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Angelogy

ViaCrucis

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How are the 9 choirs of angel realms derived in such detail? Is this something derived from strictly the Bible, or other scriptures, or from Doctors of the Church?

Conjecture and medieval tradition mostly. According to Wikipedia, the major work on the subject is a work by an author from the 5th or 6th centuries known as Pseudo-Dionysus, as the author falsely presents themselves as Dionysus the Areopagite. The author has been noted for relying on Neoplatonism in their works. While the language of the nine choirs or nine orders of angels is still frequently seen in some traditional Christian circles, the writers of OrthodoxWiki (the Eastern Orthodox wiki) caution against taking it too literally or taking the writings of Pseudo-Dionysus too seriously given the Neoplatonic influence on their works (and, likewise, as the author is essentially unknown, they certainly aren't who they claimed to be).

"However, one should be a bit cautious about taking pseudo-Dionysius' model too concretely, as he is the only source we have for such a classification system. [...] many have accused the writer of wavering somewhere in between Orthodoxy and Neoplatonism, a pagan Greek philosophical system;" - Angels - OrthodoxWiki

I wouldn't put much stock into "angelic hierarchies" at all. The only thing less trustworthy in "theology" than the field of angelology is demonology. Both are rife with fantastical and fanciful conjectures, speculations, and elaborate systems that are useless.

I think it's safe to say that there are different "kinds" of angels, even differences in "ranks" (e.g. "ordinary" angels vs archangels) but attempts to create a systematized order of them is fruitless. The best way we can talk about the angels is to remember that they want us to focus on God, not them.

-CryptoLutheran
 
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DialecticSkeptic

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The best way we can talk about the angels is to remember that they want us to focus on God, not them.

amenrightthere.jpg
 
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ViaCrucis

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@CryptoLutheran

The best way we can talk about the angels is to remember that they want us to focus on God, not them.

I like your sentiment. There's a lot of people out there who do the opposite.

The temptation to put undue focus on angels is almost as old as Christianity itself, the New Testament even warns about early heretics who engaged in a kind of angel-worship. This is probably derived from pagan and philosophic ideas of antiquity, or even highly fringe Jewish ideas.

For example in the ancient Hellenistic world the word daemon was used to describe all manner of numinous, sub-divine, or even divine beings; even the Olympian gods are sometimes called by this word. It was a generic term among the Greek pagans for all manner of spirits and entities they believed to exist, such as nature spirits, or household spirits, or luminous beings that filled the air between earth and the heavens.

In the Jewish encounter with Hellenism after the conquest of Judea (a Persian province at the time) and the rest of the Persian Empire by Alexander the Great, Jews were frequently now in much closer proximity to pagans than they had been in a long time. When the Seleucids (a Greek successor state in Syria) conquered Judea from the Ptolemies (another Greek successor state in Egypt) under Antiochus IV there was a program of forced-Hellenization that ultimately led to the Maccabean Revolt and the establishment of the Hasmonean Dynasty.

Among Jews of this period and after the Roman conquest under Pompey, the word "daemon" was adopted from the Greeks to specifically describe evil spirits, this is how the word is then used in the New Testament. The Jewish concept of a rebellious accuser (ha-Shaytan, Hellenized as Satan) mentioned only a couple times in the Old Testament, but more frequently with other names in non-biblical Second Temple period Jewish literature (e.g. Belial) and wicked angels came to be identified among Greek-speaking Jews as daemons.

So when St. Paul describes the devil as the "prince of the powers of the air", he is literally calling the devil the chief of the daemons, as "the powers of the air" is very much the Greek concept of daemons now recontextualized in Judaism as evil spirits/wicked angels.

I bring this all up because of that tendency in antiquity to conceive of a series of intermediary beings between humans and the divine, between man and God. This evolved among Gnostic sects as a way to talk about there being a progressive series of emanations from God, with the lowest and farthest of these emanations serving as the ignorant and at times evil creator of the material universe; but the idea has its roots further back for example in Plato's philosophy.

So what we frequently see in the New Testament is a strong theological impulse to the rejection of any idea that there exists, between man and God, a series of intermediating or intermediary beings which; that God is so far removed from the moral and terrestrial sphere of man that man requires going through intermediary beings to have communion with Him. So, St. Paul will say that there is only one Mediator between God and man, Jesus. In the 4th century when the Arian Controversy erupted and Arius sought to make Christ a junior and intermediary God between creation and God the Father, the Church's response was strong: Jesus Christ is not a secondary divine being, Jesus Christ is God, of the same being with the Father as the only-begotten of the Father. God became man, God dwelt in our midst, and our union to Christ means union with God in Christ. Christ is not a lesser intermediary being than God by which men may access God: Jesus is God meeting man where man is. God Himself "dwelt among us".

But this desire to make angels into intermediary beings is ancient, it is a human impulse that Christianity has fought against from the beginning.

That was kind of a long rant, but I do think it noteworthy that what is modern is sometimes never modern.

And yes, I think--at least by way of implication--that modern angel cults (and ancient for that matter) are, in fact, demon cults. And I want to be clear that nothing I'm saying is in reference to historic or traditional Christian language about the angels or the Catholic/Orthodox practice of asking the angels and saints to pray for us. I'm talking about angel cults and angel worship which frequently begins with some traditional angel language but then goes bananas.

-CryptoLutheran
 
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