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Ezekiel Bob Davis Matthew What Is the Character of Angels? The Bible tells us much about the nature or character of angels. From a study of Scripture we find them to be personal, intelligent beings who obey the will of God. Obedient Angels are obedient to God's commandments. They do not hesitate to obey the Lord when He commands them. Holy The angels were originally created as holy beings to serve God.

Isaiah records the angels as saying: And one called to another and said: Reverent The highest activity of angels is the worship of God. To all of them You give life, and the host of heaven worships You Nehemiah 9: They continually praise and glorify God, usually in His presence. On one occasion, at the birth of Jesus, the angels came to the earth. And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host, praising God and saying, "Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace among those whom He favors! Communicate To Anyone Language is no barrier for angels. Paul referred to the speaking ability of angels.

Though I speak with the tongues of humans and of angels, but have not love, I have become sounding brass or a clanging cymbal 1 Corinthians Not only can angels speak, they can communicate to any people, in any language, on the face of the earth.

We find an angel preaching the everlasting gospel to the entire world before Christ returns. Then I saw another angel flying in the middle of heaven, with the everlasting gospel to proclaim to those who live on the earth - to every nation and tribe and language and people Revelation Every language was able to understand the message of this angel. Intelligent Creatures When the angels were created, they were made as intelligent spirits.

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They have been learning from the time they were created - having had the opportunity to observe God's dealings with humanity. In addition, their intelligence has not been corrupted by sin as is the case with humanity. But those interested in the metaphysics of the mind-body problem may find them suggestive: Microprocessors and Angelic Self-possession: The microprocessors of today's computers are integrated circuits which contain the CPU on a single chip.

The CPU chip is the heart of the computer; only memory and input-output devices have to be added. A small fan might be added on top of the fastest chips to cool them down, but in the chip itself there are no moving parts, no complex gaps between the movement being imparted and that which imparts the movement.

So also, an angel, in Aquinas' formulation, is a simple, subsistent form, without any distinction between a material and an immaterial part, between matter and form. Since there is no such division, and thus no material impediment to self-possession, the angel possesses itself directly in an immaterial way, and possesses itself completely.

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But here is where the "middle term" enters: Thus the angel knows itself, its own essence, completely; 1 and since will is proportioned to intellect, the angel's volition and "movement" is characterized by completely spontaneous self-determination on the basis of its knowledge. The chip storing the Read-Only Memory in a computer contains the immutable routines controlling input and output for the computer.

It determines the basic functions of a computer, and cannot be modified in its essential functions by programs running in the computer. In a sense, it is the innate, predetermined program for the computer as a whole. The Random-Access Memory of a computer opens up the possibility of receiving an influx of data and images from programs and input devices; thus the maximum capacities of a computer can to a great extent be utilized only if maximal megabytes of RAM, proportional to hardware and operating-system capabilities, have been installed in that computer.

Angels, according to Aquinas, possess a negative or privative potency which is inversely proportional to their perfection. The higher angels have maximum act and minimum potentiality, while the inferior angels have proportionally "less act, more potency. The inferior angels, because of the greater relative deprivation of actuality in their form, need to be continually equalized with their superiors through the proportionally greater number of infused species they receive from their comrades and God Himself.

Hard Drives and Intellectual Memory: A distinction is made in contemporary computers between "main memory" or storage capacity, and the volatile memory in RAM. When "memory" is spoken of without further qualification with reference to computers, RAM is usually meant. When the "memory" of intellectual beings is referred to without further qualification, something like "storage capacity" is usually meant.

Among intellectual beings, humans have both sense memory and intellectual memory.

Whatever the merits of this analogy, angels, according to Aquinas, being purely spiritual creatures, have only intellectual memory, not sense memory. Dionysius calls them "celestial intelligences," "intellectual beings," "supercelestial beings," etc. Exalted knowledge and intelligence are the most outstanding qualities of an Angel according to human standards. Thus, in praising David's wisdom, the woman from Thecua could not find a similar intelligence here on earth and compared it to that of an Angelic mind: In calling the Angels "minds" and "intelligences" we do not mean to limit the Angelic nature to the intellect but we rather wish to stress the power of the Angelic perception, superior by far to our own both in itself and in its mode of operation.

We speak here of the natural knowledge of the Angels, the one which is proportioned to their condition of pure spirits; and we abstract, for the time being, from their present condition of comprehensors in which a Godlike, more sublime knowledge is imparted to them through the light of glory. The natural intelligence of an Angel is common to both the good and the fallen angels, the demons. Our human mind comes into possession of knowledge by a gradual and laborious process. It requires first of all a number of years of physical development for the proper operation.

It rises slowly from single sensible perceptions to general ideas of things and finally to abstract truth. The Angelic intellect, entirely free and independent from matter and senses, needs no such development. It is in the full possession of its power from the very beginning of its existence. There is no need of gathering elements of knowledge bit by bit, of adding ideas to ideas in order to discover truth, as is the case with us.

Having been created in the full perfection of its nature, the Angelic mind neither develops by gradual growth nor does it suffer any decay; its knowledge does not pass by consecutive steps from the haze of the morning to the splendor of the noonday brightness.

08. The Angelic Mind

From the beginning of its existence it was able to grasp the objects within its own sphere and advert to them without any fatigue in the process, moving in the dazzling light of the purely spiritual world as in its proper element. Its light is not subject to waning into twilight or disappearing into darkness, as is the case, unfortunately, with the human mind in this life.

Being by nature higher than man and much closer to God, the Angels receive more of His light, that is, a greater power of understanding, infused ideas, mind-pictures representing external objects, the spiritual and material creatures of this universe. The process of Angelic knowing and understanding seems to consist in a placid gazing on these ideas or mind-pictures existing within its intellect from the beginning, actuated either by the Angelic will, or the need of the moment. There is no room for obscurity or error in the Angelic process of understanding.

Obscurity and doubts often cloud human knowledge and understanding because of human passions and the senses. Even though enriched with all the necessary ideas from the beginning, the Angelic mind is capable of advancing in knowledge and able to learn about new events, as they occur, either through Divine Revelation or through illumination from Angels of a superior Order, or even through men. We must admit that what we have laid down about Angelic knowledge and similar questions of the Angelic life are no more than pure conjectures based on theological and philosophical principles and a few data of Revelation.

The Schoolmen have practically exhausted the capacity of the human intellect along these lines. As of faith we need only hold that the Angels are not endowed with cardiognosis [knowledge of the secrets of the heart] nor with a certain knowledge of future acts of the free will; these being exclusively divine prerogatives.

It follows that their knowledge of the thoughts and future free actions of men is purely conjectural and can at most engender only moral certitude. Do Angels speak and manifest their thoughts to others? It would indeed be inconceivable that such a vast multitude of pure spirits endowed with superior intelligence and an abundance of dear ideas should lack the means of communicating among themselves.

Saint Paul speaks of such things as "the tongues of Angels. The examples are too many and too obvious: If they talk and they sing in a manner and a voice that is not their own, how much more must they be able to talk and sing in the language of the spirits. At the birth of Christ, the heavenly messenger of joy and of great tidings, an Angel of God announced the nativity of the Savior of the world to a few shepherds in the hill country around Bethlehem.

Messengers had come down to earth many times since man's creation, to advise, to warn, to help, or to punish man. On this occasion "a multitude of the heavenly army" was heard for the first time singing, caroling, and praising God and saying: The fact that Angels possess a language of their own is beyond all doubt; the nature of that language, however, is little known to us. When the Angels appear to men, a human language is spoken by them, the one spoken by the addressee. The sound of human voice is produced, and human words are spoken when the Angelic apparition is a sensible one; only mental words, the conveying of ideas, are used in cases of imaginative or intellectual visions.

Among themselves the Angels do not converse in any human language, by words of mouth, being incorporeal and immaterial. What is their language then? Of several theories excogitated by the Schoolmen to explain the language of the Angels the one proposed by Saint Thomas seems to be the most acceptable.

Saint Thomas holds that the Angels talk to each other by a mere act of the will, opening their mind and revealing whatever ideas they wish to convey to others of the same nature as themselves. This Angelic language, or conversation, is called illumination. Dionysius refers to this mode of speaking where he writes: For some of them are shown to us enlightened in holy matters by those above them. Some of the Angels are depicted there asking: Our words of mouth are no more than symbols of the ideas we have in our mind and wish to manifest to others.

Symbols and words are very often inadequate in expressing the full thought, or they are ambiguous or not well understood by the hearer. To be able to open one's mind and reveal the whole thought, as it is there, without the channel of symbolism, sound, and words, is a higher and better form of expression. Such is the wordless exchange of ideas, the language of the Angels. Just as, by God's permission or command, the Angels are able to assume human forms when appearing to men, so, too, they are permitted to produce a human voice and speak our human language, as all reported Angelic apparitions reveal.

By the same Divine permission and in virtue of their natural powers, the Angels are able to produce what to human ears sounds like sweet melody or enchanting music, as we learn from the lives of several of God's servants about whom we shall report later.