In the liturgical calendar, today is the feast of St. Michael and All Angels. Traditionally four archangels–Michael, Gabriel, Raphael, and Uriel–are especially commemorated. Only two of these are named in the the Protestant canon: Michael and Gabriel. Raphael figures prominently in the apocryphal book of Tobit, and Uriel is mentioned in 2 Esdras and other non-canonical texts. Even if we cannot name these last two with any degree of biblical authority, we do know that the heavenly Jerusalem is populated by “innumerable angels in festal gathering” (Hebrews 12:23). Presumably they too have names that perhaps only God knows. In the Thomistic treatment of angels, given that angels are pure forms (not composed of matter and form or genus and species, like embodied creatures), each angel is his own species. Each elect angel is known and loved by God and does his holy bidding on behalf of God’s people.

In my experience, many evangelical Protestants have an impoverished view of the angels. Reacting to excesses and speculations on the part of some Roman Catholics and charismatics, evangelicals often swing the pendulum the other way. We take the other extreme that C.S. Lewis describes with reference to the demonic realm: rather than an unhealthy fascination, we end up thinking of the angels not at all.

Why should we care about and study the angels? Let me provide four brief reasons.

1. It Is a Delight

So why should we study the doctrine of angels and demons? For starters, it is difficult to improve upon the answer given by the Christian philosopher Peter Kreeft: because it is fun![1] Maybe fun is not the best word. Kreeft also writes this: Believing in angels “feeds the feeling of wonder, fascination, curiosity.”[2] So, one reason we should study this doctrine is the pure delight it can bring. Studying this wondrous, imagination-stoking aspect of God’s creation is not just a means to some other end. In one sense, it is an end in itself.

2. It is Biblical

A second, more fundamental, reason we should study angels is that they exist. And we know that they exist because, the Bible has quite a lot to say about them. Angels and demons show up in every genre of literature and in every phase of the unfolding biblical storyline. They are present at creation, at the fall, in every era of redemptive history, and at the final judgment and end of the age. Angels are especially prominent in and around the climactic event of the Bible: the incarnation, life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. So, to the degree that we are care about the Bible, and its central Figure, we will care about angels.

3. It Is Theologically Beneficial

Third, we should study the doctrine of angels and demons because it is theologically beneficial. So much of the history of Christian doctrine has been concerned with angelogy. The church fathers, especially Augustine and Pseudo-Dionysius wrote extensively about the angels. The medieval theologians were especially interested in the topic. Thomas Aquinas is often referred to as the “Angelic Doctor,” not only because of his eloquent expression of Christian truth but also because he spent so much space in his writings on the angels. Similarly, Bonaventure has received the moniker the “Seraphic Doctor.” Likewise, the Reformers and their theological heirs have been careful to address angels as an important part of the doctrine of creation. It may not be a stretch to say that Martin Luther was rather obsessed with the supernatural, often speaking directly to the devil (often in colorful language). Furthermore, studying this doctrine impinges upon every other doctrine in the system of Christian belief. Just as angels show up in every phase of the biblical story, so too they show up in every topic of Christian theology: everything from creation and providence to Christology, ecclesiology, and eschatology. So, to the degree that we care about Christian doctrine, we should care about angels.

4. It Is Practically Beneficial

A final reason we should care about angels and demons is that this doctrine is practically beneficial to the Christian life. Many Christians never think about the angelic realm, and, quite frankly, they do not know what they are missing. Studying angels and demons enriches our worship, our prayers, our battle against sin, our thanksgiving for the saving work of the Triune God, and our hope in the future redemption. It is not just that this doctrine equips us for spiritual warfare, though it certainly does that. But this doctrine also equips us to know and love God, which is the ultimate end of all theological reflection. The Western world has become demystified, and one of the most countercultural and spiritually beneficial things we can do is to recover the wonder.

For what it’s worth, I am contracted to write a book that will be a lay-level introduction to the doctrine of angels and demons. It has been on the back burner for a bit, while I finish up another book (co-authored with Matt Emerson) on the Trinity. But stay tuned for more on the angels!

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[1] Peter Kreeft, Angels (and Demons): What Do We Really Know about Them? (San Francisco: Ignatius, 1995), 38.

[2] Ibid., 22.

Rod Dreher has a scathing and important review of the new book by Andrew Isker, The Boniface Option, which riffs on Dreher’s own 2017 title, The Benedict Option. I have read the latter, but not the former. So, I’ll leave it to others to determine how accurate the review is. But Dreher’s piece is important in its own right as a diagnosis of a broader phenomenon, namely, the very online angry young men who are so attracted to the Christian Nationalist cause. Here are a few relevant lines from Rod’s post:

Isker is “not interested in thinking and conversing, but only emoting and getting high-fives from church bros for owning the libs. I can’t emphasize this enough: The Boniface Option is a book for angry young men who enjoy being angry, young, and male.”

“Again, every page of The Boniface Option bristles with intense anger. Over and over, Isker says that we must train ourselves to ‘hate’ — but he offers no advice on how to keep that hatred of evil from turning into hatred of human beings, or the hatred from poisoning one’s heart. One gets the clear impression that he thinks hatred in defense of holiness is no vice.”

“In the end, I know very well what Andrew Isker hates, but I have no idea what he loves. I know what he thinks war should be like, but I can’t figure out what peace is to him, other than the vanquishing of his enemies. I know what his idea of justice looks like, but I can’t see even the slightest hint that mercy matters to him.”

Again, these are problems that are broader than any one author or book. The Christian Nationalist Right, or whatever we want to call it, has a Christian virtue problem. They revel in transgression–in hate and name-calling, not to mention the often overt anti-semitism and racism–and call it courage and faithfulness.

What use is Christian Nationalism if it isn’t even Christian in any demonstrable sense of the term?

Incidentally I’m reading Benedict XVI’s final writings, and it’s striking how different his perspective is from the Protestant Nationalist/Catholic Integralist tendencies that are so en vogue in certain corners of the Christian internet. Ratzinger, of course, knew the problems of modern liberalism well. And he, too, was concerned that Christians stand strong against the cultural pressures–like the Maccabean words of defiance, “We will not obey the king’s words.” But the “zeal” of the Maccabeans “is not the form in which Christian zeal is expressed. Authentic ‘zeal’ takes its essential form from the Cross of Jesus Christ.” 

Christian responses to what Ratzinger often called the “dictatorship of relativism” must be, well, Christian, which is to say, they must be cruciform. More Ratzinger:

“As far  as the truth is concerned, I would simply like to defer to Origen: ‘Christ wins no victory over someone who is unwilling. He conquers only by persuasion. Not for nothing is he the Word of God.’ But at the end, as an authentic counterbalance to all forms of intolerance, stands Jesus Christ crucified. The victory of faith can always be achieved only in communion with Jesus Crucified. The theology of the Cross is the Christian response to the question about freedom and violence; and in fact, even historically, Christianity won its victories only thanks to the persecuted and never when it sided with the persecutors.”

I’m not on Twitter anymore. So, mercifully, I don’t see the daily crazy. But it came to my attention this week that a group of posters associated with the Christian Nationalist right were on there feigning ignorance of and then questioning the “narrative” about the lynching of Emmett Till. Apparently, we can’t acknowledge one of the most well-documented cases of racist terrorism in American history simply because it is a part of the “official narrative” of “the left.” The brutal disfigurement, mutilation, and murder of a 14-year-old boy, which was racially motivated by his murderers’ own admission, may have not been “wholly unprovoked, or as thoroughly driven by racism as is claimed.” This vile and tribalistic thinking betrays a profoundly relativistic mindset that is more concerned with posturing in the contemporary political landscape than it is with the truth or with Christian morality. Flagrantly racist attitudes are now treated as merely different “opinions on race.” And it appears to be a part of a growing trend on the so-called dissident right to cozy up to anti-Semitic and overtly white supremacist voices. One of the leaders in this movement suggested to me on Twitter a couple years ago that genetic inferiority is as likely an explanation for racial disparities in America as any lingering effects of systemic racism. The ethnic dimension to the rising ethno-nationalism on the right is becoming more transparent. The mask is coming off.

It is easy to get angry about all of this. And to be sure, righteous indignation is appropriate. But I would suggest the leavening of another emotion: pity. I genuinely pity those who still find a perverted solace in the myth of racial superiority and the hardened path of racial division. I feel sorry for those who are so blinded by a “no enemies to the right” way of thinking that they have departed so disastrously from the way of Christ, where “there is not Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave, free; but Christ is all, and in all” (Col. 3:11).

There is a reason why we included an article on racial unity in our Manifesto for Evangelical Baptist Catholicity. Racist attitudes and expressions even within the church aren’t making a comeback. Sadly, they never went away. In the Manifesto, we write,

We affirm that all people, regardless of race, ethnicity or gender, are created in God’s image and, if they have repented and believed in Christ, are brothers and sisters together in the one body of Jesus Christ through the Holy Spirit. Because of this shared imago dei and because of Christ’s saving work among all nations, peoples, and tongues, we believe that one major task of Baptist catholicity is to promote racial unity, especially within the body of Christ.

The last several years have put a major strain on efforts toward racial reconciliation within evangelical and Baptist circles. We are at a point now where things that almost everyone agreed on a decade ago—about the need for empathy, the acknowledgement of past wrongs (and their lingering effects), and the pursuit of racial diversity in the body of Christ—are dismissed as “critical race theory” or “cultural Marxism.” Few have the courage to poke their heads up in favor of racial reconciliation in this landscape. This too is pitiable.

For Southern Baptists, it would be a good time to revisit our Resolution on Racial Reconciliation on the 150^th Anniversary of the Southern Baptist Convention. Again, it says things that would get you run out of town as an allegedly CRT proponent today. It spoke of both conscious and unconscious racism and of both individual and “systemic racism.” It apologized and repented for our racist past. It sought forgiveness and healing. It made commitments to eradicate racism from our midst. And it anchored all of it in the Great Commission that our Lord solemnly gave to the church to make disciples of every tribe, tongue, and nation. We should pursue racial justice, unity, and reconciliation not because they map onto any left-right analysis of contemporary American politics, but because they are demanded by the gospel of Jesus Christ. Rediscovering and making good on these resolutions is the only possible path for a Baptist future blessed by the Savior of the world.

Myk Habets and I have recently published a book with Lexham Press on how the theology of T. F. Torrance interfaces with evangelical theology. Lexham interviewed Myk and I about the book here. One of Myk’s comments sums up well why you should be interested in the book and in Torrance’s theology more generally:

At the heart of Torrance’s theology is the conviction, from Scripture and the tradition, that Jesus is the exclusive two-fold movement from God to humanity and humanity to God. Christ is our High Priest, Mediator, Savior, Model, and King. What Evangelical would disagree with that! But, Torrance goes further and takes this as seriously as anyone in the Tradition, and argues for the vicarious humanity and ministry of Christ. This is something that is fundamental to the Gospel and yet subtly eclipsed in much modern Evangelicalism. This book is an attempt to in part, correct this. To do this, a clear and compelling doctrine of the Trinity is required, a mature and faithful commitment to the authority of Scripture is needed, and from there, everything else will flow. This book is a partial contribution to the renewal of Evangelical thought and practice today. 

Check it out the whole interview (note my last reply especially) and buy the book here!

One my favorite British Baptist theologians, Steve Holmes, has written a reflection on the Coronation liturgy of King Charles. It’s straight Baptist fire. His concerns center on the Baptist conviction, beautifully expressed in the First London Baptist Confession of Faith, that Christ alone is the true Prophet-Priest-King of the New Covenant people of God. As Holmes explains, this doctrine of Christ’s threefold office (munus triplex) had important precedents in earlier Christian history, but it takes on a particular force in Baptist theology:

Thomas Aquinas presents the doctrine like this; Calvin starts to use it as an organising principle for narrating the work of Christ. The expansion of its range amongst the English Separatists and Baptists is extensive and perhaps surprising. It is also dependent on a further claim that King Jesus does not delegate any of these offices: he is our great high priest, so there is no need for any human priesthood; he alone is the true prophet, and so we look for truth nowhere other than his word; he alone is king, and so no-one else may presume to command any congregation of his people.

Now, both the expansion of the scope of the offices and this point about the lack of delegation are contestable, of course, and so other theological constructions than a Baptist one are possible. But the instinctive Baptist fear/complaint/demand is always that some human authority is trying to muscle in on a role that belongs to Christ alone.

British Baptists have not, generally, been anti-monarchy: there is a temporal realm, that requires governing, and a monarchy is a possible way to do that. The seventeenth-century English Baptists, even when persecuted, did not stop declaring their loyalty to the crown—but they thought that, in imposing forms of worship and doctrine, the crown had badly over-reached its authority, and was trying to govern where Jesus alone can reign.

Read the whole thing. If the coronation represents an expression of “Christian nationalism” or whatever you want to call it, the Baptist complaint against it not just that it’s a relatively empty symbol in a nation even more secular and progressive than the United States. No, even if the ceremony had more teeth–especially if it had more teeth–the problems are systemic, on a Baptist reckoning. No king or government should pretend to usurp the place that belongs to Jesus alone as the King of the Church and Lord of the conscience.