Pints With Aquinas - 36.5: Can you tell me something about the angels? (A talk by Peter Kreeft)

Episode Date: December 26, 2016

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Welcome to Pints with Aquinas, episode 36.5. That's right, I said 36.5. Episode 37 still releases tomorrow. Hashtag, you're welcome. In today's episode, we'll sit down with St. Thomas and say, hey, since you're the angelic doctor, why don't you tell us a few things about angels welcome back to pints with aquinas merry christmas did you have a good one um i know

you can't talk to me, so that was sort of weird that I would ask you, but I did. Maybe you could tell me over Twitter if you did. I had a great one. As I said last week, we are going to be hearing a talk by Dr. Peter Craift, who is a philosopher from Boston College, on what Aquinas said about the holy angels. You're going to love this talk. If you can just get past the fact that the audio quality isn't the greatest, you will get a lot out of it. A lot. So I'd recommend listen to this talk with headphones in. And if you can just get past the not so great audio quality, you'll find a gold mine in this talk.

Kreeft is fantastic. He actually, I was blessed enough, he actually wrote a review for my book, 20 Answers Atheism. And so, man, that was such an honor. Anyway, so here's the talk. God bless you. Chat with you next year. See you. Father Perricone, you make me long for a time machine so that I can go back to the time that I wrote that book on angels.

I certainly would have had you write the preface. Thank you, every one of you, for coming here. I have a couple of preliminary things. One is a little game that I invite you to play. I should have done this before the talk, but I can equally do it after the talk. I Xeroxed out 54 questions from the Summa Theologica on angels, and if you want to give yourself a little do-it-yourself quiz and see how much you know about Thomas Aquinas' teaching on the angels, you may do so. The answers are on another sheet of paper here and where you look them up, so I'll trust that you use the honor system and camouflage the answers. The purpose of this is just to show you that you don't know quite as much about angels

as Thomas does. The purpose of this is just to show you that you don't know quite as much about angels as Thomas does. Since angels are so highly individualized, according to St. Thomas, that each one is the sole member of its species, I think it would be fitting if each of us tried to act a bit like an angel for the next hour and imagine that you are the only person in this room. I am not speaking to 100 people. I am speaking to one person. Because if I speak to 100 people, then each one of you has only one hundredth

of the responsibility to think and to learn. Whereas if I speak only to one, you have 100%. St. Thomas is called the angelic doctor for two reasons. He knew a lot about angels. Second, he was like an angel. There's a kind of knowledge that he calls knowledge by conaturality.

Or, in street parlance, it takes one to know one. St. Thomas was like an angel for at least five reasons. First, he was simple. Second, he was clear. Thomists are not clear. Thomas is clear. I made the mistake in college of trying to interpret Thomas through Thomists. Now I see it's the other way around. You interpret Thom Thomas through Thomas. Now I see it's the other way around. You interpret Thomas through Thomas.

Thirdly, Thomas is full of the praise of God. Angels live in the presence of God constantly. So does Aquinas. So does Aquinas. Fourthly, he flies. He is very good at overviews. He has a kind of helicopter mind. He sees an immense amount in a tiny bit. And finally, he is pure.

He's free from alloy, from distractions, and from passions. There was an incident in his life where his family kidnapped him because they didn't want him to join this disreputable order of begging friars, the Dominicans, so they put him in a tower and threw a prostitute in there with him. He immediately resisted the temptation by taking a flaming firebrand from the fireplace and driving her out, and after the door was shut, inscribed a cross on the door and according to the story god rewarded him by giving him the supernatural gift of chastity all

of his life so that he was totally free from passions like the angels this i think accounts for his freedom and flying so so to speak, because any addiction blinds your mind and scrambles your brains. He is the paragon of a truly liberal education, that is, to love the truth for its own sake, not because it satisfies any human desire. Many of the points that I'm going to make about what Aquinas says about angels will be specific to Aquinas. For instance, the strange doctrine that each angel is its own species,

and the very important doctrine of the composition of essence and existence in angels, a very important doctrine of the composition of essence and existence in angels, but not in God. But most of them will be generic to most Catholic theologians about angels. But even these historically have been influenced by Aquinas, who put a seal on many doctrines of angelology that he did not originate. Indeed, Aquinas would not regard it as a compliment, but an insult to be called original. He would say our Lord was the least original thinker in history. He said he came to do nothing but reveal the Father.

And Aquinas, as the greatest of the angelologists, is the one that you would go to if you're motivated by any of these points of mind about angels. So even though they're not all merely Thomistic points, they are, in a sense, Thomistic points. all merely Thomistic points, they are, in a sense, Thomistic points. I think the best way to organize them is in the four categories that Aristotle discovered long ago and have never become outdated, which have been called the four causes, or the four becauses. Human beings ask thousands of questions, but all the questions anybody can ever ask about anything can be reduced to four. What is it? What is it made of? Where did it come from? And what is it good for? The formal cause, the definition. The material cause, the contents. The efficient cause, what brought it into being. And the final cause is purpose or end.

and the final clause is purpose or end. Of these, the final clause is the most important. The cause of clauses, as Aristotle put it. The reason for the other clauses. Why does an efficient clause like a carpenter impose a formal clause like a blueprint on a material clause like boards so as to build a house? Well, because somebody wants to shelter a family in it. So I'll be spending most of my time on the final cause of angels. That is,

what good does it do to us to know about angels? Why are angels important? William James tells the story of himself and two other philosophers going hunting one day and catching nothing, sitting on a log and watching two squirrels chase each other around the tree. And the philosopher on his left asked the philosopher on his right, did you notice that each squirrel is exactly as fast as the other squirrel and neither one catches the other? Yes. Did you notice that each one one catches the other? Yes. Did you notice that each one goes around the tree? Yes. And did you notice that when one is on the north, the other's

on the south, and when one is on the east, the other's on the west? Yes. What are you getting at, said philosopher B? Well, said philosopher A, each squirrel circumambulates the tree, correct? Yes. Well, if A circumambulates B and if C circumambulates B, then A and C must circumambulate each other. So the squirrels must go around each other, too. No, they don't, said philosopher B, because each one is on the opposite side of the tree. Well, they argued about that for an hour. Do the squirrels circumambulate each other? At the end of the hour, they hadn't settled the argument, but each one called the other an ignoramus and went home without talking to the other.

James sat there, smiled, and said, I think I have just seen the history of Western philosophy. Many of the questions that philosophers talk about are not important. What difference does it make? James formulated his Doctor of Pragmatism, which is confused but worthy of note. It has some very good points in it. On the basis of experiences like that, he said that the proper criterion of, he called it truth, he really meant

meaning, is an idea has meaning to the extent that it makes a difference to your life. Well, that's not quite the best definition of meaning, but it's pretty good. It's at least a good negative criterion. If an idea makes no difference, what good is it? I like to think of a doctrine from either Kant or Hegel or both that time is not really real.

Time is a phenomenon, but not a noumenon. I like to think, does that mean that I didn't really eat my lunch after I ate my breakfast? If so, the philosopher is nuts. If it doesn't, it makes no difference at all. It's just a fancy way of saying I did eat my lunch after I ate my breakfast. Aquinas, however, never came up with an idea like that. Everything he ever said made a difference. And he said a whole lot. He dictated to four secretaries simultaneously. If he had had computers lot. He dictated to four secretaries simultaneously. If he had had computers, he would have probably written a thousand books instead of a hundred. And every word counts. They didn't have a lot of ink in those days, so he had to make every word count. So I will give you 15 reasons why angels count. There are many more, but 15 differences that angels make to our lives,

especially in Aquinas. The first one, angels make a difference to our lives because they make a difference to the universe, to the cosmos. If there are no angels, the universe is a radically different place, a different kind of universe. It's not full. The plenitude of being requires angels. They have a necessary place in the universe. I like to think of the analogy with animals. Aquinas made very few mistakes. I think one of the few mistakes I can find in Aquinas is for some strange reason he thought

there were no animals in heaven. Well, God didn't have to create animals. He could have created a world of just human beings and plants and minerals. But the plethora of animals is magnificent. He also didn't have to create angels. Between us and the plants, there don't have to be anything but there is a whole lot of stuff god has weird taste look at all those cockroaches he loves them saint augustine says there is no sanity uh in those whom anyone of god's creations

displease so that doesn't mean i think that you can't hire the exterminator but it means that you must admire the beauty of the thing that you're exterminating. Angels, similar to animals, make up a great gap in the chain of being which would be there without them. So the argument from angels is very strong. It's not an argument from mere fittingness, like the argument for donkeys. It is fitting that there be donkeys. By the way, Aquinas wouldn't recognize that because he never rode on a donkey. He was much too fat. He loved animals, so he spared them. And everyone else rode on a donkey across the

Alps, but he walked. Something between an argument from mere fittingness, it's nice or proper, and an argument from absolute necessity like two and two or four since god created freely since everything is grace as saint teresa said uh since everything is a result of a free choice which could have been different since as gk chesterton puts it every one of us is a great might not have been. This is true of angels and true of animals. God could have created a different universe. Perhaps he did. As an author writes many books. I'm not sure. I think that's wrong because Aquinas thinks there can be only one universe, not only one

galaxy, but only one universe. Most physicists say there could be other universes with with let's say anti-gravity instead of gravity or a matter with six dimensions instead of four but in any case he freely created this universe and nothing in it has to be so angels don't have to be so it's a deliberate choice angels don't exist simply out of automatic necessity. They exist because God said, let there be angels. Why? Because God's a great artist. Omit the angels and the whole cosmic order is upset. The greatest work of art in the universe is defaced because the greatest work of art in the universe is the universe. The greatest work of art in all reality is all reality. It's a

magnificent painting. The creator, of course, is not a work of art, so everything else is. The greatest single creature in the universe is the mother of God. Omit the angels, and you have a gap in the chain of being. Everything else is organically connected with everything else. We see that empirically and then by induction we rise to the general principle of a kind of organic fullness to the universe and then from that general principle we can deduce the unseen from the seen deductively. So we start with observation, we rise by inductive reasoning to the general principle, we understand the general principle, and then we move by deductive reasoning to argue that there should be angels.

The link between the seen and the unseen, or between the past and the future, is the universal principle. This is true in physics. Newton gets hit on the head with an apple, generalizes to the law of gravity, and we can predict when the rocket will hit the moon. How do we know that we are going to die? We observe other people die, we rise to the general principle that all men are necessarily mortal, this is a necessary property, and therefore we know that we are going to die. The general principle here is plenitude and an organic connection between each of the parts within that plenitude. In

other words, the universe is not a machine. It's like a body or like a work of art and a work of life, spiritual and material. What do we lack then if we remove the angels? Well, the universe is then, as Sartre would say, just one thing after another. It's superfluous. It's absurd. It's just brute fact. There are really three different concepts of the universe,

most fundamentally, and they're put nicely by that great line in Hamlet. When Hamlet sees his father's ghost and Horatio, his friend who's a skeptic, can't quite believe in ghosts, and Hamlet says, there are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamed of in all your philosophies. There's the principle of plenum. or philosophies. There's the principle of plenum. One can believe there are more things, fewer things, or the same number of things in heaven and earth, that is, in objective reality, as there are in our philosophies, that is, in our subjective consciousness. If one believes that there are more things, as Hamlet does, and as Shakespeare does, and as Aquinas does, and as children do, then the world is a magnificent, wonderful

place like a great big mansion, a work of art, and we can expect to find meaning in it. If the universe has fewer things in it than in our philosophies, then we become a skeptic, a nihilist, or a deconstructionist, always suspicious of the real world, less than our ideas, most of which are myths. Finally, if there are the same number of things in heaven and earth as there are in our philosophies, then we become arrogant dogmatists, rationalists, and Pharisees. If you're looking for a beautiful, poetic expression of this principle of cosmological fullness, I can't do better than to tell you to read C.S. Lewis' novel, Paralandra.

Read the whole novel to set up the most mystical passage he ever wrote. It's the cosmic dance at the end of Paralandra. I'm sure Aquinas is smiling at that passage. He may, in in fact have inspired it a second difference angels make is humility humility to quote c.s. lois again after the first shock is a most cheerful virtue it's a great joy to bow to look up to someone superior to yourself. Well, here the whole species can bow down and look up to this incredibly superior species of angels.

We are not the highest creatures. We are to the angels like little pets. In fact, there are more connections between angels and animals than you might think. I took a poll once of my students. I keep asking them funny questions in questionnaires. One of the questions was, are you interested in angels? Another question was, are you interested in animals? And I expected that they would divide into the spiritualists who were interested in angels and the materialists who were interested in animals.

It was just the opposite. Almost everyone who was interested in angels were interested in animals and most of the people who were interested in animals were also interested in angels. Those who were not interested in either tended to be, oh, I don't know, communications majors, sociologists, psychologists, economists, politicians, ideologists. You see, the medieval mind wonderfully moves immediately from heaven to earth, from real angels to real animals, and it doesn't get stuck in that middle realm of abstract generalizations. We're the real middle ages. We get stuck in that middle realm of abstract generalizations. We're the real middle ages. We get stuck in

that middle abstract realm. Anyway, we little pets can look up at the angels and say, wow. And it's one of the great pleasures of human life to say, wow. You people know that. You've got the Yankees. We've only got the Red Sox. So we need angels more than you do. A third difference that angels make is to the nature of good and evil. Angels refute Gnosticism. Evil is also spiritual. Some angels are fallen. The most evil creature that exists is a pure spirit. Therefore, when you hear somebody talk about spirituality instead of sanctity, large alarm bells should go off in your mind. of sin has nothing to do with matter. Before Adam and Eve ever bit into the

forbidden fruit, their spirits had already done what Satan's spirit had done, severed its obedience to God. Angels then, paradoxically, show that matter is good, and that the origin of evil is spiritual. Another thing that angels

show about evil is that sin is not necessary sin is free because most of the angels two-thirds by medieval calculations i don't know whether to take that symbolically or literally are unfallen if we found another race of rational beings on some other planet in the universe, it is not necessary to suppose that they too have been fallen. They could be still in Edenic innocence, in which case we would probably play the devil to them and corrupt them. But the freedom of the fall, the fact that what happened in the Garden of Eden was a free fall,

is shown by the angels. Unfallen angels prove that sin is not necessary. And therefore, the pantheists are wrong in confusing the creation with the fall, and with matter, and with manyness. Or, confusing free will with evil. Let's see, that's four so far. A fifth difference that angels make is they show that matter is not the greatest good. They show that spirit is not automatically good, but they show that matter is.

You have to take matter seriously if you believe in angels. But on the other hand, you can't take matter too seriously because there's something immensely superior to matter. Not just in a matter of degree, but in kind. These two errors go together, by the way, spiritualism and materialism. Pascal is very clear on that. He says that we must know both angels and animals in order to know ourselves. Because we tend to confuse ourselves with one or the other of them. And when we confuse ourselves with angels, we begin to act like animals. Our mode of being, what we are, determines everything else.

It determines how we know ourselves. It determines how we know ourselves. It determines how we know what knowledge is. And it determines our ethics. In other words, of the four great questions of philosophy, metaphysics, anthropology, epistemology, and ethics, what is being, what is man, what is knowledge, and what is goodness, metaphysics determines everything else. Necessarily. and what is goodness, metaphysics determines everything else.

Necessary. A sixth difference angels make is aesthetic. Angels are beautiful. They are the most beautiful of all creatures, far more beautiful than we are. The highest degree of created perfection resides in angels. They show that beauty is therefore spiritual. They explain why Mother Teresa's face was much more beautiful than Marilyn Monroe's. A seventh difference angels

make is plurality. It is good. Unity is good. Plurality is also good. There are many, many angels. God deliberately created many angels. Thomas Aquinas, asking the question, how many angels there are, answers, angels exist in exceedingly great number, far beyond all material multitude. For the more perfect a thing is, in so much greater an excess is it created by God. He also writes, the good of the species preponderates over the good of the individual.

Hence it is much better for the species to be multiplied in angels than for individuals to be multiplied in one species. Each angel is its own species. So to multiply these species of angels is more up God's alley, so to speak, than to multiply individuals in a species. I'll try to explain that strange idea very concretely. Take a Xerox machine. Here's the form, let's say, a page that you want to reproduce. And here's the matter, a number of pages of paper in the machine. The same form is reproduced or replicated on many pieces of matter, as many as you want. That's us.

I'm essentially the same as you are. Essential human equality, the basis of the rights of man, the natural rights of man, presupposes a kind of Thomistic metaphysics of form and matter. Now, angels have no matter. And therefore, there can't be any twin angels. Each angel is one of a kind. When they made Michael, they broke the mold. And God thinks the mold is so great that he multiplies the molds or the forms or the species of angels so angels show god's love of plurality god created many more things than he had to

there are real distinctions willed by god the pantheist mystic is wrong distinctions are not an illusion the the simplest child who knows that a cat is different than a dog is wiser than the great pantheist mystic who says, there's no difference between a cat and a dog. And this is true even in the realm of spirit. Because angels are pure spirits, and yet they're multiplied. They're not just one, they're many. And the reason why angels are the champions of manyness as well as oneness is because they image God so perfectly.

And God is a trinity as well as a unity. Manyness goes all the way up. It's not a fall. that angels make, is that they are the test case of the most distinctive of Thomas Aquinas' doctrines in metaphysics, the real distinction between essence and existence, between what a thing is and its act of existing, its sheer actuality. In God, there is no distinction between essence and existence. God is what he is. I am what I am.

Therefore, God cannot possibly not be. His essence is to exist. He does not receive existence from any cause. So there's no distinction in God between his essence and his existence. In every creature, there is. Even in angels. Angels have no matter. They're pure form or pure spirit and yet they have a distinction between essence and existence therefore the distinction between matter and

form is not the same as the distinction between existence and essence and it's not the absolute distinction the consequences of that for metaphysics are terribly important but since this is not a philosophy class and since we don't have all day, I won't go into them. Just take it out of the clarity. A ninth difference that angels make is that angels illustrate God's principle of mediation. God loves to run the universe by intermediaries. God loves to run the universe by intermediaries God is the source of all good and all truth and all beauty but most of what he does, he does through the angels

why? because he is charity and he loves to exalt his subordinates he doesn't have an ego problem it's a great principle of parenting and of teaching and of governing step back, exalt your subordinates It's a great principle of parenting and of teaching and of governing. Step back. Exalt your subordinates. If we could only see the role of angels in the universe, we would be overwhelmed.

The light, the truth that comes from God into the universe, into both matter and into our minds, is mediated by angels. We don't see it, but we can at least thank God for it. And that includes, and here's my tenth point, I think, although Aquinas doesn't mention this as far as I know, doesn't mention this as far as I know, inspirations or sudden hints or ideas that we know couldn't possibly have come from ourselves. Probably almost everybody in this room has had one experience in his life where somebody asked a question or had a need and your first thought is, I can't possibly satisfy that. There's no good answer to that question. And then you just sort of gave up and maybe offered a prayer, God help me, and you said something that was exactly right. You couldn't possibly have thought it yourself. The ancient Greeks knew about that.

They thought that music was inspired by the muses, who were goddesses who lived in the heavens. The very word music comes from the word muses. In traditional iconography, angels are connected with music. Of all the arts, music is the most spiritual and the least material and the least concerned with what can be seen and touched. Those who have had visions or experiences of heaven or deep out-of-body experiences

have very often heard music. Of all the things on earth that seem to persist in heaven, music is perhaps the most common. So there's a connection between angels and music. Angels are also prophets. Most of the most important messages that mankind has received have come through angels, especially Gabriel. Angels are also guardians under the tutelage

of Michael. I wonder sometimes whether or rather how much of the ills of the church since the 60s have come from the fact that we have stopped saying that prayer, St. Michael Archangel, defend

us in battle, which every Catholic knew and prayed for 50 years. Because, you know, they take us seriously. We may think it's just reciting words. They don't. Watch out what you pray for. You'll get it. Thirdly, angels are 13th. My goodness, 13th. What a word. Angels are scientists. Angels, in their knowledge, fulfill perfectly the aim that every human scientist seeks. Namely, pure universal knowledge.

Science always seeks the species, not the specimen. Knowledge of the universal. Angels have it innately. So I think our scientists should take an angel as their patron. Angels are ideal scientists. Fourteenth, angels help us to appreciate animals. In two or three ways, I think all of them I have mentioned, so I'll not say anything more. Finally, angels help us to transcend fashion. Fashionable angels are so stupid and unbelievable that you don't take them seriously. Real angels are so unfashionable

that if you take them seriously, you can't take fashion seriously. I know of no famous 20th century philosopher who philosophizes deeply and seriously about angels, and that says a whole lot about 20th century philosophy, alas. So if you want to really be delightfully irrelevant, be an angelologist. Delightful irrelevance is really the most

relevant thing in the world. As Chesterton says, he who marries the spirit of the times will soon be a widower. A second group of points comes under the efficient cause of angels. Now, in terms of their being, of course, this is God by the act of creation. And not much more can be said about that. So I'd like to talk about the efficient cause

of our knowledge of angels. Where does it come from? How do we know angels? Not what are the proofs for the existence of angels, but who tells us about them? Well, first of all, the Church. Angels are de fide. They're a matter of Catholic

dogma. They're not an option. Secondly, Scripture. They peer out of almost every page ofide. They're a matter of Catholic dogma. They're not an option. Secondly, scripture. They peer out of almost every page of scripture. They're just taken for granted, the way God has taken for granted. Thirdly, observation. Many people have seen angels. Very many. The New York Times doesn't report these incidents.

When the end of the world happens, they'll ignore that too, I think. Incidents. When the end of the world happens, they'll ignore that too, I think. But accounts both in Scripture and outside of Scripture abound with angel sightings. There are at least a million times more angel sightings than Elvis sightings. And they're much more responsible. We have no natural individual knowledge of angels until heaven, Thomas says, some of the article 11083, but we have individual knowledge of angels when we're granted a special exception,

and God grants quite a few exceptions. He says, our knowledge of angels is imperfect. We can only distinguish angelic offices and orders in a general way, so as to place many angels in one order. But if we knew the offices and distinctions of the angels perfectly, we should know perfectly that each angel has his own office and his own order among things. Quite a few individuals are given that vision. I am your guardian angel, and I have come to do this.

It happens. Finally, in addition to church dogma, scripture, and observation, there is philosophical argument. I've mentioned a few of them already. If there is no angels, the universe is not a plenum, is not a continuum. But the universe is a plenum, and it's hierarchical, and it's ordered, and it's not mere chance, therefore there are angels. That's a serious argument. Aquinas goes so far as to say in Symmetraeologica 150, the perfection of the universe requires that there should be intellectual creatures,

that is, angels. Etienne Gilson, I think the greatest poemist of the 20th century comments the perfection of the universe demands the existence of beings possessing neither matter nor bodies for the general plan of creation would display a manifest gap if there were no angels lack of discontinuity is a profound law governing the emanation of beings from God. The hierarchy of being is continuous. Every nature of a superior degree is contiguous by whatever is least noble in it with whatever is most noble in the next inferior degree.

In other words, Uncle Charlie looks a bit like an ape. Or an ape looks a bit like Uncle Charlie. Or Thomas Aquinas is a bit like an angel. Or maybe his guardian angel is a bit like Uncle Charlie, or Thomas Aquinas is a bit like an angel, or maybe his guardian angel is a bit like Thomas Aquinas. Thus, intellectual nature is superior to corporeal nature, and yet the order of the intellectual natures is contiguous with the order of corporeal natures at the point of the least noble part of the intellectual nature, which is the rational soul of man.

We are the stupidest minds in the universe. We're the stupidest angels. We're also the smartest animals. On the other hand, the body united with the rational soul is, by the very fact of this union, placed at the highest degree in the order of bodily natures. Scientists who study the human brain are astounded and amazed at the perfection and the design of it. The order of nature, to preserve proportion, must reserve, therefore, a place for intellectual creatures superior to the human soul,

that is, for the angels, who are not united to bodies. Gilson concludes. It may seem at first sight. That an argument such as this. Amounts to no more than a mere reason of convenience and harmony. But that would be a mistake. To think of it as subservient. To a purely logical and abstract desire for symmetry.

The perfection of the universe requires it. And God takes the universe quite seriously. Much more seriously than we do sometimes i turn now to material causes now angels have no matter so they don't have any material cause for their being so once again i ask about the material cause of our knowledge of angels that is the historical sources where in the history of western thought did our knowledge of angels. That is, the historical sources. Where in the history of Western thought did our knowledge of angels come from? What is the content of it? Not the authority for it, that's the previous point, but where are the books?

Well, of course, they begin with the Bible. Secondly, church tradition from the beginning. The fathers of the church talk about angels. None of them doubts them. Thirdly, philosophers. Plato, the first philosopher in Western thought to have a metaphysics of pure spirit. Plotinus, the founder of Neoplanism, who placed angels in the mind of the one, which was not quite God, but a fairly good approximation for a pagan. There are four degrees of being for Plotinus. There is the absolute one, and then there is the nous, or the cosmic mind of the one, in which are all Platonic ideas, Platonic forms.

And then there is the world soul, and then there is matter. Well, in the second degree of being, there are the angels, because for Plotinus, platonic ideas become substances, individuals, and think. They are not just ideas that we think about, like justice. They are things that think, like Zeus, but they're not on Mount Olympus. They're in the mind of God. like Zeus, but they're not on Mount Olympus, they're in the mind of God. A fourth source of data about angels is Dionysius the Areopagite, that 6th century Syrian monk whom everyone in the Middle Ages thought to be the 1st century disciple of St. Paul, mentioned in the Acts of the Apostles, especially in his book, The Celestial Hierarchy. He is very clear that angels are purely spiritual,

and he is the one responsible for the traditional idea of the nine choirs of angels. I'm not sure exactly how he knew so much about angels, but he certainly did. A fifth source is ancient astronomy, which, despite the fact that it made a lot of mistakes physically, yet conduced to a lot of truth metaphysically. Somehow, in the providence of God, truth sometimes emerges from error.

Plato, for instance, thought that the stars must have souls. Most of the church fathers deny that. None of them quite affirm it, but many of them are not quite sure. Aristotle thought that angels are necessary to move the planets because he only discovered the first half of inertia, that a body tends to remain at rest unless it's pushed. He didn't know that a body tends to remain in rest unless it's pushed. He didn't know that a body tends to remain in motion unless it's stopped. And he saw the planets moving, and he concluded that there must be some force that is continually

moving them, therefore there must be angels, or invisible spirits moving the planets around. When Aristotle was rediscovered in the Middle Ages, most video philosophers agreed with Aristotle. That was a function for the angels that fit in nicely with medieval angelology. Although most medieval philosophers didn't think it was necessary, and they wouldn't have been scandalized by the discovery that modern astronomy can get along quite well without angels. Aquinas in particular was remarkably free from subservience to medieval science as more than a hypothesis. The idea of geocentrism, for instance, the earth as the center of the universe versus heliocentrism, was dealt by Aquinas as a hypothesis. If only

the bishops in Galileo had both read Aquinas, there wouldn't have been that unfortunate incident. Galileo had both read Aquinas, there wouldn't have been that unfortunate incident. And Aquinas was also free of worshipping fashion or history, although he thought Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite was the first century disciple of St. Paul, he didn't accept him as an absolute authority. Finally, a few things about the nature of angels, or a formal cause of angels. Three things about the nature of angels, or a formal cause of angels. Three things in particular.

Their knowledge, their spirituality, and their simplicity. Angels are pure intellects. And the kind of knowledge that they have depends upon the kind of being they have. the kind of being they have. Gilson says, their knowledge can in no way resemble the abstraction by which man discovers the intelligible hidden in sense experience.

We go to the jungle and get a lion out of the jungle and then put it in a cage and study it. The jungle is sense experience, the cage is the mind. Well, angels grow up in a zoo and see the lion in the cage is the mind. Well, angels grow up in a zoo and see the lion in the cage from the beginning, pure.

There is no distinction between God's being and God's knowing. God is knowledge. He's not somebody who happens to know. So in God, the intelligible and the apprehension of the intelligible are one. Angels can't go that far.

Therefore, angelic knowledge can only be a knowledge acquired by means of innate forms, the reception of which illumines the angelic intelligence. Innate forms are species which are connatural to the angels. In other words, what Plato and Descartes think is true of us is true of angels. We're born with innate ideas. All intelligible essences which preexisted eternally in God, I'm quoting from Gilson now, which preexisted eternally in the mind of God in the shape of platonic ideas, ideas with a capital I, eternal truths, platonic ideas, ideas with a capital I, eternal truths,

issued from God at the moment of creation along two distinct yet parallel lines. Now this is a fascinating thought. Most of us do not think of God's act of creation in this way. By ignoring the angels, we cheat God of half of his glory. We think God said let there be the Big Bang and then let there be cooling and then let there be lava and then let there be a primordial slime pool and then let there be two amoebas making love and then let there be Uncle Harry on a street corner. But there's a lot more. Two distinct yet parallel lines.

On the one hand, these ideas individualize themselves in material beings whose forms they constitute. On the other hand, these ideas flowed into the angelic spirits, thus conferring the knowledge of all things upon the angels. If our intellect may be compared to a blank tablet, a tabula rasa, the intellect of the angel could be compared to a canvas covered with its painting, or perhaps better, to a mirror reflecting the essences of things in the mind of God. So angels have innate ideas. They don't all know everything.

God exalts his subordinates, so angels in a hierarchy teach each other. God exalts his subordinates, so angels in a hierarchy teach each other. Ideas flow from God through the highest angels down to the hierarchy to the lowest. And everybody's happy. Angels are not egalitarian or competitive. So angels have innate ideas. What about images of material things? Aquinas says, yes, they have images of material things too. Summa Theologica 155 2. There are images in the angel's mind, not derived

from creatures, but from God, in whom the likenesses of creatures first exist. It's like you have mental telepathy with Shakespeare, so you don't have to attend a performance of Hamlet. You know what's going to happen by reading his mind. Shakespeare is like God, you, the telepath, are like the angels, and human beings are the ones who have to come to the theater and see what Hamlet's going to say.

Hence, Augustine says, as the type or model according to which the creature is fashioned is in the word of God, the mind of God, the logos, the pre are a bit like Christ. That is, more like the mind of God. They are, after all, Christ's angels. more like the mind of God. They are, after all, Christ's angels.

Augustine also says the other things which are lower than the angels are so created that they first receive existence in the knowledge of the angel and then in their own nature. In Tolkien's Silmarillion, he has a beautiful creation myth in which the angels sing the world into being. It's sort of an extended version of what C.S. Lewis has in The Magician's Nephew in the Chronicles of Narnia. I highly recommend it. In fact, next to the Genesis account, it's the most moving creation epic I think

has ever been written. Angels are God's intermediaries or instruments in creation. Only three times did he speak the word Barak, create, out of nothing. Matter, life, and the soul of man. Everything else he did by bringing it forth and the angels were his instruments. Perhaps that explains platypuses. Maybe two angels tried to dance on the head of the same pin there and got a bit confused.

Sympathological 1.110.1. Aquinas says, St. Gregory says that in this visible world, nothing takes place without the agency of the invisible creation. Therefore, all corporeal things are ruled by angels. When we die, we will meet our guardian angel and many others. And I am quite convinced that we will be astounded and humbled by the role that they played in our lives. Oh, it was you. It is good to anticipate that simply because it is true and to give them the credit.

A second aspect of the nature of angels is their incorporeality. There was a controversy in the Middle Ages about what that meant. All agreed that angels were incorporeal, but not all agreed that they were immaterial. Corporeal matter is not the only kind of matter. The premises of a syllogism are the matter or potentiality for the conclusion. The curricula of a school are the matter or content of the school. The passions are the material cause of a free choice.

And neither premises nor curricula nor passions are made of molecules. So corporeal matter is not the only kind of matter. Aquinas says angels lack not only corporeal matter, but any kind of molecules. So corporeal matter. Is not the only kind of matter. Aquinas says angels lack. Not only corporeal matter. But any kind of matter. This was not universally. Agreed to. In Aquinas' day.

It was somewhat controversial. There were arguments against it. One argument was. According to Aristotle. Matter means potency or potentiality. If there is no potentiality in the angels, they're not distinct from God, because there's no composition in them between act and potency. Aquinas had to develop almost a new metaphysic to answer that question. He certainly had to develop one that went far beyond Aristotle.

Aristotle reduced potentiality to matter. For Aquinas, potentiality is much broader than matter. Matter is only one kind of potentiality. Essence is another. The essence of a thing is potential to its existence. So Aquinas distinguishes the two compositions of essence existence and form matter in order to explain how the angels are distinct from God even though they lack any kind of matter so this technical question about form matter essence and existence turns out to have enormous implications another implication of this same point is that angels being pure forms without any kind of matter

are also many therefore multiplicity is not just matter and therefore multiplicity in us though it is made possible by matter is it's not just matter. It's not just our bodies that make us different. We have different souls. Although there can be human twins and not angel twins, nevertheless, human souls are individuated not only by matter, but also somewhat analogous to the angels by form. A second argument against Aquinas in the middle ages was that matter is necessary to explain change without matter there's no change so if angels don't have matter they're eternal and changeless but in scripture they change they do things well aquinas says yes angels do change

their intellect and will moves from potentiality to actuality. Intellect too has potentiality. It takes time to think. And therefore, potentiality is more than just material potentiality. Angel time is spiritual time, in Greek, kairos, whereas the time of bodies is chronological time, in Greek, chronos. And since we are double creatures of spirit and matter, we have a double time sense, which is why myself and my wife can never agree because she's Italian and I'm Dutch,

and I go by the clock and she goes by her inner biological clock. So she's more like an angel. It's frequently noted that women are much more like angels than men in that they leap from premises to conclusions without the intermediary step. This is funny, but it's true and serious. Finally, one other argument that Aquinas responds to about angels being pure spirits was that angels are passive to other angels. They're illumined and taught and helped by other angels. And in order to be passive, you have to have matter, because the principle of passivity is matter.

Well, Aquinas said this is a spiritual passivity or a spiritual potentiality. Once again, distinguishing the matter-form dualism from the broader potency-act dualism. Finally, the simplicity of angels. Angels are simple, much simpler than we are but they're not absolutely simple only god is that they have no matter and therefore no form matter distinction but they're creatures therefore they have an essence existence distinction so they're not absolutely simple it's angels that led Aquinas to this profound discovery of the real distinction between essence and existence, or the distinction between the essence-existence distinction

and the form-matter distinction. Some Thomists have called this Aquinas' existentialism. Jacques Maritain wrote a book in the 60s, I believe, called Existence and the Existent, which was a well-intentioned confusion between Thomistic existentialism and modern existentialism, most of which repudiates metaphysics. But in the proper Thomistic sense of the word, Aquinas is indeed an existentialist because existence is the supreme actuality, the actuality of actualities. Aquinas would explain,

would understand quite well, that the difference between a unicorn and a horse is much greater than the difference between one horse and another. The difference between a real dollar and an imagined dollar is much greater than the difference between a real dollar and a million dollars. Because it's the difference between something real dollar and a million dollars because it's the difference between something and everything on the basis of this discovery that joseph calls the ultimate fully of human thought that the ultimate actuality and the ultimate perfection of all things is the supreme act of sheer existence itself joseph formulates what I think is one of the most moving arguments I have ever seen. He calls it the great syllogism. And it comes from Aquinas. Major premise.

Existence is the supreme actuality and therefore is the nature of God. The essence of God is existence. Principle number two. When you analyze any being, you find existence at its core, at its center. Its appearances are relative to other people perceiving it. Its relations to other beings are

somewhat relative to those other beings as well as to itself. Its accidental qualities, which are part of its own nature, but which keep changing, and it keeps losing them and gaining them, those are still somewhat peripheral. Its essential properties, which are qualities which it can never lose, are much more central to its being. But finally, its own inner essence, its very essential nature itself that it can

never, ever lose, that is still not the most intimately present aspect of a thing's being. The act of existence that actualizes that essence is the most intimate inner turn-on principle, so to speak. inner turn-on principle, so to speak. Now, put those two premises together, that the supreme actuality, the nature of God, is existence, and existence is at the heart of every being, and the conclusion is, we find God as the very heart of every being.

Most especially, ourselves. Who, like angels angels and like God and like nothing else, can say the magic word, I. So, in a sense, Thomistic existential metaphysics is a meditation on Augustine's famous statement that God is more intimately present to us than we are to ourselves. I have used my hour, and now if there's time for questions, this would be the most interesting part. First question. Well, I've got a couple of questions. One is, why does Bonaventure say that there's more than one angel in each species of angels? Because Bonaventure has a different metaphysics than Aquinas.

It's a more platonic metaphysics. So he doesn't make that essence-existence distinction that enables Aquinas to be clearer. They both have the same view of angels. There are many of them, but they have a different set of categories for explaining it. I think Aquinas' categories are better. And are there a definite number of angels? And if so, how does God set that number? There's a definite number of angels.

They're finite. Any finite number is definite. It's enormous. We have no way of estimating how big it is, except that it is enormous. I think biblical language especially is language that comes from a time when people respected quality more than quantity, so they weren't terribly worried about numbers. The numerical apparent contradiction in the Bible, you know,

whether one woman or two at the empty tomb, does Sennacherib have 200,000 or 20,000 soldiers? Wouldn't have bothered ancient people because like little kids, they just said zillions. So since scripture is our data and since quantitatively it comes from a, if you will pardon the expression, zillions mentality, we don't have an exact number for angels. But how would God set a number like that?

I mean, do you have any idea of that? I do not have any idea, being neither God nor God's counselor. Thank you. I have just two questions. Fallen angels, are they still angels, number one, number two? And the premortal existence or when you read scripture angels are referred to as having wings

cherubims and seraphims to walk around or fly around how do they get around? all Jesuit angels have a Lexus. The wings, which are scriptural in origin, are symbols of speed, of quickness. Angels are not bothered by traffic jams on the FDR drive. So they can go from one place to another much more quickly than we can. They still take time.

There's a passage in Isaiah about Michael, the defender of Israel, taking some time to get to Israel out of a jam because he was on another mission. But the wings are certainly not literal because wings are things that take up space and are made of molecules and thus matter. And angels do not have matter. But like language about God, it's true. When God is described as having a strong right hand and sitting on a mighty throne in the heavens,

it doesn't mean that he has five fingernails and there's a throne somewhere that NASA might discover with its latest rocket. It means that God really has power over the universe. So the wings are a symbolic way of speaking the truth about angels. The other question, remind me of the first question again augustine says angel is the name of their task rather than the name of their being angel means messenger the fallen angels are no longer god's messengers so we don't usually call them angels we call them demons or devils they maintain maintain their being, though. They're spiritual and they're immortal. And they can't ever change that.

And one reason why we should not pray for the conversion of fallen angels or have any sympathy for them is that it's impossible. Once they are set in their evil, not being in material time, they cannot repent. The usual explanation for that is that at the moment of creation, God gave each angel a choice for him or against him. The only thing that could tempt an angel would not be something like greed or lust or fear, but pride. tempt an angel would not be something like greed or lust or fear uh but pride and uh some chose against him and some for him and once they made that choice there's no more testing so a demon is simply evil there's a great passage in paralandra where the earthman goes to Paralandra and discovers that there's an unfallen Adam and Eve there

and the devil in the form of an earth scientist is trying to tempt the Eve of Paralandra to fall again. But this earth scientist the hero discovers is only a dead body possessed by a demon. It's an unman. And God commands him to kill him. and the hero is an oxford philologist not used to violence so he doesn't want to do this but he does it and while he's doing it he discovers a joy that he says no one on this planet can ever have the joy of absolutely proper hatred we are supposed to hate evil but we are not supposed to hate people, no matter how evil they are.

Love the sinner, no matter how depraved, but hate the sin. Well, a demon would be sin personified, pure sin, no hope for him. So the cursing psalms are interpreted by many of the saints and the fathers of the church as properly directed against demons, my enemies. Our true enemies, says St. Paul, are not flesh and blood, but principalities and powers. Dr. Crave, I regret I came a little bit late, and I want to inject two words, empirical and pragmatic, sorry,

namely this. Do you foresee any kind of official and real restoration of Thomism in the seminaries, especially in regard to the impetus given by Fidesz at Razio? Golly, I have no idea. I'm not part of that mysterious middle management that handles such things. It would be a consummation devoutly to be wished and certainly suspected. And I suspect that most people who don't want it are either afraid of it because it's too clear or else muddleheaded and think it's divisive or exclusive. And it's just the opposite. Thomism is a synthesis of much in previous philosophy and, as the present pope has shown, a great foundation for future philosophy.

I mean, the pope is a Thomist and a personalist and a phenomenologist. It's not an either or. So I think that would be a Thomist and a personalist and a phenomenologist. It's not an either-or. So I think that would be a great thing. Thomas is the doctor of the church, primary doctor of the church. So I don't see why seminaries would not restore teaching him. Dr. Kreef, there's one question that's been bothering me for a long time.

If I want to speak to my guardian angel and ask for some help, do I have to verbalize or can the angel know what I'm thinking telepathically? That's a very good question. First of all, angels aren't deaf. Secondly, Aquinas says an angel cannot read your mind against your will. It's not your mind, but your will that determines whether the angel can read your thoughts. That's true of devils too. Just as a devil cannot possess you or even understand what you're thinking without somehow you giving consent. So with an angel uh angels can influence your imagination but not

your thought this is true of good angels and bad angels so your thought which is controlled by your will is your sort of inner sanctuary but when you pray to your guardian angel whether verbally or non-verbally you're opening the door of that inner sanctuary. And the angel is a perfect telepath. He knows when you're doing that. Oh, good. I'm glad. I don't have to.

Thank you. Can angels handle matter? It would seem to me that in the story of Abraham, they eat. And in the story of Tobit, they carry money and fish. And that in Isaiah, they carry coals and burn Isaiah's lips. So there seems to be a faculty among them to move and manipulate matter, if not to be composed of it. And I'm wondering if you could explain that. They can certainly move matter and make matter do things that it wouldn't do through merely material causes.

So that would be a relative miracle, although not an absolute miracle, since it would be done not by God directly, but by the mediation of an angel. But that would be like our changing the dog's food. The dog can't do that for himself. So on a dog level, that's miraculous. To us, it's perfectly natural. But secondly, they can do more than that. They can assume bodies.

Is that what's happening in the story of Abraham? Yes. How they do it and where the bodies come from is not too clear, to me anyway. But just as we might dress up as angels on halloween so angels dress up as human beings but their costumes are a little better than ours uh those bodies don't come out of any woman's womb and they don't ever find themselves in any earthly grave they're just temporary bodies but they are bodies made of matter so you can touch them you can eat it's not a true incarnation it's not like our lord's body which is a real body forever it's i think a bit like the story you have in the hindu scriptures the bhagavad-gita where brahman the supreme god manifests himself through krishna to the warrior Arjuna and gives him some moral lessons about yoga,

that's not a real body. That's an appearance. That's similar to the Docetist heresy in early Christianity, where Jesus didn't have a real body according to this notion, but it looked like a body and it felt like a body. I'm not sure whether there's not still some difference between what the dastas said about christ's body and the kind of bodies angels assume but it's essentially the same sort of thing i think thank you but they can they can really do a job in imitating even that little dog in tobit

as a dr creeve can you tell us more about the fall of the angels, what kind of knowledge they have of God when they are created? Because it seems like if you have, well, they must not have total knowledge of God and his infinite goodness or else they wouldn't have a choice. And also, are they aware of the consequences of the other angels who have made their choice? That is a very good question. The origin of human sin is hard enough, but it's at least partly explained by temptations due to ignorance.

Angels have no ignorance, so it's much more difficult to explain why an angel would fall. Jacques Maritain has a little book on the problem of evil. And I believe James Collins, the Jesuit philosopher at St. Louis back in the 50s and 60s, wrote a book called The Sin of the First Angel, which is a rather long book. I remember trying it once and saying, this is a great book, but I'm not smart enough to read the rest of it. So I left it. But I was impressed by how much he could write about it. He could write 500 intelligent pages on the sin of the first angel, on the

difficulty of explaining why an angel would choose himself over God. He couldn't have all knowledge as God does, but he's not blinded by passion, ignorance, the senses, anything like us. So he'd have a perfectly fair test. God says to Lucifer, all right, who's going to be number one? And Lucifer says, I just don't want to be number two. But if he's number one, God's got to be number two.

And that's against the metaphysics of being. So the question in my mind was, was Lucifer so stupid that he thought he could get away with a solacism against the grammar of being? A violation against the unchangeable laws of reality? I don't think so. Well, then, since he was not brain scrambled by lust or fear or greed or the things that make us so stupid and ignorant, why would he do that? And my best answer is reflection on my own experience. For instance, gee, I never thought I'd connect these two things.

But here is the great problem of the sin of the first angel. Here is my problem getting up this morning. Had a long day yesterday. Got a little cold. Got up this morning. Had to make a plane. Wasn't terribly rushed. But I said, okay, I can either get dressed and have breakfast first and then hope it's time to pray.

Or I can pray first and, if necessary, cut my breakfast. Well, I got a call. I can't do that. Not much time to pray. Make a quick offering, quick morning offering, 15 seconds. Now I have my breakfast. Oh, this is an interesting thing in the paper. Yeah, well, maybe another five minutes to get the uh the plane on time why did i do that i know by faith by reason

and by repeated experience that when i give god the loaves and fishes of my time at the beginning of each day he multiplies them and that when i have a busy day, that's especially when I need to take the time to pray. So why don't I do it? I also know that when I do that, when I take the time to pray, everything falls into place and I'm happy. And when I don't, I'm sort of confused and it doesn't work out. So if I know that for sure, then what is it that motivates me to say, yeah, God, I know you want me to do things this way, but let's just compromise a little bit.

I know very clearly, without a shadow of a doubt, that that's stupid. And yet I do it. That's what sin is. We all know, most of the time, that sin doesn't pay. Crime sometimes pays. Half of all crimes, you don't get caught. But not true of sins. And yet we do it. Why? Because we're insane. That's the meaning of original sin.

We're insane. Now, that insanity must somehow be possible as a choice. In us, it's conditioned by the loss the preternatural gifts and our fallen condition and temptation and so on which is not the case in the angel but there is something i think that is in principle unexplainable in sin sin is the one thing that in a sense even god doesn't understand in the first psalm or yeah in the first psalm it says uh god knows the way of the righteous but the way of the wicked shall perish imp the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked shall perish. Implied that even God does not understand the way of the wicked. And in that horrible parable of the sheep and the goats, Christ has the Father say to the blessed,

coming blessed of my Father, I knew you before the foundation of the world. And to the damned, depart from me, I never knew you. There's something intrinsically unintelligible about sin. So I don't think anybody can ever get an adequate answer to your question. Dr. Craig, what does St. Paul mean when he says that we're going to judge the angels? Why would we be put in a position to judge creatures superior to ourselves? And if they're sinless, what is there to judge? Because God is a romanticist as well as a classicist.

He is a classicist in making the universe neat and orderly and hierarchical. He is a romanticist in messing up the hierarchy now and then and testing our humility by making the teacher bow to the student and the angel bow to the human being. In the Quran, there is a story which probably came from Nestorian Christianity of the devil rebelling because he refused to bow to Adam. God, according to this story, revealed to the devil that part of his plan was that he had to bow to man, this creature of flesh. Of course, the Quran couldn't explain

why. Namely, God himself, the incarnate Christ, would be born of him. But it dovetails beautifully with the incarnation. And the devil refused. Why should should i bow to that that's like making me serve a cat so it was a lack of humility god's got this thing about humility you see each of the three persons gets its greatest joy out of serving the others but what would we judge oh i've answered your question on the part of the angels but not on the part of us if i were an angel i could imagine it being a lot of saintly fun to be judged by a human being but i can't imagine myself judging angels so i guess that's just something that we shouldn't even try to understand a A bit like if you're a pregnant mother

and you're talking to your unborn baby, you shouldn't try to explain to him the Metropolitan Opera. Just tell me what's happening. Dr. Creed, I understand that one of the attributes of angels is the gift of bilocation. Could you amplify on that and give us some examples of when it would be used? I wish sometimes that I could learn that gift. It would make me much more efficient.

I think I recall, and now I'm not sure. I'll just tell you what I know and tell you what I don't know. I think I recall reading in Aquinas that he disagrees with that. That angels cannot accept by a divinely given miracle by their own nature bilocate. Which is really behind the issue, how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. A question never asked in the Middle Ages, but a perfectly good question. Because it's about the relation between angels and space. And angels direct their attention to one place at a time.

But I'm not sure. Well, I want to bring up a coincidence, an extraordinary one today. While you're talking about angels, about 27 years ago, I was in Italy where I go quite often. I'm a tour guide. And while there, I met a gentleman named Giovanni Siana. And he constantly went to Padre Pio whenever he wrote a book. And he's a very famous author in Italy and France.

And he went to Padre Pio and said there was an apparition that he believed in. And he wanted Padre Pio's help. Padre Pio said, what is the apparition? He told him, what you will do is get with the hour of the angels. That is the time coming soon. And I will help you. That book is being published as we stand here right now. It will be distributed this week. And it is coming out in the next few hours. But it is the only book where Padre Pio dictated these thoughts from his mind about his conversations with angels and, you know, the things that he expressed most of all. I thought you'd be interested.

The Hour of the Angels. I would think that's now, that is the present era, because angels and miracles both multiply during times of great crisis. angels and miracles both multiply during times of great crisis. The early church, the dissolution of the Roman Empire, the end of the Middle Ages, and today. I think these three times in history, the three great transition eras, we find the most angel sayings. Thank you. Dr. Kree, do you think that Thomas' thought had any influence on Milton's writing of the angels in Paradise Lost? Certainly, at least indirectly.

I don't know whether Milton read Thomas directly. Being a Protestant, he may have thought him inappropriate, or he may have said, here's one of the great figures in history. I don't know that much about Milton, but I do know that Milton's universe is basically the one he inherited from the Middle Ages with the great chain of being and the notion of angels and demons. And the basic thought behind Satan's fall,

I think, is quite accurate. When Satan said, evil be thou my good, and better to reign in hell than serve in heaven, those are, I think, striking expressions of the best answer we have to that question that I said a moment ago we don't have an answer to. But if you want to learn more about Milton, C.S. Lewis' The Preface to Paradise Lost is a wonderful guide.

It won't answer that particular question, but it will give you Milton's cosmos beautifully. Thank you. Another question. Where do we get the traditional visual depictions of angels? Like the cherubs, their heads with wings. Do you know that?

There's no one answer to that question. Most angels in our culture come from Western Catholic Renaissance humanist artists who for some reason or other elect cherubs. It originally signified innocence and it has now come to signify cuteness or even tutus. Earlier, the angels were either not depicted at all or depicted in much more symbolic or strictly scriptural ways, such as Ezekiel's eyes and wheels or pure wings in byzantine art you

don't have over humanized angels partly because you don't have a third dimension and partly because you have the humanoid features deliberately exaggerated for, the eyes are larger and rounder, and the countenance is usually sort of golden. We, in our culture, tend to look at symbolism in a very different way than ancient cultures did, and therefore don't respond immediately to this art as ordinary people did in past ages. We look at symbolism as an artificial human invention oh isn't that clever they looked at symbolism as the nature of being so they saw an immediate truth in it whereas we have to make an extra step well it is true in an abstract way that angels are smart and the eyes are the window of the soul so it's appropriate for these angels eyes to be a little larger than human eyes yeah it's appropriate uh so we in a kind

of a rational syllogistic way understand the appropriateness of of the art uh i think it's more difficult for us than it was for people in other cultures to immediately respond to that which is why it's a very good thing to skip philosophy and go right to art sometimes just immerse yourself in it and don't ask the question. That's the key to my mind in reading one book in the Bible, the book of Revelation. Every time I tried to read that book as a philosopher and figure it out, it fell flat. And then once I just read it aloud as magnificent words and images and was overwhelmed. It's a vision.

I was also wondering about the Jewish notion of the angel. They seem to, they don't have the same notion of the fallen angel that we do. And I was wondering why that difference and how we could communicate to them using their scriptures, you know, fallen angels. Well, Judaism is not a creedal religion. So there is a great variety of opinion within the Jewish community about angels. Orthodox Jews do believe that there are angels, and some of them are fallen. I mean, they're mentioned occasionally in the Old Testament, and Satan or the accuser is one of the sons of God or heavenly creatures or angels.

I think the usual Jewish view is that they're not as completely diabolical as we usually think. Dr. Kreft, I'm wondering how best to invoke the angels in our prayers of intercession. For instance, would it be appropriate to ask my guardian angel to visit someone else's guardian angel? Or should I simply pray to God and let him do the work with the angels? That's a question of individual discernment. That's like the question, should I ask for particular things that I'm not sure are God's will, or should I just say, thy will be done?

And the usual answer is, God likes you to be specific, and he likes you also to give him a totally open blank check. So, you know, if it is your will please do this but the most important thing is if it is your will that would be my advice if you're led to that if there's something in you that you think is piety and not just imagination leading you to ask your guardian angel to help someone else as a guardian angel I would say do that subject to God's will I see nothing wrong with it

thank you I also wanted to tell you that your books on your book on suffering your book on death and your two books on heaven I've come to consider the last word on those subjects well I don't want to insult you but they're neither the first nor the last word on those subjects. Well, I don't want to insult you,

but they're neither the first nor the last word. They're just a link in the chain. Well, they answered my questions. Thank you. Thank you. Well, that was a fantastic talk. I hope you made it this far. I guess if you're listening to me, you did.

This talk was taken, as I say, from PeterKraeft.com, so be sure to go there, and you can get a bunch more awesome talks to listen to. We will speak to you at Pints with Aquinas next week. God bless you. Bye. Who's gonna survive? And I would give my whole life to carry you, to carry you And I would give my whole life to carry you you