Angels and Angelology. Everything you Need to Know About Angels
Uploaded by fabs2hiphop on Feb 20, 2012
Angels and angelology
Angels belong to religions that have one god. And that god has spiritual servants and messengers. In Hebrew Scriptures the angels are sometimes described as the ‘sons of God’ (Job 1:6). Jewish, Christian, and Islamic theologians all agree that angels are spiritual creatures. They are not equal to God. The world was created on purpose and God made it. There was no one else with God when he created it. If you imagine a line between God and everything that he created, angels would be on the side with all the human beings, animals, and plants. (Jones 38).
In the Hebrew Scriptures, they have generally placed the creation of angels at the beginning of all that was created. They begin with the words: ‘in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth’ (genesis 1:1). ‘The heavens’ came to be known as ‘all things invisible’, including the angels. ‘The earth’ was known as ‘all things visible’. This statement makes it even more explicit at a council in church during the Middle Ages: ‘creator of all things invisible and visible, spiritually and corporeal…angelic, namely, and worldly, and then human as it were, common, composed of spirit and body’ (Creed of Lateran IV, 1215 CE.)(Jones 41).
There is an ancient difference of opinion among Christians about when the Angels were created. Some Greek-speaking Christians said that angels were created before the material universe. But Latin-speaking Christians said that angels were created at the same time as the material universe. Thomas Aquinas said that the Latin speaking opinion made more sense because angels are not a whole part of the universe all by their own; they and the material world together make one cosmos. Cosmos is the universe seen as a well-ordered whole. But Thomas Aquinas noticed that the answer to this question is unclear both from scriptures and from natural reason. There is an agreement among Jewish, Christian, and Islamic theologians that angels were created before the first humans were created. But there is no agreement on when the angels were created. (Jones 41).
In the Hebrew Scriptures, in one of the psalms God ‘makes winds his messengers, fire and flame his ministers’ (psalm 104:4). Another idea maybe the burning chariot that takes Elijah to heaven (2 kings 2:11). There is a story in the book of judges when an angel appears to Gideon. Gideon offers him food but the angel does...