Show notes
Please become a supporter of Pints With Aquinas at patreon.com/mattfradd Learn more at PintsWithAquinas.com Here's the transcript: 00:00 Welcome to Pints With Aquinas. My name's Matt Fradd. How you going? Yeah. Just so you know, in Australia you don't say how you doing, you how you going? How you going? Hey, how you going? If you could sit down over a pint of beer with Thomas Aquinas and ask him any one question, what would it be? In today's episode, we're gonna ask Aquinas about the angels, and in particular about guardian angels. Whether or not we have them. And if we do have them, when are they assigned? Before baptism, at baptism? Can we name our guardian angels? What does the church have to say about that, and if everyone has a guardian angel, did Jesus have a guardian angel? And lots else besides. Enjoy the show. 00:53 Welcome back to Pints With Aquinas. This is the show where you and I pull up a bar stool, next to the angelic doctor to discuss the oddity and philosophy. Now, how many episodes have we done now, 120 something. Every episode, or almost every episode, I say angelic doctor, don't I? And maybe you've wondered why Thomas Aquinas was called the angelic doctor. Now there's two reasons that are usually given for this. The first is that, he lived a life of angelic purity in regards to chastity, but that also he wrote so beautifully and at great length on the holy angels. And we've done no episode on them yet. We shared, I shared an episode with you from Peter Kreeft, the talk he gave on the angels, which was excellent. If you wanna go hear that, go to pintswithaquinas.com. Just type in angels in the search bar and you can check that out. 01:47 But this is really fascinating stuff. So, just so you know, here's what I wanna get done today. I wanna talk about whether or not we actually have guardian angels, or whether or not that's just a nice thing people tell themselves. You know, but it's not really true. See what Thomas Aquinas has to say about that. And I wanna share with you 10 quick facts about the angels. Maybe we'll start there. And when I say facts, I'm mining all of these facts out of The Summa Theologica, where Aquinas speaks about the angels. We could do 20 episodes on the angels, and still not cover all that Aquinas had to say, but I thought it would be kind of cool to just kind of give you a brief overview. Here's what Aquinas has to say about the angels. And I think you're gonna find some of it really fascinating. 02:33 Okay, before I forget, too, next, well not next week. This week, I'm going to release an episode I recently did with Matt Walsh from The Daily Wire. I told you this was coming. I released it for my Patrons a couple of weeks ago, and all of them told me to release it to the public, so this week you are going to get an episode of me and Matt Walsh discussing everything from being hyperbolic on social media to Pope Francis and the current scandal, and even Russian Literature, and his new job at The Daily Wire. We talk about a lot of things, so, it's not really Aquinas related, but we do talk about kind of faith, and culture, and these sorts of things. Matt Fradd: 03:14 So, if you wanna make sure you hear that episode, which of course is for free by the way, you don't have to go anywhere else. It'll come out on your feed this week. You have to subscribe. So if you listen to the show on iTunes, if you listen to it wherever you listen to it, because sure to subscribe. That way you'll be sure you don't miss it. All right? So look out for that one as well. What else do I wanna say to you? I don't know. How you going? You doing all right? Oh, Patrons. I wanna say a big thanks to all you Patrons. You know, I'm releasing these Vodka with Dostoyevsky videos just for you, right? So, it's been cool to get all your feedback, but just in case you're a Patron and you've missed it, we're releasing one a week. We're doing seven episodes and I discuss with you awesome things that I've learned from the Brothers Karamazov and Crime and Punishment, and it's kind of fun. So, be sure to check that out at patreon.com/mattfradd if you haven't already. Matt Fradd: 04:07 All right, let's jump into today's topic. As I say before, we will look exactly at what Aquinas had to say on the guardian angels. I wanna read these 10 facts to you. We'll just go through them one by one and quite briefly. As I say, some of them I think will shock you. All right, so number one, it's probably important to know what angels are, don't you think? What are they? Because I think one of the reasons we find it difficult to take angels seriously, it's not because as faithful Christians we don't believe in angels. I mean, we know they're in sacred scripture, all right. It's just that our kind of modern society or different corners of our society have kind of laid claim to them haven't they? Matt Fradd: 04:50 So you walk by these New Age stores and they talk about angels, and there's books on angels, and encounters with angels and they don't have much to do with Christianity at all, and so, for that reason, we can tend to associate them with say, the New Age movement. But then on the other side, sometimes there's like all of these like really syrupy sweet imagery that we think of, when you think of angels. That classic image of that big angel leading those two chubby kids across a rickety bridge, and she's wearing like a nightgown of something. It looks like a she you know, and you're like, "Come on, man. You're supposed to be a guardian angel. No one's afraid of you. At least make you look epic." Can we make the angels look epic? I think the angels, I mean obviously there's some beautiful images of the angels. I'm gonna put some up at the show notes at pintswithaquinas.com so you can see them. I love the sort of the Eastern iconography of the angels. They tend to be a lot more, I don't know, I think awesome. Matt Fradd: 05:49 Anyway, okay, so I think that's why we don't think a lot of the angels. But, let's look at some of the facts about angels. Some of the things Aquinas teaches us about angels, and of course this isn't original to him, but he thinks these things through. So, the first thing you should know about angels is, you should know what they are. They are intellectual substances, not united to bodies. All right, so you could think of like the brute beasts are bodies, but are not intellectual substances. You and me are intellectual substances united to bodies, and the angels are one step higher, right. They are intellectual substances, not united to bodies. The second thing to note is that since an angel is just a form, so you know you and I are a combination of form and matter, huh? Angels are just form. Well, what's form? Well form, this is a metaphysical concept. By the way at pintswithaquinas.com there's a free ebook you might wanna check out, if you wanna understand Aquinas' Aristotelian metaphysical lingo, okay? But form, just basically means the essential nature of a thing. The essential nature of ... a form is that which specifies a thing to be this rather than that. Okay? So because of that, Aquinas says that, "Every angel is a unique species." So, when we say angels, when we refer to the angels, we're not using it as a name of a species, like when we say dogs, a little dog or lion. Because again, each angel is a unique species. Instead, we're using it the way we refer to genus. So when you say, not dog or lioness, you say animal. And then under animal you have these unique species or tree, and then you have different species of tree. So that's cool. Matt Fradd: 07:50 Here's the third fact. Well, let me phrase it as a question. When were the angels created? Were they created before the world, or at the same time as the world? What do you think? Before the world, or at the same time, as well this is really a matter of theological speculation, because the fathers of the church were divided on this. Certain fathers like St. Gregory Nazianzen thought that they were created before the world. Thomas sides with St. Jerome, who says that the angels were created at the same time as the corporeal world. And the reason for this I think is, he argues that the angels, they're part of the same universe that we are, right? Though they are invisible creations. So, since they're part of the same creation, it's reasonable to suppose that they were created together with the rest of creation. That's how Aquinas argues. Matt Fradd: 08:48 The fourth thing, now this might get a little complicated. So, I'll got through it but then I'll throw up a little table of something or other at pintswithaquinas.com in the show notes so you can see this for yourself. And this has to do with the hierarchy of angels. This is something that Aquinas I think, draws from pseudo Dionisius. The idea and I'm sure you've heard it, is that there are nine choirs of angels which are divided into three in each order. So you've got like the highest order, the middle order, and the lowest order of angels. And you might be tempted to think, well why on earth is that necessary? Like why not just say that they're all angels? And we did talk about this in a previous episode, having to do with whether or not we can talk about God, and what we can say about God, hey. And I was saying, and since Thomas says that, "Since we can't know God directly, we have to know him through creatures." Matt Fradd: 09:47 And that's why there's just so many types of creatures. Because different creatures tell us something different about God in a way, hey. It would be like if you were trying to study a particular artist, and I said would you like one painting of this artist to study, so you can learn about him, or would you like an entire gallery? You would say, "I want the gallery." Why? Because it would tell you more about the artist. And in a similar way, if all you knew was say, human beings, you would know something about God, right? But if you had everything from slugs to bald eagles, to kangaroos for some weird reason, and whatever else besides. Like dinosaurs. These things speak about God in different ways and so we can know more about God. This is what Aquinas was sort of the hierarchy of being. Is that some beings have more being than other beings. Matt Fradd: 10:43 And so, this is why we should think that it's just like a moment ago, you've got brute beasts who were just body. You've got us who are kind of intelligence and body, and then you've got angels who are just intelligence. This also kind of goes, theirs a hierarchy in the angels as well. So, let me go through this real quickly, okay, so let me just say what the nine are. Seraphim. You've probably heard these words, right? Cherubim, Thrones, Dominations, Virtues, Powers, Principalities, Archangels, and Angels. So, the highest order Aquinas says are, "Those who contemplate the idea of things in God himself." And this order is most closely related to God. Has the most closest relations with him. Matt Fradd: 11:31 So, the Seraphim are most closely united to God. They sing perpetual praises around his throne. Then you have the Cherubim who know the divine secrets through God himself. Then you have the Thrones, who receive judgements from God and pass them onto the second hierarchy. All right, so that's the first hierarchy. Second hierarchy or the middle order are those angels which contemplate the idea of things in universal causes, and are involved in governing. So, these three in the middle order are Dominations, Virtues, and Powers. Dominations appoint things that are to be done. The Virtues, not moral virtues, right, these type of angels, carry out what is to be done. And then the Powers decide how what has been commanded will be carried out by others, those beneath them. Matt Fradd: 12:28 And that brings us to the lowest order. The third hierarchy. And this, the lowest order of angels are, what they do is they do is they contemplate the idea of things in their application to particular effects, and they execute God's work in the world. If this is going by way too fast, way too soon, good. It should be, because this gets pretty complicated, but you know you could ... Anyway, let's keep going. So the Principalities act as rulers, presiding over the government. Matt Fradd: 13:00 The principalities act as rulers presiding over the government of peoples and kingdoms of the Earth. The archangels, pretty crazy, hey, to think that archangels are second to lowest on the totem pole of these different choirs of angels? The archangels, and you know what they do, what do they do? What do archangels do? That's right. Sorry. It's like those kids shows where: Hey, what's two plus two? That's right! I've been watching way too many kids movies. Okay, anyway, archangels, they announce to men and women great things above the power of reason, like when the archangel Gabriel came to Mary. Matt Fradd: 13:45 Then finally, we have angels. These are those who announce to men small things within the limits of reason. Again, very complicated. Aquinas gets into this a great deal. I just wanted to give you a brief run over of this stuff in case you were curious what was meant by the nine choirs of angels. Well, that's what's meant by it. Matt Fradd: 14:06 All right, let's crank through the rest of these here. Number five … No, is it number five or number six? Oh, my goodness. Yeah, number five. How do angels communicate with each other, you might be thinking? Do they communicate with each other? What does Aquinas have to say on that? Well, you and I communicate with symbols, right, such as words and gestures? Words and gestures, what do they do? They communicate thoughts and conceptions. Matt Fradd: 14:33 Well, angels can't do this, since they're incorporeal, and they don't know things by sensible science like we do. Thomas says that they can communicate to each other, and the way they do that is by manifesting their thoughts. They direct their thoughts to another by their will, and in so doing, communicate. Here's a quote from Aquinas, "The concept of one angels is made known to another, and this way, one angel speaks to another, for to speak to another only means to make known the mental concept to another." So if that's the definition to speak, right? This is how he's defining it here. If speaking to another means making known the mental concept to another, and that's what we do as incorporeal beings, but we do it differently, well then yeah, angels can do that too. So they do speak to each other, even though they don't have bodies. All right, so that was five. This is six: Where are the angels? Where are they? Now that might sound like a silly question, because you're saying, "You just said they're incorporeal, so they're nowhere, right?" Well no, they're not nowhere. Aquinas says they are where they are active. They are where they are active. Matt Fradd: 15:53 Seventh thing that Aquinas makes a big deal about, which might seem kind of humdrum to you, since you're the beneficiary of all of this previous wisdom and thinking through of these things, but all the angels were created originally good. All the angels were created originally good, so God doesn't make junk. God doesn't make things evil, all right? Matt Fradd: 16:15 The eighth thing is, you might say, "Well, do angels move?" Well, Aquinas says that they can…
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