Episode 47 - The Divine Balance of Worship and Angelic Reverence

This episode promises a profound understanding of the angelic heavenly intermediaries and their role within the cosmic empire of Christ. 

With our guest PJ Blackham we offer an enlightening discourse on the significance of angels.

Respecting the divine and its messengers often treads a fine line between veneration and worship. 

We tackle this delicate balance by dissecting the language of the Apostle Paul —drawing a clear distinction between the homage we pay to human figures, and the worship that is uniquely reserved for Jesus. 

This thoughtful examination reaffirms the importance of angels and saints in our spiritual lives without conflating their honor with the adoration due solely to the divine.

In a meticulous investigation of historical skepticism, we address the criticisms thrown at Dionysius's works and their alleged Neoplatonic influences. 

Was Saint Eusebius correct in his claim that the original texts had been tainted with Greek philosophy? The search for textual purity leads us to consider the philosophies of Bardaisan—whose ideas stand in stark contrast with Greek thought—and the potential for future series exploring this divergence. 

As we conclude, we set the stage for an upcoming journey through the philosophies that have shaped our understanding of angels, archangels, and the spiritual realm. Join us for a series that promises to be as enlightening as it is transcendent.

The theme music is "Wager with Angels" by Nathan Moore

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:30

Well, welcome to the next episode of the Christ-centered cosmic civilization, and I think we need a change of pace. We've been doing quite a lot of detail on the theology of science and the theological presuppositions of the scientific project. There's actually more we need to do on that. Actually, we're going to I'd like to dig into specific forms of science. Particularly we're looking at biology, chemistry and physics and I've got quite a lot prepared for that. But we need to change our pace for a while. I'd like to get into the theology of language soon, but before we do that I I think we need to look a bit more angels. We often will be coming back to angels in one form or another. It's such an important aspect of created reality. It's the subject of angels and their ministries all the way through the scriptures, christian history, for real theology. It's an enormously important part of real theology and in earlier episodes, going back to some of the earliest episodes, we have looked in general at the way that angels are a vital part of the cosmic divine empire and we saw that there's a huge problem if angels are kind of done away with, because what sometimes happens in a modernist religion will tend to go no, god does everything. Everything's just God. And then all the intermediaries that he has created and that are described in the scriptures are kind of just dispensed with, and then it's just a very kind of two-dimensional view of the universe in which there's either material things or God. And, as you know, on the Christ-Centered Cosmic Civilization podcast we very much don't take that view of reality. We want to engage with as much as possible of all the created richness of the cosmic empire. So Christ, the divine emperor, administers the heavens and the earth through all kinds of creatures in the heavens and on the earth. So on the earth we know how he administers so much of what happens on earth through kings and queens and governors, authorities, all kinds of human structures of authority and power, and he administers the world through those. And we see that all the way through the Bible. And when, in order to make sure Jesus is born at Bethlehem, which was prophesied, he causes the Caesar to have a census. And by doing that, in the fullness of time, jesus is born where he is prophesied to be born, and so that's just at one very obvious level. In the fullness of time, jesus is born where he is prophesied to be born, and so on, and so that's just at one very obvious level. But all those things, all the politics and empires and kingdoms that are mentioned in the Bible, and think of how Jesus is administering the world through earthly intermediaries. And they are all in his hands and the scripture tells us he raises them up and pulls them down and that's so. We are kind of more used to that when we think about how he works in the earth.

Speaker 1: 4:32

But in the heavens also there are these mostly unseen intermediaries, mediators, that are the angels, and we see that with the prophets Daniel and Ezekiel. We're going to look at these passages in more depth in the next two or three episodes where, well, daniel and Ezekiel encounter angelic creatures that are at the very highest levels of reality and the immediate presence of the divine emperor, the Lord Jesus. And sometimes we're thinking of John in the book of Revelation also, where there's angels who are kind of doing this business of explaining theology to John or Zechariah or Daniel or Ezekiel. These angels, like, have the role of mediators on behalf of the mediator, so just as he is called the angel of the Lord, and then these are like sub angels who serve the great angel, in the same way they are kind of sub mediators who work for the mediator, and they have this role of explaining and conveying revelation and messages, but via the great mediator, the Lord Jesus himself.

Speaker 1: 5:56

Now, so the word for angel, malak in Hebrew, angelos in Greek, meaning messenger, sent one. We know this. This is the sort of thing we've done in previous episodes and that is, as we've just noted, angel or malak, like the angel of the Lord, or Malak the angel of the Lord. So it's a divine title possessed by God the Son, perhaps also by God the Spirit, the idea of being a messenger, an angel. And yet they share this title with these heavenly creatures who mirror this work of being sent to accomplish the will of God. Now, all that's just by way of getting us back into this theme of angels that we've covered before. Now I'm joined for this episode by one of the friends of the show, pj Blackham, who works on the Global Church History Project. He's one of the founders of that and he's written a book about angels called what's it called, pj, tell us about that.

Speaker 2: 7:09

It's called Michaelmas Down Through Church History. It's part of a series. We've also got all Halimus and at the moment you can get a Candlemass one on the website. We're working on getting it on print. There's some things we've got to figure out first, though maybe by the time this is up that will be out. So keep an eye out for that. But yeah, it's part of a series down through church history.

Speaker 1: 7:30

Yeah, the Hallowtide, michaelmas and the Candlemass one started off as a small book but that one's become enormous. But, yeah, that one you can get as a Patreon, can you? If you're a Patreon of Global Church you can get that now, but that will be printed before long. Now then you're going to have us like. I want to begin with a warning from Scripture, and it's from the Apostle Paul. Let me read it first, because I know that sometimes people become quite worried when we're getting into the theology of angels and and and having this big, rich view of all the angels do throughout the cosmic empire, and and. More than once people have contacted me to warn me off interest in angels and have literally told me not to have any sort of theology of angels but to ignore them, even though they're common in the Bible. The Bible mentioned them, and they do that because they're concerned about Colossians 2, from verses 16 to 19. This is what it says and Paul's writing to these Colossians who are kind of like new age people from the first century who get into all kinds of things diet, spiritualities, philosophies, new technologies, everything and then Jesus is just one of all these interesting, new, fangled things, and also they kind of get into religion as something that they're into. And so Paul says don't let anyone judge you by diet things, what you eat or drink. Don't judge people by just diet things. Don't let people judge you with regard to religious festivals or new moon celebrations or Sabbath day. These are a shadow of the things that were to come. The reality, however, is found in Christ. So in that intro bit we understand that. Well, he's saying look, don't get into a study of the Old Testament and the law such that the law itself and all the things in the law become the center of attention. Christ is to be the center of attention. Hence we have the Christ centered cosmic civilization. Everything's about Christ. So if you're getting into religion, anything religious observances, even if they're from the bible itself, from the law of moses, but you're doing that without understanding that the reality is in christ. Paul's saying don't do that now. Then but here's the relevant bit do not let anyone who delights in false humility and the worship of angels disqualify you. So that just that concept. There he seems to be saying and we'll ask pj in a second what he has to say about this but it's um, the worship of angels disqualify you so literally. Uh, is he saying that if you get too interested in angels you can lose your salvation? Is that what Paul's saying?

Speaker 1: 10:44

He goes on to say such a person also goes into great detail about what they have seen. So they are presumably people who become obsessed with sharing stories about angels. And should we? Is it ever okay to share us to say you, you encounter an angel? If you share that story with someone else, are you in danger of being disqualified from the christian faith? Should we never share stories like church?

Speaker 1: 11:13

History has a lot of stories about angels, uh, turning up up all across the world in all sorts of circumstances. But to share those or to be even interested in them, is that a danger? Is there a danger there? So such a person goes into great detail about what they've seen. They are puffed up with idle notions by their unspiritual mind and in doing that, paul then says this, and this is why he was worried about being disqualified.

Speaker 1: 11:42

He says such a person has lost connection with the head, that's, lost connection with Christ, from whom the whole body, supported and held together by its ligaments and sinews, grows as God causes it to grow. So the idea there is that they're looking to a source of growth and strength. That isn't God and therefore they're disconnected from Christ and therefore they cannot grow and in danger of just kind of withering away and being disqualified entirely. Now, pj, I know you've looked at this passage. Do you want to give us some guidance on this? Is it ever okay to be interested in angels, and can we ever tell stories if we have been visited by an angel?

Speaker 2: 12:29

Well, it's quite important to be very specific about the word Paul uses, which is threskia, which kind of is like a verb form of religion. So it's kind of like to do religion to angels in a way, and that's quite important because also we're told in other places, you know, not to worship in that way human beings and you know we don't. It's better to trust in the Lord than to trust in princes and so on. But of course the Bible includes some quite interesting commandments to the Old Testament church, like how Esther and Mordecai are to be honored every year with this yearly feast in Esther 928. We see that set up and then throughout the Old Testament we see people invoke names like Abraham, isaac, israel, moses. People do that so that doesn't constitute Threskia. That is like the Bible has that as a memorial and there's that particular word. But we also see temeo is a verb used meaning to venerate or honor, and it gets used with parents. You know you're meant to temeo venerate your parents in Exodus 2012. You're meant to venerate the elderly in Leviticus 19.32. And that English word venerate, it's related to that because we know if someone's old, we sometimes call them venerable and so venerate is like kind of kind of means, that sort of honor.

Speaker 2: 13:54

And then in 1 Timothy 5.3, paul says righteous widows should be venerated. And then Peter says we should venerate the emperor. In 1 Peter 2.17. But of course, again we saw in the Old Testament as in the New we're told not to worship princes. But then Peter says not only is it all right to venerate the emperor, he actually says we should. He has it as a command honour the emperor, venerate the emperor. So it's important just to know what does Threskia include and what does it not. Well, we certainly know what it doesn't.

Speaker 2: 14:30

Then, because the Lord would not command, either through his prophets or directly, or through the apostles or directly or through the apostles, that we do religion towards mere humans like Esther, mordecai, abraham Isaac, israel or you know, to any of these relics that we see, because again, they have to be honored. They're given as memorials. In Exodus 12, 14, we see Passover is called a memorial. So the Lord would not command people to sin. You know, james does say he doesn't will any evil, so he certainly doesn't command it. That would be a ridiculous thing.

Speaker 2: 15:05

So even any of those things to set up memorials or feasts or anything that doesn't our religion done towards Jesus is on a much more secure foundation, where just acknowledging the good that God did through someone else means we no longer worship Jesus, as we saw there. As Paul was saying, it's like you're cut off from the head. It's like you have a totally different source you're based on, and so we know that when jesus was celebrating these feasts and so on, he wasn't cut off from the head. That is the father, or else we'd all be doomed. He could venerate, you know and it's that word to mayo. Again, we do see it in the um throughout the bible. He does do this, you know, and he does honor moses, who came before him, and so on, even though he says he's greater.

Speaker 1: 16:00

so there is room for a proper interest and honor in people, festivals, angels, um, and things like there is, there is a root, there's room for proper honor of these things that does not displace the absolute worship that we have of the Lord Jesus and, through him, the father and the spirit. And so it's really. It's not saying don't be interested in angels at all, it's just don't start giving them the worship or the level of devotion or trust that is due only to the Lord Jesus. In fact, you might say more strongly that if you really trust and worship and obey the Lord Jesus, you will obey his commands to give respect to other things.

Speaker 2: 16:57

Yeah, absolutely. And you think the law of Moses, when it was properly done, it would have been such an incredible thing and it would have been so edifying, every single part of it, and that would include those feasts and those relics and so on, and they wouldn't distract them. And we see again with the angel when he's at, when this archangel talks to john in revelation and he explains why john shouldn't worship him. He says because I'm like one of you, one of the prophets or apostles. He says because I'm a fellow servant with them, therefore don't worship me.

Speaker 2: 17:31

So, whatever honor the Bible gives to them and of course we should be interested in Moses and the apostles we're given all kinds of details about them in the Bible for a reason to study to know Jesus better kinds of details about them in the bible for a reason to study to know jesus better. So proper study, without becoming so fascinated. We worship them. We have to do this to read the bible and we love reading the bible and there's no better way to know jesus. But that does mean we do have to kind of study and be interested in saints. We should, should when we're reading the Bible and we see in Hebrews 11, like Paul tells us all kinds of incredible people, incredible saints we should be interested in and that we should study actively. And if the angel is just saying, don't worship me, because I'm like all of them, that means we can be interested in that archangel in the very least. But then we think probably all of them we could be interested in.

Speaker 1: 18:24

That's good. So we'll listen to Paul's warning and take it very seriously, and what we're not going to do is set up a religion of angels or anything like that and all worship them. But we ought to give them proper respect because they are these wonderful creatures that serve the Lord Jesus and are sent out and some of them behold the Father's face and they're all out and about throughout the heavens and the earth. So it's right and proper and necessary to have a true and accurate biblical vision of angels and it also is important in this having a proper view of the heavens and the earth. Now what we're going to do this, this first episode that we're doing with pj on angels we're really wanting I'm going to warn you, we're not going to do necessarily all about angels, but we're going to really focus on the archangels and we're going to find out how many archangels there are and do we know the names of them and how do we know the names of them and what do they do and everything like that. But we're not going to rush to that. That's, that's a bit of a spoiler for the next two or three episodes. What I want to do in this first one is we're just laying the ground for a proper theology of angels.

Speaker 1: 19:46

Now, one of the people I've read a lot of is a guy called Dionysius the Areopagite. Now, he's the guy who Paul converts in when he goes to Athens and he goes to the Areopagus and he does it. It's not a massively successful time that he has there, but among those who are converted, it says at the end of Acts 17, people in general, some of the people didn't like the idea of the resurrection of the dead and they sneered. Some said we want to hear you again on this subject. So you could argue they've got an open mind on the subject, but they don't believe. But then Paul just leaves because maybe he's had enough. But some of the people do become followers and they did believe, and among them was Dionysius, a member of the people do become followers and they did believe, and among them was Dionysius, a member of the Areopagus, also a woman named Damaris and a number of others.

Speaker 1: 20:50

Now, this guy, dionysius, he's the guy we get the name Dennis from and he's a very, very heavyweight theologian, very, very heavyweight theologian, and the idea is that he studies, maybe with Paul, maybe with other apostles and things like that, but from the first century and his writings have an enormous influence over Christian history, particularly on this theme of angels. Now I'm going to in this episode, before we finish, I'm going to explain what his vision of angels is and how he classifies them. We'll do that in detail in this episode, but first, normally these days, certainly for a while, and you can tell us how long this has been the case but now people call him pseudo-Dionysius. It's like a diss really saying he's not genuine, he's pseudo-Dionysius, the Areopagite. How long has he been called that and why is he called that?

Speaker 2: 22:02

So that in a sense does go back quite a way, because there were people who doubted some of these works in saint eusebius time and we'll think more about what he has to say about that. So pseudo just kind of means like false or pretending so. There were some people who even called him out a long time ago.

Speaker 2: 22:19

But even at the time of eusebius, they thought he was pseudo yeah so it does go quite a bit back and that's probably why it has so much weight now. But I think it got a new wave of criticism in, like the so-called uh, so-called age of enlightenment. That old theory kind of came back um, but people weren't using it properly. They weren't looking at why. People criticized it at the time of saint eusebius, um, and I think they probably thought they were being too clever, because some of these people thought, like our ancients didn't notice there's all this like platonic stuff in it that means the whole thing must be false, the difficult years.

Speaker 1: 22:59

Saint eusebius does notice there's all this Platonic stuff and he says that people were editing the genuine Dionysius' works so that it had Platonic stuff in it.

Speaker 2: 23:19

So you'll have to explain that a bit. So what is Platonic stuff? Yeah, so you have, obviously, this Greek philosophical tradition that's very different from what's in the Bible, and there's all these ideas that come with it, and we think not only Plato, actually you have Aristotelianism and they get merged together. There's this guy called Plotinus and he was trying to defend paganism against Christianity. So he takes loads of Christian ideas and mixes it with a bit of Plato and a bit of Aristotle and he ended up with this ideology called Neoplatonism. And so, because we know he invented it and we know what ideas he borrowed from Christianity and Judaism, ideas he borrowed from Christianity and Judaism. We know it is not ancient, we know it's much.

Speaker 2: 24:14

It appeared much later than Saint Denis. So that means if a Neo-Platonist idea pops up in Saint Denis's works, then we think, well, it has to have been written later. We know who invented all this, we know he plagiarized it from Christianityianity, but then he also mixed in these ideas like simplest, divine simplicity, and you know all of these greek pagan ideas, um, and ended up with neoplatonism. So if any of that occurs, and like the idea that angelic mediation has to be non-bodily, that the angels are totally without bodies. So in the version of dionysius we have today, we see that where, like sometimes, the angels are called the bodies. So in the version of dionysius we have today, we see that where, like sometimes, the angels are called the bodiless powers and so on. And so people said at the time of saint eusebius and then, what?

Speaker 2: 24:52

when is saint eusebius? He's in the fourth century. He's a contemporary of the emperor saint constantine the great, the equal to the Apostles. He had been a preacher and a bishop before Constantine converted and then he lived after Constantine died. So that's the kind of time he's in, so like kind of early 4th century. So some of this Neoplatonist stuff was quite recent. So when you see a book that says, oh, this is written by dennis, and then you see neoplatonic stuff that immediately caught people's suspicions, like you can imagine if like a dan brown idea appeared in like a supposedly medieval thing.

Speaker 2: 25:35

You think, well, it can't actually be medieval. That's like obviously just um. From this recent book we know when it came out. So that idea criticism of Dionysius is quite old. But then Eusebius says no, people were just editing his work, so it had this stuff and we can see them do this with other books. So like St Clement wrote this biography of the apostle Peter, called the Recognitions and then the Homilies, and people edited that Gnostnostics. So it was Clement was writing, like the apostle John does, against Gnostics. Some Gnostics then change it so it means the exact opposite and then it means something Gnostic. So then people had to change that back. Then Aryans tried changing it. So we know people did this when they knew the teaching of the apostles is this and it's totally against us. They would pretend to be apostles. They knew the teaching of the apostles is this and it's totally against us. They would pretend to be apostles or they would modify what the apostles had taught. Marcion did this quite famously. So we know that was done.

Speaker 1: 26:32

Eusebius says that was done to Dennis's works and he had access to older stuff which seems much more genuinely Christian, much more biblical, yeah, and free from any of this platonic and pagan philosophical nonsense so we do get these books where you will get gnostic gospels and things written which do the same sort of thing, where they'll take the genuine stuff and then weave into it all this pagan ideas and then pass it off as genuine. So you're saying that happened to dionysius's works and platine, and not necessarily platinus himself. But neoplatonist said oh, dionysius's works will be a good vehicle for us to load some of our garbage onto and then pass that off, whereas what we can do then and is this possible to do? Can we strip that out and have a, a repristinated original um dionysius? Could we? Could we get a book that's the not pseudo dionysius but authentic dionysius? Is it possible to do that?

Speaker 2: 27:42

well, saint eusebius stephanie felt, uh, he, that he was capable of doing that and he felt quite confident. He just invited other people to do the same. He was quite capable of doing it because he had access to very non-greek stuff, like he quite enjoyed, uh, ma bardaishan, who was this um former mage who converted to christianity. So he has a very different background. His kind of philosophy is that of, you know, the prophet daniel and everything you know that he said he became the archmage, the prophet daniel in his book I'll tell you what.

Speaker 1: 28:16

Why don't we do a whole episode on bardation? Because he's absolutely fascinating and his, his understanding of reality is so different to the greek one. Yeah, that, actually, I think a full episode on bardation would be good, if you're capable of that, yeah, yeah, definitely.

Speaker 2: 28:35

But the reason to bring it up is that, of what we have, we can see that he, philosophically, is somewhat more in line with the Dead Sea Scrolls. The Dead Sea Scrolls are somewhat happy to agree with the Magi because the prophet Daniel was their archmage, so the kind of teaching that the magi have is obviously kind of good, and we see that the apostle Matthew doesn't feel he has to explain why the magi are good. When they turn up he's just like, oh brilliant, there's magi. Isn't that good news? He doesn't have to explain this. Or with philosophers and so on, we see Luke much more cautious of them. He doesn't quite like philosophers, and he includes that amazing sentence, isn't it, where it's like oh, they just waste all day just thinking up new ideas and that's all they ever talk about. Um, you know. So we know luke hates greek philosophy, uh. But we see matthew's kind of all right with the magi, and so are the dead sea scrolls, and so we can see a lot of the ideas in bardaishan. We can see in um the dead Sea Scrolls, and so we can see a lot of the ideas in Bardai Shan. We can see in um the Dead Sea Scrolls and some other stuff.

Speaker 2: 29:40

There's other works which have been preserved. There's one called Pseudo Philo, but it shouldn't really be called Pseudo Philo. It never pretended to be written by Philo, it's just it got lumped in. They got put in when people had collections of all the Philo's works. They put this with it because it's a work which is actually a bit older than Philo and it's, you know, the Jewish Antiquities. It's called and it basically covers Jewish history but tells you about interesting things that are missing, though that you might not have known about. That has again a very similar ideology and philosophy to Bardaischan and Desi Scrolls, so you can put together a very non-Greek way of seeing the world, that a lot of the that. It kind of seems the Bible is more likely to work with this than it is with the Greek philosophical model, if we're working with any kind of ontology and anything like that.

Speaker 1: 30:36

Okay. So where we've got to then I haven't been able to set out Dionysius' structure for angels and I'll do that in the next episode. And what we'll do then is we'll do that we'll get into the archangels and then we'll also see if we could do an episode on this bardation guy and then we'll do a little series with pj looking at these things. So tune in next time.