THE ANNUNCIATION (FRA ANGELICO, C. 1430–45)
The roles of angels change dramatically in the New Testament. Gone are the Angels of Death and Vengeance, and also gone are the heroic deeds of angels. No longer do angels bring death and destruction, nor do they go about killing the firstborn of unbelievers. The physical appearance of angels also changes. In the New Testament, angels are no longer depicted as bland creatures without personalities. They change from being purely abstract extensions of God to being friends with humankind, and have powers that can be called upon in times of stress or need.
Of course, the most important angelic visitation in the view of the early Christians is the Annunciation, the speaking of those famous words: Ave Maria, gratia plena, Dominus tecum: Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee.
THE ANNUNCIATION (FRA ANGELICO, C. 1430–45)
Although Mary didn’t quite understand what the angel meant, she realized the message was of great importance and kept puzzling about its meaning. Then the angel came to her and said, “Do not be afraid, Mary; for you have found favor with God. And behold, you will conceive in your womb, and bear a son, and you shall name him Jesus. He will be great, and will be called the Son of the Most High; and the Lord God will give Him the throne of His Father David; and He will reign over the house of Jacob forever; and His kingdom will have no end.”
In the Christian world . . . it is believed that angels were created at the beginning, and that heaven was formed of them; and that the Devil or Satan was an angel of light, who, becoming rebellious, was cast down with his crew, and that this was the origin of hell.
—EMANUEL SWEDENBORG
When Mary’s pregnancy became obvious, Joseph, her husband, who was a much older man, was embarrassed by the situation and wanted to quietly put her away somewhere so that her condition would not cause him and his family shame. But an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream, saying, “Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid . . . for that which has been conceived in her is of the Holy Spirit. And she will bear a Son; and you shall call His name Jesus, for it is He who will save His people from their sins.”
After the birth of Jesus, the angel of the Lord continued to look after the family’s safety. Herod, the Roman-appointed ruler of Jerusalem, heard rumors that the newborn might be a threat, became jealous of the child and what his birth might mean, and made plans to have him killed.
Once again, the angel appeared to Joseph in a dream and warned him, saying, “Arise, and take the Child and His mother, and flee to Egypt, and remain there until I tell you; for Herod is going to search for the Child to destroy Him.” Later, after Herod died, the angel appeared again to Joseph in another dream and told him, “Arise, and take the Child and His mother, and go into the land of Israel; for those who sought the Child’s life are dead” (Matthew, Chapter 2).
The Gospel of Matthew mentions that two angels—without wings but with “a countenance like lightning” and “garments white as snow”—were found sitting inside the cave in which Jesus had been laid in burial.
Mary Magdalene and Mary (James’s mother) went to the tomb to care for the dead body, but there was no body to be seen anywhere. It had disappeared. One of the angels informed the amazed and startled women that the reason there wasn’t a corpse was that Jesus had “risen up from the dead.”
Not knowing what to think about this extraordinary occurrence, the women rushed back to where the eleven remaining apostles were waiting and related their story. Naturally, the men were skeptical, but they rushed up the hill to take a look for themselves and indeed found the tomb empty. This story is told in many different versions by different Gospel writers, but the basic elements are the same.
THE RESURRECTION OF CHRIST
In the New Testament Apocrypha, Paul is guided by an angel on a complicated and confusing journey through the territory of heaven and hell. The narrative shifts back and forth between beauty and horror: He sees hell and several blessed abodes. He has visions of utter bliss, and visions of terrible punishments. The vision provides a wealth of imagery and an interesting role for his angelic guide. Finally, the angel leads Paul to the door of the third heaven. Paul says, “And I looked at it and saw that it was a golden gate and that there were two golden tables above the pillars full of letters. [These letters are the names of the righteous, already inscribed in heaven while they still live on earth.] And again the angel turned to me and said: ‘Blessed are you if you enter in by these gates.’”
After entering the gates of paradise, Paul encounters the ancient prophet Enoch, who issues a warning to Paul not to reveal what he has seen in the third heaven. Then, the angel descends, with Paul in tow, to the second heaven and then to the earthly paradise, where the souls of those deemed righteous await the resurrection.
Here, Paul sees the four rivers of paradise, which flow with milk, wine, honey, and olive oil, and on the banks of each river he meets those souls who have exhibited some specific virtue in their lives: The river of milk is for those who are innocent and chaste; the river of wine, a reward for those who have shown hospitality to strangers; the river of honey, for those who have submitted their own will to the will of God; and the river of oil for those who have renounced earthly pleasure and gain for love of God.
The angel puts Paul in a golden boat, and the narrative continues: “And about three thousand angels were singing a hymn before me until I reached the City of Christ.”
Sinners who have repented of their crimes are gathered in a forest, where they abide during the time between death and resurrection. The City of Christ is made with twelve walls, each exceeding the one before in greatness, and Paul goes into the center of this apparent maze and says:
I saw in the midst of this city a great altar, very high, and there was [David] standing near the altar, whose countenance shone as the sun, and he held in his hands a psaltery and harp, and he sang psalms, saying Alleluia. And all in the city replied Alleluia till the very foundations of the city were shaken. . . . Turning round I saw golden thrones placed in each gate, and on them men having golden diadems and gems: and I looked carefully and saw inside between the twelve men thrones in glorious rank . . . so that no one is able to recount their praise. . . . Those thrones belong to those who had goodness and understanding of heart and made themselves fools for the sake of the Lord God.
Paul is occupied looking at the trees of heaven when he sees two hundred angels preceding Mary and singing hymns. Mary informs him that he has been granted the unusual favor of coming to this place before he is dead.
The story of the Ascension of Isaiah (in the New Testament Apocrypha) is far less complex. The prophet is taken out of his body and led by an angel to the first heaven above the sky: “And I saw a throne in the midst, and on the right and on the left of it were angels [singing praises].” He asks whom they praise, and is told by the angels, “It is for the praise of him who is in the seventh heaven, for him who rests in eternity among his saints, and for his Beloved, whence I have been sent unto [you].”
The “heaven above the sky” is the first heaven (of seven), and the angel then takes Isaiah to the second heaven, where once more he sees, as before, a throne and angels to the right and to the left. Awed by the situation, the holy prophet prostrates himself to worship the angel on the throne (there is some confusion here about a throne being an angel and an angel being on a throne) but is told not to do that. Angels are not to be worshiped.
ISAIAH’S VISION
Ascending further, each of the succeeding heavens is filled with more glory than the one before, and the sixth heaven is of such glorious brightness that it makes the previous five dark by comparison. Naturally—in common with those who have reported near-death experiences—Isaiah wants to remain in this place of wonders and not be sent back to a dull life encased in earthly flesh. But the angel explains that Isaiah’s time on earth isn’t finished: “If [you] already rejoice in this light, how much [will you] rejoice when, in the seventh heaven, [you see] that light where God and his beloved are, whence I have been sent. . . . As for [your] wish not to return to the flesh . . . [your] days are not yet fulfilled that [you may] come here.”
Isaiah is saddened, but Jesus himself allows Isaiah to enter the seventh heaven, of which he reports: “And I saw there a wonderful light and angels without number. And there I saw all the righteous from Adam . . . I saw Enoch and all who were with him stripped of the garment of the flesh, and I saw them in their higher garments, and they were like the angels who stand there in great glory.”
The vision ends with Jesus escorting Isaiah down through all the heavens to earth to witness the Annunciation and the Incarnation.
Constantine the Great, who was the emperor of Byzantium (306–337), converted to Christianity after having a powerful vision of a cross in the sky. It was profound enough to cause him to convert even though Christianity was still a minority religion. His conversion convinced many others to follow. During this time period he also declared that angels have wings.
No doubt Constantine had a lot to do with the renewed interest in angels. At that time most people were used to stories of fairies and it was a small stretch from a winged fairy to an angel with wings.
What concerned the church fathers was that the common people were worshiping angels, and they believed that only God and His Son could be worshiped. This dilemma had been settled by St. Paul when he attacked and denied the worship of angels with his usual “I know what’s best here” attitude. Nevertheless, the First Council of Nicaea in 325 decided that belief in angels was to be church dogma. Apparently, this decision unleashed a rampant renewal of the angel worship that St. Paul had so detested. In 343, less than twenty years after Nicaea, the worship of angels was proclaimed idolatry by another council.
By the fifth century, there were so many angels’ names that a riot of confusion set in, causing the Church to declare that only seven angels, the archangels, are to be known by name. In line with the usual disputation about angels, only four of these—Raphael, Michael, Gabriel, and Uriel—remain constant throughout all the various systems. At the Ad Lateran Synod of 745, the active practice of giving names to angels was condemned. The good fathers worried that if angels all had names, angel worship would become a problem (it might hearken back to the pagan way of naming all sorts of spirits, both celestial and natural), so they decreed there should be no more naming of angels, in order that only God would be worshiped.
Finally, in 787, to end the controversy, the second Council of Nicaea, called the Seventh Ecumenical Synod, was held. It declared a limited dogma of the archangels, which included their names, their specific functions, and also formally legitimated the depiction of angels in art.
While all the debate about angels was going on in the predominantly Christian world of Europe, a Jewish population lived alongside their Christian neighbors yet remained totally isolated from them. It’s hard to see how any metaphysical or theological ideas might have been exchanged between the two communities, with one clearly superior in number and political clout. Thus separated, and trying to maintain their own identity as a people through their language and traditional culture, medieval Jews lived in religious isolation.
In the Jewish Kabbalah, the number of angels is listed at 49 million, while by another count there are 496,000 angels, ranked into seven divisions like an army. In a vision, Daniel saw that “thousands of thousands ministered to him and ten thousand times a hundred thousand stood before him.”
The Kabbalah (also seen as Kabala, Kabbala, Cabala, Cabalah) is the great book of the Jewish religion. The term Kabbalah is derived from the Hebrew root kbl, which means “to receive.” It refers to matters that are occult (meaning “hidden”) or mystical knowledge so secret that it is rarely written down. It is transmitted from master to neophyte, or student, orally, in order to protect the secrets from being revealed to those not prepared to receive them or unworthy to do so.
All of the books of the Kabbalah constitute a system of guidance to the path to God, on which the believer is taken through a series of heavenly halls guided by angels. It is replete with long descriptions of how to make the journey safely up through a tree of angels, and it gives the secret passwords to bypass demons encountered along the path.
In the Kabbalah are ten sefirot, or angels, considered to be the fundamental channels of divine energy. Their names are Foundation, Splendor, Eternity, Beauty, Power, Grace, Knowledge, Wisdom, Understanding, and Crown. They are arranged in the shape of a tree and called the Tree of Life. The top of this tree is occupied by the singular angel Keter, and beyond all of this is the mystical contemplation of God. It is so distant and removed that it makes it incomprehensible to ever know God directly, but only experience Him through His angels.
As you can see, the angels play an important role in the teachings of the Kabbalah. They once again act as intermediaries between heaven and earth and oversee what occurs on earth.
We not only live among men, but there are airy hosts, blessed spectators, sympathetic lookers-on, that see and know and appreciate our thoughts and feelings and acts.
—HENRY WARD BEECHER, ROYAL TRUTHS