Episode 48 - Navigating the Angelic Order: Dionysius, Divinity, and the Great Chain of Being

Embark on a celestial quest to unravel the angelic hierarchy with the legendary guidance of Dionysius the Areopagite and our esteemed guest, PJ. Together, we dissect the nine choirs of angels and their roles within the cosmic order, juxtaposing biblical roots against the philosophical frameworks of Plato and Aristotle. As we navigate the Great Chain of Being, we critically examine its historical misapplications and current echoes, challenging listeners to reconsider the implications of hierarchical structures in both ancient and modern contexts.

Join our conversation as we question the boundaries of celestial classifications, with special attention to figures like Michael, whose roles span across archangels to principalities. Through our discussion, we shine light on the fluidity of divine hierarchy and the closeness of cherubim and seraphim to the ultimate source. We also delve into the symbology of the menorah, as Philo interpreted it, visualizing the organization of the divine realm and contemplating the intricate relationship between the multiple heavens and angelic hierarchies.

In our concluding reflections, the theological significance of Jesus's self-identification as the light of the world is explored, drawing a profound connection to the eternal church and the pre-material existence of angels and archangels. We ponder the promise of humanity's future, sharing in the spiritual and eternal ministry of angels. The insightful exchange sets the stage for our next episode, where we'll seek to uncover the purpose of the seven heavens, providing a beacon of spiritual sustenance for our listeners.

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

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:30

Okay, welcome to the next episode of the Christ-Centered Cosmic Civilization and we're continuing to dig into the whole issue of angels. But really, archangels, archangels, is the theme of these next few episodes and you might wonder why we're doing that. Last episode we were kind of thinking about the, the why and how is it safe to do this? And we were going to think about Dionysius the Areopagites explanation of angels, and it's extremely influential in Christian thought. Has it got any biblical basis to it? Is it an accurate portrayal of angels? And particularly, we want to find the place of archangels in the scheme of the heavens and the earth. So we're going to be looking out for where do archangels fit in Dennis's scheme? And some people would say he's Dennis the Menace, because they would say Dennis's scheme is. And, uh, some people would say he's dennis the menace because they would say dennis's scheme is a bad one. Um, but I'm, I'm not of that mind. I, I like den, den, dionysius, dennis the areopagite, and um, but I'm gonna. What I want to do to begin with is to set out what exactly he has to say, how he sets it all up. Then we'll get PJ to respond to that and give us a sense of how to assess Dionysius' scheme.

Speaker 1: 2:08

Has it been influenced by Plato? Can we detect in it something of Plato's chain of being, or Aristotle's chain of being, or whatever? Is there something of that to be concerned about? And just briefly, peej, is there anything for us to watch out for in that concept of a chain of being? And what is a chain of being? What's all that about? So that one would situate it particularly in that kind of neo-platonic idea where like one thing influences another. And so there's this idea where, like um, where plato thinks about everything as like in immaterial categories, aristotle thinks more about like one thing influencing another, and so he, he's very predeterministic. Everything is quite mechanical, everything can just be explained by being part of a great chain of being or great chain of movement. He kind of has, in a way. So it's like everything is part of an interconnected system, like a clockwork machine, grading from the heights down to the bottom, and everything's interconnected and graded down in a system. That's aristotle, is it? Yeah, yeah, and so he has it that only god is free in any sense. And so he moves, he winds up the clockwork machine, yeah, yeah, and so his movement is everyone else's movement and they can't move on their own in any sense. So he's the prime mover.

Speaker 1: 3:40

So there's a and is there any dangers to believing that everything is a great integrated chain of being? Well, I think, in that quite deterministic sense, I think there is quite a lot of trouble and there is a lot of sense. I think there is quite a lot of trouble and there is a lot of um, when people have these ideas about, uh, predetermination and so on, um, it can cause a lot of bigotry within church and so on. And we do see the great chain of being as the medievals used it. They didn't use this chain of being between other human beings, but after the kind of reformation we do see this, certainly after the enlightenment, yes, but yeah, yeah, and it depends exactly on which empire we're talking about and everything. But as these european empires go out, some of them do apply these ideas of chains of being within human beings, and so there is that idea. So then, so then they start to grade human beings as some being higher up the chain of being than others. And we can see some of the influence of this today, where people kind of only value, kind of Western European civilization, and so then they are like they think these other countries can be good provided they fit into this model or they're developing towards the western uh goal.

Speaker 1: 5:01

Yeah, and in one of the most disliked videos on youtube, they had this kind of thing where they were saying, wow, we're so grateful that finally, uh, asians are big in tech and it's like like, of course, korea, japan and China have been the biggest people in tech, but it's just because in American technology there was a bit of Asian representation, and it's that sort of thing where they're like this is we are at the top, yeah, and it's good now that some are sharing the top. It's like, dude, you've never been at the top of tech Totally. And it's good now that some are sharing the top. It's like, dude, you've never been at the top of tech Totally. And they do see all the technological improvement coming out of those countries as on a lower part of the chain of being. So that's a modern influence and that's one that caused this massive reaction.

Speaker 1: 5:57

This video got totally disliked, so it's kind of one of the dangers of a chain of being way of looking at reality is you tend to structure things in a. In a, creative things or even human beings are put on a pyramid scheme and then you work out who's at the top, and and it's a very 19th century thing to do, isn't it? Where you? You have history is is a pyramid structure. We're at the top of it and it might be in in, like freud would say that in one way, darwin does it in another way, marx does it in another way, hegel does it in another way, and everything's going up to us. And we're at the top of this pyramid. And now we look back on history and see everyone below us, or even people around the world today, as below us we are obviously at the pinnacle, kind of thing.

Speaker 1: 6:35

So a chain of being mentality is attending to grade everything according to, like a pyramid approach. Yeah, and whereas the cosmic empire, the divine empire we don't do that where it's the living god who's like at the pinnacle of it all, and we don't grade creatures in that way, and or, if we do, it's underneath this supreme divine emperor, and there's a way of grading that includes rather than demands. Yes, we see moses. He splits up israel. So in in the septuagint he's called the emperor, the basileus, but he and he tries to everything.

Speaker 1: 7:14

He sees at one point, like sovereignty, as this thing where you meticulously control everything and then Jethro, who's been a priest for much longer, he explains it's like no sovereignty, isn't like that at all. What you want to do is break things down so that you've got lots of like little divisions and they can kind of have some responsibility and they can give you feedback on all that. And we see god does this, and so we see I think it's a prophet, shemaiah he gets to look into heaven and see what's going on and he sees that god has called a council of all these angels to get some ideas about how to get rid of ahab. Oh yeah, he just calls this and he wants so he's delegated all this authority. But he doesn't have it like now I'm going to prime move and all of you just get in line and all you should just be moved. Instead he says I've given you lots of talents, lots of thoughts, lots of authority. Um, now I want to hear your perspective. And so that's how Jethro advises Moses. And it's a crazy thing where Moses is so great to be, to be able to advise Moses. You have to be quite great. But actually Jethro is saying lots of people should be able to advise Moses because God is this way, where he likes these perspectives.

Speaker 1: 8:30

So an Aristotelian chain of being which is similarly replicated because in the Renaissance and Enlightenment is an attempt to reacquire classical, like Aristotelian and Platonic categories. So that idea then is that you think of reality as basically like a clockwork machine and there's, or yeah, like a clockwork machine and there's, or yeah, like a, yeah, like like a clockwork machine, like a cotton and Jesus or whoever. God cranks around this like handle and as he turns the handle all the cogs and parts move, like in little tiny cogs move and little big ones and all that, and the machine turns around as he turns the handle, but each of those parts has no sense of like in individual autonomy or freedom or contribution other than as it mechanistically moves. So it's a way of having a completely mechanistic view of the universe where the individual components don't really freely contribute and everything is graded, whereas in a Christian view it's like there are biblical view he distributes, he delegates power into the creation and all the different parts and components and people and angels and everything have genuine contributions to make that aren't the mere product of the cosmic mechanism turning. Is that fair? Absolutely.

Speaker 1: 10:06

And St Philo of Alexandria he's someone we often like to think about and he does think this is a key part, specifically, of the spirit. He thinks because he describes the lamp stand. He says this is a divine lamp stand and he clearly shows how it is the holy spirit. But then he also says there are these seven lamps that, like the spirit feeds life into. And then, if you like, see how it all gets set up in numbers and this is a very important part, how, like in numbers, first they get the furniture, then they build the tabernacle around it, and then they finally dedicate the tabernacle, then they add in the lamps, so the furniture goes before the tabernacle to show these three bits of furniture, or what they represent, which are the three divine persons. They always existed's what that shows. And so by having these lamps added in, we're saying they're these creatures that get added in. But that's a key part of the spirit though, that these lamps that says, from now on, you should keep these lamps continually burning so they will, like, always be a part of the spirit. So the spirit wants to be known, uh, by these creatures that the holy spirit empowers. And and we're going to think about how those seven archangels are manifestations of the spirit and what they do and how they are shown in bible.

Speaker 1: 11:29

Let's not rush on to that. That's a big thing. But that's a great thing then that that there's, um that a concept of chain of being which plato has, it's aristotle and all these characters where you divide, make the universe a kind of mechanistic clockwork machine and then god turns the handle and so no only god is able to do anything really, everybody else is merely carried like, moved by the prime mover, and they themselves do not do anything really and that's like, in a way, a fatalistic system. Was the pagan position, and the early church fathers, of course, constantly resist that and argue against it and regard it as a terrible thing, but it kind of can at times become adopted into the Christian system and Christians at times adopted a chain of being thinking and of course it's obviously an Islamic way of thinking, that sort of inshallah. Every, anything that happens is in fact because the you know alice turning the, the crank of the, of the clockwork machine, whereas christians don't have that view and they have this much, much higher view of creatures, both human and angelic.

Speaker 1: 12:49

Well, we may come back to that, let's actually. Oh, I, I we've deviated slightly, because I was just about to explain dionysius's system, and we want to then be aware because, as we thought last episode, the original writings of dionysius may have been corrupted almost certainly were corrupted by neoplatonists and they wanted to put in all this kind of rubbish and so we would like to get at a proper view of what Dionysius originally said, and is it biblical? And if so, how is it biblical? So what I'm going to do next is and this will just be me for a few minutes now explaining Dionysius the Areopagite's system for the angels. Where do the archangels fit in that? How does it all work? Why does he say what he says? And then we're going to get PJ to take it all apart and see what he makes of it.

Speaker 1: 13:47

So now, according to Dionysius the Areopagite, there are nine choirs of angels split into three sets of three, and I love the fact that he has them as choirs of angels. Like that's what is the collective noun for angels. You might have thought it could be a flock of angels or a herd of angels or something, but he has it as choirs Angels. The collective name for angels is choirs, and the idea there is that they're all essentially musical, and in the Bible they are. There's so much in the heavenly realms, there's so much music going on. Angels were, if you could, if you took the Job idea, the morning stars sang together at the creation of the universe. The idea there that almost, perhaps, that they were created in order to produce music. But they are essentially musical, and Dionysius grasps that, and they are classified as choirs of angels. And there are nine of them.

Speaker 1: 15:00

So music written into the very deepest and highest aspects of reality. And we've seen that again, haven't we? How all things vibrate, with waves and so on, and that's melodies. All of the vibrations and waves that everything fundamentally is at the most subatomic level is these waves and vibrations. And all of that can be represented musically, even if we in our fallenness cannot hear or comprehend the cosmic music. And the stars and the planets are constantly singing this music. And so there we go.

Speaker 1: 15:38

The angels, they're in choirs. There are nine of them, three sets of three, so each of the choirs then combine to produce the great harmony of the whole creation. So the choirs, I guess if you wanted to push it, you would say each of them have different sort of voices soprano, alto, bass and things. And maybe that's true. I don't know. I don't know if he fully explains all that, but I like to think like that. So they've all got the, and then all of them singing together is the perfect harmony of creation.

Speaker 1: 16:10

Anyway, according to Dionysius, the highest triad of angels contains the seraphim, the cherubim and thrones Seraphim, the Cherubim and Thrones. First of all, I'll tell you what the three triads are, and then I'm going to pick it apart a little bit to tell you why he does those divisions, and then, after we've done all that, we'll get PJ to comment about it. So, the highest triad Seraphim, cherubim and thrones. The middle triad of angels contains dominions, virtues and powers. Of course, all these titles for angels are from the Bible. They're all in the Bible and you can find them in Ephesians, in Daniel, ezekiel, revelation. All these labels of heavenly creatures are all from the Bible. So the middle set dominions, virtues and powers. And then the lowest triad of angels contains principalities, archangels and angels.

Speaker 1: 17:27

So now, of those, let's think why he has, for example, three triads of angels. Now, that's easy to see because there are three heavens. Well, that's easy to see because there are three heavens, and so you expect there to be three categories of angels to correspond to three heavens and then they maybe divide into seven heavens. We'll get PJ to talk about that in a minute. How do three heavens divide into seven heavens? Is that true? Is that possible? But let's just accept that for a minute, because you know we've done a whole episode of this podcast about the three heavens but he has them distributed across seven heavens and that apparently PJ's going to explain is completely compatible with three heavens.

Speaker 1: 18:24

And then in this scheme, then the cherubim, seraphim and thrones work in the highest heaven, the third heaven, and then we see that because the seraphim attend the Lord Jesus in Isaiah chapter six, so you can see that they have this kind of role of being very close attendants to the heavenly son of man there, um, so you can see how he would arrive at that idea, I guess. And then thrones are set in place in like daniel 7, revelation 4 to 5. So again you can see thrones have that kind of heavenly throne room dimension. So you can see how you will get to seraphim and thrones associated with the third heaven. And then the idea is dominions, virtues and powers are involved in the administration of the second heaven, from the general physics of the second heaven through to the conveyance, and then there the idea of the movement of the second heaven through to the conveyance, and then there the idea of the movement of the planets and stars and things like that, and also, I think, the idea that be given that the second heaven was given for signs and sacred seasons and festivals and we are going to ask BJ about the festivals of the angels in a while. So then that idea then is that the dominions, the virtues and the powers that handle the second heaven will be tied up to do with the signs and sacred seasons, astrological as well as astronomical phenomena, astrology and astronomy being two totally different things. So I'll leave that for now. There's something.

Speaker 1: 20:05

And then, of course, then we come down to what is called the lowest triad of angels, which will be principalities, archangels and angels, and then that will be then to do with the administration of life in the first heaven, which is really to do with earth. And so principalities we can understand that, because principalities is like nations, kingdoms, things like that. So then the principality, angels we see them in the Bible, angels who administer nations. There may be 70 or so of those, you would expect, because I think there are 70 or 72 primal nations of the world. Pj might want to explain that to us more. And then the archangels and angels in this scheme are those who engage with church and humanity on Earth, sending or delivering specific messages, performing works and wonders in more relation to church and individual people. That's the idea then. Right, I think that's a general. I think that will work as a general perspective on how Dionysius sets it all up.

Speaker 1: 21:22

Now then let's hand it back to PJ. There's loads of things I've just mentioned there that I know he wants to get into the logic behind the First of all, the way he divides them up and the names he gives to them. Then there's this idea of three heavens, seven heavens, and then this idea of the principalities and things. What's your general view then, pj? Is there any biblical merit to what he says? Dionysius says Are there any people before him who speak like this? You go for it now.

Speaker 1: 22:00

I think the ones he groups together whether or not he's put them in the right order hierarchically, uh, and we'll get into that in a second but the ones he groups together, it seems, are quite easy to, because sometimes some creature, and so these are all angelic creatures, because he notices angels are distinct from cherubim. Sometimes we call cherubim angels, but they are somewhat distinct. Uh, so we call them angelic, that there's loads of creatures that are like angels in that they live in the highest heavens and so on, and then we kind of do that category in the same way that the germani were the first of a certain kind of tribe that the romans encountered. So they called all of those kinds of tribes Germanic, and so you have that sort of thing where you've got one which kind of seems to be like them all. So then they stand in, but they are quite different.

Speaker 1: 22:53

But then again some creatures seem to be capable of fitting into at least two categories, maybe more, because Michael is called an angel at one point, but he's also called an archangel. The Apostle Paul calls him that, but Daniel calls him Hormegas, archon, the great principality. So he seems to fit into all three categories. And we also see the devil at one point is called a cherub, but then he also seems to be seraphic in some ways, because the seraphim are flaming serpents and the devil is often called the flaming serpent. So he seems to be have those two characters. We see those connected together and so we do see that the one t ties together.

Speaker 1: 23:34

There's good reason to, but it does seem we don't see many archangels who seem to be cherubs and so on. So is it that there is? He does do a good job, but it might be that the, that the strict boundaries there aren't as strict boundaries as he's saying, that literally, like you say, michael could be in every tryout, so that it's not. It's a good scheme, but it may not be the, the true angels and archangels, and all of them may be slightly more complicated to categorise. And also, we might notice part of his argumentation for why the archons, the archangels and the angels are on the lowest rung is partly because they seem humanoid and they seem close to us, they seem more carnal, which were only problems for Platonists. In a way, that's going back to this chain of being again, where you've got like the higher up you go, the less physical you are. Yeah, and whereas if, if in jesus all the fullness of god lives in bodily form, it might be that the more bodily is that, the more yeah, go on.

Speaker 1: 24:43

And also when we think about some of the visions we see of heaven, the seraphim and the cherubim shield their eyes from the father's face like they can't handle it, whereas you have the seven archangels that stand in front of the father and do see his face, and even our angels, who must be a lower rank than archangels our guardian angels, look at the father's face for us. So the cherubim say, oh, we're not worthy to look at the father's face, but then archangels and angels do seem to feel themselves worthy somehow. So could it be, then, that one of the problems is he goes the highest triad, the middle triad and the lowest triad, Whereas in truth, like your point was, in this distributive view of the Empire, they're not graded in that way and it could be just like there are, say, three triads, maybe, or something like that. But that, what the to try and stack them one above the other and all that sort of thing? That's the mistake. Yeah, yeah, yeah, and they all have their roles. And we see as well I think it's in ezekiel a cherub has to give this scroll and then this coal to one of the archangels, and the archangel has to ask him. So, even though this archangel seems to have this privilege of looking at the father's face, which is an amazing privilege, there's also some privileges this cherub has that he doesn't, and he does distribute these things quite fairly and equally and there has to be permission asked between these choirs. They can't step on each other's toes. So I think that's quite important. That's the way he set it up. So, yeah, like hierarchy, there is hierarchy in a sense, but it's not hierarchy like we know, isn't it?

Speaker 1: 26:30

When jesus talks about heavenly hierarchy, he says one of the key factors of it is they don't lord it over over each other, and they don't. They're not like that where they are, you know. So each of them have their benefits, right, they give each other and then. So one of the problems is, you know, like with Gnostics, love to have these graded levels of being and that when you die you have to kind of ascend through all these levels of of higher and higher and higher, higher levels of reality. You need code words to pass through them and all that and that kind of thing. But the they are then grading things like which level are you at, whereas the living god is.

Speaker 1: 27:13

There is hierarchical structure, but it's done very differently and that every, everyone, all the, all, the different creatures and groups of creatures and things have a proper role to play and there can be interdependence, as you say, like an earthly thing could have authority over a heavenly thing in the divine empire, and we do see that in the Bible. So how does that fit then to the idea let's make this, the last thing you address in this episode Like three heavens or seven heavens, because that's also this idea of levels. But how does that work? Well, philo does explain this, using the menorah again, how he says you've got these branches which are all goated, like. They're at different lengths from the central branch. You get seven of them, but they're all of equal size, they all receive the same amount of oil, which is the spirit. They're all equal. He sees equality even though hierarchy is one of the most striking features about the angelic beings. He sees equality as the other striking thing, and it's that that they all receive the same amount of attention and care and they have the same size and they're all made of gold, and so they're all like, cared for in the same way.

Speaker 1: 28:32

But he has seven and he says heaven is naturally seven. And sometimes, you know, philo says these things. He just says, well, obviously, but he does so. He says at one point well, obviously, heaven's just about seven, but he does so. He says at one point. Well, obviously heaven's just about seven, but he does explain it somewhat because he talks about the seven planets. There's seven visible planets that you know. There's more we know floating out there and everything, but there's seven that are meaningful when we think about ordering times and everything, what he, what he made planets for. Um, so that is like quite natural to look in that and then.

Speaker 1: 29:03

But he also says that you have this central candlestick which is bigger than the others, and he says that represents the word and you've got these ones either side of it. So seven is natural. Where you've got six, you've got the one which is the word, surrounded by six, which is like humanity. So, given that Jesus' intention was always to die you know he was crucified before the foundation of the world His intention was always to become a human, to live among us and to die for us, and that is central to the heavens. Then the heavens was all created, as he said, to be the song and this backdrop to help the creation of earth, so that Jesus could create humanity and then the church, or the church and then humanity, following saintly saviors. But he did all that so he could live as a human among them so that you have, humanity is six and Jesus has the central one living among them.

Speaker 1: 29:56

And Jesus loves this image on the menorah and he says I am the one who stands among the candlesticks. And he says, uh, you know, in revelation he says this, so it's quite an interesting idea. And then if he says I am the light of the world, but also you are the light, that, does that fit as well? Yeah, absolutely, and so the angels do show us. They are like a church community that existed, depending on how you read it, kind of before the universe, like they are created, but before, certainly a little bit before humans, even if it's only five or six days before. Yeah, and possibly they were there, possibly much earlier. Yeah, yeah, yeah, um, yeah. So they are like an image of like church going from possibly before, like material creation as we know it, or like the, the earth and so on. That church has always been going and it works pretty much the way we understand church to work and they're symbolic of this.

Speaker 1: 30:49

And because jesus promises that we will be made equal to the angels, there's one of those incredible promises of his. So we think everything that the angels do, we will be partakers in that and it's quite incredible. And even them, which is an extraordinary thing, yeah, yeah. And again, we think like, so that those seem like contradictory, versus if we saw it the way like Aristotle does. So he's like, if you judge, if you're in charge, then you're better than something, whereas, as we saw with cherub and archangels, they judge each other on different matters but they're totally equal and, as Philo felt was quite important, but I think there's that when it comes to the angels, and especially the archangels, they're filled with the spirit in this way, and that shows what we're meant to be, we're meant to have.

Speaker 1: 31:35

In the way you think of that menorah, you've got these pipes which are constantly streaming the spirit, this oil, into these created things, these lamps, so that they're burning always and always for the ministration of the temple, which will be all of creation, the spirit. Our goal is to always be filled with the spirit, so that we always shine, and that will be what we will be in the new creation. Very good, so that's a good thing. We still haven't got to what the point of the seven heavens is, but we're going to do that at the beginning of our next episode. That's enough for now.