Dante makes the creation of angels simultaneous with that of the universe at large. “The fall of the rebel angels he considers to have taken place within twenty seconds of their creation, and to have originated in the pride which made Lucifer unwilling to await the time prefixed by his Maker for enlightening him with perfect knowledge”—see Rossetti, Shadow of Dante, 14, 15. Milton, unlike Dante, puts the creation of angels ages before the creation of man. He tells us that Satan's first name in heaven is now lost. The sublime associations with which Milton surrounds the adversary diminish our abhorrence of the evil one. Satan has been called the hero of the Paradise Lost. Dante's representation is much more true to Scripture. But we must not go to the extreme of giving ludicrous designations to the devil. This indicates and causes scepticism as to his existence.
In mediæval times men's minds were weighed down by the terror of the spirit of evil. It was thought possible to sell one's soul to Satan, and such compacts were [pg 444]written with blood. Goethe represents Mephistopheles as saying to Faust: “I to thy service here agree to bind me, To run and never rest at call of thee; When over yonderthou shalt find me, Then thou shalt do as much for me.” The cathedrals cultivated and perpetuated this superstition, by the figures of malignant demons which grinned from the gargoyles of their roofs and the capitals of their columns, and popular preaching exalted Satan to the rank of a rival god—a god more feared than was the true and living God. Satan was pictured as having horns and hoofs—an image of the sensual and bestial—which led Cuvier to remark that the adversary could not devour, because horns and hoofs indicated not a carnivorous but a ruminant quadruped.
But there is certainly a possibility that the ascending scale of created intelligences does not reach its topmost point in man. As the distance between man and the lowest forms of life is filled in with numberless gradations of being, so it is possible that between man and God there exist creatures of higher than human intelligence. This possibility is turned to certainty by the express declarations of Scripture. The doctrine is interwoven with the later as well as with the earlier books of revelation.
Quenstedt (Theol., 1:629) regards the existence of angels as antecedently probable, because there are no gaps in creation; nature does not proceed per saltum. As we have (1) beings purely corporeal, as stones; (2) beings partly corporeal and partly spiritual, as men: so we should expect in creation (3) beings wholly spiritual, as angels. Godet, in his Biblical Studies of the O. T., 1-29, suggests another series of gradations. As we have (1) vegetables—species without individuality; (2) animals—individuality in bondage to species; and (3) men—species overpowered by individuality: so we may expect (4) angels—individuality without species.
If souls live after death, there is certainly a class of disembodied spirits. It is not impossible that God may have created spirits without bodies. E. G. Robinson, Christian Theology, 110—“The existence of lesser deities in all heathen mythologies, and the disposition of man everywhere to believe in beings superior to himself and inferior to the supreme God, is a presumptive argument in favor of their existence.” Locke: “That there should be more species of intelligent creatures above us than there are of sensible and material below us, is probable to me from hence, that in all the visible and corporeal world we see no chasms and gaps.” Foster, Christian Life and Theology, 193—“A man may certainly believe in the existence of angels upon the testimony of one who claims to have come from the heavenly world, if he can believe in the Ornithorhyncus upon the testimony of travelers.” Tennyson, Two Voices: “This truth within thy mind rehearse, That in a boundless universe Is boundless better, boundless worse. Think you this world of hopes and fears Could find no statelier than his peers In yonder hundred million spheres?”
The doctrine of angels affords a barrier against the false conception of this world as including the whole spiritual universe. Earth is only part of a larger organism. As Christianity has united Jew and Gentile, so hereafter will it blend our own and other orders of creation: Col. 2:10—“who is the head of all principality and power”—Christ is the head of angels as well as of men; Eph. 1:10—“to sum up all things in Christ, the things in the heavens, and the things upon the earth.” On Christ and Angels, see Robertson Smith in The Expositor, second series, vols. 1, 2, 3. On the general subject of angels, see also Whately, Good and Evil Angels; Twesten, transl. in Bib. Sac., 1:768, and 2:108; Philippi, Glaubenslehre, 2:282-337, and 3:251-354; Birks, Difficulties of Belief, 78 sq.; Scott, Existence of Evil Spirits; Herzog, Encyclopädie, arts.: Engel, Teufel; Jewett, Diabolology,—the Person and Kingdom of Satan; Alexander, Demonic Possession.