.—Concerning angels.
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, changeable 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 nature 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 thing 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 extended 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.