In Our Time - Angels

Episode Date: March 24, 2005

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the heavenly host of Angels. George Bernard Shaw made the observation that "in heaven an angel is nobody in particular", but there is nothing commonplace about this description of angels from the Bible's book of Ezekiel:"They had the likeness of a man. And every one had four faces, and every one had four wings. And their feet were straight feet; and the sole of their feet was like the sole of a calf's foot: and they sparkled like the colour of burnished brass.... As for the likeness of their faces, they four had the face of a man, and the face of a lion, on the right side: and they four had the face of an ox on the left side; they four also had the face of an eagle." With angels like that, it is easy to see why they have caused so much controversy over the centuries.What part have angels played in western religion? How did they get their halos and their wings? And what are they really: Gods or men?With Martin Palmer, theologian and Director of the International Consultancy on Religion, Education and Culture; Valery Rees, Renaissance Scholar at the School of Economic Science; John Haldane, Professor of Philosophy, University of St Andrews.

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. Thanks for downloading the In Our Time podcast. For more details about In Our Time and for our terms of use, please go to BBC.co.com.uk forward slash radio four. I hope you enjoy the program. Hello, George Bernard Shaw made the observation that in heaven an angel is nobody in particular, unquote. But there's nothing commonplace about this description of angels from the book of Ezekiel.

They had the likeness of a man and everyone had four faces, and everyone had four wings, and their feet was straight feet, and the sole of their feet was like the sole of a calf's foot, and they sparkled like the colour of burnished brass. As for the likeness of their faces, they had four the face of a man, and the face of a lion on the right side, and they four had the face of an ox on the left side. They four also had the face of an eagle.

With angels like that, it's easy to see why they've caused so much controversy over the centuries. What part of angels played in Western religion and in Western thought? How did they get their halos and their wings? And how did the medieval philosophers use them to explain the world? With me to discuss Angels is Valerie Reese, Renaissance scholar from the School of Economic Science, Martin Palmer, theologian, and director of the international consultancy on religion, education and culture, and John Haldane, Professor of Philosophy at St. Andrews University. Martin Palmer, can we start with the etymology of the word and tell us where it came from?

Well, it's the Greek word, Anglos, which means messenger, and is the translation. of the Hebrew term meaning precisely that, the messenger of God. And in fact, often in the Torah, in the Hebrew Bible, what we call the Old Testament, the angels are described as the angel of the Lord, in the same way that you might say the word of the Lord or the message of the Lord. It's giving a sort of pedigree to what they're saying and saying, listen to this, it's worthwhile, it's trustable. What's their role in books like Ezekiel and Isaiah and in earlier books in the Bible? Well, it changes, actually. It's quite interesting.

The earliest accounts of angels, if you take them from judges, for instance, or some of the earliest oral traditions. When early, can you give us a date? Oh, judges, we're looking around about 800, 900,000 BC. But all the oral traditions that are collected together in the book of Genesis, which is probably edited around about the 4th, 5th century BC, but the stories are much older. They are essentially simply instruments. They're rather like the sort of the postman of God or the telegraph. boys of God. They come down and deliver the message. They stop certain things happening. They

warn people. They have a function, but nobody's terribly concerned about what they look like or what their powers are. They're just simply part of this rather wonderful, mystical, spiritual world in which, remember, at this time, Israelites aren't entirely sure there's only one God. There is God amongst the gods, according to the Psalms. So they're not too worried about having lots of different deities and beings. When you get to that extraordinary vision of Ezekiel, you're moving into something quite different. Here, Judaism or the Israelites...

And this is a dead what? We're talking round about 580, 590 BC. So this is before Genesis has collected, but after judges. That's right. And you've got the early experience of the exiles. Many of the Israelites are now captives in Babylon. They're being exposed to a tremendously more sophisticated powerful culture than they've been used to.

Earlier in the text, for example, Ezekiel says that the glow around God is like the glow around amber. And it's quite clear they'd never seen amber until that point. And amber was so rare traded from the Baltic that only the Babylonians could afford it. So you've got this relatively unsophisticated tribal group that suddenly find themselves in this great empire, and they're confronting the most extraordinary system

of angels and deities and. beings coming out of what we now call Zoroastrianism. And these are not messengers, these are demigods to all intents and purposes. These are immensely powerful beings. And Ezekiel is trying to make them servants of God, but he ends up really with creating almost a sort of sub-sect of divine beings. And that's where part of the problem comes in. Mariri, can you take that idea on?

Can you tell us more about the cultural influences at play here, the Assyrian influence, and Zoroastrianism as Martin has led us to? Can you bring that mix in? Certainly, as Martin has said, the figures that people saw during the Babylonian captivity must have made a huge impression on the imagination. Saw saw in sculptures, you mean? Saw in the sculptures, yes,

and you only have to go into the British Museum and see those fabulous winged creatures at the ends of the friezes to realize these are very powerful presences. Now, the difference between the... the vision in Ezekiel and the earlier appearances of angels in the Bible is that Ezekiel's is a sort of dream vision, whereas the earlier angels that people have been familiar with through the stories of their ancestors, they appear as human beings and they don't have wings.

You only know they're an angel because they've brought a message that you realize was a divine message you needed to hear. After Ezekiel, in fact, after Isaiah, there are winged beings. But in Isaiah, they are not the angels, they're not messengers of God. They're the seraphim that Isaiah sees. And there are also cherubim or kerouvin, to use the Hebrew term, which is much closer to these winged protective beings. And they were on the, when the Ark of the Covenant was made for the tabernacle in the wanderings in the wilderness,

This box that held the tablets on which the words of the Lord were written had two figures at the ends which do seem to be borrowed, either from the Babylonian tradition through some kind of early contact or more likely, I think there's a possibility there, a reflection of ideas that were present in Egypt, where in the Cairo Museum you can see wonderful gold-covered boxes with winged figures at the ends. protecting very valuable contents. Can you take us on from that, John Holden, can you explain how apocalyptic Judaism started to emerge and what that does for the idea of avenging angels

and why this proliferation? I'm sorry to ask you three questions at once, it's a very bad form of interviewing, but why they're sort of drawing away from what they encountered in Babylon and in Egypt and before? What happens with the Jews is that there's to some extent, as it were,

a separation, the experience after the return of exile begins, as or positively, and in their relations with, as well, the governing powers, they're pretty much left to themselves and to get on, and they do. But then you start to get among Palestinian Jews, I mean, jury and Palestine, the development of, as it were, a force which sees itself as set against, as it were, earthly powers.

And it's very important that it develop itself in the direction of a sort of messianic Judaism. So now we've got, as it were, this chosen race of people set apart who are special in God's sight, who the world may reject and rebuff, and that's not unsurprising because the world doesn't recognize the true God and so on. So they see themselves in an oppositional relationship

with some of the governing powers. And of course, this produces a certain amount of trouble. And so a period of, as we're, disturbance and trouble and so on, in which they themselves come to be abused by some of these governing powers or seen themselves in those terms, gives rise to the idea that this good God who has chosen them as a people set apart will provide for them. And one of the ways in which he's going to provide for them is by providing powers greater than those of their enemies.

And so this sense of spiritual beings or angelic beings who now become avengers on behalf of God or God's people against their persecutors. starts to develop. And this is part of a Judaism that shapes the world into which Christ enters, but it's a Judaism in which things like the so-called eschatology, the final things, this account of what's going to happen in due course. And these people start to build up ideas of the resurrection of the dead, of the triumph of final times, of a Messiah who's going to come and be a great ruler and so on. And this, the avenging angels enter into that world, I think.

And then there begins to be, I mean, I'm rushing it a bit, but that begins a long period of using angels for thought as well as thinking about angels for religion, isn't that? And what is immaterialism and what is a fall? I see yes. I mean, there's a curious passage in Genesis, if I can read to you, John. You probably need off my heart, but here we go.

And it came to pass when men began to multiply in the face of the earth, and daughters were born unto them, that the sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair, and they took them wives of all which they took them. chose. Now, the sons, what would I say? The sons

of God. These are these are presumably angels but they over to you. Well, all right, sorry. Not that simple. You're really, you know. Well, I mean, look, you know, theme, we

won't start to sort of go too far in the roots of biblical scholarship, but we don't really know quite what that means. I mean, this is obviously going to be the case with me. This is an all-purpose answer. We don't know quite what that means. But I think that some people see this as perhaps a source of the idea of fallen angels and some of the translations it comes out as such. But even as, as were, in early times, as dispute,

as soon as people are reflecting in a systematic way on scripture, they're beginning to ask questions about what this sort of thing means. One possibility here is that the sons of God is just, as we're, a strand within the lineage of Adam, because what you get in the passages that precede the one you've just quoted is one of these genealogies, and you get, you know, so-and-so-so's a son, and he had these, and all the rest of it.

So one possibility is that the sons of God are just some preferred strand within the lineage of Adam and then they are getting involved with people as a word with whom they shouldn't be getting involved in this other strand. So it's really kind of very hard and quite what to make of that,

except that what I think is significant is that some people at least see that passage as being connected with the idea of fallen angels. So the notion of fallenness certainly is very important. Fallen because they obviously, if they desired the sons of men and saw that the wives, sorry, the daughters of men and saw that they were fair. They obviously had lost and therefore they were not. So the problems raised, as it were, the problems still around now, though, it seems to me that Theo-look, but this is later.

There's a couple of steps to go first. Valerie, a Dionysius, a Syrian monk in the 5th century trying to make sense of all this. He did a hierarchy. Can you briskly tell us what that hierarchy was and why it was important? By that time, angels were... It was assumed that there were angels. I think we mustn't leave out of account that angels were accepted by everybody and their presence was welcomed.

And in particular in all the liturges, both the Jewish liturgy and the Christian liturgy and the Eastern Orthodox liturgy, the angels are seen as joining in human prayer and there is an unbroken song of praise that goes from the angels to God and that humans join in completing the circle. Now, this is the picture that Diana. Anisius is looking at when he studies the scriptures and pulls out nine levels, taking the Old Testament angels and also references in the New Testament, particularly in St. Luke.

And he comes up with three sets of three, which is very appealing numerically. The first group who are closest to God are the seraphim, the cherubim, and the thrones. And what unites all those three levels is that they are in constant contemplation of the divine. They're close to God. They are constantly turned towards the divine, absorbing the light in full measure and passing it on to the lower levels. And what distinguishes the three is that the seraphim are ablaze with love of God. The cherubim are characterized by knowledge. And the thrones are to do with divine.

power. Then the second set of three is less clearly defined but has to do with universals. And then the third and lowest set of three of the hierarchy is the principalities, archangels and angels. So even archangels who we think are very high actually come quite low in this hierarchy. And they're the ones who move down from the heavenly realm and move among mankind bringing these messages we've been speaking about. Can we develop this then, Martin, and bring in, just give us a quick reference to what's happening to angels in the New Testament just to distinguish it, if you think there is a distinction a little, and then take us on to what Aquinas and the great thinkers, I mean, minds as great as any they've ever been. Take this on fully and examine the world through it.

I think in the New Testament you have a very interesting shift again, rather like the one that there is discussed earlier. You have a continuation of the notion that they are the messengers. So, for example, when the angel Gabriel comes to tell Mary that she will bear the Christ, that is very much in the tradition of the Old Testament messenger, indeed, when the angels come to the Magi, the wise men on their way and warn them to go on. So you have a traditional role. You also have hints at something that has developed very much out of what John was discussing about this sense of a personal relationship with angels, which is guardian angels.

Christ refers to children having guardian angels. And when St. Peter is released from prison, it's his angel that does this, and there's all sorts of accounts around that. But then you're also getting this very powerful tradition, particularly in Revelation, of avenging angels, that the angels, in a sense, represent the power of God when all other powers have failed on earth. You are a persecuted minority. You are up against it. The Romans are out for your blood. everybody's out for your blood. Who is going to stand with you?

Well, you know God is going to stand with you, but then suddenly you know that you have angels with flaming swords. You have hordes of angels. You have multitudes of angels. And so suddenly you are caught up, and I think this is terribly important, you're caught up into a much more glorified, and exactly as Vanery is saying,

a glorifying world. Brilliant. Now, can I go to Aquinas, who tried very crudely, to bring Aristotle to bear on the theology that he found himself with. Now, how was he, what was he doing, how was he using, I know he did, there's lots and lots and lots of say about Aquinas, but we haven't got time.

How was he putting the angels into that? What was he doing with that? What was he using them for? And how is he squaring it with Aristotle in a way? Well, I think one of the main things he's trying to do is to discover where the angels fit philosophically and to address this question of whether they have bodies, and if so, what are their bodies?

is made of, which it was something that had exercised people from early on. And it's a real theological issue. When were they created? And what from and what for? It's actually very like particle physics in that sense. It is in a way. And there was an old tradition that they were half fire and half ice. But whatever it was, by the time of Aquinas,

I think there was a general agreement that their bodies were subtle, not material. that they didn't have desires, which sort of negates the whole concept of fallen angels, because they don't have free will and they don't have desires. And they do have this access to the heavens, and they become a model for humans. And you get a bit of discussion going on between, for example, the Franciscans, who thought that St. Francis had become an angel after he died, that he had gone into one of these vacancies caused by a fallen angel.

And as I understand it, and correct me if I'm wrong, John, you know far more about this than I do. The Aquinas' view was more along the lines that there was no possibility of angels becoming involved in this sort of way and that they represented something much more ethereal that spanned the realms between. between heaven and earth. I mean, there are many things going on here.

Melvin mentioned the relation between Aquinas and Aristotle. In Aristotle, for example, there's a philosophical puzzle, which is how, as it were, movement is transmitted through the cosmos. And he introduces a series of intermediary movers. One transmits its motion to the next thing and so on. Motion in this context means activity. And so he thinks that there are sort of intermediary movers between the material objects that we encounter and whatever.

is the ultimate cause of those, which obviously becomes God in Christian understanding. Now Aquinas to some extent has caught up in that metaphysics of activity, and the angels certainly have a function in that. But he's much more interested in, as well, the theological, philosophical structure than the, as well, the mechanics of the universe. He, in his understanding of angels, he sometimes uses the notion of angels as subsequent philosophers do, even philosophers who we wouldn't really associate in this,

people like Locke and Descartes later on, Libreys and Spinoza, will mention angels from time to time, in part to explore certain ideas. So, for example, could there be non-experiential knowledge, not rooted in sight or hearing and so on, but in some sense intuitive or direct? And when they think about that, they say, well, imagine angels for a moment.

They don't have eyes, they don't have ears, and such like, so how do they know? So it's a way of exploring that. But one thing I might just add here briefly is that the church gets involved in this in terms of dogma, and you get councils of the church, these great convened meetings of the church,

when they're setting out questions of what we're not and ought not to believe, and this becomes important again after the Reformation, will say what is or is not permissible with regard to questions of angels. So one thing, for instance, 1215, they insist on, is that angels were created. They may be eternal, there's immaterial beings,

but they're not coexistent with God in any sort of sense of minor deities. Now then, Martin, Luzer bangs his pamphlet and Protestantism comes on the door of Wittenberg Cathedral and how does the Reformation affect the position of angels in Western thought? Well, I think we fell the angels rather than have fallen angels in the sense that Protestantism basically chucks it out

not quite with the baptism or water because we do retain that as one of the sacraments but Protestantism does a very thorough, of a great deal of the tremendous system. So what's driving Protestantism to do that? I think in a sense it's, I mean, John's image is a wonderful one and the reflection of contemporary cosmology. What Protestantism does in a sense is demolishes a medieval worldview of concentric rings

by saying, no, hang on, let's get back to that original one point, that one principle. And in a sense, seize angels as simply a reflection of political hierarchies, to a great extent the angel orders and the divine orders and the orders of saints and so forth does reflect, as it would have to do, because it's our language, the imperial courts and the kingly courts of medieval Europe. And they want to get rid of all that. They want to have a personal relationship with God. No interceders, and not even priests really have the role that they used to have. So Protestantism really throws out the angels, and yet it doesn't.

we have this dilemma. I'm an Anglican. I go to moderately rational services, as we like to see them in the Church of England, and our churches are stuff full of angels. Our hymns are absolutely heaving with angels. We pray exactly as Varie said. We join with the angels in giving praise.

We even use a section from the Old Testament of what the angels say when they sit before the throne of God and say, holy, holy, holy. And yet we don't discuss them. We are acutely embarrassed by them. It's as though in order to get back to a personal relationship with God we have shed everything with the one exception of guardian angels because the guardian angel appeals to the Protestant notion

of the individual soul finding its way back to God. Can you just take us further then? Martin's been very graphic about it about the Reformation now to 16th century. Take us the next century to the dying off of interest in angels. As the Enlightenment grows, this dies off, is it as simple as that, or I'm sure it can't be simple as that. Well, I'm sure it's not simple at all, and I think that interest in angels did continue, and certainly there was a resurgence of it in Victorian times. You have only to look at the art, and the art, I think, should be our key much of the way through this.

For instance, when angels stop being strong, stocky men and start being rather ethereal feminine figures and the appearance of... When is that present? Is there a century to... Yes, around the... By the 13th century, the change has happened. Why is that, you think? Well, in a way, that could be to do with sending angels back to heaven, rather than having them around us here on earth. In the philosophical side to this discussion,

there is this whole idea of dimones, the good ones of which were identified with angels. And then the dark ones who cause lots of mischief in the world should be pushed firmly back into hell. And the concomitant of that is that the angels go right, up into heaven. And interestingly, therefore, get out of reach. So the angels are no longer all around us. And I think that's reflected in the art. And I think that's also what carries on into the 17th century when the interest is much more in science. And you've got a lovely

period in the 16th century where science and angels are rubbing shoulders all the time. And you have people like John D trying to talk to the angels to gain knowledge about the physical world. Elizabeth I first. Yes, Elizabeth's scientist. This business of the art, as it were, taking up the idea of invention. proliferation of angels in art. How far is that reinforcing? How far did it develop the idea? At the beginning we, there was six wings and so on.

And now we've got two winged angels and we've got very famine in angels. And we've got little cherubs and the whole thing becomes, we've got halos. It begins to set in its ways there, doesn't it? And massively, massively, massively, massively in every sort of church around the place. I think the depiction of angels and art is very interesting as a way of keeping track of what's happening theologically and philosophically, if you like. I mean, the way in which people regard these. And I would say until relatively

recent times, and this is in part to do with the Protestant tradition of failing to think as it were theologically about angels, the depiction of angels is fairly well disciplined. So, for example, angels up until the time of Constantine, the 4th century of the Christian era, where angels are depicted, and that's very

rare, they're not equipped with halos or with wings. They just appear as I'm thinking of two or three depictions in the third century, where they appear as sort of young men, the enunciation scene where a young man stands before Marian is announcing that she is to conceive Christ. But later, after Constantine,

then the angels start to sort of acquire the accoutrements of these stranger beings and then they leave Earth and they start to hover in the sky and they're flying around and so on. Now I think that one thing that's happening is that up until the period of Constantine, when Christianity was a minority and an oppressed minority, the last thing they wanted to do was to give their opponents material

to accuse them of being believers in lots of deities, and so they didn't want to get tangled up with this. Once they become more confident, they can start to sort of use angels, pictorially, iconographically, and so on. As it moved through, the angels, some of this rediscovered mythology of the ancient world

to start to be used, but it's used within a theological and church context that is very self-confident and so it doesn't worry too much about this because it's got its dogmatic definitions. Everybody knows what you can believe and what you can't believe. I think the really interesting period

is as it were, the liberalisation of angels in art when they really just become, they're unconstrained. And particularly in the 19th century and so on. I mean, the angelic depictions move precisely into the area that would have horrified the earlier Christians. It moves into the area of superstition. And this may be,

even brings us into the area of, you know, the contemporary interest in angels would, for most Christians and indeed most Jews and so on, seem utterly superstitious. Can you talk about the contemporary interest in angels, Martin, and just bring us right up to one we are now. I mean, one of the interesting things that emerges out of Protestantism is two of the most strongly angel-directed new versions of Christianity,

that is the Swedenborgians, who emerge in the mid-18th century out of the teacher, of Emmanuel Sweediburg, who believed that he was in touch with angels and was receiving a true message about the real church. And then, of course, the most famous angel in contemporary history is Moroni, the angel who appears to Joseph Smith in the 1820s, and reveals to him the books of Mormon and founds the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. We tend to forget that angels come back when people need, as did Muhammad, when he received the revelation from the, angel Gibriel, Gabriel, angels reappear when you want to say everybody else was wrong and I have now got the real truth. And that lays down a foundation of an idea that angels are going to bypass

conventional religion. Angels no longer are in hot to the church or to the synagogue. They're kind of freed. And I think that's a little bit of what John's talking about is the notion that angels have escaped out into popular belief. Chesterton's quote, you know, when you stop believing in God, you don't believe in nothing, you believe in everything. And I think that lays the foundation

for today's New Age, Angel Massage, angel therapy, etc. But those angel therapies, they also are performing a very useful function of opening people's eyes to universal forces and really breaking free of the mould you spoke of earlier about, there's me and there's God. And the idea of bringing back the angels with all its strengths and weaknesses

is about allowing people to become more aware of universal forces and the fact that you sitting opposite me could well be God's messenger. I should listen, I should be aware of everything around me as being part of what I have to meet in the world. Can I just tell the listeners that you're addressing John Holland? I happen to be looking at it. You too, better.

Clear that up. I'm afraid. I'm afraid I did. It was terrific, and we could go on for a long time, but we can't. So thank you all very, very much indeed. Thank you very much to Valerie Rees, to John Haldane, and to Martin Palmer. Next week we'll be talking about John Ruskin, the art critic and inspirer, and of so many people. Thanks for listening. We hope you've enjoyed this Radio 4 podcast.

You can find hundreds of other programmes about history, science and philosophy at bbc.c.com. forward slash radio 4