Angels
Angels are created, intelligent, bodiless spirits whom God sends to serve, worship and guard; the Church says firmly that they exist and what they do, and says openly that much about their make-up is not revealed.
For Inquirers
Long before anyone drew a baby with wings, Christians were already talking about angels, and they meant something quite different. An angel is a real someone, whom God made on purpose, with a mind that can think and a will that can choose, though without a body like yours or mine. The word itself just means "messenger." It tells you what angels are often doing (carrying God's word, bringing help, standing guard) and leaves their make-up a bit of a mystery. When one shows up in a story, the people in it are often frightened first and comforted afterward, which is a good clue that nobody who met one thought of them as cute.
Angels also sing. One of the Bible's best-known pictures of them shows beings gathered around God's throne, calling out "Holy, holy, holy," and that is the very song Christians sing in church today, joining in with a choir they cannot see. Christians believe each person is looked after by an angel, a kind of unseen companion on the road, and they feel free to ask these angels for help, the way you would ask a friend to put in a good word. Worship goes to God alone, though honour for His servants is another matter. In the Bible's last book, when John falls at an angel's feet, the angel stops him: "Worship God." Elsewhere people bow to angels and no rebuke is recorded (Abraham, Lot, Joshua), and the Church later spelled out the difference between reverence for a messenger of God and the adoration that belongs to God alone.
It is fair to find this a lot to take in, and fair to ask how anyone could know. The Church claims to know only a little, and her teachers say so plainly. She holds the basics firmly: angels exist, God made them, they love and serve Him, and they care for us. About how many there are, what they are made of, and how they are arranged, even the Fathers confess how little they know, and faithful people are left to wonder.
Overview
- Angels are intelligent, free spirits, created by God and living in His presence. The name "angel" says what they do (they are sent); other words say what they are.
- They appear all through Scripture, from the cherubim at the gate of Eden to the armies in the Book of Revelation. In the life of the Church they sing the thrice-holy hymn with us, carry our prayers, and watch over each person and each nation.
- Christians honour angels and worship God alone. That line is drawn in the New Testament itself, in the definition of the Second Council of Nicaea, and in the way the Church paints and sings of them.
- On some points the writers cited agree; on others they differ or confess ignorance: who appeared to Abraham at Mamre, whether angels have a kind of body, when they were made, and who the "sons of God" of Genesis 6 were.
Summary
Angels are spiritual beings of a higher nature than man's, made before humankind to praise Him and to serve His purposes among us. Scripture calls them messengers because that is the work most often seen, but it also shows them as worshippers around a throne, as warriors, as guides, and as the ones who announced the birth to the shepherds and stood at the tomb and the Ascension. The Fathers who describe their nature, above all St. John of Damascus, call them intelligent, free and bodiless, immortal by grace alone, and limited in place as every creature is, with Scripture showing them ignorant of some things too. A number of them fell and became demons; the rest stay with God. They are arranged in ranks, which the Church has received in the nine orders of the Celestial Hierarchy, though those who list the orders differ in detail and confess how little is known. The Church honours them in her liturgy, paints them in her icons, and asks their help, and she guards the difference between that honour and the worship due to God alone. In Christ, finally, human nature has been raised above the angels, a fact at which Damascus and Chrysostom both marvel.
A Name That Describes a Job
The English word comes from the Greek angelos, "messenger." Fr. Michael Pomazansky puts the matter in one line: "The name 'angel' means 'messenger.' This word defines chiefly their service to the human race."[^pomaz-angelic] St. Augustine notes the same thing from the Latin side, and draws the consequence that "angel" is a title of the errand, which Scripture is also willing to give to human beings: the Greek word, he says, "means a messenger," and the Baptist is called one in the Gospel ("Behold, I send my messenger (angel) before Your face").[^aug-cog-15-23] The Catechism of St. Philaret of Moscow asks the same question in the same plain way: the angels are "incorporeal spirits, having intelligence, will, and power," called messengers "because God sends them to announce his will."[^philaret-cat]
A name that describes an errand leaves open what sort of being runs it. The Septuagint itself renders the prophet's name for the coming Son as the "Messenger of great counsel" (Isaiah 9.5), a title that Hilary, as we shall see, reads as the Son's office of declaring the Father's counsel while holding Him to be God. The word names an errand, and the beings who run it are described by other words: spirit, mind, flame, host, power. St. Gregory the Theologian speaks of "secondary Splendours" who came into being "as the Ministers of the Primary Splendour,"[^gnz-or38-ix-spl] and the Psalm says of God that He "makes his angels spirits, and his ministers a flaming fire" (Psalm 104.4), a line the Church sings as the prokeimenon on the feast of the Archangels.[^menaion-nov8] A reader should therefore expect, as the stories unfold, that "the angel of the Lord" is sometimes a created messenger and sometimes more than that, and the Fathers had to sort out which.
Messengers in the Old Testament
The first angels in Scripture are guards. When Adam is driven from Paradise, God "stationed the cherubs and the fiery sword that turns about to keep the way of the tree of life" (Genesis 3.24). From there the angels come steadily into the story, often at the moment someone is in need. An angel finds the runaway Hagar by a spring in the wilderness and sends her home with a promise (Genesis 16.7-13); the same chapter has her name "the Lord God who spoke to her," a detail to which we shall return. Abraham looks up at noon and sees "three men" at his tent door, runs to meet them and bows to the ground (Genesis 18.1-2); that evening "the two angels came to Sodom" and Lot likewise bows (Genesis 19.1). When Abraham lifts the knife over Isaac, "an angel of the Lord called him out of heaven" (Genesis 22.11-12). Jacob, leaving Laban, looks up and sees "the host of God encamped; and the angels of God met him" (Genesis 32.1-2).
Moses meets one in the bush: "an angel of the Lord appeared to him in flaming fire out of the bush," and then "the Lord" calls out of it, and Moses hides his face "afraid to gaze at God" (Exodus 3.2-6). God promises the people on the road from Sinai, "behold, I send my angel before thy face, that he may keep thee in the way," and adds a strange reason for obeying him: "for my name is on him" (Exodus 23.20-21). Outside Jericho Joshua sees a man with a drawn sword and asks whose side he is on; the answer is "I am now come, the chief captain of the host of the Lord," and Joshua falls on his face and is told, "Loose thy shoe off thy feet, for the place whereon thou now standest is holy" (Joshua 5.13-15). Gideon is greeted under a tree, "The Lord is with thee, thou mighty in strength," and when fire rises out of the rock to consume his offering and the angel "vanished from his sight," he cries out that he has "seen the angel of the Lord face to face" (Judges 6.11-12, Judges 6.21-22). Manoah's wife is told she will bear a son, and when the angel rises in the altar flame Manoah says to his wife, "We shall surely die, because we have seen God" (Judges 13.3, Judges 13.18-22).
The prophets move the scene from the road to the throne. In the year King Uzziah died Isaiah "saw the Lord sitting on a high and exalted throne," with "seraphs" standing round about him, each with six wings, calling to one another, "Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord of hosts: the whole earth is full of his glory" (Isaiah 6.1-3). Ezekiel sees four living creatures in a storm-cloud and, later, the same beings as cherubim under a throne "as a sapphire stone," from whose wings comes a sound "as the voice of the Almighty God speaking" (Ezekiel 1.4-14, Ezekiel 10.1-5). Daniel sees the Ancient of Days with "thousand thousands" ministering to Him (Daniel 7.9-10), and then meets two named messengers: Gabriel, who tells him "Understand, son of man," and later flies to him at the hour of the evening sacrifice to give understanding (Daniel 8.15-17, Daniel 9.21-23), and Michael, "one of the princes," who comes to help against "the prince of the kingdom of the Persians" (Daniel 10.13) and who at the end "shall stand up, that stands over the children of thy people" (Daniel 12.1). The vision of Daniel 10 sets angels over nations, a thread picked up by Damascus and discussed below, and Daniel 10 and 12 together show Michael as the champion of God's people (see Archangel Michael and Book of Daniel).
The Orthodox Old Testament also includes the Book of Tobit, which tells an angel story of its own. Tobias goes looking for a guide for his journey and "found Raphael that was an angel. But he knew not" (Tobit 5.4-6). At the end the guide tells them who he is: "I am Raphael, one of the seven holy angels, which present the prayers of the saints, and which go in and out before the glory of the Holy One" (Tobit 12.15). The book thus gives a name, a function (carrying prayers) and a number (seven). Pomazansky ties that number to John's greeting of the churches from "the seven Spirits who are before his throne" (Revelation 1.4) when he lists the seven angels traditionally named.[^pomaz-angelic] The Orthodox Church receives Tobit as Scripture (see Canon of Scripture).
The Angel of the Lord, and Who Appeared at Mamre
In Genesis 16 "the angel of the Lord" promises Hagar descendants beyond counting, which no messenger could do on his own authority, and she responds by naming "the Lord God who spoke to her." In Exodus 3 the same figure is "an angel" in verse 2 and "the Lord" in verse 4. Gideon fears for his life because he has seen the angel "face to face," and Manoah because he has seen "God." The question for the Fathers was whether the figure in such scenes is a created angel speaking in God's name, or whether the one who appears is God Himself, in a form He takes to be seen.
In the second century the answer given is that the visitor is the Son. St. Justin Martyr, arguing with a Jew, takes Mamre as his test case: Moses declares that the One who appeared to Abraham is God, yet the same text distinguishes Him from the Father who "remains ever in the supercelestial places." So Justin undertakes to show "that there is, and that there is said to be, another God and Lord subject to the Maker of all things; who is also called an Angel, because He announces to men whatsoever the Maker of all things ... wishes to announce to them."[^justin-trypho-56] St. Irenaeus, a generation later, reads the same scene with a count: of the three men, "two of the three were angels; but one was the Son of God, with whom also Abraham spake," pleading for Sodom, and it is the Son, receiving authority from the Father, who then rains fire on the city.[^iren-dem-44] Irenaeus adds a rule that is easy to carry to the other scenes: it was not the Father, "who is not seen by the world," that stood in a very small space and spoke with Abraham, but the Word of God, "who was ever with mankind."[^iren-dem-45]
St. Hilary of Poitiers takes Genesis 16 the same way and reads it slowly. The speaker promises a multitude of descendants, a promise that Hilary says goes beyond what a messenger could do, and he notes the three titles the text gives the speaker in succession: "First He is the Angel of God; then He is the Lord ... then, thirdly, He is God." From this he concludes that "He Who is called the Angel of God is also Lord and God," the Son of God whom Isaiah calls the Angel of great counsel. The title, in his reading, names the Son's office and leaves His nature untouched: He "executes the ministry of declaring the great counsel" and is yet "in name and nature God."[^hilary-trin-4] St. John Chrysostom, speaking of the Son as teacher, uses the same prophetic title when he says that He "is called Word, and Angel of great Counsel."[^chrys-john-15]
St. Athanasius also reads God's speaking as the Word's speaking, but he is careful to keep the created angel distinct. In his argument against the Arians he says that "he who beholds a vision of Angels, knows that he has seen the Angel and not God," and gives as proof that Zacharias saw an angel while Isaiah saw the Lord. Where the two seem to merge, as at the burning bush, he explains it this way: "yet was not the Angel the God of Abraham, but in the Angel God spoke. And what was seen was an Angel; but God spoke in him."[^ath-or3-25] On this reading the created angel is the instrument, God is the speaker, and the Word is the one through whom God speaks.
Athanasius applies the same test to the two scenes in Judges that look most like appearances of the Lord, and it comes out the other way: "Manoah, the father of Samson, saw an Angel; but Moses beheld God," and "Gideon saw an Angel, but to Abraham appeared God."[^ath-or3-25-gm] On his reckoning, then, Gideon and Manoah met created angels, and the appearances of God belong to Abraham and Moses.
Not every Father reads Mamre this way. St. Augustine, writing against the other reading, says plainly that the three men at the oak "it is not to be doubted were angels, although some think that one of them was Christ," and points out that Lot also addresses the two angels in the singular as "Lord," so that singular address proves nothing.[^aug-cog-16-29] The range, then, runs from Justin, Irenaeus and Hilary, who see the Son in the central figure, to Augustine, who sees only angels through whom God appears, with Athanasius between them, holding that what is seen is a created angel and that God speaks in him. Hebrews gives the Church a thread through both: "Don't forget to show hospitality to strangers, for in doing so, some have entertained angels without knowing it" (Hebrews 13.2). The hymns for the feast of the Archangels keep both readings in one line: "Abraham who saw God and glorious Lot welcomed Angels and have found fellowship with Angels."[^menaion-nov8] Typology in Scripture shows how the Church holds readings like these together.
Angels in the Gospels and the Apostles
The New Testament opens with angels. Gabriel stands before Zacharias and says, "I am Gabriel, who stands in the presence of God" (Luke 1.19), then is sent "to a city of Galilee named Nazareth, to a virgin" (Luke 1.26-28). On the night of the birth "an angel of the Lord stood by" the shepherds, "and suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly army praising God" (Luke 2.9-15). The Lord, tempted in the wilderness, is served: "the devil left him, and behold, angels came and served him" (Matthew 4.11). In Gethsemane "an angel from heaven appeared to him, strengthening him" (Luke 22.43). At the tomb an angel "descended from the sky and came and rolled away the stone" and tells the women, "He is not here, for he has risen" (Matthew 28.2-7), and Mary Magdalene sees "two angels in white sitting, one at the head and one at the feet, where the body of Jesus had lain" (John 20.11-13). After the Ascension an angel opens Peter's prison: "His chains fell off his hands" (Acts 12.7-8).
The Epistle to the Hebrews gives the shortest definition of their work in the Church's own words: "Aren't they all serving spirits, sent out to do service for the sake of those who will inherit salvation?" (Hebrews 1.14). Colossians gives the largest frame, placing them within the created order: "For by him all things were created in the heavens and on the earth, visible things and invisible things, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers" (Colossians 1.16). Revelation shows the war in which the fallen are cast out: "Michael and his angels made war on the dragon" (Revelation 12.7-9). Jude, in one verse, shows the restraint even an archangel keeps toward the devil: "when contending with the devil and arguing about the body of Moses, [he] dared not bring against him an abusive condemnation, but said, 'May the Lord rebuke you!'" (Jude 1.9).
St. Cyril of Jerusalem, preparing candidates for baptism, reminds them how many are meant: reckon all the nations that have ever lived, he says, "Great indeed is the multitude; but yet it is little, for the Angels are many more. They are the ninety and nine sheep, but mankind is the single one."[^cyril-cat-15] Scripture's own numbers run large in the same way: Daniel counts "thousand thousands" and Revelation "ten thousands of ten thousands" (Revelation 5.11-12).
Before the World: Their Making
The Creed confesses God as maker "of all things visible and invisible," and Philaret's Catechism, asked what "invisible" means there, answers: "The invisible or spiritual world, to which belong the angels."[^philaret-cat] The Fathers who ask when they were made give a graded answer. St. Basil, opening his sermons on Genesis, says that "even before this world an order of things existed of which our mind can form an idea, but of which we can say nothing," a condition "suitable for the exercise of supernatural powers, outstripping the limits of time," in which God made "intellectual and invisible natures" and "pure intelligences who are beyond the reach of our mind and of whom we cannot even discover the names," and he cites Paul's list of thrones, dominions, principalities and powers.[^basil-hex-1-5]
St. Gregory the Theologian gives the reason, and it is a reason from love. Good could not stay shut up in contemplating itself: "this movement of self-contemplation alone could not satisfy Goodness, but Good must be poured out and go forth beyond Itself to multiply the objects of Its beneficence ... He first conceived the Heavenly and Angelic Powers. And this conception was a work fulfilled by His Word, and perfected by His Spirit." Only after that, he says, did God conceive a second, visible world.[^gnz-or38-ix] St. John of Damascus follows him, and says so openly, while noting that others disagree: "Some, indeed, like Gregory the Theologian, say that these were before the creation of other things ... Others, again, hold that they were created after the first heaven was made. But all are agreed that it was before the foundation of man. For myself, I am in harmony with the theologian."[^dam-exp-2-3-order] The Job text the Church cites (in the Septuagint, "When the stars were made, all my angels praised me with a loud voice," Job 38.7) puts the angels already singing at the founding of the visible world. Pomazansky names Ambrose, Jerome, Gregory the Great and Anastasius of Sinai as others who held that God made the angels long before the visible world, so that they already stood before the Creator when it was made.[^pomaz-angelic]
The angels, in this account, came into being the way everything else does, through the Word and by the Spirit. Basil gives the formula: "the ministering spirits subsist by the will of the Father, are brought into being by the operation of the Son, and perfected by the presence of the Spirit."[^basil-ds-16] The angels therefore are not rivals of the Trinity, nor intermediaries in making the world. Damascus is sharp on this: "those who say that the angels are creators of any kind of essence whatever are the mouth of their father, the devil. For since they are created things they are not creators."[^dam-exp-2-3-creators] The same instinct was voiced by Athanasius earlier in the contrast he drew between creature and God: "greatly, or rather wholly, do things by nature originate differ from God the Creator."[^ath-or3-25-creature]
What an Angel Is
St. John of Damascus gives the definition the Church most often cites: "An angel, then, is an intelligent essence, in perpetual motion, with free-will, incorporeal, ministering to God, having obtained by grace an immortal nature: and the Creator alone knows the form and limitation of its essence."[^dam-exp-2-3-def] Each phrase carries a point. Intelligent means a mind; free-will means they can choose, and therefore could fall; incorporeal means they have no body of the kind we have; and immortal by grace means they do not live by their own right. Damascus spells the last one out: "It is immortal, not by nature but by grace. For all that has had beginning comes also to its natural end. But God alone is eternal."[^dam-exp-2-3-immortal] Pomazansky, summarising the Fathers, adds that an angel's life depends "entirely upon the will and mercy of God," as does the immortality of human souls.[^pomaz-angelic]
Because they are creatures, angels are limited, and the Fathers say so firmly. They cannot be in two places at once: "They are circumscribed: for when they are in the Heaven they are not on the earth: and when they are sent by God down to the earth they do not remain in the Heaven."[^dam-exp-2-3-place] Scripture shows them ignorant on some points: they do not know "that day or that hour" (Mark 13.32); they "desire to look into" the Gospel (1 Peter 1.12); and God's own manifold wisdom is "made known to the principalities and the powers in the heavenly places" through the Church (Ephesians 3.10), which means they are learning from it. St. Gregory the Theologian says the gap between creature and God does not close at any height of rank. Even a mind "exalted to Angelic or Archangelic place and dignity" is in his words a being "far higher in nature and nearer to God than we," and yet "farther distant from God, and from the complete comprehension of His Nature, than it is lifted above our complex and lowly and earthward sinking composition."[^gnz-or28-3] Rank brings an angel nearer to God without making God comprehensible to him.
How an angel is made of whatever it is made of, and whether it has any kind of body, is a question on which the Fathers speak with care and not always alike. Basil says that "their substance is, perhaps, an aerial spirit, or an immaterial fire, as it is written, Who makes his angels spirits and his ministers a flame of fire; wherefore they exist in space and become visible, and appear in their proper bodily form to them that are worthy."[^basil-ds-16-fire] Damascus, working from the same Psalm, agrees that they are "a sort of spirit or immaterial fire," and adds that all we can understand is that "it is incorporeal and immaterial," since "all that is compared with God Who alone is incomparable, we find to be dense and material."[^dam-exp-2-3-incorp] Pomazansky's translation of the same passage puts the comparison both ways: "compared with us, the angel is said to be incorporeal and immaterial, although in comparison with God ... everything proves to be gross and material."[^pomaz-angelic] Where Damascus parts from Basil is over the appearances, for when angels show themselves to the worthy, "it is not as they really are that they reveal themselves ... but in a changed form which the beholders are capable of seeing."[^dam-exp-2-3-form] He has Scripture behind him in Tobit, where Raphael says, "All these days I did appear unto you; but I did neither eat nor drink, but ye did see a vision" (Tobit 12.18-19).
Gregory the Theologian himself will not decide. Angels, he says, may be "intelligent Spirits, or ... Fire of an immaterial and incorruptible kind, or ... some other nature approaching this as near as may be."[^gnz-or38-ix-spl] Augustine hesitates over the same Psalm: whether "His ministers a flaming fire" speaks of their bodies, "or means that God's ministers ought to blaze with love as with a spiritual fire, is doubtful," though the same Scripture "testifies that angels have appeared to men in such bodies as could not only be seen, but also touched."[^aug-cog-15-23-body] None of the four gives angels flesh like ours, and Damascus names the limit plainly: the Creator alone knows the form and limitation of an angel's essence.
The Ranks
Scripture speaks of angels and of archangels (1 Thessalonians 4.16; Jude 1.9), of seraphim and cherubim, and, in Paul's lists, of thrones, dominions, principalities and powers. St. Gregory the Great, as Pomazansky reports him, counts nine ranks by adding up the names Scripture uses, and the Church usually follows that count, setting the nine in three triads according to the Celestial Hierarchy attributed to St. Dionysius the Areopagite; the fuller account is in The Heavenly Hierarchy.[^pomaz-angelic] Dionysius himself gives the first rank as the Thrones and the many-eyed and many-winged Cherubim and Seraphim, the second as the Powers, Virtues and Dominions, and "the last and lowest choirs" as Angels, Archangels and Principalities.[^dion-ch-6-triads] Damascus, who says he is giving Dionysius's division, names the Seraphim, Cherubim and Thrones nearest God; then the Dominions, Powers and Authorities; and last the Rulers, Archangels and Angels.[^dam-exp-2-3-orders] Pomazansky's list, drawn from the Orthodox Confession, has Authorities, Dominions and Powers in the middle and Angels, Archangels and Principalities at the bottom, and the Menaion for the Archangels' feast names the Virtues in place of one of these.[^pomaz-angelic][^menaion-nov8] All of them keep the number nine and the three triads; they differ in the names of the middle and lowest ranks, and the English names do not match even where one writer reports another, since the translation of Dionysius quoted here has Virtues where the translation of Damascus has Authorities.
Those who write about the orders are cautious about them. Dionysius begins his chapter on the orders by saying that "none but the Divine Creator by whom they were ordained is able to know fully the number and the nature of the supermundane Beings,"[^dion-ch-6] and he prefaces the list that follows with a refusal to speak "as from ourselves." Chrysostom, commenting on Paul's phrase "every name that is named, not only in this age, but also in that which is to come" (Ephesians 1.21), makes the same admission from the other side of the lists: "Therefore powers there are whose names are to us unintelligible, and unknown."[^chrys-eph-3] Pomazansky quotes Augustine saying it in the first person: "I believe unwaveringly" that there are thrones, dominions, principalities and authorities, "but of what sort they are, and in precisely what way they are distinguished among themselves, I do not know."[^pomaz-angelic]
The Angels Who Fell
Not every angel stayed. Damascus says of the devil that he "was not made wicked in nature but was good, and made for good ends," and that "of his free choice" he "was changed from what was in harmony to what was at variance with his nature." Evil, on his account, "is nothing else than absence of goodness, just as darkness also is absence of light."[^dam-exp-2-4] Gregory the Theologian names the leader of the rebellion, "for his splendour was called Lucifer, but became and is called Darkness through his pride."[^gnz-or38-ix-fall] The Lord says, "I saw Satan having fallen like lightning from heaven" (Luke 10.18); Jude and Peter speak of "angels who didn't keep their first domain" (Jude 1.6) and of those whom God "cast down to Tartarus" (2 Peter 2.4).
Damascus draws one conclusion from this about the nature of the fall, which distinguishes it from ours: "what in the case of man is death is a fall in the case of angels. For after the fall there is no possibility of repentance for them, just as after death there is for men no repentance." The reason, Damascus says, is that the angelic nature "is not susceptible of repentance because it is incorporeal. For it is owing to the weakness of his body that man comes to have repentance."[^dam-exp-2-3-repent][^dam-exp-2-4-fall] Because the demons "have no power or strength against any one except what God in His dispensation has conceded to them," as in the case of Job, they remain creatures, never rivals of God.[^dam-exp-2-4-power] The detailed treatment of the devil and his host belongs to Satan and Demons; the story of how the powers set over the nations rebelled is told in The Divine Council.
The Sons of God and the Watchers
One passage in Genesis has divided readers since the Church began, and the angels are at the center of it. In the Septuagint "the sons of God having seen the daughters of men that they were beautiful, took to themselves wives of all whom they chose," and giants were born (Genesis 6.2; see The Sons of God and Nephilim). Two second-century writers read the "sons of God" as angels. Justin says that God "committed the care of men and of all things under heaven to angels whom He appointed over them. But the angels transgressed this appointment, and were captivated by love of women, and begot children who are those that are called demons."[^justin-2apol-5] Athenagoras, in his plea to the emperors, says the same of angels who "fell into impure love of virgins, and were subjugated by the flesh," and from whom "were begotten those who are called giants."[^athenagoras-24] Jude and Peter also speak of angels who sinned: Jude of angels who "deserted their own dwelling place" and are kept "in everlasting bonds under darkness" (Jude 1.6), Peter of angels in "pits of darkness to be reserved for judgment" (2 Peter 2.4). Neither verse mentions Genesis 6, and whether they point to it is itself a question, as Augustine's reading below shows.
A second reading is attested by the early third century. Julius Africanus, who found "the angels of heaven" in his text and "the sons of God" in some copies, held that the Spirit means the descendants of Seth, "on account of the righteous men and patriarchs who have sprung from him," and the descendants of Cain "the seed of men." He allows that if angels are meant at all they must be "those who deal with magic and jugglery," who taught the women the motions of the stars.[^africanus-fr2] In John Cassian's Conferences the abbot Serenus answers a question on the passage by saying, "We cannot possibly believe that spiritual existences can have carnal intercourse with women," and then explains the text through the line of Seth.[^cassian-conf-8] Augustine too reads it so. Of the spirits "embodied in an aerial substance" whom common report makes the assailants of women, he says "I dare not determine" whether there are any; but "certainly I could by no means believe that God's holy angels could at that time have so fallen," and he will not allow that Peter's "angels that sinned" are these, taking them to be the devil and those who apostatized with him.[^aug-cog-15-23-holy] The Sons of God traces how the Sethite view came to prevail in later centuries.
The Book of Enoch, which tells the angelic story at length (see The Watchers), is quoted by Jude: "About these also Enoch, the seventh from Adam, prophesied, saying, 'Behold, the Lord came with ten thousands of his holy ones ...'" (Jude 1.14-15). Origen, answering Celsus, says of the writings under Enoch's name that they "do not at all circulate in the Churches as divine."[^origen-cels-5-54] OrthodoxWiki notes that 1 Enoch is not part of the canon of Scripture for the larger Christian Churches, though the Ethiopian Orthodox Church and some other groups regard parts or all of it as inspired.[^orthodoxwiki-enoch] Enoch gives the story of the man himself, and The Watchers sets out what the Book of Enoch and the Book of Daniel say about the "watchers." Daniel's own "watcher and an holy one" who comes down from heaven in the Greek text (Daniel 4.13-14) is a holy angel, a plain case that "watcher" is not in itself a name for a fallen one. Jude and Peter attest a real angelic fall (see the section above); whether Genesis 6 describes it is the point on which the writers cited here differ.
Angels at Worship
The angels' first work is worship, and the Church's own worship is built to join theirs. The seraphim's cry in Isaiah 6, "Holy, holy, holy," is the cry the people take up in the great prayer of the Liturgy of St. James, and the Trisagion ("Holy God, Holy Mighty, Holy Immortal") has an origin the Church has explained from the angels. St. John of Damascus tells the story that the people of Constantinople, praying in a time of calamity, found that a boy "was snatched up from among the people, and was taught by angelic teachers the Thrice Holy Hymn," and on his return taught it to all, after which the calamity ended; the hymn, he adds, was "taught us by the angels" and, as he tells it, was sung in that form at the Council of Chalcedon, and "sung first by the Seraphim as a declaration of the three subsistences of the Godhead."[^dam-exp-3-10] Damascus reads the threefold "holy" of the seraphim as pointing to the three Persons and the one "Lordship" as pointing to the one God.
The Cherubic Hymn is more openly an angelic song. Its words, as OrthodoxWiki gives them, are: "We, who mystically represent the Cherubim, / And chant the thrice-holy hymn to the Life-giving Trinity, / Let us set aside the cares of life / That we may receive the King of all, / Who comes invisibly escorted by the Divine Hosts."[^orthodoxwiki-cherubic] It is sung while the gifts are carried in procession, and it says that the assembly on earth stands in the place of the cherubim. In the Liturgy of St. James, the priest's prayer lists the whole heavenly company before the Sanctus: "angels, archangels, thrones, dominions, principalities, and authorities, and dread powers; and the many-eyed cherubim, and the six-winged seraphim, which cover their faces with two wings, their feet with two, and with two they fly."[^liturgy-james] (For the shape of the Liturgy see Divine Liturgy and Worship.)
The Church also keeps a feast of the angels, the Synaxis of the Archangel Michael and the other Bodiless Powers, on 8 November. The synaxarion as the Orthodox Church in America gives it says that the day was set by the Council of Laodicea, whose 35th canon, it says, "condemned and denounced as heretical the worship of angels as gods and rulers of the world, but affirmed their proper veneration," and that November, the ninth month from March, was chosen because there are nine ranks and the eighth day of the month stands for the Last Day, when the Son of Man comes "and all the holy Angels with him."[^oca-synaxis] That is the synaxarion's account. The canon's own wording is not quoted, and the synaxarion's placement of the council "several years before the First Ecumenical Council" differs from the date of about 363 given elsewhere, which falls after Nicaea.[^laodicea-date] The hymns of the day make the same point twice over, calling Christ the one "who united the things of earth with those of heaven, and brought to completion one Church of Angels and of mortals," and asking the angels to intercede.[^menaion-nov8]
Honour that is not worship
Paul warns the Colossians against being robbed of their prize "by self-abasement and worshiping of the angels, dwelling in the things which he has not seen" (Colossians 2.18). St. John Chrysostom, explaining the verse, says the problem was a theory about access: "There are some who maintain that we must be brought near by Angels, not by Christ, that were too great a thing for us." Paul therefore turns the argument back to what Christ has done "through the Blood of His Cross."[^chrys-col-7] In Revelation, John himself twice falls at an angel's feet and twice is stopped: "Look! Don't do it! I am a fellow bondservant with you ... Worship God" (Revelation 19.10; Revelation 22.8-9).
How can the Church then honour angels, ask their prayers, and paint them? Damascus gives the distinction, and uses the angel in Joshua to illustrate it: "Jesus son of Nave and Daniel worshipped an angel of God; they did not adore him. The worship of latreia is one thing, and the worship which is given to merit another."[^dam-apol-1] "Latreia" is the adoration owed to God alone; the lower honour may be shown to anyone or anything God has made holy. In the same work he writes, "I venerate and worship angels and men, and all matter participating in divine power and ministering to our salvation through it." The translation uses one English word, "worship," for both kinds of service, and the distinction he draws above, latreia against the worship given to merit, shows which he gives to angels. Of the holy places and things he lists just before, he says he cherishes them "not on their own account but because they show forth the divine power."[^dam-apol-3-482] The Second Council of Nicaea fixed the same distinction in its definition: veneration "being a word of wide meaning is an ambiguous term," but of the word for service, "to God alone do we render latria."[^nicaea-ii] The Catechism of Philaret answers the obvious objection: honouring angels and holy men does not break the first commandment, "because in them we honor the grace of God which dwells and works in them, and through them seek help from God."[^philaret-cat] The Church's whole practice of asking the saints and angels to pray rests on this, and Invocation of Saints and The Divine Council show how it fits the picture of God's court.
Images of angels
Because the angels appear in Scripture in visible form, the Church paints them. The Second Council of Nicaea decreed that the icons of Christ, of the Mother of God, "and likewise those of the Holy Angels (for they have manifested themselves in human form to those who were counted worthy of the vision of them), or of any of the Saints" are to be kept and venerated.[^nicaea-ii] Damascus had made the case a generation earlier. Though "nothing physical or material may be attributed to an angel, a spirit, and a devil, yet they may be depicted and circumscribed after their own nature," as Moses did when he made the cherubim, "the material image offering them an immaterial and intellectual sight."[^dam-apol-3-229] He adds that the cherubim of the Ark were themselves icons of angels made by hands: "Were not the cherubim the icons of angels made by hands? Do you call them idols?"[^dam-apol-3-834] In the same spirit the synaxarion describes how the archangels are painted, each according to his service: Michael trampling the devil, Gabriel with a branch from Paradise, Raphael with a vessel of healing and leading Tobias.[^oca-synaxis] The full argument is in Icons and St. John of Damascus.
Guardian Angels
The Lord's own words are the foundation of the Church's belief that each person has an angel: "See that you don't despise one of these little ones, for I tell you that in heaven their angels always see the face of my Father who is in heaven" (Matthew 18.10). When Peter, freed from prison, knocks at the house of the praying disciples and the servant girl says he is at the door, they answer her, "It is his angel" (Acts 12.15), which shows how natural the belief already was. The Psalm adds, "he shall give his angels charge concerning thee, to keep thee in all thy ways" (Psalm 91.11), and Philaret's Catechism, asked whether each of us has a guardian angel, answers "Without doubt" and points to the Lord's words in Matthew 18.10.[^philaret-cat]
The belief is old. The Shepherd of Hermas, a Christian writing of the second century, says that "there are two angels with a man--one of righteousness, and the other of iniquity," and teaches the reader to tell them apart by the thoughts each brings: the angel of righteousness comes "gentle and modest, meek and peaceful," while the other is "wrathful, and bitter, and foolish."[^hermas-m6] The book is not Scripture, and the picture of two angels is its own; still, it shows a second-century Christian writer taking for granted that an angel attends each man. St. Basil, arguing that the Spirit is the witness to be called on with heaven and earth, remarks in passing that "the apostle, knowing the angels to be set over men as tutors and guardians, calls them to witness."[^basil-ds-13] Origen, in his Commentary on Matthew, goes further and asks when the angel is assigned: whether the "little ones" receive their angel at the laver of baptism, or "from birth ... according to the foreknowledge and predestination of God."[^origen-mt-13] He asks the question; none of the other Fathers quoted above takes it up.
Angels are also set over larger charges. Damascus says that the good angels "are the guardians of the divisions of the earth: they are set over nations and regions, allotted to them by their Creator: they govern all our affairs and bring us succour."[^dam-exp-2-3-guard] Daniel's "prince of the kingdom of the Persians" and "Michael your prince" are the scriptural basis (Daniel 10.20-21), and Athenagoras describes the angels' office as "to exercise providence for God over the things created and ordered by Him; so that God may have the universal and general providence of the whole, while the particular parts are provided for by the angels appointed over them."[^athenagoras-24] The Church asks for this care in the petition of her litanies for "an angel of peace, a faithful guide, a guardian of our souls and bodies."[^orthodoxwiki-guardian]
The Angels and the Lord
At the Annunciation Gabriel is sent and Mary is told what will happen (Luke 1.26-28); Damascus, narrating the Incarnation, begins his account with the sentence, "The angel of the Lord was sent to the Holy Virgin."[^dam-exp-3-2] Paul gives the fullest reason that this is a matter for angels as well as for us: the mystery of godliness was "seen by angels" (1 Timothy 3.16), and Peter says that the angels "desire to look into" what was announced (1 Peter 1.12). Gregory the Theologian, preaching on the Lord's birth, imagines this joy as shared by the angels, noting that Christ "calls together His Angel friends on the finding of the coin, and makes them sharers in His joy, whom He had made to share also the secret of the Incarnation."[^gnz-or38-xiv] The Church sings, in the same spirit, that the mystery "unknown to Angels" has been revealed to those on earth through the Mother of God.[^menaion-nov8]
At the Resurrection the angel says "He is not here, for he has risen" (Matthew 28.2-7). At the Ascension, two men in white stand by the disciples and say, "This Jesus, who was received up from you into the sky, will come back in the same way as you saw him going into the sky" (Acts 1.10-11). St. Cyril of Jerusalem, instructing his candidates, counts the angels among the witnesses of the Ascension ("you have also for witnesses the Angels which there bore testimony"), and tells them to remember "that the divine powers also said to one another, Lift up your gates, you Princes."[^cyril-cat-14] Cyril thus hears the Psalm's call as spoken among the heavenly powers at the Lord's return (see The Ascension of Christ).
The same angels will accompany Him at the end: "when the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the holy angels with him, then he will sit on the throne of his glory" (Matthew 25.31), and the Lord will descend "with the voice of the archangel and with God's trumpet" (1 Thessalonians 4.16). Cyril sets this against the first coming in one sentence: "In His first coming, He endured the Cross, despising shame; in His second, He comes attended by a host of Angels, receiving glory."[^cyril-cat-15-1] The synaxarion's choice of the eighth day for the angels' feast is built on the same verse.[^oca-synaxis] So the angels who praised God over the shepherds' field and spoke at the tomb are the ones who will come with the Judge.
Angels and Human Beings
The Psalm says of man, "Thou madest him a little less than angels, thou hast crowned him with glory and honour" (Psalm 8.5), and Hebrews reads it of Jesus, "who has been made a little lower than the angels" for the suffering of death (Hebrews 2.5-9). The same chapter says that "he didn't subject the world to come ... to angels" (Hebrews 2.5) and that "he doesn't give help to angels, but he gives help to the offspring of Abraham" (Hebrews 2.16). And Paul tells the Corinthians, "Don't you know that we will judge angels?" (1 Corinthians 6.3).
St. John Chrysostom, preaching on Hebrews 2, is astonished by what it implies. Christ took human nature, and so "our flesh should sit on high, and be adored by Angels and Archangels, by the Cherubim and the Seraphim. For myself having oftentimes thought upon this, I am amazed at it, and imagine to myself great things concerning the human race."[^chrys-heb-5] On Ephesians, preaching on the same theme, he draws the practical lesson: "we ought to be better, yea, than the very angels, and greater than the Archangels, in that we have been honored above them all."[^chrys-eph-3-better] Damascus puts the same truth in the language of participation. "The angels did not participate in the divine nature, but in working and in grace. Now, men do participate, and become partakers of the divine nature when they receive the holy Body of Christ and drink His Blood." In itself our nature is far from theirs, "on account of death and the heaviness of the body, but through God's goodness and its union with Him it has become higher than the angels."[^dam-apol-3-317] This is the doctrine of Theosis seen from the angels' side: the creature that was made lower is raised, through the Incarnation, into a nature that Damascus calls "higher than the angels."
Before that happens, the Fathers see man and angel as close kin. Gregory the Theologian describes the first man as "a new Angel, a mingled worshipper, fully initiated into the visible creation, but only partially into the intellectual," a being who joins the two worlds in one person.[^gnz-or38-xi] St. Gregory of Nyssa takes the Lord's saying that the saints will be "like the angels" (Luke 20.36) and argues backwards: "the life of those restored is closely related to that of the angels," so "it is clear that the life before the transgression was a kind of angelic life."[^nyssa-making-17] He adds that whatever the manner of increase among the angels may be, it is "unspeakable and inconceivable by human conjectures." These writers treat humans and angels as the two halves of one worshipping creation, the "one Church of Angels and of mortals" of the hymn above. Pomazansky adds that the saints in heaven "are equal unto the angels," which is why asking their prayers and asking the angels' stand on the same ground (see The Divine Council and The Image of God).[^pomaz-communion]
What the Church Leaves Open
The Fathers and texts cited above agree on a firm centre. Angels exist; God made them; they are intelligent and free, and not divine; some fell and the rest worship; they serve us, and may be honoured but not worshipped.[^pomaz-angelic][^philaret-cat][^nicaea-ii] Around that centre the writers diverge or confess ignorance. Justin, Irenaeus and Hilary see the Son in the visitor at Mamre where Augustine sees only angels. On whether angels have any kind of body, Gregory the Theologian and Augustine will not decide, while Basil and Damascus, who agree on "immaterial fire," differ over how angels look when they appear. Damascus records that some placed the angels' making before the other created things and others after the first heaven, though all, he says, are agreed that it was before man. The orders are listed in more than one way, and Dionysius and Augustine both say they cannot fully know them. Origen asks when each person's angel is assigned, and no other Father cited above answers. Justin and Athenagoras read Genesis 6 of angels, and Africanus, Cassian and Augustine of the line of Seth.
The angels are the Church's companions in worship, "serving spirits, sent out to do service for the sake of those who will inherit salvation" (Hebrews 1.14). The Church asks their help the way she asks the help of any friend of God, and then turns, with them, to the Trinity they are praying to: to the God whom the seraphim hail as thrice holy in the Liturgy and whom the Fathers confess in The Trinity, to the Lord whom they escort in the Ascension and the Second Coming, and to the human beings whom, as Theosis teaches, He is raising above their rank.
Sources
[^pomaz-angelic]: Michael Pomazansky, Orthodox Dogmatic Theology, "The Angelic World" (on the name, the creation, nature and limits, ranks, named angels, and guardian angels; quoting Gregory the Theologian, Basil, John of Damascus, Cyril of Jerusalem, Chrysostom, Gregory the Great and Augustine). [^pomaz-communion]: Michael Pomazansky, Orthodox Dogmatic Theology, "Communion with the Saints." [^philaret-cat]: Metropolitan Philaret of Moscow, The Longer Catechism of the Orthodox, Catholic, Eastern Church, qq. 99–110 (the angels; guardian angels) and q. 515 (honouring angels and the first commandment). [^aug-cog-15-23]: Augustine, The City of God — Book 15 23.3 (De civitate Dei 15.23). [^aug-cog-15-23-body]: Augustine, The City of God — Book 15 23.4 and The City of God — Book 15 23.5 (De civitate Dei 15.23). [^aug-cog-15-23-holy]: Augustine, The City of God — Book 15 23.7 (De civitate Dei 15.23). [^aug-cog-16-29]: Augustine, The City of God — Book 16 29.1 (De civitate Dei 16.29). [^gnz-or38-ix]: Gregory of Nazianzus, Select Orations — Oration 38 0.81 (Oration 38.9). [^gnz-or38-ix-spl]: Gregory of Nazianzus, Select Orations — Oration 38 0.83 (Oration 38.9). [^gnz-or38-ix-fall]: Gregory of Nazianzus, Select Orations — Oration 38 0.84 (Oration 38.9). [^gnz-or38-xi]: Gregory of Nazianzus, Select Orations — Oration 38 0.97 (Oration 38.11). [^gnz-or38-xiv]: Gregory of Nazianzus, Select Orations — Oration 38 0.128 (Oration 38.14). [^gnz-or28-3]: Gregory of Nazianzus, Select Orations — Oration 28 0.20 and Select Orations — Oration 28 0.21 (Oration 28.3). [^menaion-nov8]: Menaion for 8 November, Synaxis of the Archangels Michael and Gabriel and the other Bodiless Powers (Vespers, Matins and Liturgy), tr. Archimandrite Ephrem Lash (Anastasis). [^oca-synaxis]: Orthodox Church in America, Life of the Synaxis of the Archangel Michael and the Other Bodiless Powers (8 November). [^laodicea-date]: "On the reception into the Orthodox Church" (fatheralexander.org booklet on the canons for receiving converts), on the Local Council of Laodicea (c. 363). [^hilary-trin-4]: Hilary of Poitiers, On the Trinity 4.230, On the Trinity 4.231, On the Trinity 4.274 (De Trinitate 4.23–26). [^justin-trypho-56]: Justin Martyr, Dialogue with Trypho 56.6 (Dialogue with Trypho 56). [^justin-2apol-5]: Justin Martyr, The Second Apology of St. Justin Martyr 5.2 (Second Apology 5). [^iren-dem-44]: Irenaeus, The Demonstration of the Apostolic Preaching 44.5 (Demonstration of the Apostolic Preaching 44). [^iren-dem-45]: Irenaeus, The Demonstration of the Apostolic Preaching 45.5 (Demonstration of the Apostolic Preaching 45). [^chrys-john-15]: John Chrysostom, Homilies on the Gospel of John — Homily 15 3.11 (Homilies on John 15). [^ath-or3-25]: Athanasius, Four Discourses Against the Arians — Discourse Iii 25.56, Four Discourses Against the Arians — Discourse Iii 25.57, Four Discourses Against the Arians — Discourse Iii 25.61, Four Discourses Against the Arians — Discourse Iii 25.62 (Orations against the Arians 3.25). [^ath-or3-25-gm]: Athanasius, Four Discourses Against the Arians — Discourse Iii 25.58, Four Discourses Against the Arians — Discourse Iii 25.59 (Orations against the Arians 3.25). [^ath-or3-25-creature]: Athanasius, Four Discourses Against the Arians — Discourse Iii 25.60 (Orations against the Arians 3.25). [^basil-hex-1-5]: Basil of Caesarea, Hexaemeron — Homily I 5.1 and Hexaemeron — Homily I 5.3 (Hexaemeron 1.5). [^basil-ds-16]: Basil of Caesarea, De Spiritu Sancto 16.19 (On the Holy Spirit 16). [^basil-ds-16-fire]: Basil of Caesarea, De Spiritu Sancto 16.34 (On the Holy Spirit 16). [^basil-ds-13]: Basil of Caesarea, De Spiritu Sancto 13.18 (On the Holy Spirit 13). [^dam-exp-2-3-def]: John of Damascus, An Exposition of the Orthodox Faith — Book II 3.2 (Exact Exposition 2.3). [^dam-exp-2-3-immortal]: John of Damascus, An Exposition of the Orthodox Faith — Book II 3.12 (Exact Exposition 2.3). [^dam-exp-2-3-place]: John of Damascus, An Exposition of the Orthodox Faith — Book II 3.17 (Exact Exposition 2.3). [^dam-exp-2-3-form]: John of Damascus, An Exposition of the Orthodox Faith — Book II 3.19 (Exact Exposition 2.3). [^dam-exp-2-3-incorp]: John of Damascus, An Exposition of the Orthodox Faith — Book II 3.1, An Exposition of the Orthodox Faith — Book II 3.3, An Exposition of the Orthodox Faith — Book II 3.4 (Exact Exposition 2.3). [^dam-exp-2-3-guard]: John of Damascus, An Exposition of the Orthodox Faith — Book II 3.31 (Exact Exposition 2.3). [^dam-exp-2-3-order]: John of Damascus, An Exposition of the Orthodox Faith — Book II 3.42 and An Exposition of the Orthodox Faith — Book II 3.46 (Exact Exposition 2.3). [^dam-exp-2-3-creators]: John of Damascus, An Exposition of the Orthodox Faith — Book II 3.48 (Exact Exposition 2.3). [^dam-exp-2-3-orders]: John of Damascus, An Exposition of the Orthodox Faith — Book II 3.38 and An Exposition of the Orthodox Faith — Book II 3.41 (Exact Exposition 2.3). [^dam-exp-2-3-repent]: John of Damascus, An Exposition of the Orthodox Faith — Book II 3.10 (Exact Exposition 2.3). [^dam-exp-2-4]: John of Damascus, An Exposition of the Orthodox Faith — Book II 4.1 and An Exposition of the Orthodox Faith — Book II 4.3 (Exact Exposition 2.4). [^dam-exp-2-4-fall]: John of Damascus, An Exposition of the Orthodox Faith — Book II 4.17 (Exact Exposition 2.4). [^dam-exp-2-4-power]: John of Damascus, An Exposition of the Orthodox Faith — Book II 4.8 (Exact Exposition 2.4). [^dam-exp-3-2]: John of Damascus, An Exposition of the Orthodox Faith — Book Iii 2.1 (Exact Exposition 3.2). [^dam-exp-3-10]: John of Damascus, An Exposition of the Orthodox Faith — Book Iii 10.13 and An Exposition of the Orthodox Faith — Book Iii 10.15 (Exact Exposition 3.10). [^dam-apol-1]: John of Damascus, Apologia Against Those Who Decry Holy Icons — PART I 0.193 and Apologia Against Those Who Decry Holy Icons — PART I 0.195 (Three Treatises on the Divine Images 1, tr. Mary H. Allies). [^dam-apol-3-229]: John of Damascus, Apologia Against Those Who Decry Holy Icons — PART III 0.229 (Three Treatises on the Divine Images 3, tr. Allies). [^dam-apol-3-317]: John of Damascus, Apologia Against Those Who Decry Holy Icons — PART III 0.319, Apologia Against Those Who Decry Holy Icons — PART III 0.321, Apologia Against Those Who Decry Holy Icons — PART III 0.332 (Three Treatises on the Divine Images 3, tr. Allies). [^dam-apol-3-482]: John of Damascus, Apologia Against Those Who Decry Holy Icons — PART III 0.479 and Apologia Against Those Who Decry Holy Icons — PART III 0.482 (Three Treatises on the Divine Images 3, tr. Allies). [^dam-apol-3-834]: John of Damascus, Apologia Against Those Who Decry Holy Icons — PART III 0.834 (Three Treatises on the Divine Images 3, tr. Allies). [^nicaea-ii]: Second Council of Nicaea (787), definition and the argument on veneration and latreia. [^chrys-eph-3]: John Chrysostom, Homilies on Ephesians — Homily 3 0.106 (Homilies on Ephesians 3, on Eph. 1.21). [^chrys-eph-3-better]: John Chrysostom, Homilies on Ephesians — Homily 3 0.139 (Homilies on Ephesians 3). [^chrys-heb-5]: John Chrysostom, Homilies on Hebrews — Homily 5 1.12 (Homilies on Hebrews 5, on Heb. 2.16–17). [^chrys-col-7]: John Chrysostom, Homilies on Colossians — Homily 7 0.23 (Homilies on Colossians 7, on Col. 2.18). [^dion-ch-6]: Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, The Celestial Hierarchy — Chapter Vi 0.3 (Celestial Hierarchy 6). [^dion-ch-6-triads]: Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, The Celestial Hierarchy — Chapter Vi 0.22 and The Celestial Hierarchy — Chapter Vi 0.30 (Celestial Hierarchy 6). [^cyril-cat-14]: Cyril of Jerusalem, Catechetical Lectures — Lecture 14 23.7 and Catechetical Lectures — Lecture 14 24.5 (Catechetical Lectures 14.23–24). [^cyril-cat-15]: Cyril of Jerusalem, Catechetical Lectures — Lecture 15 24.5 (Catechetical Lectures 15.24). [^cyril-cat-15-1]: Cyril of Jerusalem, Catechetical Lectures — Lecture 15 1.5 (Catechetical Lectures 15.1). [^nyssa-making-17]: Gregory of Nyssa, On the Making of Man 17. [^origen-cels-5-54]: Origen, Contra Celsum — Book V 54.5 (Against Celsus 5.54). [^orthodoxwiki-enoch]: OrthodoxWiki, "Book of Enoch." [^origen-mt-13]: Origen, Commentary on Matthew 13.26–27. [^athenagoras-24]: Athenagoras of Athens, Plea for the Christians 24. [^africanus-fr2]: Julius Africanus, Chronography, fragment 2 (on Genesis 6). [^cassian-conf-8]: John Cassian, Conferences 8.20–21. [^hermas-m6]: The Shepherd of Hermas, Mandate (Commandment) 6.2. [^liturgy-james]: Liturgy of St. James, anaphora (the prayer before the Sanctus). [^orthodoxwiki-cherubic]: OrthodoxWiki, "Cherubic Hymn." [^orthodoxwiki-guardian]: OrthodoxWiki, "Guardian angel."