J.P. Moreland, a Christian philosopher, defends angels and demons without hesitation or embarrassment. “I don’t believe they exist,” he tells me. “I know they exist—and there are two reasons. First, I’m convinced Christianity is true, so angels and demons being real is a system-dependent belief. Second, there are just too many credible, intelligent people who’ve had encounters with angels and demons to dismiss it. … I myself had an encounter with three angels.”
Well….do they ?
Well….do they ?
As the Enlightenment philosopher John Locke wrote: "That there should be ... intelligent creatures above us ... is probable to me from hence: that in all the visible corporeal world, we see no chasms or gaps."[82]
Hence F.C. Copleston argues:
We can discern the ascending order or ranks of forms from the forms of inorganic substances, through vegetative forms, the irrational sensitive forms of animals; the rational soul of man, to the infinite ... God: but there is a gap in the hierarchy. The rational soul of man is created, finite and embodied, while God is uncreated, infinite and pure spirit; it is only reasonable, then, to suppose that between the human soul and God there are finite and created spiritual forms which are without body.[83]
There is a Scholastic maxim that “The perfection of the cause is reflected in the perfection of the effect.”
“Perfection,” in scholastic terminology, refers to actuality, to the extent to which a thing manifests itself fully. One of the logical reasons for believing in separated intelligences is that because God is perfect (fully actual), His creation will manifest perfection as well, in the sense of a full actual range of creatures. He would not leave gaps in His Chain of Being. This is the logical Scholastic argument for the existence of separated intelligences: They complete the Great Chain of Being, and their non-existence would be inconsistent with God’s perfection.
Before you dismiss this line of reasoning, keep in mind that it is used regularly in natural science. The most dramatic example is Paul Dirac’s prediction of the existence of anti-matter (positrons) based on solutions to equations in quantum mechanics. He saw that the equations worked for electrons with positive as well as negative charge, and he predicted their existence based on his inference to completeness of nature inherent to his equations. Shortly thereafter, positrons were empirically discovered. Such predictions based on the “perfection” of nature are routine in science. Black holes, the Big Bang, and gravity waves were all predicted (before there was empirical evidence of their existence) by extrapolating from equations and presuming the “perfection” — the full actuality — of nature. This is the same reasoning Scholastic philosophers used to infer the existence of separated intelligences.
Michael Egnor points out “Millions of materialists believe that our universe came from nothing for no reason, that essentially infinite numbers of universes are actualized continuously by quantum processes, that upwards of twenty or so invisible spatial dimensions are rolled up in infinitesimal vibrating strings that form the fabric of the cosmos, that cats can be simultaneously dead and alive, and that any moment now we will be saved or damned by benevolent or malicious space aliens (benevolent and malicious aliens are, of course, merely the angels and demons of materialism — except that, unlike separated intelligences, there’s no evidence for aliens whatsoever).
Even more bizarre is the belief by materialists that life itself — the genetic code, the intricate nanotechnology in cells, and the elegant physiology of complex organisms — evolved by natural selection, without any intelligent agency. I point out that there is immeasurably more evidence for separated intelligences than there is for the origin of species by random mutation and natural selection, which has never been videotaped, or seen, by anyone.
These materialist fables are a lot crazier than witnesses’ reports of experiences with separated intelligences.”
Agnostic Robert Lawrence Kuhn muses: "As I see it, a starting fact is that, yes indeed, most human beings believe in angels and demons. Across diverse cultures, nonphysical beings, in great numbers and variety, fly freely in collective myth and individual imaginations. How to explain such robust, broad-based belief?"[54]
As psychiatrist Richard Gallagher observes:
anthropologists agree that nearly all cultures have believed in spirits, and the vast majority of societies (including our own) have recorded dramatic stories of spirit possession. Despite varying interpretations, multiple depictions of the same phenomena in astonishingly consistent ways offer cumulative evidence of their credibility.[55]
As Joshua Hoffman and Gary S. Rosenkrantz affirm:
if entities of a certain kind belong to folk ontology [the ontological presumptions of our common-sense worldview], then there is prima facie presumption in favour of their reality ... Those who deny their existence assume the burden of proof.[56]
Despite their religious differences, Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Taoist, Zoroastrian, Buddhist, Pagan and New Age believers all recognize the existence of finite supernatural agents.
Professor Stafford Betty reports that:
In the West, several prominent psychologists have opened their minds to the possibility of 'demonic' oppression, gone public with their evidence, and participated in exorcisms.
we must allow the data to challenge our worldview
Moreover, Betty states: "there is mounting evidence today that evil spirits do oppress and occasionally even possess" people.
William P. Wilson, Professor Emeritus of Psychiatry at Duke University Medical Centre, "regards as purely psychological many problems popularly attributed to demons today, but insists that there are real cases, including some that he has encountered, of actual spirits."[5]
Anthropologist Alan R. Tippett writes that: "When one has eliminated the spurious and psychopathological cases one is still left with a considerable residue of material which appears to be genuine possession."[6]
Anthropologist Raymond Firth acknowledges that, despite approaching the subject of spirit possession from a very different standpoint than Christian missionaries, social anthropologists from the Western world:
Have been faced in the field by dramatic changes of personality in men or women they were studying ... speaking with strange voices, assumption of a different identity, purporting to be a spirit not a human being, giving commands or foretelling the future in a new authoritative way. Sometimes it has been hard for the anthropologist to persuade himself that it is really the same person as before whom he is watching or confronting, so marked is the personality change.[7]
Contemporary experience of the angelic
Hope Price reports that "hundreds, possibly thousands, of men and women living today in Britain are quite certain they have seen angels."[99]
In 1993 Time magazine reported that 13% of Americans claimed to have actually seen or otherwise sensed the presence of an angel.[100] Is it likely that all of these people are either lying or deluded? If not, then it is likely that angels exist.
In 1993 Time magazine reported that 13% of Americans claimed to have actually seen or otherwise sensed the presence of an angel.[100] Is it likely that all of these people are either lying or deluded? If not, then it is likely that angels exist.
Having written her PhD thesis on angel experiences, agnostic Emma Heathcote-James reports that
"people from all cultures, backgrounds and faiths report fundamentally the same types of experience [with angels]... agnostics and atheists have the same kinds of experiences as believers in orthodox religions."[106]
Self-described atheists and agnostics comprised some 10% of the reported angelic experiences in Heathcote-James' study.
She admits: "psychological and medical theories have not provided answers that could explain away every experience I have investigated."[107]
As Peter Kreeft argues, there are only two groups of people who would disagree with the conclusion that some reported experiences of angels are true: "(1) the materialists, who claim to know that there are no spirits and thus believe no angel stories, and (2) people who even believe the National Enquirer and thus believe all angel stories."[108]
"people from all cultures, backgrounds and faiths report fundamentally the same types of experience [with angels]... agnostics and atheists have the same kinds of experiences as believers in orthodox religions."[106]
Self-described atheists and agnostics comprised some 10% of the reported angelic experiences in Heathcote-James' study.
She admits: "psychological and medical theories have not provided answers that could explain away every experience I have investigated."[107]
As Peter Kreeft argues, there are only two groups of people who would disagree with the conclusion that some reported experiences of angels are true: "(1) the materialists, who claim to know that there are no spirits and thus believe no angel stories, and (2) people who even believe the National Enquirer and thus believe all angel stories."[108]
"I know three African priests who are immensely educated and sophisticated scholars (linguists, philosophers, and historians all) and who are also unshakably convinced that miracles, magic, and spiritual warfare are manifestly real aspects of daily life, of which they themselves have had direct and incontrovertible experience on a number of occasions.
All three are, of course, creatures of their cultures, but I am not disposed to believe that their cultures are somehow more primitive or unreasoning than ours. It is true they come from nations that enjoy nothing like our economic and technological advantages; but, since these advantages are as likely to distract us from reality as to grant us any special insight into it, that fact scarcely rises to the level of irrelevance.
Truth be told, there is no remotely plausible reason why the convictions and experiences of an African polyglot and philosopher, whose pastoral and social labors oblige him to be engaged immediately in the concrete realities of hundreds of lives, should command less rational assent from us than the small, unproven, doctrinaire certitudes of persons who spend their lives in supermarkets and before television screens and immured in the sterile, hallucinatory seclusion of their private studies."
-David Bentley Hart
All three are, of course, creatures of their cultures, but I am not disposed to believe that their cultures are somehow more primitive or unreasoning than ours. It is true they come from nations that enjoy nothing like our economic and technological advantages; but, since these advantages are as likely to distract us from reality as to grant us any special insight into it, that fact scarcely rises to the level of irrelevance.
Truth be told, there is no remotely plausible reason why the convictions and experiences of an African polyglot and philosopher, whose pastoral and social labors oblige him to be engaged immediately in the concrete realities of hundreds of lives, should command less rational assent from us than the small, unproven, doctrinaire certitudes of persons who spend their lives in supermarkets and before television screens and immured in the sterile, hallucinatory seclusion of their private studies."
-David Bentley Hart
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