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He is Himself the Maker and Creator of the angels: for He brought
them out of nothing into being and created them after His own image,
an incorporeal race, a sort of spirit or immaterial fire: in the words
of the divine David, He maketh His angels spirits, and His
ministers a flame of fire: and He has described their lightness and
the ardour, and heat, and keenness and sharpness with which they
hunger for God and serve Him, and how they are borne to the regions
above and are quite delivered from all material thought.
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. But all that we can understand is, that it
is incorporeal and immaterial. For all that is compared with God Who
alone is incomparable, we find to be dense and material. For in
reality only the Deity is immaterial and incorporeal.
The angel's nature then is rational, and intelligent, and endowed
with free-will, change. able in will, or fickle. For all that is
created is changeable, and only that which is un-created is
unchangeable. Also all that is rational is endowed with free-will.
As it is, then, rational and intelligent, it is endowed with
free-will: and as it is created, it is changeable, having power
either to abide or progress in goodness, or to turn towards evil.
It 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.
It is immortal, not by natures but by grace. For all that has had
beginning comes also to its natural end. But God alone is eternal,
or rather, He is above the Eternal: for He, the Creator of
times, is not under the dominion of time, but above time.
They are secondary intelligent lights derived from that first light
which is without beginning, for they have the power of illumination;
they have no need of tongue or hearing, but without uttering words they
communicate to each other their own thoughts and counsels.
Through the Word, therefore, all the angels were created, and
through the sanctification by the Holy Spirit were they brought to
perfection, sharing each in proportion to his worth and rank in
brightness and grace.
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. They are not hemmed in by walls and doors,
and bars and seals, for they are quite unlimited. Unlimited, I
repeat, for it is not as they really are that they reveal themselves to
the worthy men to whom God wishes them to appear, but in a changed
form which the beholders are capable of seeing. For that alone is
naturally and strictly unlimited which is un-created. For every
created tiring is limited by God Who created it.
Further, apart from their essence they receive the sanctification from
the Spirit: through the divine grace they prophesy: they have no need
of marriage for they are immortal.
Seeing that they are minds they are in mental places, and are not
circumscribed after the fashion of a body. For they have not a bodily
form by nature, nor are they tended in three dimensions. But to
whatever post they may be assigned, there they are present after the
manner of a mind and energise, and cannot be present and energise in
various places at the same time.
Whether they are equals in essence or differ from one another we know
not. God, their Creator, Who knoweth all things, alone knoweth.
But they differ from each other in brightness and position, whether it
is that their position is dependent on their brightness, or their
brightness on their position: and they impart brightness to one
another, because they excel one another in rank and nature. And
clearly the higher share their brightness and knowledge with the lower.
They are mighty and prompt to fulfil the will of the Deity, and their
nature is endowed with such celerity that wherever the Divine glance
bids them there they are straightway found. They 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. And the reason surely is because they are set over
us by the divine will and command and are ever in the vicinity of God.
With difficulty they are moved to evil, yet they are not absolutely
immoveable: but now they are altogether immoveable, not by nature but
by grace and by their nearness to the Only Good.
They behold God according to their capacity, and this is their food.
They are above us for they are incorporeal, and are free of all bodily
passion, yet are not passionless: for the Deity alone is
passionless.
They take different forms at the bidding of their Master, God, and
thus reveal themselves to men and unveil the divine mysteries to them.
They have Heaven for their dwelling-place, and have one duty, to
sing God's praise and carry out His divine will.
Moreover, as that most holy, and sacred, and gifted theologian,
Dionysius the Areopagite, says, All theology, that is to say, the
holy Scripture, has nine different names for the heavenly essences.
These essences that divine master in sacred things divides into three
groups, each containing three. And the first group, he says,
consists of those who are in God's presence and are said to be
directly and immediately one with Him, viz., the Seraphim with
their six wings, the many-eyed Cherubim and those that sit in the
holiest thrones. The second group is that of the Dominions, and the
Powers, and the Authorities; and the third, and last, is that of
the Rulers and Archangels and Angels
Some, indeed, like Gregory the Theologian, say that these were
before the creation of other things. He thinks that the angelic and
heavenly powers were first and that thought was their function.
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. For it was fitting
that the mental essence should be the first created, and then that
which can be perceived, and finally man himself, in whose being both
parts are united.
But 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. But He Who creates and
provides for and maintains all things is God, Who alone is uncreate
and is praised and glorified in the Father, the Son, and the Holy
Spirit.
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