By Alain Kerizo

Good or Bad, Who Are the Angels?

Albert Einstein, asked shortly before his death what he thought about the origin of UFO’s, said: “The UFO’s are piloted by men who left the earth 10,000 years ago.” Plainly, they are a link in the revelation and the accreditation of the New Religion, the religion of Man. It is necessary to bear in mind, however, that, in the creation narrative, Sacred Scripture only speaks to us of two kinds of intellectual natures: the angelic and the human. There are no others.

Here is how Christian theology, in the person of Bishop Gaume in his Treatise on the Holy Ghost, introduces the existence of angels:

The wisest observation of divine laws proclaims this axiom: there is no leap in nature, nor rupture in the chain of beings. At the same time, it demonstrates that, in this magnificent chain, man cannot be the last link. God is the Ocean of Life. He diffuses it under all forms: vegetative, animal, intellectual. According as it is more or less abundant, life marks the hierarchical degree of beings. Now, it is more abundant as the being approaches nearer to God. Thus, in order to gather to Himself, by the necessary degrees, all creation descended from Him, the Almighty, whose infinite Wisdom delighted in the formation of the universe, has drawn from nothing several types of creatures: some both visible and purely material, such as the earth, water, plants; others both visible and invisible, material and immaterial, men; and finally others, invisible and immaterial, the angels. No less than the others, the latter are, then, a necessity of creation. Let us listen, on this subject, to one of the greatest theologians: “I answer that,” says St. Thomas, “there must be some incorporeal creatures. For what is principally intended by God in creatures is good, and this consists in assimilation to God Himself. And the perfect assimilation of an effect to a cause is accomplished when the effect imitates the cause according to that whereby the cause produces the effect. Now, God produces the creature by His intellect and will. Hence the perfection of the universe requires that there should be intellectual creatures…and of an incorporeal creature.”1

The angels are purely spiritual beings whose intellectual and volitional activity is not hampered by a body, nor subordinated in its exercise to organs or to the power of emotions, as is the human soul, which is the form of the body and composes with it a being whose spiritual activity can only be exercised by means of a body. This state of human intelligence is an inferior state which places man on the last rung of the scale of intelligences. “Nothing is in the understanding that is not first in the senses,” runs the Scholastic adage. St. Paul expresses the same truth when he says: “For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made” (Rom. 1:20). As for the angel, he is endowed with a nature more perfect than ours. He has no need of sensible things to raise himself to the perception of intellectual truths. He is an admirable likeness of the Divinity, and it suffices for him to contemplate his own being and nature in order to attain to the knowledge of God and of His divine attributes.

The understanding’s mode of apprehension still occurs by means of representation. But while for man, it is the exterior and material creatures that serve as a mirror [because nothing is in the intellect unless first in the senses-.Ed.], for the angel, it is his own intelligible nature. Nevertheless, although he is a pure spirit, the angel lacks the power to attain to the knowledge of God directly and without intermediary, face to face. What makes all the difference between the good angels and the bad, or demons, is that the good angels, by their submission and now elevation in glory, have access to truths and splendors of the supernatural order and of the beatific vision of God, whereas the bad angels, by their pride, are deprived of them, while conserving, because of their angelic nature, the understanding of truths of the natural order.