Peter Kreeft - Angels and Demons: What Do We Really Know about Them?

The Angel Appearing to Joshua
Illustration for Old Testament
GUSTAV DOR

PETER J. KREEFT

What Do We Really Know about Them?

IGNATIUS PRESS SAN FRANCISCO

Cover art:
The Archangel Michael .
La Martorana, Palermo, Italy
Scala/Art Resource, New York
Cover design by Roxanne Mei Lum

1995 Peter J. Kreeft
All rights reserved
ISBN 978-0-89870-550-8
Library of Congress catalogue number 95-76525
Printed in the United States of America

This book is dedicated to

Francis/ces and Frodo

my wifes and my guardian angels

who have been the real editors and ghost writers of this book

through their gentle inspirations

and their muted laughter

and to

Tranquillo (Tony) Massi

my father-in-law

who sat at the edge of his childrens beds

lulling them to sleep

with stories of St. Michael the Archangel betting with Lucifer

and who is now most likely losing

a game of poker (as usual) to an angel

CONTENTS

PART ONE: Questions about Our Fascination with Angels

PART TWO: Questions about How We Know Anything about Angels

PART THREE: Questions about the Nature of Angels

PART FOUR: Questions about Demons

INTRODUCTION

This book has four parents.

The books mother and its most immediate source, the womb from which it actually emerged, is the questions many people ask me about angels once they hear Im writing a book about them and teaching a course about them. The books agenda is the readers questions, not the writers.

The books father was my unhappiness about the quality of angel books currently flooding the market and my surprised happiness about their quantity. There is a huge hunger out there, but its being fed with fast food.

The books godfather was a course I taught at Boston College called Angels, Devils, Ghosts, and Miracles. It attracted not only many students but also many media inquiries.

The books godmother was the absolutely fascinated sudden silence I have elicited from my classes every time I have mentioned the subject of angels and demons.

PART ONE

QUESTIONS ABOUT

OUR FASCINATION WITH ANGELS

The Death of St. Louis

Illustration for Michauds History of the Crusades

GUSTAV DOR

1. They really exist. Not just in our minds, or our myths, or our symbols, or our culture. They are as real as your dog, or your sister, or electricity.

2. Theyre present, right here, right now, right next to you, reading these words with you.

3. Theyre not cute, cuddly, comfortable, chummy, or cool. They are fearsome and formidable. They are huge. They are warriors.

4. They are the real extra-terrestrials, the real Supermen, the ultimate aliens. Their powers are far beyond those of all fictional creatures.

5. They are more brilliant minds than Einstein.

6. They can literally move the heavens and the earth if God permits them.

7. There are also evil angels, fallen angels, demons, or devils. These too are not myths. Demon possessions, and exorcisms, are real.

8. Angels are aware of you, even though you cant usually see or hear them. But you can communicate with them. You can talk to them without even speaking.

9. You really do have your very own guardian angel. Everybody does.

10. Angels often come disguised. Do not neglect hospitality, for some have entertained angels unawaresthats a warning from lifes oldest and best instruction manual.

11. We are on a protected part of a great battlefield between angels and devils, extending to eternity.

12. Angels are sentinels standing at the crossroads where life meets death. They work especially at moments of crisis, at the brink of disasterfor bodies, for souls, and for nations.

I think this is a far more serious and significant sign than most people realize. I think its a symptom of fundamental changes that are happening, or about to happen, to our world. (In the Bible, angels usually appear just before world-changing and life-changing events.)

The explanation usually given is psychological and sociological.

The psychological part of this standard explanation of angels newfound popularity is the need for comfort in a hard and increasingly violent, scary world.

The sociological part of the explanation is the changes in our culture that allow people to believe in angels again: the change from modernism to postmodernismwhich means essentially the change from rationalism and faith in science to faith in something else: the irrational, or the occult, or the mystical, or just something else. Angels fit into the category of something else.

This standard explanation forgets something crucial.

In all the expert explanations of the angel phenomenon, what answer is never given? An answer about what is objectively true! The psychological explanation talks about only what is subjectively true for you: your need for comfort or security. The sociological explanation talks about only whats subjectively true for a society: changing opinions, trends, fashions. Whats forgotten is that angels are really there; thats the ultimate reason why people believe in them!

I believe because... Because is ambiguous. It could mean only a subjective motive (Because Im paranoid, I believe that man is going to kill me), or it could mean an objective reason (Because hes pointing a gun at me and squeezing the trigger, I believe that man is going to kill me). We believe in angels because we seek security is only a subjective, psychological motive. We believe in angels because God has revealed to us in the Bible that they exist is an objective reason (though its a reason that depends on faith, not on logical proof).

There are both good and bad subjective motives; and both good and bad objective reasons. Perhaps the need for security is a good subjective motive (I do not think it is), and perhaps the faith that the Bible is Gods word is a bad objective reason (I do not think it is). But my point is simply that psychological motives are inadequate. The only honest reason for anyone ever to believe anything is that it is true, that it is really there. The same goes for angels too.

What about the sociological reason? Maybe the changes in our society are objective too, not just subjective. Maybe angels are really appearing more often now, and thats why there are more stories of people seeing them and more interest in them. Why do the sociologists and journalists never consider that simple explanation?

Why would they be appearing more now? That is one of the distinctive themes of this book. Angels appear on the brink of chaos, or catastrophe, or at least at the threat of chaos or catastrophe. They are spiritual soldiers in the great cosmic jihad , the spiritual war between Good and Evil.

That war seems to be coming to a head or making a fundamental turn right now, exactly at the time when most of our religious teachers have stopped talking about this fundamental biblical theme for the first time in thousands of years. Just when the enemy is making a great counterattack, we start forgetting were on a battlefield at all!

Perhaps the angels are there to remind us, like soldiers in uniform.