The Concept of Angels

The origin of the concept of angels goes back further than the Bible, to the days of primitive religion. In that regard, the Encyclopaedia Britannica classifies angels and demons together, with "various spiritual beings, powers, and principles that mediate between the realm of the sacred or holy--i.e., the transcendent realm--and the profane realm of time, space, and cause and effect" (Fredericksen). Customarily, in Western culture the angels are "benevolent," and the demons are "wicked," though it appears that in Asian and African cultures the same spirit may sometimes be good and sometimes evil. The overriding point about the origin of angels as mediators, however, is that they function as a liaison between human experience and the experience, or power, of the divine and/or eternal. They are, in short, a kind of buffer between man and God.

Angels are a continual presence in both the Old and New Testaments. At Genesis 16.7-11, an angel of the lord appears to Hagar to explain that she will have a son called Ishmael, although at Gen. 17.16-17, it is God himself who tells Abraham that his wife Sarah will also have a son. At Gen. 18, Abraham interacts with the angels who have come to destroy the cities of the plain, pleading with them not to destroy Sodom if he can find enough just men there to save it. In Gen. 19, Lot plays host to and protector of two angels when the wicked men of Sodom besiege his household in order to (carnally) "know" them (Gen. 19.5). In these passages, t

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of the word of God, and of the testimony of Jesus Christ, and of all things that he saw." The tacit message: Ignore God's message at your peril. Not all messages are so clear. At 1 Cor. 6.3, Paul asks, "Know ye not that we shall judge angels," which is a linguistically ambiguous reference inasmuch as (according to the KJV), the subject of discourse at that point is a "warning against litigation and immorality." What it seems to mean is that people who waste time suing each other are not exercising good judgment about whom they target and that just as well as unjust people are bound to get caught in the net. The point is that, in God's cosmic plan, angels are meant to function as judges of men, not the other way around. To upset the cosmic order is to invite damnation. In that connection, angels are elsewhere linked by Paul to damnation's opposite, which is salvation, which is the goal of all professing Christians: But to which of the angels said he at any time, Sit on my right hand, until I make thine enemies thy footstool? Are they not all ministering spirits, sent forth to minister for them who shall be heirs of salvation? (Heb. 1.13-14). The linkage between angels and salvation does not, in biblical narrative, mean that evil

Category: Philosophy - T