Systematic Theology (part 9)

All right, well, this morning we're going to go back to systematic theology. We have about a month-ish, yeah, I think we figured that out. About a month-ish, counting this, I think five more weeks of this, maybe six.

Session four today, session four on angels, angelology, angelology. Now, before I start, well, actually, first I want to read to you from Ezekiel, and we're going to talk about why we need to study angelology, why it's not so simple, right?

All right, we're going to read Ezekiel chapter one, just a part of it. As I looked, behold, a stormy wind came out of the north, and a great cloud with brightness around it, and fire flashing forth continually, and in the midst of the fire, as it were, gleaming metal.

And from the midst of it came the likeness of four living creatures. And this was their appearance. They had a human likeness, but each had four faces, and each of them had four wings. Their legs were straight, and the soles of their feet were like the sole of a calf's foot, and they sparkled like burnished bronze.

Under their wings, on their four sides, they had human hands. And on the four, they had their faces and their wings thus. Their wings touched one another. Each one of them went straight forward without turning as they went.

And as for the likeness of their faces, each had a human face. The four had the face of a lion on the right side. The four had the face of an ox on the left side, and the four had the face of an eagle.

Such were their faces. And their wings were spread out above. Each creature had two wings, each of which touched the wing of another, while two covered their bodies. And each went straight forward. Wherever the spirit would go, they went without turning as they went.

As for the likeness of the living creatures, their appearance was like burning coals of fire, like the appearance of torches moving to and fro among the living creatures. And the fire was bright, and out of the fire went forth lightning.

And the living creatures darted to and fro, like the appearance of a flash of lightning.". Sounds pretty clear, right? Very simple and easy to understand. Ezekiel here has one of the most fantastic and amazing visions of angelic creatures.

And there's so much in here that's both possibly literal, as he's just struggling to explain what he's seeing, in the same way that when we read Revelation, to tie it in to Tim last week, that, and John talks about his visions in Revelation, and you can almost get this sense of John just like struggling to find the words in his language to describe what it is he's seeing of heaven in the heavenly throne room.

In the same way, it's like Ezekiel is just like, I don't know, they kind of look like an ox and an eagle and a lion and a human all at the same time, right? And just really grasping for trying to describe it in any kind of language that we can understand.

So we're going to talk a lot today about angels, and Lord willing, we'll get all the way through it, but we'll see. It's a double-sided handout, so you all know what that means. But I want to start by doing a little bit of not systematic theology, but historical theology.

You might remember from way back when we first introduced this series that there's different types or approaches to studying theology. Systematic theology, the one we're doing, is exactly as the word sounds.

It is systematizing the science, and so you kind of go through various categories one at a time and explore them as they relate to one another, and you're not really worried about the order in which things appear in the Bible or in which they were revealed to us, but rather just simply doing that sort of categorizing thing.

Another way that you can approach theology is historical theology. Now, historical theology is really the study of how the Church and Israel before it has come to understand the Bible over time, and the development of our theological belief in understanding.

So let's do a little historical theology on angelology. We're going to just talk about the New Testament era, the Church era. One thing is pretty clear that from the very beginning of Church history, from the earliest Church fathers that we have writing on, that there's belief in angels.

That's never in dispute. The early Church fathers believed, and note as I kind of list these things off, there's going to be various aspects, which we'll keep coming back to throughout the lesson today, but I just want to sort of show you the development of things.

The early Church fathers believed that all angels were created good, that some fell, although interestingly, the early Church fathers had a two-fold fall. They believed that Satan fell first by pride, and that the other angels that fell fell later by lusting after human women, and that was from their interpretation of Genesis 6 -2, which we'll talk about a little bit more later.

They believed in guardian angels, talked a lot about them. They believed that angels had, this is an interesting term so I'll just quote it, fine ethereal bodies. Okay, not that they were just pure spirits, but they had fine ethereal bodies, something like some kind of really marvelous body.

And they also believed very strongly, and talked about it a lot, the idea that fallen angels, demons, were responsible for almost all the calamities in the world. Any kind of natural disaster or terrible circumstance occurring, it was always, or almost always, the fallen angels to blame who were behind it.

So that's the early Church fathers. Now by the time we get to the Middle Ages, Thomas Aquinas, a few other folks like that in the, say, like 800s through 1300s, there's more emphasis on the division of angels into classes and ranks.

They get really into this, trying to break it down and create the angel org chart. This is where we first read about and hear the notion of perseverance of angels, that those who did not follow Satan are gifted the gift of perseverance by God.

They were all created in a state of what they called natural perfection, but only natural perfection, which means that there was, there doesn't seem to be really an understanding or any talk of elect angels, right?

That there wasn't election of angels, but rather they just all had this original state of righteousness and the free will to choose one or the other. All of them, by the time we get to the Middle Ages now, we're all talking about all angels falling because of pride.

Isaiah 14 becomes the big feature text when it comes to demons, and it's the story of Satan's fall. Don't worry, don't try to take notes on this. We're going to come back to all this. We're just running through it real quick.

And also, now we're not talking about bodies anymore. Now we're saying that they're incorporeal, but still limited in a place. And the Middle Age theologians were sort of divided over whether angels were capable of learning.

All right? There were some schools of thought that they were created with all the knowledge they would ever have, and there was other schools that said, no, they could, they were capable of learning new things, observing and learning new things.

Now we get to the Reformation. And in the Reformation, the big emphasis, especially with Luther and Calvin, as you can imagine, is that the emphasis is on Satan being under divine control, and that he can only work within prescribed limits, right?

And they go back repeatedly to Job, the story of Job and all that we hear in Job about, in the early chapters of Job, about Satan in God's throne room and the conversation that God and Satan have as sort of proof to that.

Very interestingly, Luther and Calvin both reject the idea that Isaiah 14 is referring to Satan. We're going to read Isaiah 14 later, and we'll talk about that. They're all divided, the Reformation theologians, about whether or not there's such a thing as guardian angels.

Good angels remained good by the grace of God. That's in the Belgic Confession. And by the time we were in the Reformation, all the theologians are saying that there's no bodies. They don't have bodies.

They're all incorporeal. They're all just spirit beings. And then finally, bringing up some modern times, we hear a lot more about the idea of the angels' fall is when they aspire to usurp God's authority.

We're back to being divided. It's a bit controversial now over whether or not they are corporeal, have a body or don't have a body. The ranks thing, especially, obviously, the ranks thing stays a big feature in Catholic theology.

But in Protestant theology, the emphasis now is on the types of ministries of angels as opposed to their ranks or types of like classes. And then, of course, the liberals, the liberal theologians, there's no such thing as angels, right?

But they're a symbolic representation of God's care. So there it is. So that was all that was a way for me to answer the first question on your handout, which is true or false. The church has had a consistent doctrine of angels throughout its history.

False. Right. Or you could add a new one. L .O .L. Ha ha. Right. Nope. Now, what was helpful about just before I move on, when we're doing systematic theology versus historical theology, what do you think was helpful about talking about all that from a historical theology standpoint?

Historically, knowing that there's been so many changes, it's obvious that we don't know. Right. We can't be very definitive necessarily about a lot of stuff when it comes to angelology. And historical, doing historical theology makes that very plain to us.

Other categories of systematic theology, we would see very little change over time in historical, when we use the historical theology method. And we'd be like, oh, this is then therefore more of a fundamental of the faith.

If it's never if there's been a generally consistent understanding of this doctrine all throughout history, at least of true believing Christians, then this obviously is a rock solid one. Whereas angelology, I think what you can understand is we'll be able to agree to disagree on this.

Right. As we go through it. What's lacking then when you talk about historical theology? Or when you use historical theology? What's kind of lacking in all that? Scripture? Sure. Well, that can also be true of systematic theology, to be totally honest.

But the right answer is kind of like the definitive answer, right? Like, well, which one of those? Who was right? And the truth is that, you know, if I take this historical theology and apply it to a different category, I don't have an example off the top of my head, but you might actually come to the conclusion and say, like, you know what?

I actually think the early church fathers had it the most right. Right. Versus modern theologians. So, you know, historical theology doesn't necessarily lead you to the correct or most correct answer every time.

When you follow. All right. That's just very briefly just wanted a quick thought about that stuff. But let's get into angels. All right. Let's get into angels. Number two, I did mention it in my quick rundown there.

But which famous theologians believe that Isaiah 14 is not referring to Satan? Luther and Calvin. Not exactly. You know, unheard of guys, right? Obscure dudes. Yeah. Luther and Calvin both. And we're going to get into the implications of that, why they thought that and and what the implications of are of that.

But we'll get into that a little bit. All right. First off, let's talk about we're going to now go systematic on the angels. And we're going to start with their creation. Okay. Their creation. All right.

The Creation of Angels

Number one, by the fact that I said there are part one by the fact that I said that they are created. Right. Let's make that very clear. Angels are created. They are created beings. Psalm 148, Colossians 1.

They make it very clear that angels are created beings. And in Hebrews, it's one of the things that becomes pretty obvious when the author of Hebrews is talking about why Jesus is greater than the angels.

Jesus being, you know, preexistent, whereas the angels being created. Now, this makes them immortal. But not eternal. Okay. That's the that's the right way to think about it. They're immortal, but not eternal.

We also are immortal. Right. We are immortal. Are we have an earthly life that is going to pass and end and that makes us mortal. But in another sense, we are immortal in that we will all have an eternal life, an eternal destiny.

Right. And but we are not eternal in the strictest sense of the term, because in the strictest sense of the term, it's eternal as both directions. Right. And so thus only God is eternal in the past and also eternal in the future.

We're just in the one direction. Now, when were angels created? When were angels created? This is a very interesting question. Turn to Job 38, please. Could somebody read Job 38, verse 7? Job 38, verse 7.

And somebody else can turn to Genesis 1 .1. I know that's really hard to find in your Bible. Who's going to make it to Job 38, 7 first? Ah, Savannah, thank you. Right. Actually, you know, back up and read verse 6, too.

Just right. OK, so what those verses are is God talking to Job about the creation of the world. And he's in and verse 6 was about how when he's laying the foundations of the earth. And then there's this mention of that the stars of the morning, right, are singing as God is doing that.

So who are the stars? What's the stars? Well, that is a reference to angels, to spirit beings. In fact, you're going to see on a bunch of our texts as we read them or you go back to look at them later, that angels are very often described as stars.

Right. Stars of the morning or just stars of heaven, etc. And so we have this sense that the angels are singing at the creation of the world. OK, well, in Genesis, when is the world created? What's that?

In the beginning. OK, yes. Which day? This is a trick question. Which day? Day zero. Yeah. Day one. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. Boom. Right there. The earth. A lot of people will say day three because that's when land appears.

No, no. It's already there in day one. But that's OK. But let's. We'll be flexible and we'll say maybe that part of Job is talking about day three. OK, so we got to at least, as I put on question three on the handout, say that at the least we know from this and there are also several references in Psalms that the angels were around to see creation on at least day three, if not day one.

OK, but but theologians almost always apply Genesis one one to the creation, not just of the material, but also the spiritual world. Now, when it says that God created the heavens and the earth, that they read heavens there as not just, you know, outer space, the sky and outer space, but also the spiritual realm, which means that God created the spirit realm, the spirit world on day one or day zero or whatever you want to say there.

Right. So we we know that they were created pretty much right in that little sliver of space. Right. Genesis doesn't get into it. It doesn't say. And on day one, he also created angels. But we can infer from these other texts that it was probably right there at the very, very beginning.

And they're already singing right from the get go. OK. All right, so that's when they were created. Now, what were they created unto? What do what did they become? Let's talk about their nature and their form.

So I mentioned a lot in the historical thing about the push and pull about whether they're incorporeal, I can't say that today, whether they have a body or they don't have a body, or I'm just going to say that the rest of the way, whether they have a body or they don't have a body, are they pure spirit or or are they, you know, body too?

I would say Birkhoff settles on that they do not have a body, but they are present. OK, it's a very interesting distinction. And this is done to contrast them with God, who also is a spirit and does not have a being.

But as a result of his spirit nature, he is omnipresent, right? He is everywhere. Angels and demons both are not omnipresent. They have a space in some way, shape or form. They are here and not there.

OK, but they don't have a body. Luke 24, 39, pretty clear that Jesus teaching that they don't have flesh in Matthew 22, which is almost like a side note in his fight with the Sadducees over the resurrection.

The Sadducees try to trap him with that question on the hypothetical woman who marries seven different brothers. Whose husband is she going to be? And they say that, hey, they're going to be just like the angels where they are not married nor given in marriage.

Like, oh, well, there's something to know about the angels, right? They do not marry. Probably also means that they don't have gender. There's in every case we always see angels described as he. OK, using the masculine pronoun.

So they're probably just all he or that's maybe not even really the right way to, but to anthropomorphize them slightly, they're male. Luke 8, when we hear about Legion possessing the one man, we know from that that a great number of them can be in a tight space.

Right. So if they had a body of some form, you would think that would limit them from being able to pack themselves in. And now we get into that great, deep theological controversy of how many angels can dance on the head of a pin.

Right. Six, six. Pastor Steve says six. There you go. They're also invisible. Colossians one. But even though Colossians 116 tells us they're invisible, we also obviously know from what I read this morning already, they can appear in Ezekiel.

Lots of appearing in Genesis repeatedly. There are angels who appear to the patriarchs. Luke in Luke, we we they are seen right. What's not clear in all of those passages about visible angels is whether they themselves can make themselves appear and disappear or if it's God who makes them visible.

So like, did OK, so I would say from everything I read that the there's no. I guess we could leave it open to the possibility, but there's no mention of any likes later creation of angels that they all their original number is their number.

So we don't they're not being added to over time after that. So that's it. So it's just. They started out with some innumerable number and that's it. Yeah. Except time. How do you apply time? Oh, yeah.

Andrews read my notes later on. I'm going to talk about that part. But yeah, Brian. Right. If there was if there was a change in numbers. Right. Yeah. We'd be adjusting the fraction all the time. Right.

So, yeah, exactly. Yeah. All right. So, oh, also, by the way, we can one other reason why we can say that they have some kind of presence or they're in a location is that they cannot be in two places at once.

Daniel 10 talks about the trouble that one messenger angel has with getting to Daniel. Right. He like test it like, Daniel, I've been trying to get here to you ever since you prayed for some understanding and God sent me.

But it took me a while to get here because a demon was slowing me down and I needed Michael's help in order to overcome him and make it to you. All right. Well, if angels could be everywhere at once or could teleport themselves like what?

What? Right. Why would that be a problem? Right. So there's there's clearly some sense in which they need to be able to travel. They might be able to do it really fast, but there's still a traveling that has to happen.

OK, so this is where we get into the Latin terms on question four on your handout, Ubi Definitivum, Ubi Repletivum and Ubi Circumscriptivum. OK. All right. Only one of these is the proper Latin term to describe the form of angels.

Ubi Definitivum is the idea of it means that you so Ubi, by the way, is place. I mean, but it actually it's a cool Latin word and that it can mean both where or when. Which is great, because I think that's really true here when we're talking about angels, we're talking about both their where and their when.

Right. Their space time location to nerd out on you a little bit. All right. So Ubi Definitivum means they have a defined where and when would mean. OK, I'm going to give you the three meanings and you're going to tell me which one it is.

All right. Ubi Repletivum would mean that they fill a place. And Ubi Circumscriptivum would mean that they surround or define a boundary of a place. So given all the stuff that I have talked to you about, that they don't have a body and all that other thing, which which of these three terms do you think is the correct one?

Cheryl, the fill a place one. OK, Janet, you think it's the first one that they just have a defined place? Yeah. Anybody else, anybody want to guess the third one and we'll go for the full house? All right.

It is the first one. It's the first one. Ubi Definitivum. It's just like it's basically where Burkoff says it's all we can really say is they've got some kind of defined when and where, but they don't fill it or occupy it or because they don't have a body that to have to fill it would require a form, a body, and to even circumscribe it would mean they have some kind of physical nature, which they just don't seem to have.

Yeah, maybe. Yeah. We're very much in the we don't know situation. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. They were there. Right. They were there with you. It looked like a man in white. Yeah, correct. And yeah, I think the fact that they are described in lots of different physical forms, right, depending on the vision, tells us that they don't really have a consistent physical form.

Right. And what we what prophets or disciples see is intended to be symbolic, right, of the moment in which they are seeing them. God's wanting us to see something about them at that time when they see them.

If they're just being messengers, they're almost always they look like people because he wants you to hear the message more than be impressed by their by what they look like. Right. Yeah. Jonathan, who knows?

Yeah. Right. Right. We're going to get into it. Maybe as time rolls on past. All right. So here's the thing. Let's keep going through their nature. I want to get to the really want to get to question five.

So let's get through their nature a little bit more about their nature besides the body part thing. Look, they're also obviously rational and moral. Gabriel can have a conversation with Mary. And the other angels can have conversations with Abraham.

OK, they're communicative, they're rational, they worship God, they can reason. In fact, Matthew 24, 36 shows that they have Jesus describes them as having more intelligence than us. They're smarter than us.

All right. Which is no surprise. They've been around longer. And thanks to what we're going to talk about at the end about that, there's both holy angels and fallen angels. They are capable of making a choice between right and wrong.

They're capable of sin. So they're moral. They have a will. They're immortal. We already talked about that. They're glorious. All right. It is interesting that when John sees one in Revelation, his next natural reaction is to drop to his knees and worship it.

Right. And he has to be stopped. No, no, no, don't do that. I'm not God. But that's how glorious they are, that when John sees he mistakes it for something that ought to be worshipped. So they are very glorious.

And now we get to question five, which is, are they made, though, in the image of God? Are they made in the image of God? And for this, we'll call back to Andrew's lesson two weeks ago. All right. Let's check the list.

All right. We said that what made us when we were trying to get our hands around what made us a Maggio day, I write image bearers. What did that mean? Well, for one, we said it meant that there was an existence of spirit and soul and man, which was defined by things like simplicity, spirituality, invisibility and immortality.

Do angels have that? Yes. OK, check. Two, we said that man has intellect and will and the ability to discern and make decisions. Do angels have that? Yes. Check. OK, three, we said that they have more man has morality and integrity, that we are able to understand true knowledge, righteousness and holiness.

Can angels do that? Yes. We are three for three. Oh, we're starting at home, maybe. Maybe they are made in the image of God. And I'll tell you what, that some theologians only get that far in the list and then say, yes.

Yes, they are. They're made in the image of God. So if you Google it, you'll find plenty of articles and blog posts out there talking about angels being made in the image of God. But oh, and by the way, and not to cast dispersions, but that's where Calvin stopped.

And Calvin concluded from this that they are indeed made in the image of God. All right. But Burkoff has more boxes to check. And he went on and Andrew already told us these two, which is really one kind of two part of one, that man has dominion over the earth, just as God has dominion over his creation.

And that in our body, our body is an organ or a tool to exercise said dominion. OK, so there's this idea of dominion. Do angels have dominion? Now we're getting maybe no. And then theologian, so Baptist theologian Leighton Talbert, apologist Andy Fry both have really good writings on this stuff.

They added two more beyond dominion. They talk about creativity, right? Like that man, like our creator, we like to make and shape and invent. And we are also relational, right? We are made to relate to God in a very unique way.

One that is anthropomorphized in familial terms. Right. And that is that we God is our father and we are his children. Right. Jesus is our older brother. Right. But also we're talked about where the church is the bride and Christ is the husband.

OK, so we have this relationalness. And do angels have that kind of relationality? No. Right. So at that point, I'm I come to the conclusion and Burkoff does as well, that they're not made in the image of God, that the image of God is goes even beyond that and is even richer and that despite the fact the angels have on us higher intelligence, higher power, strength and, you know, wisdom probably and and glory that we as man still have something on them in creation and that God has created us alone, especially in his image.

Sure. I don't well, because I don't think it's adding because I'd say that I mean, Burkoff even had it before we talked about it. Right. It's not that we went back and said, oh, no, we got to keep defining because angels might be image bearers.

I think it's that in the whole scope of us trying to define what it means to be image bearers, we've come up with and talked about all those things. And so all of those are true of man, but they're not necessarily true of angels.

And that kind of just eliminates them. Yeah. Andrew. Yeah, I agree. Yes. There's more like width, breadth to what humankind does and what our purpose is in creation, whereas angels seem to very much have a very specific tool, purpose and mission in the moment.

Yes, Jonathan. Right. They're always servants and messengers. Yeah. Which this is pretty good. Let's go ahead and do number six, the fourfold mission or ministry of angels. It's probably as far as we're going to get.

Page one of two pages. See, I should know better. All right. The fourfold ministry of angels. All right. One is that they are messengers. OK, number one, they are messengers. The word angel means messenger.

OK, the Hebrew word for angel means messenger. And so that definitely seems to be their primary purpose. Gabriel, of course, is our most famous example of this, of our messengers. But there it is. Number two.

They have a protection ministry. OK, they have a protection ministry. Jesus himself in Matthew 18 indicates that children probably elect children. We can make an argument over the scope of it, but that it's certainly children have at least that they have a guardian angel.

OK, it's unclear the Bible's silent on whether the rest of us do, but children definitely do. And there are there are, however, whether or not we have a, quote, unquote, assigned a guardian angel particular to us, we definitely do have promises of angels protecting the elect in general and not just promises.

We actually see them in action in acts, for example. Psalm 91, which, by the way, Satan tries to twist in the desert to tempt Jesus to throw himself from the top of the temple. He talks about how the angels will protect you from dashing your foot against the stone.

Satan's twisting that because that is not just about Messiah. That Psalm is about a passage about angelic protection for all believers. That applies to us, too. And we might also surmise from the story of Lazarus and the rich man in Luke 16, in which it says that the rich man died and was buried and then in hell lifted up his eyes, right?

Like it's like, boom, boom, boom. But for Lazarus, the beggar, we hear that he dies and the angels carry him to heaven. Right. And so there's this really actually sort of beautiful thought there in that they seem to have this.

They potentially we can extrapolate from that. They have a role in conveying believers from earth to heaven. And I heard Martin Lloyd-Jones, I listened to an old sermon tape of his as I was preparing this lesson, and he made a lot about this.

This was really meaningful to him. And he thinks that it's a really important, it should be a really important reassurance and comfort to believers. There are some of us who are probably disposed to sort of this fear of death, even as believers.

Right. Not the fear of what's going to happen to you after death, but more the fear of the physicalness of like, what is it going to be like? How horrible is it going to be to die? Right. And and he said, you know, we should look at this and and find comfort in the notion that the angels, God has sent angels to be with believers as they perish and to be there to immediately almost like to catch them and then pick, lift them right up and escort them to heaven.

They're not doing this. They're not doing this on their own. There's there's a it just comes to mind that I don't ever read the story because it's blasphemous out of like to the nth degree. But Mark Twain wrote a short story, Captain Stormfield's Visit to Heaven, in which Captain Stormfield, when he dies, kind of rockets, his spirit rockets off the face of the earth and he's all by himself.

He has no idea where he's going. And and while he's just flying through space towards heaven, he like gets distracted. He like sees like some really cool planet and he kind of like takes a detour to check it out and then and then swings back.

And because of that, he ends up arriving at like the wrong gate in heaven and they don't know what to do with him because they're all confused. They're like, wait, you're not on the list. Where was I?

I don't know. And right. Yeah. But anyway, don't read any more than that. There's that's not happening. Right. You don't have to be afraid of showing up at the wrong gate or your luggage getting, you know, misplaced or anything like that on your way.

There's no luggage. OK, OK. Number three, they are so are the host. They're the army. OK, they are the foot soldiers of God's spiritual army. We could go on and on for this, but I mean, God is called the lord of hosts.

And whenever he talks about him, whenever Yahweh is described as the lord of hosts, the hosts it's talking about is this the angel army. OK, and how many legions does Jesus say that he could call down?

And this is probably just the spare angels. Right, to come protect him, anybody remember myriads upon myriads, I think it's twelve. I think he said he specifically says like twelve legions of angels. Steve's looking at me.

Did I get that right? Is it twelve? I don't remember. I think it's twelve. But anyway, a legion is, you know, if if we're being literal and we're talking about that, he was defining as a Roman legion.

That's three thousand. So that's thirty six thousand angels that could just be there right off the bat. And surely that's not the whole army, right? It's a lot is the idea. Ezekiel, Daniel, Second Kings, Revelation.

We see it over and over again. Right. These armies of angels. OK, and there's a reason there's a big army, and that's because there is a big army on the opposite side of demons. There is a true spiritual war raging, and it has been raging from the fall from the fall of the angels.

And it's going to keep on raging all the way till Revelation. And then fourthly, their mission is their ministry is worship. That at least some of them, we see their job is to praise God continually. Right.

Praising him in the heavenly throne room in Job and Isaiah six and Psalm one oh three. There's an angelic chorus that is able to show up at Jesus's birth to the shepherds. They rejoice, according to Luke 15, at the conversion of every sinner.