a computation of all the members of the human race from Adam till the last man, the numbers will all but pass beyond the reckoning of human figures. What reason is there that the angels should be less in number?
Bossuet says: "Count, if you can, the sands on the seashore; count, if you can, the stars in the firmament, those that you can see, as well as those that you cannot; and when you have done so, be firmly convinced that you have not yet reached the number of the angels; for, point out to me what is most perfect in heaven or on earth, and on that, I say, does God most lavishly outpour the abundance of His omnipotence and His love".
"Prodigality. . . is a characteristic of all the divine works. . . . We cannot meditate on the countless multitudes of the angels without astonishment. So vast a populace, of such surpassing beauty, of such gigantic intelligence, of such diversified nature, is simply overwhelming to our most ambitious thoughts. A locust-swarm, and each locust an archangel; the myriads of points of life disclosed to us by the microscope, and each point a grand spirit; the sands of the seas and the waters of the ocean, and each grain and each drop a beautiful being, the brightness of whose substance we could not see and live: this is but an approximation to the reality. So theologians teach us." - Father Faber, Precious Blood
Are the angels all of one species?
The angels are not all of one species. Scripture frequently speaks of distinctions and differences; some angels, some archangels, etc. Theologians generally teach that different gifts of grace have been bestowed on the angels, marking out, therefore, different capacities, i.e., different species. Saint Dionysius, writing on the heavenly hierarchy, says: "The sacred volumes declare that these holy superior beings differ from one another by different grades." Saint Jerome, writing against Jovinian: "Among the invisible creatures there is a manifold and an indefinite diversity." Saint Augustine and Saint Anselm teach the same. Reason would tell us, if we look at bird differing from bird, beast from beast, flower from flower, tree from tree, that the variety of the species enhances the beauty and harmony of the creation. The same way is it with the beautiful angels in heaven.
Are there many individuals in each species?
The great Saint Thomas would have it that there is only one angel of every species, thus showing forth the magnificence of the designs and the perfection of this wonderful work of God. This is not the opinion commonly held, however; nearly all the rest of the schoolmen hold the opposite opinion. Saint Augustine (in his Enchiridion, 29) finds an unanswerable argument in the fact of the condemnation of the angels; for, he says, "if each angel constituted a separate and distinct species, then numerous, separate, and distinct species were condemned to hell, and lost absolutely and for ever to heaven, which can hardly be thought of; whereas, if there were several individuals of each species, there would still be representatives of each species in heaven".
With our notions of things earthly, it appears rather to harmonise that there should be many members of each species, than that each angel should constitute a distinct species.
Cardinal Newman, in his Grammar of Assent, without, however, giving any adhesion to the doctrine, says: "The angels have been considered by divines to have each of them a species to himself, and we may fancy each of them so absolutely sui similis as to be like nothing else."
Father Faber, in his work All for Jesus, says very beautifully: " Scripture teaches us a great deal about the angels, their worship of God, their ministries towards other creatures, their individual characters, as in the case of Michael, Gabriel, and Raphael, their multitude and their nine choirs by name. Some theologians have thought that each angel is a species of himself, which would, indeed, open out quite an overwhelming view of the magnificence of God. Others, with more show of reason, make twenty-seven species, three in each choir, as there are three choirs in each hierarchy; and even this gives us amazing ideas of the court of heaven, when we remember how hard it is for us to conceive of any further specific division of reasonable creatures than into those with bodies and those purely spiritual."
The natural life of the angels.
We know what the natural life of man consists in: he breathes, his heart beats, his blood circulates, he eats and drinks, he sleeps and walks about, he thinks, reasons, acts. Now, in what does the life, the natural life, of the angels consist? In four things: in the exercise of the intellect, the exercise of the will, the interchange of thought, and the power of acting. This is the teaching of divines.
The angels, by the natural powers belonging to them as angels, can know God, can know themselves, one another, and, finally, the soul of man. They know God. God was their first beginning, their last end, and this knowledge was the primary and chief object to which the powers of their intellect were to be turned. They know themselves. That is simply what we understand by being alive. They know the other angels, as being fellow-citizens of the heavenly city. They know the human soul, as forming a portion, like themselves, of God's vast creation.
Can the angels know, and do they know, all the material things of this world?
Yes; they know all the material world. They know the mineral world and all its properties, such as geology, for example, teaches, but in an indefinitely higher degree than geologists know it. They know the vegetable world and all its varied and different properties also, flowers, and shrubs, and trees, and vegetables, and mosses. They know the firmament world - all that astronomy teaches about the sun and the stars, their motions, their orbits, their substances. They know all about the animal world, and its equally diversified creatures, their formation, their habits, modes of life, etc., from the microscopic animalcula to the lord of the creation - man. God gave them this knowledge, and it may be said of them that if they did not know these things at one glance, they would have a curiosity (as being members of creation) to know these things which formed other parts of the same creation as they were.
Do the angels know future things?
The angels know some, not all, future things; they know those things which necessarily follow from natural causes. But the things which are merely accidental in the future, or those necessary consequences of natural causes which by God's providence, or otherwise, may be changed, they do not know. Let us take example of the foretelling of a storm, which an American paper appears to the unlearned to supernaturally predict. Now, an angel knows that a current of air is passing in the Western regions. It knows all the laws whereby the atmosphere is guided. It knows at what speed it is travelling. It knows at what time, with a certain rate of motion, it would reach a given place. As a rule, it could predict of it that it would do so by a certain period; men can do that much. Thus, to an extent, it can tell future things. But unforeseen causes may arise and interfere, and then it would not be infallible in its judgment. Suppose a person was sick, one of those mentioned in the Bible, and sick unto death, an angel from its super-human medical skill would predict its death. But in the meantime our Blessed Lord is entreated: He enters, and the disease flies at His approach; then the angel would be mistaken in his calculation; so speaks Saint Thomas. But Suarez and others hold that the angels know what will eventually happen, provided these things depend upon necessary causes. This will be better understood by the following.
Can they know future things, not arising from necessary causes?
No; for the knowledge of future things, that depend on free-will for their coming into being, is ever set down as the special mark of the Divinity.
"Tell what shall happen in the future, and we will know that ye are gods." (Isaias 41:23)
"I am God, and there is no one like Me, telling from the beginning the latest thing to happen, and from the commencement the things that have not yet begun to be." (Isaias 49:9)
Saint Hilary says: "What is so peculiar to God as the knowledge of the future?"
Saint Hilary: "To no one else but to One, and that One God, does it belong to know the future".
Tertullian: "The truth of divination I hold to be the distinct testimony of the Divinity".
This is important, as it leads us to understand what is the knowledge of the demons, and whether they can foretell future things, which do not happen by fixed laws; as, for instance, when the oracle was asked, "Shall Pyrrhus conquer the Romans?" the oracle did not know. The answer it gave was ambiguous. It made reply: "The Romans Pyrrhus shall conquer" - which might mean that Pyrrhus would conquer the Romans, or the Romans would conquer Pyrrhus. Hence Cicero says: "Their divinations were partly false, partly true," as may happen to any one; oftener still ambiguous so as to square with any event; and, therefore, their responses were generally despised by the more learned and keener-minded of the heathens, as Origen and Eusebius testify. The Roman general had little confidence in the sacred chickens. On an occasion, when before a battle they refused to take their food, he flung them into the sea, with the exclamation: "If they do not eat let them drink". This, however, lost him the battle, for the soldiers, thinking it a bad omen, got so disheartened that they easily yielded to the enemy.
Can the angels know for a certainty free acts of the intellect and the will either in other angels or in man?
No, not without the consent of the others. God alone can do so.
Scripture says: "God searches all hearts, and understands all the thoughts of the mind. Thou alone (O Lord) knowest the heart of man." (Paralip. 28:9)
"Wicked and inscrutable is the heart of all; who shall understand it? I, the Lord, searching the hearts and reins." (Jeremiah 17:17)
Saint Hilary: "The thoughts of the heart it is not ours to know, but His, of whom it is written: God, searching the reins and hearts."
Saint Ambrose of Milan: "When the Lord wished to save men, He showed that He was God, by His knowledge of hidden things."
Saint John Chrysostom: "But that you may know it belongs to God alone to know the secrets of hearts, hear what the Prophet says: Thou alone knowest hearts."
This is the feeling that God's own hand has implanted in our minds, namely, that our thoughts should not be read by every passer-by, but only by those we wish, and according as we ourselves would reveal them. We would even conceal them, if possible, from God. From this it follows that the devil, when he tempts us. can only guess at what is going on in our minds. He cannot know for certain, except from our own outward manifestations, how we receive his suggestions, and whether we yield to them or not.
Are the mysteries of faith, as, for instance, the dogma of the Holy Trinity, as much beyond the natural powers of the angels to understand as beyond ours?
Just the same. They can no more of their own powers understand the great mysteries of faith, as they really are, no more than we can. They must bow their heads as we do, when reflecting on the Incarnation, the Blessed Eucharist, etc.
But in natural things that they can under stand, is there a knowledge from inference in the angels, i.e., knowing one thing do they conclude another?
No; they see all natural things at one and the most luminous glance. For instance, they know at one glance the essence of man's nature, all its properties, individual conditions, and so on; the same way with all the material world. And from this we are also to conclude that there is no such thing as being deceived with the angels in those things which come within their knowledge.
What is meant by the morning and evening knowledge of the angels?
Divines distinguish two sources of knowledge in the angels:
(1) By the Beatific Vision the angels see all things, present, past, future, and most perfectly, in God; this is called the morning knowledge, because both of its priority and of its clearness.
(2) The angels afterwards see things as they really take place. This knowledge is not so noble, nor so perfect as the morning, and, therefore, because of its lateness and its dimness, is called the evening knowledge. Saint Augustine, in his City of God, says: "The knowledge of a creature is (if I might use the expression) more discoloured than the knowledge of it as seen in God, just as art is less than the first principle Nature; and, therefore, very fittingly is that knowledge called evening knowledge." Saint Thomas says: "As of forenoon and afternoon a day is customarily made up, so of morning and evening science the days and knowledge of an angel".
It is well to remember these two terms.
Can the angels desire, and love, and hate, or rejoice and sorrow?
These things are attributed to them in the Scriptures, but none of these external things affect their substantial bliss and glory and happiness in the Beatific Vision.
Are the angels endowed naturally with free-will like man?
Yes; the Scriptures everywhere speak of them as obeying the commands of God, as worthy of reward or punishment, and this could not be unless they had free will.
Saint Damascene says: "An angel is a being endowed with free-will, for everything that makes use of reason is also endowed with free-will."
Saint Gregory of Nyssa: "God ordained that whatsoever is honoured with reason and intelligence is ruled by free-will."
Saint Fulgentius: "God gave liberty to the angels, that their loyalty might have the approval of their will."
Are the angels of their own nature exposed to sin?
Yes; the angels, not alone in their own nature, but even raised to a supernatural order and strengthened, therefore, by God's grace, did actually sin.
Saint Jerome says: "It is God alone to whom sin cannot be imputed. All others, since they enjoy free-will, may turn that will to either side."
Saint Ambrose of Milan: "Every creature, according to the capacity of his nature, receives the accidents of good and evil, and feels the same yielding to evil."
Saint Augustine of Hippo: "It is manifest that sin is destruction, annihilation (nihilum), and that men, when they sin, become nothing."
Now, according to Saint Thomas, "Every creature has this (of its nature) to tend namely to nothing, since out of nothing it was made"; therefore, to make use of the words of Saint Augustine, in his City of God, "Every intellectual creature is mutable, i.e., prone to sin, since out of nothing it was made."
Bossuet says: Some creatures, and they the most perfect, are drawn out of nothing, just as others; and those, all perfect though they be, are exposed to sin. One Being alone is by His own nature impeccable - He who is of Himself, and who by His essence is perfect. But, since He alone is perfect, it follows that everything besides is defective, according to holy Job: " And He hath found depravation even in His angels". Again, the rule directing angelic intelligence is by nature either intrinsic or extrinsic. If the former, the rule would be identified with the very nature of the actor, and could not therefore be deviated from; but if the latter, then it can. Now, the rule in the case of the angels (as well as in that of man) is the sovereign will of God, which is extrinsic, and which consequently may be deviated from; and hence angels may sin. To quote the words which the great bishop of Meaux addresses to a fallen angel: " Truly everything drawn out of nothing has still some of its belongings. You were sanctified, but not essentially holy as God. You were ruled at first before you fell (not as God, whose own will is His rule), but you were ruled by an indefectible sovereign will - the will of God."
To be naturally peccable it is sufficient that one can be drawn aside by any passion, as pride, envy, hatred; and also that one be free to follow or resist that passion. Now, that is what happened in the case of the angels.
Does not sin presuppose in the intellect a defect either of truth or of attention to that truth? and surely such could not be in the case of the angels.
Generally, indeed, there is some defect, for it is hard to believe that an intellect, such as the angels', strongly and intently gazing on truth, could, without that defect, give way to sin; yet that is not absolutely impossible. But, an angel (speaking now only in the natural order) does not at every moment consider all the things it might con sider; nor, again, does it consider all with equal attention, for this is the necessary consequence of the possession of free will; therefore it can fail in attention, and in will too. At any rate, it is certain that they, like us, possess (happily in one sense, unhappily in another) the great gift of free will, whereby they might obey or disobey, love or hate, the great Creator of all.