A pride of lions, a murder of crows, a parliament
of owls … a "baffle" of angels? We humans
love to categorize and name things, and the names we give them reflect our very human impressions of them. “Pride” for a group of lions reflects the air of nobility and power we see in them, even when they’re
lazing in the shade. The “murder” of
crows reflects their ancient habit of flocking to our battlefields after the
fighting but before the tasty bodies were cleared. And “parliament” works quite well for those
lordly, wise-looking owls.
So why do I say a “baffle” of angels? What's baffling about them, and what am I suggesting?
I’ll tell you. But hold
on to your wings, Clarence.
WHAT ANGELS AREN’T
First, though, let’s clear up some things we thought we knew about angels. Those who have read a few of my posts know I always like to get our misconceptions out of the way first. (Those misconceptions are called cognitive biases in the world of informal logical fallacies, and they’re the sorts of baggage we carry with us whenever we approach the Scriptures.)
ANGELS DON’T HAVE WINGS
Whenever scripture speaks of the mal’akim (Hebrew) or
the ayyeloi (Greek), those angels have a very human appearance. They may make impressive entrances at
times (Matthew 28:2-5), and they might even flash with lightning when behaving
apocalyptically (Daniel 10:5-6), but most of their appearances in scripture are
either as normal-looking humans (as when a couple of them met with Abraham in
Genesis 18:2) or as nondescript messengers in dreams. The Bible never mentions angels having wings.
ANGELS AREN’T CHERUBS
Cherubs (also called cherubim) are biblical entities. There are many human traditions that classify cherubs as a
type of angel. However, not a single one of those "cherubs = angels" traditions is scriptural.
We humans, basic creatures that we are, tend to oversimplify
information. We hear a hymn about cherubim,
and we’re convinced we’ve got those beings defined. With all due respect to Christmas carols,
however, there is never a place in scripture where cherubs are called angels. They are a different class of spiritual being.
We meet our first cherubim in Scripture before we see any
angels at all. They’re beings posted at the way
into Eden (Genesis 3:24) along with a swinging, flaming sword meant to cut down
anyone who’d dare try to reenter paradise. Oddly,
the cherubim don’t seem to be swinging that sword; it’s just hanging out there with
them, swinging itself, guarding the path.
The next time we see cherubs is in Exodus 25, where they’re represented
in statue form, stationed at Israel’s Ark of the Covenant. This is where we see wings for the first time
– a count of four rather than the two we’d expect. Since they’re “facing” one another, we can
assume they have faces. That’s all the
description we get in Exodus, though.
Ezekiel gives us our best visual details about the
cherubim. Piecing together chapters 1
and 10, we see that these “living beings” had calves’ hooves instead of feet
and at least one pair of hands. They had
four faces: human, eagle, lion, and either an ox (if you take chapter 1
literally) or a cherub (if chapter 10 is more to your taste and you can handle
the circularity of learning that a cherub has a “cherub face.” )
In English, the word “cherubic” has come to mean a
round-faced, childlike appearance of innocence.
But when we’re talking about real biblical cherubs ... well, I wouldn’t advise
sending a picture of one in your next Valentine’s Day card. Cherubs are weird at best, scary at worst, and not particularly romantic.
ANGELS AREN’T SERAPHS
You probably saw this one coming. Like cherubim, the seraphim are never
identified in scripture as mal’akhim, angels. In fact, they are snakes. Cooler still, they’re fiery snakes, as shown
in translations of the word seraph in Numbers 21:6 and Deuteronomy 8:15,
where the word refers to actual flaming snakes.
As celestial beings, however, the seraphim make only a single appearance in all of scripture: Isaiah 6:1-7.
These celestial beings have six wings (take that, you lower-order,
four-wings-only cherubs!) They also have
faces and “feet,” but those remain undescribed, since four of the six wings are
used to cover them, evidently out of humility and modesty.
A word-nerd side note: The
Hebrew text will sometimes use the term raglayim, “feet,” as a modest
stand-in for genitals. Isaiah himself
does that in Isaiah 7:20, and we see it employed in Ruth 3:7-8, 2 Samuel
11:8-11, and elsewhere. Biblical
scholars John M. Oswalt and Marvin Sweeney mention that that meaning might
apply here, which would display an even deeper seraphic homage to the Lord: one
set of wings hiding their eyes from God’s glory, another set hiding their own
shame.
And a motherly side note: What
parent would give their beloved child a name like “Marvin Sweeney?” C’mon, people.
SATAN ISN’T A FALLEN ANGEL
You may find this more surprising. The idea that the Satan was once an angel of
God comes from an early collection of Jewish and Christian writings called Apocalypse
of Moses, sometimes called Life of Adam and Eve. It’s not a book of the Bible. It’s a fanciful, imaginative expansion of the
story of creation, the very first time the idea appears that the Satan might
have been one of the heavenly angelic host.
That idea percolated in the back of Christian minds until the English
poet John Milton immortalized the "Satan was an angel" concept in his Paradise Lost epic.
But didn’t I read that Satan got cast from heaven in Isaiah 14? No, you didn’t. In that passage, you read about King Nebuchadnezzar II of
Babylon (see Isaiah 14:4) being cast down from his high place of glory. The king is the one called helel
(“shining one”) in that text, a word later translated to Latin as lucifer and
inexplicably turned into a name that was never meant to be used for the Satan. The Apocalypse of Moses text borrowed Isaiah's imagery of a shining king falling from glory and applied it to the Satan, spinning a new, nonbiblical tale.
Okay, but didn’t I read about
Satan leading an army of fallen angels? You did!
You’ve also read about Jesus leading an army of angels. Leading that army didn’t make Jesus a mere
angel. The Satan, leading his own army
of them, also doesn’t turn into an angel.
He is never called an angel, fallen or otherwise, in scripture. (Hang in there. We’ll see what he is eventually, but I like
taking this step by step.)
Fine, if he leads all the demonic fallen angels, why isn’t he one of them? Oh, dear.
Someone told you that demons are fallen angels. Since this is a blog post about angels, I’d
better clarify that for you.
FALLEN ANGELS AREN’T DEMONS
I know you think you read that somewhere. In fact, you probably did. The problem is, the Bible isn’t where you read it.
To state this simply and directly: scripture never identifies demons as fallen angels. Don't be too hard on yourself for not knowing that, though – even Billy Graham, in his 1975 book Angels: God’s Secret
Agents, is wooed away from the biblical text by the traditions that humans
developed outside the text of the Bible. He states, without scriptural evidence, that all demons were once angels. He even has a whole chapter devoted to “Lucifer and the Angelic Rebellion,”
making the nonbiblical claim that the Satan had been an archangel who became
too proud and was cast from heaven with other fallen angels to become demons.
The text of the Bible makes it clear that, yes, the Satan
was driven from heaven, "fallen" (noted by Jesus in Luke 10:18 and dramatized as a
symbolic dragon in Revelation 12:7-9).
But no scripture text ever refers to him as having been an angel (particularly not an
archangel, a title scripture only gives to Michael). Like many of us before him and after, Graham
assumed the traditions he’d heard about the Satan were scriptural. He also assumed that misinterpretations of Isaiah 14 were reliable.
There are fallen angels. They're not here on Earth, busily tempting souls and possessing people. We know exactly where they are, thanks to the epistles of Jude and 2 Peter:
“…
God did not spare angels when they sinned, but cast them into Tartaros and
committed them to pits of gloomy darkness to be kept until judgment” (2 Peter
2:4)
“And the angels who did not stay within their own positions of authority, but left their proper dwelling, he has kept in eternal chains under gloomy darkness until the judgment of the great day” (Jude 6)
Fallen angels are not roaming the Earth as demons. They’re locked away in darkness. Demons, on the other hand, stand separately as yet
another class of spiritual beings. Fallen angels: locked up. Demons: at large. The Satan doesn't belong to either one of those classes of beings, and no scripture claims any overlap between the two groups themselves.
THEN WHAT IS SATAN?
Not an angel, not a demon, not even that slithery snake in
the Garden of Eden (you
can read my explanation of that here) … what is this Satan creature? And why do I keep calling him the
Satan?
The Book of Job introduces him. He is one of the B’nai ha-elohim,
which translates as “the sons of the God[s],” a divine council in the heights
of heaven who assemble with God. That's the Satan's group ID; he's one of them. These "sons of Elohim" are yet another non-angel class of spiritual entity, and the Satan is numbered among them. His name isn’t
really a name – it’s actually a title in Hebrew, “the Adversary,” a legal term like “the
prosecuting attorney.” As the Adversary,
he works for God, still in the heavens at the time of Job and not yet
fallen. In concert with God, he’s sent
out to test Job’s faithfulness, a trial in which Job, a clearly innocent and
righteous man, is tested as if he is not at all righteous but deserving of
horrific punishment. The Satan delivers
that punishment, killing people and sickening Job as part of the God-approved test.
So … not an angel.
And in Job’s time, not quite the devil yet, but used by God for some
pretty nasty torment.
AND WHAT ABOUT ANGELS?
Holy katz! I’m near
the maximum word count I allow myself for these blogs, and I haven’t even
gotten to what angels are yet! I’ve
only covered how
- They’re not cherubim
- They’re not seraphim
- Satan was never one of them
- Fallen ones never became demons
And here I was planning on explaining that there’s no Angel
of Death, either (it’s a different scary beastie on God’s team). So many misconceptions to clear up before I
get to the main points! It isn’t a
baffle of angels after all. It’s a
baffle of human traditions and storytelling that has clouded over the actual
information we find in the Bible.
We shouldn’t be surprised that there are so many biblical categories
of spiritual beings, or that so many of them are scary. It’s a big universe out there, and an awful
waste of space if there aren’t trillions upon trillions of other beings,
including the spirit kinds. It was Paul the
Apostle who noted in Ephesians 6:12 that we have invisible company (not of the
flesh, he emphasizes) that he categorizes as:
- Rulers
- Authorities
- Cosmic powers
- Spiritual forces of evil in heavenly places
and in Colossians 1:16 as:
- Thrones
- Dominions
- Rulers
- Authorities
I’m glad there’s more of them, more types of spiritual
beings, than I can wrap my mind around.
I’m blessed by Christ’s grace that I have an eternity to grow in understanding
of them and of so much more in this universe.
It’s a … well, a whole baffle of entities!
UH, YOYO … THE ANGELS?
Yes, yes … so what are angels? That’s a topic I’ll be more than happy to
explore scripturally in my next posting, teasingly titled: “Touched By An Angel? D.O.A.”
Before
you leave, however, I’d like to explain what this post, this lead-in exercise, is all
about.
Do I really care what might be the fine distinctions between a spirit called a “Throne” and a spirit called a “Dominion”? Not particularly. In fact, getting too far into the weeds on such topics is probably less than spiritually healthy (see Colossians 2:18-19).
The real point
of this month’s post is to make us start thinking about what Bible facts we really
know and what things we just think we know because somebody claimed it once or
because it was summarized for us by a very smart-sounding person.
Love
those people, fellowship with those people, but test those people. And most of all, test yourself. Test me. We’re all learning these
things together. The moment we claim we
know something without being able to back it up with evidence, we’re no longer
free agents. We’re just parrots on
playback. We’re complacent and wise in
our own eyes.
And
Proverbs 26:12 says that kind of thinking makes fools better off than us.
Mara Natha /
Marana Tha,
Cosmic Parx,
a.k.a. YoYo Rez
