Truth Unites - Are Guardian Angels Real?

Episode Date: October 16, 2024

Gavin Ortlund addresses whether Christians have guardian angels. Truth Unites exists to promote gospel assurance through theological depth. Gavin Ortlund (PhD, Fuller Theological Seminary) is President of Truth Unites and Theologian-in-Residence at Immanuel Nashville. SUPPORT: Tax Deductible Support: https://truthunites.org/donate/ Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/truthunites FOLLOW: Twitter: https://twitter.com/gavinortlund Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TruthUnitesPage/ Website: https://truthunites.org/

Do Christians have guardian angels? My answer to this will maybe surprise some, but I think if you get into this with an open mind, I think people will understand the plausibility of this idea. That's how I'm going to cast it. My basic answer is probably. And if not, there's probably some comparable arrangement like that. But I'll give two caveats. Number one, the evidence for this is not super clear or decisive, so we shouldn't be dogmatic about this. Number two, this should make us more grateful for Jesus, more grateful for the gospel. It should put more focus on Christ rather than become a primary focus in itself, more on that at the end. But having said everything, I think the case for guardian angels is a plausible one. I don't think we can be dogmatic, but I think it's a plausible idea.

We'll go through scripture, then church history, then practical conclusions, and I'll put up my four-step argument on the screen so you can see where we're going here. Number one, the general Ministry of Angels, number two, the hierarchical organization of angels, number three, two particular passages, Matthew 18, Acts 12, and number four, the witness of church history. Let's dive in. So general ministry of angels, these first two points are just sort of background context that help us as we get to the particular texts. If you just go straight to the proof text, I think we miss some context. So just starting with the general idea here, in Scripture, angels do a lot. sometimes theologians distinguish between the parts of their activity that is what they call

the ordinary ministry of angels versus the extraordinary and so forth. There's a lot we could say about angels. It's such a complicated and fascinating topic. For our purposes, we'll just observe this one point, and that is that the general idea of guarding or protecting and guiding and watching over the people of God is very clear in scripture. I'll put up two texts as examples of this, because I don't think we need to put up more. I don't think that we need to put up more. I don't think this will be controversial. I think we can all admit this. It's actually amazing how much we see this in Scripture without the narrative books of the Bible, Old Testament and New Testament, for example. But here from Hebrews 1 and Psalm 91, you get the idea very plainly. Related to this, we just see

general angelic interest in and awareness of human affairs. Luke 15, just to give an example of a passage, talks about how the angels are happy when people repent. Kind of interesting. And by the way, this this whole topic should be a comfort to us. I mean, I think it should be, we'll talk about the danger of over-focus on angels, but the other danger is under-focus. So we've got to get this right. Spiritual warfare, angels and demons, this is in the Bible. We need to be aware of this. Ephesians 612 is something we need to be aware of. We are fighting against spiritual powers. So all of that kind of gives just basic plausibility to the general idea of angelic guardianship that doesn't hit the target yet, but it doesn't prove there's, you know, one angel per Christian or

something like that. But as relevant background context as we get to some other passages, and it leads to this second question, which is the second point I want to make, and that's, you know, we could just ask the question like this, okay, what's the nature of that guardianship? If angels are protecting and watching over the people of God, is this a ceaseless or occasional activity? Is it organized, or is it more sort of ad hoc? God just sends out the angel here and there based upon a need. Is Hebrews 1-14 activity going on? You know, is it circumstantial?

Is it regional? Is it personal? You know, are the angels playing man-to-man defense or zone defense? To put it weirdly like this. In other words, I mean, those are reasonable questions. You know, by the way, kids always ask good theology questions. And if you talk about your kids with this, you'll get questions about this like this. So this, again, gets us into kind of a second background point here, and that's the hierarchical

organization of angels. Pretty much all of the pre-modern Christian tradition, to my awareness, Saw Angels is having a hierarchical stewardship over creation. I've gone into this more in this video and in my academic work on Angelic Falthy Odyssey, Lord willing, I'll have another article coming out about this, specifically about Augustine and Aquinas, and their view of angels' role over the stars. Strange as that seems, it's pretty fascinating. But this general idea, I'll put up a quote from John of Damascus, as representative of how pre-modern Christians tended to think, this general idea is very common. He says, angels are the guardians of the divisions of the earth. They are set over nations and regions, allotted to them by their

creator. They govern all our affairs. So that's extremely common. And I think we see teaching to that end in scripture. Let me give you an example of the passage that really hit me. I was preaching through Daniel several years ago. Actually, only about a year ago. And I got, or no, two years ago. And I got to Daniel 10. And I somehow had missed this before, but it seems to affirm the idea of angels and demons being involved specifically in the affairs of nations. So you have an angel here in Daniel 10. I'll put up this passage. He's speaking to Daniel, and he references the prince of Persia, who detains him for 21 days or withstands him for 21 days, and then Michael, another angel, comes to help him. And without going into all the details here, we can observe that really the best interpretation of the Prince of Persia is referring to what we call a demon.

And you see just a little bit later a reference to the Prince of Greece as well. There's some kind of manifestation of demonic power in these particular brutal nations. Boy, once you start thinking like this, by the way, it sheds a lot of light on other portions of scripture, like you'll read Psalm 2 a little differently. You'll read, you know, remember Paul's statement in 1st Corinthians 10 that the sacrifices of pagans are offered to demons. I remember preaching through this passage, and it just finally dawned on me like, oh, this makes so much more sense of why Daniel is so interested in the rising and falling of these brutal

foreign powers. They're all his dreams and visions in Daniel 2 and in Daniel 4 and elsewhere, because this is a part of basically spiritual warfare. And Michael, by contrast, is called the guardian or prince, the Hebrew term is translated, of the people of God in a couple of passages here. So, you know, when we get to these passages, we just want to be able to go with the clear assertions of scripture, where you have a reference to this power that is associated with this particular nation. Now, it's interesting, isn't it fascinating how much angels come up in the Bible, but how little philosophical or systematic treatment they get. You don't really get chapters of the Bible that are filling in our speculations.

This is why we want to come back to this point that we need to be careful not to become too speculative about this. Nonetheless, angels are everywhere in scripture, and you do seem to have texts like Daniel 10 that seem to indicate some kind of organization with respect to the different nations and powers in this world. That's also, I think, indicated in Zechariah. the book of Zechariah is very relevant to angelology, meaning the doctrine of angels. Some try to get this also in Deuteronomy 32 from the Song of Moses, but there are text critical issues in this passage, so I'm not going to lean on that here. From Daniel 10 alone, I think we can get support for the idea of an organization of angelic

and demonic activity at national levels. In Revelation 2 and 3, we also seem to have organization of angelic oversight with respect to churches. And I'll put up from the first of these seven letters. This is the word ongalos. Now, it's true that you don't have to translate that word as angel. And some people believe it's a human messenger or something like that. But I think Greg Beale, my favorite commentary on Revelation is Greg Beale's great commentary. I think it makes a pretty good case for the view that, no, these are angels. And one of the biggest arguments for that is just the context. that's how the word is most commonly used all throughout the book of Revelation.

And he gives a good case from other factors as well. So you spend some time in the background there. Now we're going to come from that background to these specific passages I'm going to work through because I think what's really decisive on this topic is the background conception we have that we bring to the table. From Hebrews 1 and Psalm 91 and Daniel 10 and Revelation 2 to 3 already, we already have some basic categories for this idea that the general, ministry of angelic guardianship seems to have organization to it. And so that just raises the question

very naturally. If nations can have angels and if churches can have angels, do people have angels? And that brings us to the relevant passages like Matthew 18, where in verse 10, Jesus is speaking about their angels. You see that possessive word there. Now, the little ones here are Christians, believers, and we find the same and this possessive language for them. Seeing the face of God has to do with access to God. There's disputes about all the details of this. Some people think it's talking about angelic intercession for people. That was a common Jewish belief. People got from Tobit, Chapter 12, as well as from the book of Job versus chapter 33 versus 22 and following. We don't really go into that here. Other people, you know, all this is in terms of

but for our purposes, I should say, all this is interpreted differently, but for our purposes, it's enough to observe that people seem to have angels in some kind of organizational role toward them. Now, that doesn't establish absolutely clearly the idea of guardian angels, but it gives a lot of texture to the idea, and it adds plausibility to it. Then you get to Acts 12, where it seems like Christians had some kind of category for particular believers having an angel associated with them. So this is the story of Peter's miraculous release from prison, and Rhoda, the servant girl, is not believed when she's saying Peter's at the gate, because they are saying it's his angel. Now, again, this language is disputed. There's lots of,

all of this is disputed. But nonetheless, I mean, again, it's kind of interesting. If you bring the background question of angels are guarding the people of God, angels are generally organized. There's different hierarchies of different kinds of angels that are tasked with different responsibilities. And you get to a passage like this, you know, a plausible way to take it is these early Christians thought Peter had an angel that was watching over him. Okay. Now, there's other ways to read that text. Again, that's why I'm not trying to nail this absolutely down, but it's a plausible way, it's a plausible idea and a plausible way to take the passage. And if that's the right way of reading it, isn't it fascinating that they're more surprised that Peter would be released than they are

that he'd have his angel there? It shows how the angels were not so shocking to the ancients. So all of that kind of sets the table, and then we say, well, what have Christians believed previous to this? And let's just run through real quick church history. Very early on, you get references to angels having this kind of stewardship or guardianship role to particular people. This comes up in the shepherd of Hermes, written very early on. He has an angel appearing to him announcing that he is the shepherd to whom Hermes has been entrusted. And this is an angel. And that verb entrusted here seems to make this kind of connection, like a guardianship-type

relationship. And the reference to with you the remaining days of your life seems to tell us about the duration of this. It just seemed like a permanent kind of relationship. Now, you could say, okay, fine, or that text, that theology is wrong, you could say, or you could say that's just for him, but that's not for every Christian, okay, fine. But this seems to become an extremely commonly attested idea. I'd say not necessarily universal. You know, it has some nuances to it, but it's pretty close. You find it in Clement, though he's more tentative about it,

regiments of angels, this is Clement of Alexandria, regiments of angels are distributed over the nations and cities, and perchance, some are assigned to individuals. So there you see general organization, and then he's saying, well, perhaps it's like that with individual people. But then when you get to the exegesis of Matthew 1810, as you're moving into the patristic era, guardian angels just becomes the overwhelmingly dominant view. Origin, characteristically, origin has some eccentricities to his own understanding, but he seems to be teaching this. You can see his language that even the humblest one in the church is attended by an angel. Jerome, commenting on Matthew 1810, says, the worth of souls is so great that from birth, each one has an angel assigned to him for his protection. Bosel says,

no one will deny that every believer has an angel that accompanies him acting like a kind of pedagogue and shepherd and directing his life. There's a lot of disputes about the details of this. You know, origin has the idea that there's a demon assigned as well that's attacking you. People are debating about is this just for Christians or for all people, is it start at birth or some other time, but the basic idea is extremely common. Now, when the reformers come along, concerns are raised about the received angelology, but most of the resistance has to do with angelic veneration and then speculation, this sort of overly elaborate system of angelology that they had inherited, especially through the influence of pseudo-dionysius.

Pseus and Thomas Aquinas give you the most rich and thorough angelology, but especially with pseudo-dionysius, it is pretty speculative. He's really pushing it. And so there's an important and valid critique that the Reformation brings of just how far this has gone, but the basic idea of angelic guardianship isn't really rejected by the reformers. at most, I think we would say, they're saying it's not certain that you have one angel assigned to you for life. And then they're opposing angelic veneration and too much speculation.

But they're not the basic, like, I think you could summarize people like Luther and Calvin by saying, okay, if it's not one angel, it's multiple. So they're just trying to push back against the certainty and the way how it's pushed. So Luke Stamps wrote a good article about this. I'll link to in the video description. You can check that out. he points out, I'll put up these passages. In one sermon, Luther seems to affirm the idea of guardian angels, but at other times, drawing on Matthew 1810, he seems to question it. But here, if you read through this passage, he's saying this doesn't rest on solid grounds, but he's opposing origins idea of a

single demon and a single angel, and the strict requirement of a single angel. But the alternative to that for him seems to be multiple angels. And you see the same idea with John Calvin, in the institutes. When Calvin comments on Matthew 18, he says, I don't know whether one ought to infer that each individual has the protection of his own angel. We ought to hold as a fact that the care of each one of us is not the task of one angel only, but all with one consent watch over our salvation. So you can see what they're pushing back against it is this certainty about a singular angel, not the general idea that angels are watching over us. You also will get Protestants who affirm the idea of guardian angels. I'll put up an example of this in the reform tradition that Heinrich Heppa draws attention to.

So I think I'm mispronouncing his name. I've always read about him and never heard him talked about. But the point is the Protestant pushback comes in the context of some other aspects of angelology, and they're trying to especially push back against the speculation and just where they thought it had gone too far. I don't think they were trying to push back against the basic idea that angels are watching over us and that it's plausible that that's organized. I don't think, by the way, it's wrong to have speculative theology so long as we remember that it is speculative. A good metaphor is if you're stepping out onto a bridge, you can like gently put your foot out to test it at first. That's what we're doing and we're speculating. We're not putting our weight

onto it, insisting upon it or claiming certain knowledge. It's okay to just say we don't know for sure, but just reference what is plausible. And I would just say it's plausible. The idea of guardian angels is plausible. You know, you just run through these points and you realize angels are guarding over the people of God. That's very clear. Angels generally are organized in their activity. And we have some language in scripture that at least seems to hint toward this in Matthew 18, for example, in Acts 12. And the tradition largely goes this way. Hey, sounds good to me, you know. sounds like a pretty plausible idea, but I don't think we should... So what do we do with all this?

Maybe some practical application points here. Three points of application. Number one, angels are often under-emphasized. Angelology and demonology are often under-emphasized, especially in evangelical contexts. Sometimes you'll see more... You'll see a lot in certain, like, charismatic circles especially, lots of curiosity about angels' interaction with our lives, but less about just the theology of angels. Angels raise all kinds of fascinating questions.

You know, if Einstein taught us that space and time are interwoven, then it's really interesting to ask questions about this that come up in the context of angelology. Like if angels are temporal creatures, okay, what does that mean for their spatial existence? And again, my interest in my work on this is to draw attention to how most Christians thought of angels as overseeing creation. They're not in some alternative realm. They're here. They're a part of the universe.

I mean, if you want to get right into it, it's the C.S. Lewis quote, and from the voyage of the Don Treterter when one of the characters says, it's not, somebody says a star is a ball of flaming gas, and he says, even in your world, that's not what it is, that's just what it's made of. And this is the classic way of thinking about angels and their oversight over the stars. It's pretty mystical, actually, if you get into it. Now, my point, my only point right now is not you have to follow all of that. My point right now is just we need to talk about this theology more. This has been a huge part of the Christian tradition, and it's a huge part of scripture. I mentioned pseudo-dionysius and Thomas Aquinas. There's definitely concerns among the Protestants

that they go too far into speculation. I think those are valid concerns, but it's also valid to ask, where have some Protestants, at least kind of overreacted in the other direction. If you read through Thomas Aquinas' Summa Theologica, he is spending a lot of energy. on the doctrine of angels. He's asking questions about, you know, he says angels inhabit this universe as a part of God's creation. He says they have a stewardship role over material bodies like stars. He says that two angels cannot occupy the same place at the same time, and that one angel cannot occupy two places at the same time, and that the movement of an angel from one physical location to another takes time. It's not instantaneous. Angels can take

on a physical body. You know, all these kinds of things, he's going on and on talking about the nature of angelic knowledge, the nature of angelic love. Now, whatever you think about all that, it's really worth engaging that. Many, my experiences, many Christians have just never thought about those questions at all. They're really interesting. They raise all kinds of important questions, and they're fascinating. Beyond that, I think the doctrine of angels should be comforting and nourishing to us. You know, the thought, here's the part that makes me the happiest about it. it's not the power of angels, it's the virtue of angels. You just think about, you know, in the book of Daniel, when they're comforting Daniel constantly and saying, oh, you have high regard,

you know, fear not. It's like, it's amazing to think that the angels are loving and compassionate. The angels are not robots. I don't know why. That strikes me so much, but it's a happy thought that God has these glorious, mighty servants doing his bidding all around us. But that leads to the second practical comment, and that is we can over-focus on angels, and this is a real danger. I've known lots of people who they feel really excited. It just elates their heart to think, wow, could I have a guardian angel? Are angels watching over me? And this becomes so exciting to them. And it can actually make them feel more loved and more cared for than the gospel itself. This is a real danger. Danger. In scripture, we see the warning of angel worship in Colossians. That's a problem that Paul

has to confront there. That shows that that's a temptation for us. In fact, whenever angels show up, they're so glorious that it's frequently a temptation to worship them. So we need to be careful about this. So in this spirit, I would say to people, don't worship the angels, don't pray to the angels. I'm going to do another video on praying to the saints where I'll try to canvas this more thoroughly, but I think it's all throughout divine revelation, all throughout the Old and New Testament, prayers for God. Don't make angels your main focus. it shouldn't be like this. You know, you feel loved by God about 80% because of what Jesus has done,

and then angels come along and fill in the next 20%. It shouldn't work like that. Third application point, here's how it should work. We should see angels as one more witness to the love of God. You know, even if it turned out you don't have a guardian angel, that shouldn't be emotionally devastating for you because it's like, well, no big deal either way, because I already have the cross of Christ.

You know, I already know Jesus died for me. Just think about this. This is how much that God loves you. When you think about angels, it helps you understand the gospel better in some ways. Because you think angels are awesome, but nothing compares to the fact that the second member of the Godhead became a man and died on a cross for you. That is how you know God loves you. And the fact that God cares for us and watches over us with angels is just one more testimony

of what we already know through the gospel of Jesus Christ. just say that to everybody watching this video. God loves you that much that he was willing to die for you as a man. That's amazing. Having said that, to finish off, the doctrine of angels is comforting, and it's in the scripture for a reason. And so I would just encourage us. It is encouraging to remember, God is watching over us with angels, and it's plausible that there's some organization to that. You know, if it doesn't go too far, let's just put it in, you know, again, the speculative comments are safe if you cash them out as speculative. You say, I'm not sure, but you're just putting out there's possibility. Who knows, but that when God calls a particular person into a particular service,

he sends several angels to attend them and watch over them in that service, in that ministry. Why not? Isn't that totally consistent with what we see in the scripture? And if so, shouldn't that comfort us when we're stepping out into a service of God? I mean, to me, it's thrilling and as well as plausible. Here's my last little anecdote on this. Because this has been a comfort to me, because we've been through times of spiritual warfare. I mean, so here's the anecdote is,

I pray with my kids, my oldest three kids, I baptized my three oldest kids before we moved, left Ohio. I pray with them every night before bed. And you know how when you pray, they just start praying things that you pray. At some point for some reason, I prayed, Lord's surround our hearts, house with your angels as we sleep tonight. And I think I prayed that because we were experiencing

all these horrific demonic dreams at this one point in sickness and terrible stuff. And so I was praying this way just for protection over our sleep. And I didn't pray that every night, but that's one of those little prayers that my kids picked up on. And now they pray that every night. I don't know why that's the thing they latch on to, but they pray other things too, but that's one of the recurrent, not every night. Most times that's one of the things they praise, surround our house with your angels. And I think that's a legitimate prayer. Why not? I mean, if God loves us enough to send Jesus to die on the cross for us, surely he loves us enough to deploy angels to watch over us, right? That seems like the whole point. So when I think about that,

I think, is that a selfish prayer? I mean, should the angels be doing something more important than watching over us as we sleep? Well, if we're having demonic dreams and being assaulted by Satan, maybe so, you know. But the point of all that is, God loves us that much. And the doctrine of angels doesn't establish that, but it's another witness to what we already know because of what Jesus has done for us. Now, if you're not a Christian or not a believer in the spiritual realm, then this all can sound crazy. But one thing I will say is, it's actually another reason it's a comfort to believe in angels and demons is if you do believe in that, you don't have to attribute all of human evil throughout history to just human agency. You can recognize there's darker powers

that work around us, which is actually comforting. Because if you have to attribute it all to human beings, you say, wow, it makes us even more wretched, you know. That's actually one benefit. But I don't think the biggest challenge we face right now is a strict secularism. I think the biggest challenge is spiritualisms that don't have any problem with angels and demons, but if anything, unfortunately, get too focused on that stuff. So I'm never too worried about being mocked by atheists about this stuff because I think that's not even the biggest threat anymore. At any rate, the main point of this is God loves us that much. And that should be a comfort to us, and it should make us courageous in stepping out to serve him and follow him. What do you think? Let me know in the

comments. Are there scriptures I've forgotten about? I think I kind of at least alluded to the major ones, but I'm sure there's things I've left off. So let me know what you think in the comments, and thanks for watching everybody.