On Angels

God is the maker and creator of angels, bringing them out of non-being into being, having created them after His own image as an incorporeal nature, like some spirit or immaterial fire, as the divine David says: “who makes His angels spirits and His ministers a fiery flame” (Ps. 103:4), describing their lightness, ardor, warmth, extreme sharpness, and acuity with regard to their longing for God and ministry to Him and their sublimity and deliverance from all material thought.

An angel is therefore a substance that is intellectual, always moving, possessing free will, incorporeal, ministering to God, whose nature has by grace received immortality, and the form and determining of whose essence only the Creator knows. An angel is said to be incorporeal and immaterial in relation to us. For everything in comparison with God, who alone is incomparable, is dense and material, for only the divine is truly immaterial and incorporeal.

An angel, then, is a rational nature possessing intellect and free will that is mutable or changeable with regard to the will of choice. For everything created is also mutable, only that which is uncreated being immutable, and everything rational possesses free will. Therefore, as rational and intellectual, the angelic nature possesses free will, but as created it is mutable, since it has the power to choose and either abide in the good and make progress in it or take a turn for the worse.

An angel is incapable of repentance because it is incorporeal, for a human being has the possibility of repentance on account of the weakness of the body. An angel is immortal not by nature but by grace, for everything that has a beginning naturally has an end. Only God exists eternally or rather, He is beyond eternity, for He who is the creator of time is not subject to time but transcends it.

The angels are secondary spiritual lights that possess their illumination from the first light that has no beginning. They have no need of speech or hearing but communicate their own thoughts and intentions to each other without verbal utterance.

All the angels, then, were created by the agency of the Word and were perfected through sanctification by the Holy Spirit in accordance with the dignity and rank of the illumination and grace in which they share.

They are circumscribed, for when they are in heaven, they are not on earth, and when they are sent to the earth by God, they do not remain in heaven. They are not confined by walls and doors, locks and seals, for they are not limited. I say not limited, because they do not appear to the worthy, to those to whom God wills them to appear, as they really are, but in a different form, in such a way that those who behold them can see them. “For properly speaking, only the uncreated is unlimited by nature, for every created thing is limited by God who created it” (Doctrina Patrum, Diekamp, 252:23-24).

They have the sanctification of their essence from outside, from the Holy Spirit, prophesy by divine grace, and do not need marriage, precisely because they are not mortal.

Being intellects, they are also in intellectual places, since they are not circumscribed corporeally (for they do not have by nature a bodily form, nor are they extended three-dimensionally), but they are present and active intellectually where they are assigned to be and cannot be present and active in two different places simultaneously.

Whether they are equal or differ from each other with regard to essence we do not know. Only God who created them and who knows all things has knowledge of this. [But we do know that] they differ from each other in their illumination and standing, either possessing their standing in proportion to their illumination, or sharing in illumination in proportion to their standing, and they illuminate each other by the superiority of their rank or nature. And it is clear that the superior impart a share of their illumination and knowledge to the inferior (cf. Dionysios the Areopagite, Celestial Hierarchy 10.2).

They are powerful and ready to fulfil the divine will, and by the swiftness of their nature immediately appear anywhere that the divine sign should command. They watch over parts of the earth and are set in charge of nations and places, as appointed by the Creator, and administer our affairs and help us, and being always around God they are necessarily superior to us in accordance with the divine will and command.

They are reluctant to move towards evil but are not immovable, only now they are also immovable, not by nature but by grace and their devotion to the only good. They see God so far as they are capable of doing so, and have this as their food. They are superior to us because they are incorporeal and are free of any bodily passion, though not indeed impassible for only the divine is impassible. They assume different forms, in accordance with whatever the Lord God commands them to do, and thus appear to human beings and reveal the divine mysteries to them. They occupy themselves in heaven and have one task, which is to praise God and carry out His divine will.

As the most holy, most venerable, and most theologically gifted Dionysius the Areopagite says: “The whole of theology,” that is to say, the divine Scripture, “has declared the heavenly essences to be nine in number, which the divine initiator divides into three triadic ranks. And he says that the first is that which is ever around God, in which the six-winged Seraphim, the many-eyed Cherubim, and the most holy Thrones have been granted to be closely and immediately united with Him, and the second rank is that of the Dominions, Powers, and Authorities, and the third and last rank is that of the Principalities, Archangels, and Angels” (Celestial Hierarchy 6.2).

Now some say that they were brought into being before all creation. For example, Gregory the Theologian says: ”First he conceived of the angelic and heavenly powers, and the conception was the accomplished work” (Oration 38.9). But others say that this was after the creation of the first heaven. All hold that it was before the creation of humanity. I, for my part, agree with Gregory the Theologian. For it was necessary that spiritual substance should be created first, followed by sensible substance, and then humanity from both.

Those who say that the angels are creators of any substance whatsoever are the mouthpiece of their father the devil. For since they are created beings they are not creators. The maker, controller, and sustainer of all things is God, the only uncreated one, who is hymned and glorified in the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

*St John of Damascus, On the Orthodox Faith, trans. Norman Russell (Yonkers, NY: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2022), pp. 99-102.