I Hope I Never Forget:

“Anything that one imagines of God apart from Christ is only useless thinking and vain idolatry.”- Martin Luther

Monday, September 10, 2007

THOUGHTS ON MICHAELMAS AND ANGELS- PART TWO


The reality of Angelic beings isn’t a matter of dispute among God’s people. I don’t mean that there aren’t baptized individuals who deny it; rather I mean that they are wrong to do so. Angels are a major part of the story that defines the church. It’s as simple as that. We don’t affirm their reality as a result of a proof. We affirm their existence based on the testimony of those who know.

While we don't begin with an argument, it might be helpful to think through one. Not to establish that angels exist, but to ask why they do. Perhaps their final cause will reveal something about their nature.

So, why angels?

One of the church’s greatest thinkers asked that question. His answer was simple and straightforward- “the universe would be incomplete without them.” Perhaps that sounds too simple…maybe simplistic, but I think Thomas Aquinas’ answer was profound for the simplicity.

Have you ever seen a canvas that’s partially painted? Maybe it’s a portrait whose detail has been fiercely worked over in some places; whole sections of the canvas remain blank and untouched, while others are roughed in with broad unfinished strokes. Would you go to the trouble of matting and framing the painting at this point? Why not? If we saw such a portrait prominently displayed, we’d wonder about the story behind it. Did the artist die before completing it? Did she loose interest? Was she unhappy with the progress?

Each of these potential tales spring from one obvious fact- the thing isn’t finished. It’s incomplete. This is Thomas’ point.

Creation is God’s artwork. It was inconceivable that he’d leave any part of the canvas blank. Past thinkers called this the doctrine of plenitude. By this they meant that within the sphere of created being-every possible gap would be filled.

This is more than theory at the material level. It seems to be the case. Men and women stand at the top of the corporeal realm. Below them are the higher apes; then various mammals leading all the way down to the lowest of insects. Strange creatures seem to bridge the gap between animal and plant, and we can continue our descent down from the giant Sequoia to the most simple of plankton. From there complex chemical brews can be broken down into various molecules; molecules give way to constituent elements; elements to particles, particles to quarks and…there is no where else to go. The continuity seems necessary and fitting. This half of creation’s canvas is complete.

Mortimer Adler has written that St Thomas believed that the order to be expected in any world created by God would look like “(1) inanimate and mindless physical things to (2) living beings without minds, and (3) minds that are somehow associated with animal bodies and from them to (4) spiritual beings- minds without bodies.”

That’s why God made angels. He had a very large canvas to fill.

Paintings of fat playful cherubs have blinded me to the reality that the spiritual realm presents. The fittingness of plenitude helps to reorient me. Scripture distinguishes between different choirs of angels. We know of cherubim, seraphim, Principalities and Powers, Archangels and Angels. Surely this is not an exhaustive list with the ten thousand times ten thousands of angels scripture speaks of. Not a single one of them is cute. All deserve the fear their presence would instantly inspire.

The vast continuum of creaturely potential that angels exhaust begins just above man. For we have it on good authority that mankind was made a little lower than the angels. From there the creaturely progression towers upward, lost in the dizzying heights of the utmost creaturely potential. The doctrine of plenitude teaches that the greatest manifestation of power and glory that is possible for a creature to attain is an actual reality in at least one set of glowing, terrible, thundering seraphim's wings high above in the glory cloud of God. Such a being exists, and there is another just below him, and another just below him... on and on without number.

To get a perspective on what these beings must be like, we can compare the other half of animate creation’s progression- being soars upward from plankton to the majestic dignity of man. Now think; in the higher half of the creaturely chain of being Seraphim stands to man as man stands to bacteria.

Is it any wonder that the first words from an angel’s mouth seem to invariably be “Fear not.”

1 comment:

Phil James said...

I understand that many who propose a Chain of Being deny the Creator/Creature distinction.

I certainly don't mean to do that and I believe I clearly guard against it in the post above. Perhaps I am very naive (I'm surely philosophically ignorant), but I don't know why a continuum of creaturely possibilities demands that God shares in the qualitatively same being as his creation.