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Preface

It may seem unlikely that a scientist and a theologian would discuss angels in the twenty-first century. Both disciplines at the end of the modern era appear equally embarrassed by this subject.

Nevertheless, although angels have been ignored by the scientific and theological establishments, recent surveys have shown that many people still believe in them. In the United States, for example, over two-thirds believe in their existence, and one-third state that they have personally felt an angelic presence in their lives. Half believe in the existence of devils.¹ Angels persist.

We are entering a new phase of both science and theology, and the subject of angels becomes surprisingly relevant again. Both the new cosmology and the old angelology raise significant questions about the existence and role of consciousness at levels beyond the human. When the two of us held our first discussions on this subject, we were fascinated by the parallels between Thomas Aquinas speaking of angels in the Middle Ages and Albert Einstein speaking of photons in this century. Hence the title of this book, The Physics of Angels.

The grassroots revival of interest in angels is timely. Much of the present interest centers on experiences of help and assistance at times of need. It is intensely personal in nature, and individualistic in spirit.

Recently we have both had the privilege to sit down with Lorna Byrne, the Irish peasant woman and grandmother, still illiterate, who has now published three books on angels with whom she has been in contact since she was a little child. She was instructed not to tell of her encounters until given the word, and that word came after her husband died. Her books rapidly became bestsellers world wide, having appeared in at least twenty-six languages at the time we write this preface. It was clear to us both while speaking with Lorna that she is as authentic as they come, a true “sod of the earth” of green Ireland, direct and matter of fact, joyful and hard working and generous.

But she insists that the angels have some important messages for us today, messages of their disappointment in the paltry advances we have made as a species and, surprisingly enough, messages about the role America can and needs to play in the world’s spiritual awakening—a role based on the fact that in America so many religious traditions have gathered and interfaith practice is most developed. In her most recent book A Message of Hope from the Angels, Lorna emphasizes how “we all have a part to play in the spiritual evolution of humanity.”

Lorna prefers being interviewed in “interfaith events” rather than giving public lectures. One such event occurred in New York City at St. Bartholomew’s Episcopal church when black Baptists, Jews, Buddhists, Hindus, Christians, and Muslims gathered for her public interview. Also present at the event in New York, she tells us, were angels who “packed the chapel” and she reports that “there was great joy and celebration among them at this wonderful gathering of different faiths.” The angels were as pleased as she was because people had come not to convert each other but with open hearts in order “to listen, to pray, and to celebrate, and not to justify their own religion or to claim that it was superior.”

Lorna’s descriptions of angels as “balls of fire” parallels some of Hildegard of Bingen’s visions that we relay in this book while treating her writings on angels. Also, Hidlegard tells us that angels praise human work, and Lorna too makes many references to angels’ appreciation of the work that humans do—and might do if we were to wake up more fully—to contribute to the advancement of our evolution, one that takes us beyond reptilian brain “I win/you lose” dynamic to an authentic practice of our deep interdependence with one another and with all of creation.

I, Matthew, am very aware of Aquinas’ teachings that angels “carry thoughts from prophet to prophet” and that angels “announce the divine silence” and that angels “can’t help but love” and that angels learn exclusively from intuition, so as we develop and honor our intuition more we may well be running into angels along the way. And that they assist us in many ways including the unfolding of the process of evolution. When I met Lorna I shared some of these teachings from Aquinas and she very much seconded them based on her experience, and she has underscored them also in her books on angels. Great things can happen with the help of the angels.

How about you? Do you sense the angels among us? Do you encounter the “speck of light” (Eckhart called it the “spark of the soul”) that is within us all. If so, what is its message? What are we needing to learn? Hopefully this new version of this book will continue to ground angelology in a substantive discussion from both religious and scientific perspectives of what angels are busy trying to accomplish with us humans in these trying and significant times.

THE TRADITIONAL UNDERSTANDING OF ANGELS IN THE WEST

The traditional Western understanding of angels is much deeper and richer than the more individualistic modern angel literature would suggest, and far more concerned with community and our common development and our relationships with one another, God, and the universe. These values fit with a more holistic or organic understanding of nature and of society.

Furthermore, it is important to acknowledge common experiences that emerge in all world cultures and religions when we are living in an ever-shrinking global village. All cultures, including our own, acknowledge the existence of spirits at levels beyond the human. We call them angels, but they go under different names in other traditions (Native Americans call them “spirits”). Angels constitute one of the most fundamental themes in human spiritual and religious experience. It is difficult to imagine deep ecumenism or interfaith advancing among the world’s cultures and religions without acknowledging angels in our midst and angels in our own traditions.

Other experiences that all human beings face together include the ecological crisis, for which we require all the wisdom we can muster. Angels may be able to assist us in this work and may well prove to be indispensable allies, truly guardian angels, instructing us in safeguarding our inheritance of a once healthy but today endangered planet.

For all these reasons it is important to return to our own spiritual tradition to examine what it tells us about angels, and to connect that wisdom to today’s evolutionary cosmology. This is necessary in order to set the stage for deeper explorations in the future—a future we believe will be characterized by a more eager effort to examine consciousness on this planet and beyond.

To assist us in this task of exploring our own spiritual tradition, we have chosen to concentrate on three giants of the Western tradition whose treatment of angels is particularly broad, deep, and influential. They are Dionysius the Areopagite, a Syrian monk whose classic work The Celestial Hierarchies was written in the sixth century; Hildegard of Bingen, a German abbess of the twelfth century; and St. Thomas Aquinas, a philosopher-theologian of the thirteenth century.

Dionysius the Areopagite made an amazing synthesis of the currents of the Neoplatonic philosophies of the Middle East in the light of his own Christian theology and experience. Hildegard of Bingen, though she called on the tradition of angelology handed down through the monastic tradition of the Western church, nevertheless worked especially out of her visionary experiences with the angelic realms. Thomas Aquinas created a synthesis of the study of angels, including the views of the Muslim philosopher Averroës, the writings of Dionysius the Areopagite, the science and philosophy of Aristotle, and the biblical tradition. He also raised profound, speculative questions that are provocative even today, and are especially interesting in light of the cosmology now emerging from today’s science. It is likely that these three thinkers devoted more of their intellectual labor to angelology than any other three major thinkers of the West.

We begin with an introductory dialogue in which we explore the history of the understanding of angels in the West and the way in which they were central to the tradition of the early church and medieval theology. We explore how the mechanistic revolution in science in the seventeenth century left no place for angels in a mechanical cosmos and led to a decline of interest in this subject in science and theology. We also discuss the recent grassroots revival of interest in angels (surely Lorna Byrne’s work is part of this movement) and the importance today of an ecumenical and interfaith or cross-cultural understanding of the spiritual realms.

We then turn to our three main authors. We have selected their most important and relevant passages about angels, and each of these passages is followed by a discussion in which we try to work out their meaning today from both a theological and a scientific perspective.

In these discussions we are less concerned with the theology and science of yesterday than with the potential theology and science of tomorrow. We have both found this method of dialogue illuminating. It has taken each of us beyond any understanding we would be able to arrive at individually with our own limited perspectives. We hope that what for us was a creative process will help others in their exploration and thinking.

We conclude by considering how the exploration of angels in a living cosmos could enliven and enrich both religion and science as we enter a new millennium. We end with a series of questions.

An appendix of biblical references is provided for those wanting to study the scriptural examples in greater depth and detail.