The Soul After Death

CHAPTER TWO The Orthodox Doctrine of Angels

We know from the words of Christ Himself that the soul is met at death by angels. And it came to pass that the beggar died, and that he was carried away by the angels into Abraham’s bosom (Luke 16:22).

Concerning the form in which angels appear, we know also from the Gospel: An angel of the Lord (whose) appearance was as lightning, and his raiment white as snow (Matt. 28:2-3); a young man arrayed in a white robe (Mark 16:5); two men in dazzling apparel (Luke 24:4); two angels in white (John 20:12). Throughout Christian history, the manifestations of angels have always been in this same form of dazzling youths arrayed in white. The iconographic tradition of the appearance of angels has also been consistent throughout the centuries, depicting just such dazzling youths (often with wings, which of course are a symbolic feature not usually seen in angelic apparitions); and the Seventh Ecumenical Council in 787 decreed that angels should always be portrayed only in this way, as men. The “cupids” of the Western art of the Renaissance and later periods are pagan in inspiration and have nothing to do with true angels.

Indeed, not only with regard to the artistic depiction of angels, but in the whole doctrine of spiritual beings, the modern Roman Catholic (and Protestant) West has gone far astray from the teaching of the Scripture and of ancient Christian tradition. An understanding of this error is essential to us if we are to understand the true Christian doctrine of the fate of the soul after death.

Bishop Ignatius Brianchaninov († 1867), one of the great Fathers of recent times, noticed this error and devoted a whole volume of his Collected Works to exposing it and setting forth the true Orthodox doctrine on this subject (vol. III in the Tuzov edition, St. Petersburg, 1886). In criticizing the views of a standard Roman Catholic theological work of the 19th century (Abbe Bergier, Dictionnaire de Theologie), Bishop Ignatius devotes a large part of this volume (pp. 185-302) to combatting the modern idea, based on the 17th-century philosophy of Descartes, that everything outside the material realm belongs simply to the realm of “pure spirit.” Such an idea, in effect, places the infinite God on the same level as various finite spirits (angels, demons, souls of the departed). This idea has become extremely widespread today (although those who hold it do not see its full consequences) and accounts for much of the confusion of the contemporary world regarding “spiritual” things: great interest is shown in everything that is outside the material world, with little distinction often made between what is Divine, angelic, demonic, or simply the result of extraordinary human powers or of the imagination.

Abbe Bergier taught that angels, demons, and the souls of the departed are “perfectly spiritual”; thus they are not subject to laws of time and space, we can speak of their “form” or “movement” only as metaphors, and “they have need to be clothed in a subtle body whenever God permits them to act on bodies” (Bishop Ignatius, vol. III, pp. 193-95). Even an otherwise knowledgeable 20th- century Roman Catholic work on modern spiritism repeats this teaching, stating, for example, that both angels and demons “can borrow the material required (for becoming visible to men) from a lower nature either animate or inanimate” (Blackmore, Spiritism: Facts and Frauds, p. 522). Spiritists and occultists themselves have absorbed these ideas from modern philosophy. One sophisticated apologist for supernatural Christianity, C. S. Lewis (an Anglican), properly criticizes the modern “conception of heaven as merely a state of mind,” but he still seems himself to be at least in part caught up in the modern opinion “that the body, and locality and locomotion and time, now feel irrelevant to the highest reaches of the spiritual life” (C. S. Lewis, Miracles, The Macmillan Company, New York, 1967, pp. 164-65). Such views are the result of an over-simplification of spiritual reality under the influence of modern materialism and owing to a loss of contact with authentic Christian doctrine and spiritual experience.

To understand the Orthodox doctrine of angels and other spirits, one must first unlearn the over-simplified modern dichotomy of “matter-spirit”; the truth is more complex than that, and at the same time so “simple” that those who are still capable of believing it will probably be widely regarded as “naive literalists.” Bishop Ignatius writes (emphasis added by us): “When God opens the (spiritual) eyes of a man, he is capable of seeing spirits in their own form” (p. 216). “Angels, in appearing to men, have always appeared in the form of men” (p. 227). Likewise, “from the Scripture it is clear with all apparentness that the human soul has the form of a man in the body, just like the other created spirits” (p. 233). He cites a multitude of Patristic sources to prove this point. Let us, then, look at the Patristic teaching for ourselves.

St. Basil the Great, in his book on the Holy Spirit, states that “in the heavenly powers their nature is that of an aerial spirit — if one may so speak — or an immaterial fire.... For this reason, they are limited by place, and become visible, appearing to those who are worthy, in the form of their own bodies.” Again, “we believe that each (of the heavenly powers) is in a definite place. For the angel who stood before Cornelius was not at the same time with Philip (Acts 10:3; 8:26); and the angel who spoke with Zachariah near the altar of incense (Luke 1:11) did not at the same time occupy his own place in heaven” (chs. 16, 23; Works of St. Basil, Russian edition of Soikin, St. Petersburg, 1911, vol. 1, pp. 608, 622).

Likewise, St. Gregory the Theologian teaches: “Secondary lights after the Trinity, having a royal glory, are the brilliant, invisible angels. They freely go around the great Throne, because they are swiftly moving minds, a flame, and divine spirits which swiftly transport themselves through the air” (Homily 6, “On the Noetic Beings,” in Works of St. Gregory the Theologian, in Russian, Soikin edition, St. Petersburg, vol. 2, p. 29).

Thus, angels, while being “spirits” and “a flame of fire” (Ps. 103:5, Heb. 1:7) and dwelling in a realm where earthly laws of time and space do not hold true, still are limited by time and space and act in such “material” ways (if one may so speak) that some Fathers do not hesitate to refer to the “aerial bodies” of angels. St. John Damascene, in summing up in the 8th century the teaching of the Fathers before him, states: “Compared with us, the angel is said to be incorporeal and immaterial, although in comparison with God, Who alone is incomparable, everything proves to be gross and material — for only the Divinity is truly immaterial and incorporeal.” Again, he teaches: “The angels are circumscribed, because when they are in heaven they are not on earth, and when they are sent to earth by God they do not remain in heaven. However, they are not confined by walls or doors or bars or seals, because they are unbounded. I say that they are unbounded, because they do not appear exactly as they are to the just and to them to whom God wills them to appear. On the contrary, they appear under such a different form as can be seen by those who behold them” (Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith, II, 3, in The Fathers of the Church, New York, 1958, vol. 37, pp. 205-6).

In saying that angels “do not appear exactly as they are,” St. Damascene does not, of course, contradict St. Basil, who teaches that angels appear “in the form of their own bodies.” Both of these statements are true, as may be clearly seen in numerous manifestations of angels in the Old Testament. Thus, the Archangel Raphael was the travelling companion of Tobias for many weeks without it once being suspected that he was not a man. Yet, when the Archangel revealed himself in the end, he said: All these days I was visible to you, but I did not eat and drink, but it only seemed thus to you (Tobit 12:19). The three angels who appeared to Abraham also gave the appearance of eating and were thought to be men (Genesis, chs. 18 and 19). Likewise, St. Cyril of Jerusalem, in his Catechetical Lectures, instructs us concerning the angel who appeared to Daniel, that “Daniel at the sight of Gabriel shuddered and fell on his face and, prophet as he was, dared not answer him until the angel transformed himself into the likeness of a son of man” (Catechetical Lectures IX, 1, Eerdmans Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, vol. VII, p. 51). Yet, in the book of Daniel (Ch. 10) we read that even in his first dazzling appearance, the angel was also in the form of a man, only with such brightness (his face like the appearance of lightning, his eyes like flaming torches, his arms and legs like the gleam of burnished bronze) as not to be endured by human eyes. Thus, the appearance of an angel is the same as the appearance of a man; but because the angelic “body” is not material and the very sight of its fiery, shining appearance is enough to dumbfound any man still in the flesh, angelic apparitions must of necessity be adapted to the human viewers of them, appearing as less shining and awe-inspiring than they are in reality.

With regard to the human soul also, Blessed Augustine teaches that when the soul is separated from the body, “the man himself who is in such a state, though it be in spirit only, not in body, yet sees himself so like to his own body that he cannot discern any difference whatever” (City of God, Book XXI, 10; Modern Library edition, New York, 1955, p. 781). This truth has now been amply confirmed in the personal experiences of perhaps thousands of resuscitated people in our own times.

But if we speak of the “bodies” of angels and other spirits, we must be careful not to ascribe any crudely material characteristics to them. Ultimately, St. John Damascene teaches, “the form and definition of this substance only the Creator understands” (Exact Exposition, p. 205). In the West, Blessed Augustine wrote that it is all the same whether we prefer to speak of the “aerial bodies” of demons and other spirits, or simply call them “bodiless” (City of God, XXI, 10, p. 781).

Bishop Ignatius himself was perhaps a little too interested in explaining the “bodies” of angels in terms of the 19th-century scientific knowledge of gasses; for this reason a minor dispute arose between him and Bishop Theophan the Recluse, who thought it necessary to emphasize the uncompound nature of spirits (who, of course, are not composed of elemental molecules as are all gases). On the basic point, however — the “subtle covering” which all spirits possess — he was in agreement with Bishop Ignatius (see Fr. Georges Florovsky, Ways of Russian Theology, in Russian, Paris, 1937, pp. 394-95). Perhaps some similar misunderstanding on a secondary point or question of terminology was responsible for the opposition which arose in the West in the 5th century when the Latin Father, St. Faustus of Lerins, taught this same doctrine of the relative “materiality” of the soul, based on the teaching of the Eastern Fathers.

If the precise definition of the angelic nature is known to God alone, an understanding of angelic activity (at least in this world) is accessible to everyone, for of this there are many testimonies both in Scripture and in Patristic writings, as well as in the Lives of Saints. To fully understand the manifestations that occur to the dying, we shall have to know in particular how the fallen angels (demons) appear. True angels always appear in their own forms (only less dazzling than they are in reality), and they act solely in order to carry out the will and commandments of God. Fallen angels, on the other hand, although they appear sometimes in their own form (which St. Seraphim of Sarov described, from his own experience, as “hideous”), usually assume various appearances and perform numerous “miracles” with the powers they have in submission to the prince of the power of the air (Eph. 2:2). Their special habitat is the air, and their chief function is to tempt or frighten men and thus drag them to perdition with themselves. It is against them that the struggle of the Christian is directed: Our wrestling is not against flesh and blood, but against the principalities, against the powers, against the world-rulers of this darkness, against the spiritual hosts of wickedness under the heavens (Eph. 6:12).

Blessed Augustine, in his little-known treatise “The Divination of Demons,” written when he was asked to explain some of the many demonic manifestations of the ancient pagan world, gives a good general view of the activities of demons:

“The nature of demons is such that, through the sense perception belonging to the aerial body, they readily surpass the perception possessed by earthly bodies, and in speed, too, because of the superior mobility of the aerial body, they incomparably excel not only the movements of men and of beasts but even the flight of birds. Endowed with these two faculties, in so far as they are the properties of the aerial body, namely, with keenness of perception and speed of movement, they foretell and declare many things that they have recognized far in advance. At this, because of the sluggishness of earthly perception, men wonder. The demons too, through the long period into which their life is extended, have gained a far greater experience in events than accrues to men because of the brief span of their lives. Through these faculties, which the nature of the aerial body has allotted, demons not only foretell many things that will occur, but also perform many miraculous acts” (“The Divination of Demons,” ch. 3, in The Fathers of the Church, vol. 27, p. 426).

Many of the “miracles” and spectacles of the demons are described in the long discourse of St. Anthony the Great contained in St. Athanasius’ Life of him; here also the “lighter bodies” of the demons are mentioned (ch. 11, edition of Eastern Orthodox Books, Willits, Calif., 1976, pp. 19-29). The Life of St. Cyprian the former sorcerer also contains numerous descriptions of demonic transformations and miracles as related by an actual participant in them (see The Orthodox Word, 1976, no. 5).

A classic description of demonic activity is contained in the seventh and eighth Conferences of St. John Cassian, the great 5th-century Father of Gaul who first transmitted the full teaching of Eastern monasticism in the West. St. Cassian writes: “Such a multitude of evil spirits fills this air which is spread out between heaven and earth and in which they fly in disturbance and not idly, that the Divine Providence for our benefit has hidden and removed them from the gaze of men; otherwise, from fear of their attack, or of the frightful spectacle of the faces into which they are transformed and changed by their own will, whenever they wish, men would be struck with unbearable terror and ready for collapse....

“And of the fact that the unclean spirits are governed by the more evil powers and are subject to them, we are instructed, not only by the witness of Holy Scripture, which we read in the description of the Lord’s reply to the Pharisees who slandered Him: “If I cast out demons by Beelzebub, the prince of demons” (Matt. 12:27) — but also by clear visions and many experiences of saints.

“When one of our brethren was travelling in this desert, having found a certain cave after nightfall, he stopped there and wished to perform the evening prayer in it. While he was singing psalms according to custom, the time passed and it was already after midnight. After finishing the rule of prayer, desiring to rest his exhausted body a little, he lay down and suddenly began to see innumerable hordes of demons coming together from all directions; coming in an endless file and a very long row, some preceded their chief, while others followed him. Finally came the prince, who was both taller than all in size and more frightful in appearance. After a throne had been placed, he sat down upon an elevated tribunal and with careful investigation began to examine the activity of each one. Those who said that they had not yet been able to seduce their antagonists he ordered to be banished from his sight with reproof and abuse, as inactive and careless, reproaching them with a roar of rage that they had wasted so much time and labor for nothing. But those who declared that they had seduced those assigned to them he let go with great honors, to the enthusiasm and acclaim of all, as most courageous warriors, glorified as an example for all.

“One most evil spirit from among their number stepped forth and reported with evil joy, as of an illustrious victory, that he had finally conquered a well- known monk, whose name he gave, after fifteen years of ceaselessly tempting him, having enticed him this very night into fornication.... At this report there was extraordinary hilarity among everyone, and he departed, exalted by the high praises of the prince of darkness and crowned with glory. With the approach of dawn, all this multitude of demons vanished from sight.” Later the brother who witnessed this spectacle learned that the report of the fallen monk was indeed true (Conferences VIII, 12, 16; Russian translation of Bishop Peter, Moscow, 1892, pp. 313, 315).

Such experiences have occurred to Orthodox Christians right down to the present century. They are clearly not dreams or visions, but waking experiences of the demons as they are in themselves — but only, of course, after one’s spiritual eyes have been opened to see these beings who are normally invisible to human eyes. Until quite recently it was perhaps only a few “old-fashioned” or “simple-minded” Orthodox Christians who could still believe in the “literal truth” of such accounts; even now some Orthodox find them hard to accept, so pervasive has been the modern belief that angels and demons are “pure spirits” and do not act in such “material” ways. Only with the greatly increased demonic activity of recent years do these accounts once again begin to seem at least plausible. Now also the widespread “after-death” experiences have opened up the realm of non-material reality to many ordinary people who have had no contact with the occult, and a coherent and true explanation of this realm and its beings has become one of the needs of the times. Only Orthodox Christianity can supply this explanation, having preserved the authentic Christian doctrine to our own days.

Now let us see more specifically how angels (and demons) appear at the moment of death.