Article 1: On Spirits (Part 3)

The Dogmatic Theology of the Orthodox Catholic Eastern Church—accepted by decree of the Holy Synod as a teaching manual in all Russian seminaries and translated for the same purpose into Greek—after careful consideration of the concepts concerning spirits furnished by Holy Scripture and the holy Fathers, sets forth the teaching on angels and on spirits in general as follows: “They are bodiless. However, the holy Fathers understand the bodilessness of angels in a limited sense—namely, that they are bodiless only in comparison with us, who are clothed in gross and heavy flesh.” Saint John of Damascus says: “An angel is called bodiless and immaterial in comparison with us. For everything, in comparison with God—the one incomparable—is found to be gross and material. God’s Divinity alone is strictly speaking immaterial.” “They are invisible. However, this property too is accepted in a limited sense: an angel, a soul, a demon—says Saint John of Damascus—although they do not possess the grossness of a body, yet also have a form and limitation proper to their nature. The divine Being alone is unlimited, perfectly formless, imageless, and boundless. The extraordinary speed and swiftness with which angels move from place to place demonstrates that they are not constrained, as we are, by forms, space, and time. Yet even this property admits of limitation.” Saint John of Damascus says again: “Angels are limited: for when they are in heaven, they are not on earth; and when they are sent by God to earth, they do not remain in heaven, and cannot be and act in both places at once. Therefore, certainly, there must be for spirits their own particular world, occupying a certain place in the universe, which is called in Holy Scripture the third heaven95 and the heaven of heavens.96 Angels are endowed with immortality.” Yet angels are immortal, according to the words of Saint John of Damascus, “not by nature but by grace.”97 By nature God alone is immortal, as Holy Scripture has testified with decisive definiteness.98 “God,” says the Venerable Macarius the Great, “is boundless and incomprehensible, appearing everywhere—on mountains, and on the sea, and in the very abyss; yet this occurs not by change of place, as angels descend from heaven to earth: He is at one and the same time in heaven and on earth.”99 The same is affirmed by other Fathers as well, in decisive contrast to the more recent teaching of the Westerners.

Such is the teaching of the Orthodox Church concerning created spirits. We see in both the Theology of the Orthodox Church and in her holy Fathers a particular solicitude—repeated and multiplied warnings—lest, through some misunderstanding, created spirits be placed in the same category as God in their very essence, lest there be attributed to them properties belonging to God alone. What is the reason for this? The reason is that attributing to creatures the properties of the Creator is, with respect to the Creator, blasphemy. The holy angels do not seek from us improper and erroneous veneration: they rejoice far more when we render due honor and worship to God, urging us toward this and assisting us in it. I, the holy Apostle John the Theologian declares in his Revelation, saw these things and heard them. And when I had heard and seen, I fell down to worship at the feet of the angel who was showing me these things. But he said to me: See, do not do that, for I am your fellow servant and of your brothers the prophets and of those who keep the words of this book: worship God.100

The Dogmatic Theology, in setting forth the teaching on angels, cites the holy Fathers in general and names specifically Saint John of Damascus, drawing an extract from that one work of his known under the title “An Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith.” This manner of proceeding is entirely well-founded. Saint John of Damascus, one of the ancient Fathers, set forth the teaching concerning Christianity in systematic order.101 Living in the eighth century, he studied the Fathers who preceded him—both by most careful reading of their writings and by drawing near to them in spirit through a deeply devout life. The teaching of these Fathers, scattered in portions through their various Discourses and Epistles, he gathered into a unity and composed from it, as stated above, a systematic teaching concerning Christianity. His teaching is the teaching of the holy Fathers who preceded him. “An Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith” was printed by decree of the Holy Synod. The foreword to the book states: “Saint John of Damascus is one of the great teachers of the Church, whose labors and struggles were dedicated to the benefit of his contemporaries, and whose writings were and will continue to be soul-saving for the subsequent children of the Church of Christ. Saint Damascus’s book concerning the Orthodox Faith gives him above all his right to the title of teacher of the Christian faith. In this writing the teacher of the Church expounded the truths of the Christian faith as clearly as precisely, and moreover in the order of consecutive reasoning and with such completeness as they had not been gathered in any book before him. The truths of the Word of God Saint Damascus explains by the very Word of God, and at the same time invokes the aid of sound reasoning illumined by the light of Revelation, and in both cases he most frequently repeats the words of the teachers of the Church who preceded him. The book on the Orthodox Faith constitutes a treasury of Patristic thoughts on the subjects of the faith. Saint Damascus united into a single whole all the Conciliar and Patristic definitions on the subjects of faith that existed before him, and not only gathered the Patristic sayings but also, having penetrated with far-sighted vision into the very spirit of the teachers of the faith, unveiled the depths of the spirit of the profound teachers of faith of various ages.” Saint John of Damascus bases the teaching on angels and on spirits and the soul in general on the works of Athanasius the Great, Gregory the Theologian, Theodoret, Maximus the Confessor, and Nemesius—as is evident in his book from the citations.

Holy Scripture does not set forth a separate, defined teaching concerning spirits, as it does not do so concerning many other subjects. At the same time, the teaching of Holy Scripture on spirits is clear and satisfying. It is imparted with such detail and fullness as are needed for our salvation. The demands of idle curiosity and vainglorious inquisitiveness are constantly scorned and condemned by Scripture.102

From the declarations of Scripture concerning spirits, the following concepts of them emerge. Created spirits are limited beings, of a gaseous nature, endowed with the power of reason. They are called spirits in Scripture because Scripture calls every gaseous substance a spirit:103 by this name is denoted the subtlety of the nature of spirits, whereby they are distinguished from the gross matter visible to us.104 This distinction, however, is only relative: it arose from the limitations of man’s knowledge, which took as its norm the human body in its fallen state. A norm subject to change cannot be a true norm. The soul of man, like created spirits, is called a spirit in Scripture;105 but it is clothed in a gross body—and this is the only difference between man and created spirits. Spirits, as not possessing the human body, or flesh, are called bodiless, incorporeal; they are called invisible because we do not see them with bodily eyes.

God created all spirits, and created them all as good and excellent. Some of them, by their own will, have remained good and are united with God through participation in His grace; others, likewise by their own will, have estranged themselves from God and have become the beginning of evil. Good spirits are called angels; they are divided into orders; they dwell in heaven; they descend to earth and act upon it. Evil spirits are called demons, evil spirits, and devils; but the name devil and Satan properly belongs to the chief among them. Their place of dwelling is the underworld—that is, the air, the surface of the earth, and the interior of the earth, or the netherworld. In all these localities they act according to the law of limited beings, to which the angels also are subject. Spirits influence matter, and matter influences spirits. They can touch human beings, and human beings can feel their touch. When God opens the eyes of a man, he becomes capable of seeing spirits in their own form. Animals may also possess this capacity. Angels, when appearing to men, have always appeared in the form of men glorified by divine grace. Scripture mentions their face, breast, hands, feet, and clothing—and relates that they walk, fly, sit, speak, and hear what is said to them. Scripture attributes to them the senses that man possesses: sight, hearing, smell, and touch. Holy human beings, after the resurrection, in their holy and spiritual bodies, will dwell together with the angels in heaven; sinful human beings together with the demons will be confined in hell. Both the place of abode and the blessedness and the torment will be shared by human beings and spirits: the division between spirits and human beings produced by the corruptible body will be abolished; being will approach being to the point of likeness and equality.107 The natural and necessary consequence of the concepts furnished by Holy Scripture concerning spirits is the concept of the materiality of spirits in the modern understanding of materiality. With the concept of materiality and limitedness, the concept of dependence on space and time is inseparably joined. The action of a limited being in space with change of place is movement. A limited being acting in space and possessing movement must necessarily have a form: to this law is every substance subject.

Many of the holy Fathers, in defining or describing the nature of spirits, base themselves on the Scripture saying: God makes His angels spirits, and His servants a flame of fire.108 If one takes this saying literally and explains it in accordance with the modern scientific understanding, one must say that angels are beings of the nature of gases combined with caloric, since Scripture properly calls the moving gases spirits. The Fathers expressed themselves very close to this. If one takes this saying in a higher sense—acknowledging God alone as Spirit, which is entirely correct according to the modern understanding of the word “spirit”—then God, by overshadowing the angels with His grace, makes them spirits and fire, raising them to that lofty dignity which they do not possess by nature. In that case too, angels are of necessity material—as participants in divine spirituality by gift and in a certain measure, and as not possessing it by nature. Like the angels, spiritual human beings—through the action of divine grace in them—receive properties and capacities that man lacks when he remains solely in his natural state.

The enumerated properties of spirits may be discerned with particular clarity from the following declarations of Scripture.

Two angels came to Sodom in the evening in the guise of men.109 Lot invited them into his house as travelers, not at all understanding that these men were angels. And they entered his house.111 The Sodomites, learning that Lot had strangers with him, determined to dishonor them, and surrounding Lot’s house they demanded the surrender of their victims. Lot went out to plead with the rioters. They subjected him to grievous insults. Then the angels, stretching out their hands, drew Lot inside to them and shut the doors of the house; but the men who were at the door they struck with blindness.112 When morning came, and Lot was slow to leave Sodom, the angels took him by the hand, and his wife by the hand, and the hands of his two daughters, and led them out.113 Here, with all possible clarity, we see the existence of a relationship between angels and time, space, and matter; we see movement; we see both action in common with human beings and action surpassing human capabilities. The latter was the blinding of the transgressors. In the narrative we also see another action of the angels that surpasses human capabilities and understanding: their participation in the burning of the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah. The Lord rained on Sodom and Gomorrah brimstone and fire from the Lord out of heaven;114 but the angel said to Lot concerning this event: make haste to escape there—to Zoar—for I cannot do anything until you arrive there.115 God was the agent; the angel was the instrument of action, and an agent in the capacity of an instrument. The terrible transformation, achieved by a special operation in the air, was wrought by the angels. In order for a limited being to act upon matter, a material means and a material force are necessary. The prophet David says that the plagues which smote Egypt at the time of the Israelites’ departure from it were wrought by destroying angels;116 and the Egyptian sorcerers, Scripture says, performed certain wonders equal to those of Moses through the medium of their sorcery,117 that is, by the power of demons. Demons, like angels, possess a capacity beyond our comprehension to produce the most striking transformations in visible nature;118 they have far greater knowledge of its laws than human beings possess; in their nature they have a greater development of powers; in their actions incomparably more freedom. By the action of the devil, fire that appeared to human eyes to have fallen from heaven119 consumed Job’s flocks of sheep together with their shepherds;120 and by the action of the devil, a great wind came suddenly from the desert and struck the four corners of the house, and the house fell upon Job’s children, and they perished.121 The holy Apostle John the Theologian, depicting the devil as a serpent122 and the Antichrist as a beast, says that the serpent will give the beast his power and his throne and great authority,123 and that by this power the Antichrist will perform great signs, and will even make fire come down from heaven to earth in the sight of men.124

The action of an angel upon matter through matter unknown to us—as well as many other properties of spirits—is vividly depicted in the following narrative from Scripture. An angel appeared to Gideon, who later became a judge of Israel, and commanded him to deliver his people from subjugation to the Midianites. During this apparition the angel first sat under an oak tree, then stood before Gideon, looked upon him, and declared to him his divine calling. Gideon expressed doubt concerning the one who had appeared, evidently taking him for an ordinary man, and asked for a sign. The angel, who had a staff in his hand, commanded that a sacrifice be prepared. When the altar and the offering were ready, the angel reached out the tip of the staff that was in his hand and touched the meat and the unleavened bread; and fire sprang up from the rock and consumed the meat and the unleavened bread. And the angel of the Lord vanished from his sight. Having witnessed the miracle, Gideon understood that the one who had appeared was not a man but the angel of the Lord. After the angel’s departure, Gideon said that he had seen the angel of the Lord face to face.125 The angel had not only a hand but also a face, just as Gideon had a face. In outward appearance the angel bore a complete resemblance to the outward form of a man. The action of the staff was the action of a substance unknown to us. With the discovery of electricity and galvanism we became acquainted with the refined, powerful, and rapid action of a substance unlike its previously known modes of action—an action that had remained unknown to humanity for thousands of years, an astounding action which we employ but do not understand. Let us note in passing: a galvanic device operates through its extremities—through contact.

Jacob was left alone, Scripture says, and a man wrestled with him — by “man” is meant the angel,126 on account of his human form — until the breaking of the day. And the man touched the hollow of his thigh; and the hollow of Jacob’s thigh was put out of joint as he wrestled with him… and he limped because of his thigh.127 During the flight of the prophet Elijah from the wrath of Queen Jezebel, he became exhausted in the desert, sat under a broom tree,128 and asked God to take his life. From toil and grief the prophet fell asleep beneath the shadow of the tree. And behold, an angel of the Lord touched him and said to him: Arise and eat. The prophet awoke, saw near him bread and a vessel of water. He tasted of this food, but from weariness and sorrow fell asleep again. And the angel of the Lord came a second time and touched him and said: Arise and eat, for the journey is too great for you. And he arose and ate and drank, and went in the strength of that food forty days and forty nights to Horeb, the mountain of God.129 In the Acts of the Apostles we read that Herod, to gratify the Jews, killed the Apostle James the son of Zebedee, and with the same purpose had the Apostle Peter bound and cast into prison. On the night before the day on which Herod intended to bring Peter out for public execution, the Apostle was sleeping between two soldiers, bound with two iron chains; guards stood at the doors of the prison and kept watch over the prisoner. The strictest precautions had been taken to prevent escape from the prison by one who had already been freed from it by the power of God’s right hand. And behold, an angel of the Lord stood by him, and a light shone in the cell; and he struck Peter on the side and woke him, saying: Rise up quickly. And his chains fell off his hands. And the angel said to him: Dress yourself and put on your sandals. And he did so. And he said to him: Wrap your cloak around you and follow me. And he went out and followed him; and he did not know that what was done by the angel was real, but thought he was seeing a vision. When they had passed the first and the second guard, they came to the iron gate leading into the city, which opened to them of its own accord. And they went out and went down one street, and immediately the angel departed from him. And when Peter came to himself, he said: Now I know for certain that the Lord has sent his angel and rescued me from the hand of Herod and from all that the Jewish people were expecting.130—Another remarkable account of the action of an angel is found in the Acts. After the holy deacon Philip had baptized the eunuch of the Ethiopian queen at a spring of water on the road leading from Jerusalem to Gaza, the angel of the Lord snatched Philip away, and the eunuch saw him no more. But Philip found himself at Azotus.131—A similar event is described in the book of the prophet Daniel. Daniel, while in Babylon, was cast into the pit where lions were kept. The lions had for a long time been tormented and provoked by hunger, so that they might devour Daniel. Daniel spent six days in the pit without tasting bread or water. At that time the prophet Habakkuk, who lived in Judea, had prepared food for reapers who were working in his field, and went out to the field carrying what he had prepared. Suddenly the angel of the Lord appeared to him and said: Take the meal you have to Babylon, to Daniel in the lions’ pit. And Habakkuk said: Lord, I have never been to Babylon, and I do not know where the pit is. And the angel of the Lord took him by the crown of his head, and held him by the hair of his head, and set him down in Babylon over the pit with the rushing of his spirit… And Daniel arose and ate; but the angel of God instantly restored Habakkuk to his own place.132 The sound produced by the angel’s movement Scripture attributes to his nature, to his spirit. Likewise, the angel who descended into the Babylonian furnace with the three young men made the inside of the furnace as though a moist whirling wind blew through it.133 It is clear that here the word “spirit” denotes a fine substance, since spirit in the abstract sense of the word cannot produce any sound. In a similar way, the sound that accompanied the descent of the Holy Spirit is attributed to the multitude of the Heavenly Powers who rushed down from heaven to be present at God’s great act. Suddenly there came from heaven a sound like a mighty rushing wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting134—the Apostles. For the Holy Spirit, who is everywhere present and fills all things, there is no need of movement in order to manifest his action in any place whatsoever. “The Holy Spirit,” says Cyril of Jerusalem, “is living, self-subsistent, ever present to the Father and the Son; he does not proceed from the mouths or lips of the Father or the Son, is not produced by means of breath, does not spread through the air, but subsists in his own hypostasis.”135 What the Holy Church theologizes concerning God the Word can, with complete exactness and faithfulness, be theologized of the Spirit-God: “His condescension—his descent to earth—was divine, not a movement from place to place.”136 The swift movement of created spirits produced in the aerial space a sound like a strong wind. It is natural for spirits to produce such a sound—not only holy spirits, but rejected spirits as well: the nature of both is one and the same, as are their natural properties; the difference in qualities arises from the holiness of the one and from the decisive corruption by malice of the other.

The movement of an angel from place to place, and his occupation of a definite place—which gives us a conception even of the natural size or stature of spirits—is depicted with particular clarity in the following passages of Holy Scripture. The Archangel Gabriel, the Evangelist Luke relates, appeared in the Temple during a public act of worship to the prophet Zechariah, and announced to him the birth of the Forerunner of the Lord; in this apparition the Archangel stood at the right side of the altar of incense.137 The same Archangel Gabriel was sent by God to the Galilean city of Nazareth to the most holy Virgin Mary to announce to her that she would become the Mother of God. He entered her dwelling and, having fulfilled God’s command, departed from her.138 According to the account of the Evangelist Mark, the myrrh-bearing women who came to the cave-tomb in which the Lord’s body had been laid saw within it a young man dressed in a white robe and sitting on the right side;139 that was an angel. Of this angel the Evangelist Matthew says that he had descended from heaven, rolled back the stone from the entrance to the cave-tomb, and sat upon the stone. His appearance was like lightning, and his clothing white as snow.140 Mary Magdalene, coming to the cave-tomb, stooped down and looked into the interior of the cave; she saw two angels in white robes; the angels were seated in the narrow cave-tomb: one at the head and the other at the feet, in the place where the body of the Lord Jesus had lain.141—Demons also possess the capacity for movement from place to place and for traveling through various places. The Lord spoke as follows about the wandering of a demon who is weary of being driven out of a man: “When an unclean spirit has gone out of a person, it passes through waterless places seeking rest, and finds none. Then it says: I will return to my house from which I came; and when it comes, it finds the house empty, swept, and put in order. Then it goes and brings with it seven other spirits more evil than itself, and they enter and dwell there.”142—Satan, having appeared before the Lord in the assembly of the angels, in answer to the Lord’s question whence he had come, replied: I have been going to and fro on the earth and walking up and down in it, beneath the heavens—here I am.143—Tempting the Lord, the devil took him into the holy city, set him on the pinnacle of the Temple, then took him to a very high mountain. Since the Lord had been fasting in the desert, and it was there that the devil approached him, it is evident that the swift transpositions mentioned were accomplished by a spirit in the same manner as the angel had transported the deacon Philip from the road to Gaza to Azotus: the devil was carrying the Lord from place to place. After the victory over the fallen spirit, the Lord said to him: “Depart from me, Satan.” The devil left him—and angels came and ministered to him.144—In the story of the false prophet Balaam, who was acting against the Israelites, it is told that an angel was sent to hinder the false prophet in his ill-intentioned enterprise. Balaam was riding on a donkey, accompanied by two servants. The event had witnesses. The donkey, Scripture says, saw the angel of God standing in the road, with a drawn sword in his hand, and turned aside from the road and went into the field. Balaam began to beat the donkey with his staff and direct it back to the road. Meanwhile the angel, having changed his position, stood on the path between the vineyards, where there was a wall on both sides. The donkey again saw the angel, pressed against the wall, and crushed Balaam’s foot against it, whereupon he began again to beat the donkey. The angel of God moved again from that position and stood in a narrow place with no room to turn either to the right or to the left. The donkey, seeing the angel, lay down under Balaam, and the enraged false prophet struck it a third time. After this, God opened Balaam’s eyes, and Balaam saw the angel of God standing in the road, with his drawn sword in his hand. The angel said to him: Behold, I have come out to oppose you, because your way is perverse before me; and the donkey saw me and turned aside before me these three times; and if she had not turned aside from me, I would have killed you.145 The donkey saw the angel, by God’s will, in precisely the same way as Balaam saw him: through the opening of the eyes by the omnipotence of God. Irrational animals can see only matter, just as human beings also see with their bodily eyes only what is material.

In the world invisible to us there exist means—material, of course—that act in the most powerful manner upon the objects of the visible world. This is not in the least contrary to contemporary science; on the contrary, it is in harmony with it. We know to some extent the matter belonging to the earth; matter in incomparably greater volume, outside the earth, beyond the bounds of its atmosphere, remains unknown to us. More than that: it is inaccessible to our investigation. Yet this matter exists, because everything in space, and everything bounded by space, is matter.146 Such is the law discovered by positive science—against which the cries of ignorance may be raised, against which there are no valid objections. Scripture, in agreement with science, reveals the nature invisible to us more than science does—science which argues irrefutably for the existence and materiality of invisible nature. Scripture tells us, as much as is needful for us, about heaven, about hell, about the matter of heaven and hell, about the created rational beings for whom heaven is a blessed dwelling and hell a prison. Even our conception of the earth, in connection with these ideas, gains in correctness and leads to sound conclusions, guarding us against self-deception, teaching us to spend our time on earth as in a lodging, and not to sacrifice to the earth all the powers of soul and body. In the narrative of the false prophet that we have cited, it is said that in the angel’s hand was a sword with which he intended to kill the false prophet; in the narrative of Gideon it is said of the angel that he had a staff in his hand, and that the offering was ignited at the touch of that staff. These events point to the existence of a relationship between matter invisible and unknown to us and matter visible and known to us. Church Tradition teaches us that in general the separation of the human soul from its body is accomplished through the mediation of angels; and Holy Scripture relates that angels were employed as instruments for striking certain transgressors with death and for striking multitudes of people with pestilence. — Herod, for appropriating to himself the glory due to God, was struck down by an angel, fell into a strange illness, and—eaten by worms—gave up his soul.147 The attendants of the Jewish king and his physicians, naturally, remained ignorant of the immediate cause of his illness: Scripture discloses it. — When a plague was sent by God upon the people of Israel for placing human confidence in their own strength rather than in the strength of God, seventy thousand men died in a very short time, from Dan to Beersheba. The angel had already stretched out his hand against Jerusalem to destroy it. At that moment the Lord had compassion, and said to the angel who was destroying the people: It is enough; now stay your hand. And the angel of the Lord was standing by the threshing floor of Ornan the Jebusite. And David lifted his eyes and saw the angel of the Lord standing between earth and heaven, with his drawn sword in his hand stretched out over Jerusalem. And David, seeing the angel striking the people, repented; and the Lord said to the angel: Put your sword back into its sheath.148—In one night the angel of the Lord, having descended into the camp of the Assyrian army, struck down a hundred and eighty-six thousand soldiers.149—Demons also are capable of inflicting illness and death upon human beings. The devil struck Job with grievous sores from the sole of his foot to the crown of his head. He would have struck the righteous man whom he hated with death as well, had this not been forbidden by God.150—The Saviour himself testified of the bent woman that Satan had bound her.151 The demon Asmodeus killed seven men to whom Sarah, the daughter of Raguel, had been given in succession as wife.152