Making Sense of Angels and Demons
High Level Approaches for Christians
When one steps into the world of the Bible one inhabits a world of angels and demons. However, from a modern context they seem less necessary, both because of the naturalism that pervades our culture and because God can seemingly do whatever he wants without a class of intermediate beings. Thus, how should Christians regard angels and demons? Without committing to a view, and leaving aside how the doctrines may have evolved over time, we should note why these beings might make sense in their own right.
We can focus on general themes of how a doctrine of angels and demons might work. We should examine the nature of God, and what he needs to interact with the created world. What gaps would such beings fill, and do they possess free will? Further, do angels and demons make sense for aesthetic reasons? With these questions, we can begin to map out our preferred options.
The first riddle to tackle in constructing an angelology or demonology is the nature of God. For example, what is God’s relationship to time? If we regard God as eternal and timeless, how can he interact with time and events within it? Angels support the image of a God on his heavenly throne sending messengers into the world to enact his will, which dovetails with a remote, eternal God who has temporal helpers guiding us along our individual journeys. Perhaps if God is timeless, and does not experience time as we do, he may need intermediaries to carry out his will in the world. Even if in time, he may lack certain powers and/or delegate responsibilities to other agents. Still, all of this is dependent on how one regards God’s omnipotence and relationship with time. A powerful temporal God closely involved with his creation could intervene whenever he saw fit. We cannot rule out potential necessities along this line of thought, but we should go further.
For example, how do we justify evil? As the problem of evil shows, why does God permit and allow evil to exist? Without delving too deeply into this quandary, if we focus on natural evil, and not evil coming from human free will, one answer is that God does not directly cause evil. Instead demons and malevolent agents might act in the world against God’s will. This line of thought might be extendable to angels too, if supernatural forces are behind the various virtues and vices struggling for supremacy in the world.
If each demon or angel represents a virtue or vice, however we define and divide them, we can see how all these forces might coexist. Perhaps the will of God is a particular balance of virtues, and if God does not intervene directly, subordinate forces might fight for and against this balance. This does not absolve God of larger problem of evil concerns, such as why he does not intervene directly in human affairs to stamp out injustice. Yet it might parallel a related riddle we encounter when observing the natural world: why things do not act uniformly in concert with God’s will.
Why does the lion not lie down with the lamb? Why is there so much conflict in nature? It does seem easier for God to just stop this never-ending conflict between virtue and vice and just force his desires upon the world. Yet for other reasons he does not do this. Perhaps God wants to promote human free will? Perhaps he has other goals in mind?
If God has the power to mandate, yet does not, we need to distinguish between the different levels of will in the divine mind. We shouldn’t flatten everything and say God wills X, so X must occur no matter what. Got might desire a utopia, but he permits and allows our world instead.
Thus, we might say God’s heavenly desires reflect his innermost will, and what manifests in our world is instead God’s outermost will. The inner and outer wills might conflict, but the outer will is what manifests. A hierarchy of wills might cause this, with one just having higher priority. Or, perhaps we should rank goals instead, with the “wills” of God just reflecting different axes on which he judges the goals. Human agency and autonomy may rank highly along God’s outer, manifesting axis, but other concerns are paramount on the axis of his innermost desires. However we envisage it, as humans do not always follow their innermost desires, God might do the same.
Tying this back to angels and demons, these differing levels of the divine will may be what underlies their existence. They on one hand are willed by God, yet differ from his innermost expectation. We may recoil from the chaos involved, and wonder why there are a multiplicity of forces seemingly battling it out in creation. However, perhaps the intermediate spiritual forces reflect this outer will, while God maintains his inner will of what he wants creation to be.
This leads to the next question of what exactly the will of angels and demons is. Does it resemble human free will, in which we can freely choose between good and evil? Or, are we anthropomorphizing too much, and they either lack agency or have a very different kind of agency? Maimonides in the Jewish tradition arguably reflects the view that angels are natural forces (1). There is ammunition if we want to follow a similar path in the Christian tradition. For example, Augustine reinforced the view that the term “angel” described their office and not their nature (2). Barth and Pannenberg talk of angels as a spiritual field, existing when called forth and merging back into the principle body after they have finished their task (3). We can if desired see these beings as reflections of the outer will of God, and not highly autonomous beings with will in their own right.
We should also note the historical tradition, contemporary experience, and why God might allow the manifestation of such beings aesthetically. For communities conducive to thinking in terms of angels and demons, such as those in the New Testament, God may derive high engagement using them. We should not discount modern reports either, although we should keep in mind what modern science has discovered regarding conditions like epilepsy. We also should recognize that our desire to simplify is not always correct. There is room in creation for beings with a more direct knowledge of God and agency to act accordingly.
In sum, angels and demons might seem out of place in the modern world. However, by pondering the nature of God, theories about their will, and community context, we can see how they might make sense. We just need to keep an open mind.
