Spiritual beings Fr Aiden Nichols reviews a new study of the angels by Fr John Saward

Angels have had a bad press recently. Or have they? In the 1960s Roman Catholic angels fell victim to the demythologisation programme pioneered for their Protestant counterparts a generation (or two) previously by the Lutheran New Testament scholar Rudolf Bultmann. They were one of the deliberate omissions of the 1966 ‘Dutch Catechism’ (its chief architects were two theological radicals, Piet Schoonenberg and Edward Schillebeeckx), and had to be shoehorned in, by way of an ‘Appendix’, as subsequently required by a commission of Roman cardinals.

More surprisingly – and probably by oversight – they failed to make an appearance in the English Dominican Herbert McCabe’s ‘New Catechism’ (The Teaching of the Catholic Church) a decade after that.

The influential German Jesuit Karl Rahner had wondered whether the Fourth Lateran Council (whose Fathers came the closest to a dogmatic definition of the Church’s faith in angels) had really intended to home in on these spiritual yet finite beings, as distinct from saying that God is the Creator of everything – no matter what ‘everything’ might turn out to be. If so, angels could be abandoned, on the pastoral principle that one must not present unnecessary obstacles to Fred (the ‘Fred’ – that is –found in that litmus test of successful apologetics suggested (tongue in cheek) by Ronald Knox, ‘How much can Fred swallow?’). And yet in the following decades, in popular religious literature, the angels gave every impression of making a massive comeback – even to the point that encounters with angels were reported by people who otherwise seemed rather unclear as to whether there is a God or not. This contrast is well worthy of exploration by sociologists or social anthropologists. But it is not the point of Father John Saward’s new book.

Father Saward’s book is straightforwardly biblical, doctrinal, and devotional in character. It could appropriately be called a summa of angelology, not only because it is comprehensive but also because, like all of this author’s later writing, it is placed firmly under the aegis of St Thomas Aquinas: his sources, texts, disciples, and those other writers he is known to have influenced. In a word, it comes from the ‘school of Thomas’, the schola Thomae. What gives it its peculiar Sawardian flavour, on the other hand, are two features not commonly associated with any mediaeval Scholastic: namely, a lyrical writing style and the most exacting precision in the making of references. (Though I suppose John Saward could appeal to St Bonaventure in connection with the first, and to St Thomas’ search for authentic patristic sources, in connection with the second.)

What, then, does this ‘summa’ contain? It consists of five chapters, on, in due order, the existence of angels; their nature; their activity; their ‘rebel band’ (the fallen angels), and, finally, their relations with the Mother of God, where angelology intersects with Mariology. A coda considers their role in eschatology - ie the character of the social existence they will share with the redeemed in Heaven or, after the general resurrection – the Great Consummation, in the Age to Come.

These themes are surveyed lucidly, and therefore usefully for those (some of us) who have to teach the faith, as well as inspirationally, and therefore usefully for those (all of us) who have to turn it into spiritual practice.

Though this is a Thomasian (Aquinasbased) angelology, and also a Thomistic one (not quite the same thing: in recent parlance ‘Thomistic’ implies drawing on later disciples of Thomas who may have said things Aquinas didn’t but by way of statements in keeping with his set of mind), it is not altogether without dips into other theological or indeed confessional traditions.

C. S. Lewis makes an appearance, as does the Byzantine Liturgy and, indeed, from the remoter reaches of erudition (and in a footnote, so not indexed), Anglo-Saxon monks unlikely to have been known to St Thomas but adding a homely English touch, as with Bryhtferth (Bridfert) of Ramsey. What is more surprising is the absence of reference to two classics of twentieth century writing on the angels, the Russian Orthodox Sergei Bulgakov’s Jacob’s Ladder andThe Angels and their Mission, by the French nouveau théologien Jean Daniélou. Possibly their provenance, coming as they did from writers who were often anti-Latin (Bulgakov) or at any rate antiScholastic (Daniélou), put them beyond the Pale. That would be a pity, since, as Aquinas himself makes plain, not least by his practice, we can often learn from those with whom, in certain respects, we disagree.

John Saward, WorldInvisible.TheCatholic Doctrine of the Angels (Angelico Press). Available from Amazon.