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The Necessary Angel
Essays In Idleness ^ | 9/29/2014 | David Warren

Posted on 09/30/2014 12:04:28 PM PDT by mojito

It has been the Feast of Saint Michael and all Angels today, with all that we associate with that, in Christendom, both Western and Eastern. One cannot be Christian and deny that angels exist: the most literal will find several actually named in the Bible (Old Testament and New), and their messages received, and their presences acknowledged, page after page. Their choirs ascend, in greater and greater proximity to God in the highest: Angels, Archangels, Principalities; Powers, Virtues, Dominations; Thrones, Cherubim, Seraphim.

There was a post on this topic one year ago. I tried to supply a suitable affront to the contemporary mind, which is indifferent to angels. Merely to mention them is probably enough, to set scientistic eyeballs rolling. The more poetic will accept them as figures of speech. But let us insist on a religious hard line: that angels be not only publicly recognized, but deferred to in their spiritual place, delectated in the liturgical order, and comprehended as Beings about whom we can know little, but much more than nothing.

[....]

In Christian teaching, the angels were created, as we were created; but prior to, or before us. They defeat our conceptions of space and time. But Love itself defeats our conceptions, and Faith and Hope are anchored in an Eternity that remains bottomlessly mysterious to our human minds — richly repaying contemplation, but solving no riddles. For a Mystery is not a riddle or puzzle, with a set answer waiting overleaf; and our modern attempts at this sort of reductionism all end in farce. Our own Being is anchored in Mystery, and what can we do about it?

(Excerpt) Read more at davidwarrenonline.com ...


TOPICS: Religion & Science; Theology
KEYWORDS: angels; darwinism; lemurs; saintmichael
A beautifully expressed essay on the nature of angels by the great David Warren.

Well-worth reading the whole thing.

1 posted on 09/30/2014 12:04:28 PM PDT by mojito
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