Angels (and Demons): What Do We Really About Them? (Ignatius Press; 2004, sixth printing) by Peter Kreeft:Posted on 09/28/2009 3:38:37 PM PDT by NYer
As tomorrow is the Feast of Saints Michael, Gabriel, and Raphael, archangels, here is an excerpt from Angels (and Demons): What Do We Really About Them? (Ignatius Press; 2004, sixth printing) by Peter Kreeft:
The Twelve Most Important Things to Know About ThemA free 80-minute lecture,"Aquinas and the Angels," by Peter Kreeft can be accessed here.
1. They really exist. Not just in our minds, or our myths, or our symbols, or our culture. They are as real as your dog, or your sister, or electricity.
2. They’re present, right here, right now, right next to you, reading these words with you.
3. They’re not cute, cuddly, comfortable, chummy, or “cool”. They are fearsome and formidable. They are huge. They are warriors.
4. They are the real “extra-terrestrials”, the real “Super-men”, the ultimate aliens. Their powers are far beyond those of all fictional creatures.
5. They are more brilliant minds than Einstein.
6. They can literally move the heavens and the earth if God permits them.
7. There are also evil angels, fallen angels, demons, or devils. These too are not myths. Demon possessions, and exorcisms, are real.
8. Angels are aware of you, even though you can’t usually see or hear them. But you can communicate with them. You can talk to them without even speaking.
9. You really do have your very own “guardian angel”. Everybody does.
10. Angels often come disguised. “Do not neglect hospitality, for some have entertained angels unawares”—that’s a warning from life’s oldest and best instruction manual.
11. We are on a protected part of a great battlefield between angels and devils, extending to eternity.
12. Angels are sentinels standing at the crossroads where life meets death. They work especially at moments of crisis, at the brink of disaster—for bodies, for souls, and for nations.
Why do people think it's stupid to believe in angels?
One reason is a mistake about themselves: the failure to distinguish between (1) sense perception or imagination (which is a kind of inner sensing) and (2) reason, or intelligence, or understanding. We don't see pure spirits, and we can't imagine them. That doesn't mean we can't know or understand them. We can see and imagine the difference between a five-sided figure (a pentagon) and a six-sided figure (a hexagon), and we can also intellectually understand that difference. We cannot, however, sense or imagine the difference between a 105-sided figure and a 106-sided figure. Both look to us simply like circles. But we can understand the difference and even measure it exactly. So we can understand some things we can't see. We can't see qualities like good and evil either. What color or shape or size is evil? Yet we can understand them. We can imagine our brains, but not our minds, our personalities. But we can know them.
Many who deny angels deny or are uaware of the spiritual half of themselves. Angels are a touchstone of "know thyself". So are animals.
Aren't angels irrelevant today? This is the age of man, isn't it?
Yes, this is the age of man, of self-consciousness, of psychology. And therefore it is crucial to "know thyself" accurately today. The major heresies of our day are not about God but about man.
The two most destructive of these heresies—and the two most popular—are angelism, confusing man with an angel by denying his likeness to animals, and animalism, confusing man with an animal by denying his likeness to angels.
Man is the only being that is both angel and animal, both spirit and body. He is the lowest spirit and the highest body, the stupidest angel and the smartest animal, the low point of the hierarchy of minds and the high point of the hierarchy of bodies.
More accurately stated, man is not both angel and animal because he is neither angel nor animal; he is between angels and animals, a unique rung on the cosmic ladder.
But whichever way you say it, man must know angels to know himself, just as he must know animals to know himself, for he must know what he is, and he must know what he is not.
Develop a relationship with your guardian angel. You've read enough of my guardian angel stories to realize that teamwork is better than going it alone.
I believe in both angels and demons. I also believe that they are all around us, all the time. I also believe in guardian angels.
But one thing that I have wondered for sometime now, and I mean no offense by this question, is can an angel be in the form of a dog? I wonder this due to the very positive effects that some dogs, but not all dogs, have had on people’s lives, including my own.
5. They are more brilliant minds than Einstein.
Clearly, your angel didn’t help you write this article!
Interesting read. Thanks for posting.
Video of angels I believe in.....
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1nMrceKXTqE
They never let me down.
Clearly, your angel didn’t help you write this article!
No, I did not write this article; I simply posted it to the forum. However ... ahem ... I just happen to share my birthday with Albert Einstein :-)
Probably not. But they do have souls and are capable of devotion and self sacrifice, not to mention love and mourning.
Those that we call “angels” are incarnate souls.
Why WOULDN’T Our Lord let an angel take the form of a dog?
With Him all things are possible.
You know, that was the first thing that popped into my mind too. My present dog is almost telepathic. I brought home, from my mother’s house, the bowl we had for my second dog(27 yrs ago). Max won’t eat out of anything but the dishes we use. Tonight, he barked at me for food, which I put in the new bowl, and he ate it without a hesitation.
Interesting article, and I agree with most of it, but some seems to be theory and supposition.
Be careful not to glorify angels, who are just God’s messengers, over the Creator himself. Worshipping or praying to angels is just wrong.
And remember that angel powers are God-granted and limited. The angel who spoke to Daniel in Daniel 10:13 spoke of being detained for three weeks by the King of Persia until Michael came to rescue him.
There are things that angels don’t know (Matthew 24:36; I Peter 1:12).
Respect angels, but worship God.
Well, my son is a living example, as you know NYer, of the power of guardian angels.
He’s alive. I firmly believe that his angel folded over him that day to cushion the impact. He was married on June 21!
i know angels are real. just a few days before my first husband died he was in the hospital, fading rather quickly, and was out of it most of the time but with a few lucid moments. during one of those times he looked over my shoulder toward a chair in the corner. his expression was puzzled. he tipped his head toward me and (still looking at the chair) asked me who was the man sitting there. i looked over my shoulder and saw no one in the chair. i presumed he was hallucinating due to the illness and meds even though he was perfectly “with it”. as i turned my head back to hubby, i caught a strange motion at the corner of my eye. it most closely resembled heat waves coming up from pavement. my head snapped back to examine the area again. nothing there but as i turned again there it was. i asked the hubby if the man was still there and he said yes. i asked if he recognized the man, he said no. never seen anyone like this fellow, even in pictures. could not describe him either. i asked if the man was bothering him, frightening or uncomfortable, nope. i wondered what the man was doing there and should i ask him to leave. hubby said “ no, he isn’t here to hurt me, he is here to help. i am supposed to go with him, but i’m not ready so he is waiting.” i know without any doubt that the man he saw (and the shimmer i glimpsed) was an angel waiting to escort a young man home to God. and when they left, i felt a warm sensation on my shoulder and looked to see which of my family had put an arm around me. no one had, they were all a few feet away. yeah i know angels are real.
They're angels.
It's what they do.
It's their job.
It's their prime directive.
And humans are above the angels
Which is why angels have a curiosity about humans.
What makes humans so special to God?
Look at how humans act.
Look at what humans do.
Why would He have His Son die for humans that behave in such manner?
Why give humans eternal life when other angels followed Lucifer and are damned for eternity?
It is because humans and human life are God's greatest creation.
I suspect the error in the sentence is not the one you are jeering at:
To say angels are minds (and more brilliant then Einstein) is correct—provided one understands the English “mind” as an equivalent of the Greek “nous”. Holy Tradition speaks of the bodiless powers as “noetic beings” and uses “angelic realms” and “noetic realms” interchangably.
The problem is that Einstein was not a mind, but human being, body and soul.
Angel worship is not allowed in the Catholic Church or any other christian church that I am aware of.
A good thing they don’t exist.
Why would you say that? It's one of the better angel threads I've seen. I may buy the book, just based on the 12 things he listed.
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