The Awesome God and the Holy Angels

Dear Parish Faithful,

I have been reading a very interesting book entitled Angels [and Demons] - What Do We Really Know About Them. The book is already about twenty-five years old. The author is Peter Kreeft who is a philosopher teaching at Boston College and King's College (I am not certain if he is still teaching, as he is now eighty-three years old). He is also a deeply committed Roman Catholic, and a very prolific writer who has written at least eighty books.

 

On the whole, most of his books can be called "popular," meaning written in a way that make them quite accessible to a wide-ranging audience. At times, he can certainly display his skills as a philosopher when necessary. He is clearly a Christian apologist, that is one who writes in defense of the truthfulness and reasonableness of the Christian Faith. For many he is seen as something of a late twentieth - early twenty-first century American version of C.S. Lewis, a writer that Peter Kreeft greatly admires. 

He is also very much a Thomist, a Roman Catholic who is deeply inspired by the medieval theologian, Thomas Aquinas. I have only read about two or three of his books, and I do find them very insightful and "thought-provoking," as we like to say. As Orthodox, we would disagree with certain things he claims, but the point is he offers a very compelling case for basic Christian Truth.

Be that as it may, in this book I am reading about angels, he makes a slight digression to examine and critique the philosophy of materialism, the belief that only material reality exists. This come under a section in which he is answering the questions: Can you prove spirits exist? Can you prove materialism is untrue? He begins with three short statements:

1. Nonmaterialists don't demand of materialists that they prove matter is real. Why does the materialist demand that we prove that spirit is real?

2. We appeal to common experience. Most people experience both their bodies and their souls, or spirits, or minds.

3. Materialism is insulting. if it is true, we are only sophisticated animals or machines.

It is his fourth point, picking up from and developing point 3, that I find a bit more compelling and worthy of sharing as a strong philosophical argument against materialism:

4.  If you are a machine, then you can't change or control what you do any more than the environment of the earth can help evaporating water. All acts of thinking and choosing are nothing but movements of atoms, or material energy., like gravity or electricity. How then can some of these atom movements be true and others false? You don't say that the evaporation that happens on the surface of another lake is false. They simply both happen. So if acts of thinking are just material events that happen, like evaporation, it makes no sense to call some true and others false. In that case, it makes no sense to call the thought of materialism true and of nonmaterialism false. The theory contradicts itself; it undercuts itself. If it is true, nothing is true, including it. Matter is not true; matter is neither true nor false; matter just is. If nothing but matter exists, then nothing is true, including the thought of materialism. (Angels [and Demons], p. 48-49)

(As Orthodox, we are less inclined to say that "matter just is." We think of matter as also filled with the divine energies - and for this reason, matter cannot be manipulated for the wrong purposes - but as used in his argument, his statement makes a point). Materialism, of course, is atheistic, and therefore actually nihilistic, no matter how "optimistic" one is about life in this world. It is a bankrupt philosophy that cannot ascribe real meaning to anything. But materialists do not act like the materialist that Peter Kreeft analyzes. They seek meaning in life, as well as they love and have "moral values." But none of this can be philosophically defended. Thus, there is a real disconnect between a materialist worldview and the desire to live moral and meaningful lives.

On a very different subject, now that I am dealing with this book, Peter Kreeft takes on the question: Are angels comforting? He writes simply:

"In the end, yes, but not always in the beginning. All the current angel books seem to assume that angels are comforting. Yet every time a real angel appears in the Bible, he has to say "Fear not!" And angels do not use superfluous words. Like Jesus and unlike popular spiritualists and occultists, they are laconic."

But he then continues this specific question by examining and defining what is meant by religious "fear" as that word is associated with God in the Bible. Not in anyway capitulating to our contemporary inclinations toward superficiality — even when discussing "religion" or "spirituality," —  Kreeft writes:

Religious fear, or awe, is an essential ingredient of all true religion, yet it has been systematically exiled from modern, "psychologically correct" religion. What irony! — the thing the Bible calls the "beginning of wisdom" is the experience modern religious educators and liturgists deliberately remove or try to remove from our souls: fear and trembling, adoration and worship, the bent knee and the prone heart. The modern God "is something I can feel comfortable with." The God of the Bible, in contrast, is "a consuming fire." (see Psalm 104:4 and Heb. 12:29).

Rabbi Abraham Heschel, when told by a student that it must be gratifying to spend his life amid the "comforts of religion," replied, "God is not an uncle. God is not nice. God is an earthquake." The same applies to God's angels.

And of course "fear" does not mean "craven fear" or "fear of an evil tyrant." It means awe. But this is much more than "respect," which is how the biblical term fear  is usually interpreted today. No. You don't just "respect" God. You "respect" the value of money, or the power of an internal combustion engine, or the conventions of politeness. You smile politely and take account of it. Only a fool does that to God. Refusal to fall flat on your face proves that the God you have met is simply not the real God.

Angels (as distinct from devils - fallen angels) always do us good. They warn, rescue, guide, and enlighten. So the end result is indeed comforting. But not at first. True religion never begins in comfort. It begins in repentance and humility and fear." (Angels [and Demons], p. 62-63)

This is very important for us to realize today, as "therapeutic religion" is becoming pervasive. In this approach, even if not articulated openly, it is God who is serving us, rather than we who are serving God. But it is more important to experience the reality that Peter Kreeft is defending.  And this always brings us to the beauty and power of the Liturgy. 

We do not come to the Liturgy - at least primarily - to be comforted by God; rather we come to worship God in all of God's majesty, power, glory and beauty: Holy God! Holy Mighty! Holy Immortal! Have mercy on us! And before every Vespers service: "Come, let us worship and fall down before Christ our King and our God!"   God is the "awesome God," but God is not a remote deity. God is simultaneously "Our Father." This balance - or paradox - is at the heart of the Orthodox understanding and experience of God.