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.
bump
KYgrandma, I believe that my dog is also telepathic. He knows me better than I know myself, he seems to understand full sentences, and likely has a vocabulary of around 500 words, or more.
The reason I ask if it is possible for a dog to be an angel, is because I believe that angels are sent to us by the Lord at the times in our life in which we need them.
A while back I read a story somewhere about a man who was about to commit a mass murder. He was on his way, armed with many guns when he crossed paths with a stray dog. He stopped to pet the animal, and apparently it touched him. He said that he did not know that something could be so loving as this dog. He returned home and did not go through with his plan. I cannot recall what the story said happened to him or the dog, and I cannot find this story now.
It seems to me that our physical bodies are vessels for souls. I also believe that dogs have souls, some of them seems to be very advanced or old souls. If a dog’s body is also a vessel for souls, then I still wonder if it is possible for an angel to be in that vessel. I don’t know, it’s just something that I have wondered for a time now.
What an amazing and wonderful story.
ANGELS: Their Meaning for Our World
Photo captures image of an 'angel' in hospital hallway
Do Angels Exist? (A miracle and a picture have many asking this question)
God Sends His Angels to Watch Over and Guide Us
Angels, Part 3
Angels, Part 2
Angels, Part 1
Angels Among Us Today
God Created the Angels as Individual, Immortal Spirits with Intelligence and Free Will
The Angels in Sacred Scripture
Angels in the History of the Church
Angels - in Heaven, on Earth and in Hell
Catholic Q&A: Angels and Demons (Fr. Thomas J. Euteneuer)
GOD AND THE ANGELS
Question: “Are there really such things as guardian angels?”
>The problem is that Einstein was not a mind, but human being, body and soul.
So then Einstein had no mind? — ;)
I think the problem is the is-a vs has-a constructions in object-oriented programming. Though there are some places where the correct ‘view’ depends on the implementation, so to speak.
Take sex, for example. It is linguistically correct to say blank is a male, or blank has a male gender. In the first, the person IS a male, in the second the person has a sex (that is the gender field/attribute) and it depends on how you are modeling the construct of “Person”.
Do you understand what I’m getting at?
Is Prayer a form of worship?
The Bible makes it clear that angels exist and I have no doubt they do.
Cool story. Thanks.
I didn’t say Einstein had no mind. In the Christian tradition, the mind is a property of the soul (which by observation, while the body and soul are properly united during life, provably is intricately bound to the physical brain). Einstein was not a mind: much though Western Christian seems to want it to be so, we are not our minds. It was the whole person whom Christ became incarnate of the Virgin Mary, died on the Cross, trampling down Death by death, and rose again as the firstfruits from the dead, to save, not minds, nor even disembodies souls.
Admittedly some of the Fathers use the tripartite anthropology—body (soma), mind (nous) and soul (psyche)—though the tripartite body, soul and spirit (pneuma) is equally common.
I take your point, but there is still a real problem with the sentence: angels are minds (mind properly understood as nous), quite literally, while to say Einstein was a mind, is not actually true, but an example of metonymy. And, I wanted to emphasize the Orthodox view that we are not our minds.
Pray tell, why do you ask?
Pat told me a long time ago that the angles were talking to him (also the letters and numbers), and I didn't see any harm in letting him put his hexagons and parallelograms on the mantel with the other religious articles ...
Oh, Zot, we're doomed, aren't we?
However, my immediate thought was the same as Jedidah. It says we can "talk" to angels, but the Bible tells us to go directly to Christ with our prayers. In fact, God tells us to use His name throughout the New Testament.
What does it mean to pray in the name of Jesus?
They also will refuse worship, and have consistently told human beings who tried to do so that they are created as well.
I also don't know where in Scripture it says that each of us has our "own" angel. Anyone know the Biblical basis for this?
Finally, didn't Paul tell us that believers in Christ would someday judge angels? Did he mean fallen angels, or all angels?
Thanks.
>>Is Prayer a form of worship?
>
>Pray tell, why do you ask?
Because if it is, then the Catholic church has some explaining to do. (Daniel and Revelation seem to imply that it is.)
http://www.ourladyswarriors.org/prayer/michael.htm
Very nice story - thanks.
"See to it that you do not despise one of these little ones, for I tell you that in Heaven, their angels always behold the face of my Father who is in Heaven."
There’s also the episode in Acts, when St. Peter was released from prison by an angel. The text says that when St. Peter arrived at the home of his friends, “They thought it was his angel.”
The pentagrams are the ones you really have to watch out for.
Actually, they come in several different sizes, some are 20 Ft Tall and some are the same size as you and I.
I can’t tell you how I know though.
Dang, them Masons got to him.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.