Angels
Concepts and images
As with others, ELCA Lutherans often discover that our 21st Century culture’s concept of angels includes — and sometimes mixes — myth, folklore and Hollywood fantasy. That "mixed bag" may influence many who confess belief in God but who don’t believe angels exist, even though angels are mentioned as God’s emissaries in 34 of the 66 books in the Bible, including all four Gospels and seven letters of St. Paul. The Revelation to John (the last book in the New Testament) associates angels with the end times, as warriors and guardians of the churches, mentioning them in all but one (Chapter 13) of that book’s 21 chapters.
In looking at what angels are or are not, and what role — if any — they play in our faith, we first need to acknowledge that our images of angels are probably more influenced by centuries of Western Christian art than by what we read in Scripture. In a male-dominated culture, and in spite of believing them to be asexual and gender neutral, medieval artists often depicted angels as male. Because they believed that angels flew, they were often pictured with birdlike feathered wings, based on the only flying creatures known. Angels are depicted in manger scenes with the baby Jesus, his mother Mary and Joseph; with Mary Magdalene at the empty tomb; there are angelic hosts in battle; with saints being received into heaven; or as cherubs on wing hovering over children. Such depictions owe more to folklore than Scripture. They provide us with a kind of medieval "greeting card" characterization of angels.
Turning from these often fanciful images to the Bible, the source book for Christian faith, we can learn a number of things Biblical authors believed about the roles and functions of angels in salvation history. Lutherans, relying on both text and scholarship, understand that, just as medieval culture has influenced our pictures of angels, the folklore and culture of the Hebrews' ancient Near East neighbors probably exerted considerable influence on the authors of biblical texts that incorporate angels. Similar beings are found in other ancient Near Eastern religions. In fact, the influence of Babylonian and Persian religious traditions may have helped biblical authors form a coherent picture of angels as part of God’s heavenly realm. Built on the kingship model where God is King, angels are at least among those who attend God's throne, serve as God's emissaries, provide the legions/armies of heaven, and sing God's praises.
God’s messengers
In Biblical Hebrew, the main meaning of the term angel (mal’ak) is "my messenger/envoy." However, not all messengers were angels. For instance, the name of the prophetic book that closes the Old Testament, Malachi, means "messenger," but its content makes it clear that Malachi was a human messenger — a prophet, not an angel.
Thus, not all messengers are angels, and angels are definitely not human beings - especially not dead human beings who ‘earn wings.’ This is the Hollywood image of "It’s A Wonderful Life," though the idea’s roots go back as far as the early Second Century A.D. (see "The Martyrdom of Polycarp" [1:39]). Jesus, talking about resurrected life, compares the resurrected to angels, but he does not say that the resurrected will become angels (Luke 20:36). Rather, the resurrected are the redeemed. In the Bible, angels are a created order of spiritual beings, endowed with immortality and attendant upon God. Not needing redemption, they don’t fall into the category of the resurrected.
Many tasks have been assigned to angels in Jewish and Christian tradition, folklore and folk theology, but the Bible sees them as a part of God being with and for us. They are God’s created servants, appearing at key moments in Scripture (e.g. Jesus' birth, temptation, resurrection) and then giving way for human action. They worship God (Rev. 7:11), guide believers, take specific action upon God’s command, celebrate (and presumably have other emotions, too), and carry on dialogue with both God (Zechariah 1:12) and human beings (Luke 1:13 ff). Definitely not cherub-like, they appear as warriors (Rev. 12:7) and protectors (Daniel 3:28), communicate messages from God (John 20:13), and appear as agents of God’s judgment (Matt. 13:41 ff.). They appear to people of all religions, or even of no religion at all, when God wants those people to listen. They exist to praise God and bear the message and task for which God sends them. And they have free will. Those in heaven chose to obey God (Matt. 6:10) while others chose to rebel (Jude 6; 2 Peter 2:4) and be led by Satan (Matt 25:4).
Guardian and so-called orders of angels
People from many times and cultures — including those who are not Christian, Jewish, Mormon or Moslem — have said that angels also protect people. While Scripture doesn’t say much about this "guardian angel" role (Ps 34:7 and Ps 91:11-12 and Acts 12:15 being passages often cited), Jesus speaks of children having their own angels (Matt. 18:10). The only angels called by name in the Bible are the archangels Michael and Gabriel, though in the intertestamental Apocrypha Raphael and Uriel are also named.
Angels are differentiated from cherubim and seraphim, about whom we’re not told much but, unlike angels, they have no scriptural dealings with humans. God is said to place cherubim at Eden’s gateway after banishing Adam and Eve. Some suggest that they are yet another category of attendants to God and were not considered to be angels. In the 5th Century, Pseudo-Dionysius’ book "The Celestial Hierarchy" invented a ninefold order for supernatural beings; from highest to lowest they were Seraphs, Cherubs, Thrones, Dominions, Virtues, Powers, Principalities, Archangels and Angels. The order was designed mostly for philosophical reasons and is not biblical. St. Paul talks about most of these, but not as classifications or ranks, and not specifically as supernatural beings. St. Thomas Aquinas used an altered form of these in his "Summa Theologica" imagining what each did in detail, and this, too, has come to cloud the Biblical picture.
What we know is that the Bible does not depict angels as created in God’s image (as we are) nor acting on their own (as we may). We, not angels, are said to be God’s heirs. Angels, in the Bible, personally appear to see God’s great presence and hear God’s command, whereas we are created to walk not by sight but by faith. We’re told not to worship angels (Colossians 2:18) nor pray to them, and the New Testament Letter to the Hebrews (1:5-14), in reflecting upon Jesus’ glory "as much superior to angels as the name he has inherited is more excellent than theirs," goes on to ask, "Are not all angels’ spirits in the divine service, sent to serve for the sake of those who are to inherit salvation?"
To believe in angels?
Along with most other denominations, ELCA Lutherans celebrate September 29 as the liturgical feast day of St. Michael and All Angels. At the same time, some would ask, "Do we have need of angels as we conceive of God and God's dealings with us?" For some Lutherans the biblical images of angels are important sign posts in the story of salvation. Others would say that in this post resurrection time, because in our Baptism God has bound God's self to us for the rest of our life and sent the Spirit into our heart, we don't need guardian beings. For it is God who speaks to us in response to our prayers, and if another brings us God's message, it is more likely to be a human messenger (one of the biblical uses of the term) rather than a supernatural one appearing in a dream.
Most ELCA Lutherans will agree that belief in angels is a non-issue. We confess in the Nicene Creed that "We believe in one God, the Father, the Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, of all that is, seen and unseen." Perhaps it is sufficient to say that for ELCA Lutherans, angels are among "all that is, seen and unseen" in God’s creation. We simply accept that they are in the Bible and may well be part of the realities of heaven that we will not fully understand in this life. Trusting in God alone and waiting to understand more when we are gathered to God's nearest presence, what is important to Lutheran Christians is the personal, forgiving, loving, and saving God whom we know in Jesus.
Material drawn from Interpreters Dictionary of the Bible (T.H. Gaster), Volume 1, the Anchor Bible Dictionary, Volume 1 and some wording from Robert Longman, Jr. www.Spirithome.com copyright 1997-2008.