On Angels and Gravity

Featuring Isaac and fake Dennis

Many were quite peeved at Isaac Newton. Everything, both above and below the moon, behaves according to laws we can predict? What of the will of God? What of the heavens?

It is an understandable concern. This style of inquiry was relatively new, and for those used to the older form, it had shocking implications¹. Newton proposes this thing that he calls a “vis”² of all objects being drawn to all objects according to the reciprocals of the square of their distances. In math:

\(F=G\dfrac{m_1 m_2}{r^2}\)

This was a problem, and not for the typical reasons moderns object to³. What the heck is a “vis”? How does it operate at a distance? No one knew, and Newton himself refused to speculate. All the data would tell him is that the objects he could observe behaved as if something was pulling them together reciprocally proportional to how close they were to each other. He refused to speculate as to why.

And here’s the thing: We still don’t have any clue as to why. We have gotten much deeper into the that, but the why is turtles all the way down, which is not expected to change anytime soon. And how could it? Why is a question of “telos” or final cause⁴ and there is no way for investigating the material nature of something to lead to discovering a definitive final cause.

Or rather, no way while still maintaining a purely materialist frame. The solution to the difficulty has existed for many centuries, even if the language used to describe the solution was not accepted as “scientific.” Gravity occurs because a benevolent, discorporate intelligence ensures that things move according to the patterns we call “gravity.” That is, angels cause things to fall.⁵

What is an angel anyway? To answer that question, we must turn to the original writer of Christian angelology,⁶ Pseudo-Dionysius the Aeropagite, or as I will call him for the rest of the piece, Fake Dennis.

Dionysius the Aeropagite is one of the few people Paul⁷ converted following his speech to the Athenian assembly in Acts 17:16-34. Dionysius appears in verse 34: “But some men joined him and believed, among them Dionysius the Areopagite and a woman named Damaris and others with them.” A corpus of writing attributed to this man arose, with the first reference in 532, but authorship was debated even then⁸. The majority position switched to probable later authorship in the Renaissance, but scholars still argue for authenticity. I, however, will call him Fake Dennis as it is not the man, but the tradition, that holds the authority,⁹ and authorship questions bore me.

Fake Dennis’s principal (exant) works are the Divine Names¹⁰, the Mystical Theology¹¹, the Celestial Hierarchy¹², and the Ecclesiastical Hierarchy¹³. I am chiefly concerned with the Celestial Hierarchy right now¹⁴. In it, he begins discussing angels by discussing what he means by hierarchy, which I will quote at length (Chapter 3, emphases mine):

Hierarchy is, in my judgment, a sacred order and science and operation, assimilated, as far as attainable, to the likeness of God, and conducted to the illuminations granted to it from God, according to capacity, with a view to the Divine imitation….

The purpose, then, of Hierarchy is the assimilation and union, as far as attainable, with God, having Him Leader of all religious science and operation, by looking unflinchingly to His most Divine comeliness, and copying, as far as possible, and by perfecting its own followers as Divine images, mirrors most luminous and without flaw, receptive of the primal light and the supremely Divine ray, and devoutly filled with the entrusted radiance, and again, spreading this radiance ungrudgingly to those after it, in accordance with the supremely Divine regulations….

He, then, who mentions Hierarchy, denotes a certain altogether Holy Order, an image of the supremely Divine freshness, ministering the mysteries of its own illumination in hierarchical ranks, and sciences, and assimilated to its own proper Head as far as lawful.

For Fake Dennis, therefore, a hierarchy is an order based on God. Each member of it looks to God, imitates Him as best he can, leads those directly below him to do the same, and reflects the light of God to those who come below him, all for “performing, through grace and God-given power, those things which are naturally and supernaturally in the Godhead, and accomplished by It superessentially, and manifested hierarchically, for the attainable imitation of the God-loving Minds.”¹⁵

That is a hierarchy, what is a celestial hierarchy? Once again quoting at length (Chapter 4 this time):

First of all, however, let this truth be spoken ----that it was through goodness that the superessential Godhead, having fixed all the essences of things being, brought them into being. For this is the peculiar characteristic of the Cause of all things, and of goodness surpassing all, to call things being to participation of Itself, as each order of things being was determined from its own analogy. …. All things then, without life, participate in It by their being. For the being of all things is the Deity, above being; things living participate in its life-giving power, above all life; things rational and intellectual participate in its self-perfect and preeminently perfect wisdom, above all reason and mind. It is evident, then, that all those Beings are around It, which have participated in It, in many forms.

The holy orders, then, of the Heavenly Beings share in the supremely Divine participation, in a higher degree than things which merely exist, or which lead an irrational life, or which are rational like ourselves. For by moulding themselves intelligibly to the Divine imitation, and looking supermundanely to the supremely Divine likeness, and striving to mould their intellectual appearance, they naturally have more ungrudging communications with It, being near and ever moving upwards, as far as lawful, elevating themselves with the intensity of the Divine unswerving love, and receiving the primal illuminations without earthly stain, and ranging themselves to these, and having their whole life intellectual. …Wherefore, beyond all, they are deemed pre-eminently worthy of the appellation Angelic¹⁶, on the ground that the supremely Divine illumination comes to them at first hand, and, through them, there pass to us manifestations above us.

The Celestial Hierarchy is, therefore, the Sacred Order of those things unmixed with matter, which we call “above the order of nature.” We humans participate in the Divine nature by our intellects, but the Celestial Hierarchy is comprised of beings that are nothing but intellects, sharing with the Godhead also the property of being pure Spirit. Even in our death, we will still be fundamentally corporeal¹⁷, but the Angels are perpetually immaterial.

So, an angel is a benevolent (because rapt up in God, the source of all Goodness) discorporate (because lacking a body) Intelligence. But are not angels associated with fighting against pernicious discorporate intelligences that would do us harm? Yes and no. The Angels are divided into “Hierarchies” and the Hierarchies into “Choirs”, and each of the choirs has different purposes. The lowest of the choirs of angels are called angels, proper, for these are the ones that interface directly with individual humans, in the same way that you can call anyone working for the postal service a postman, but it is most proper to call the person who actually delivers the mail to your house a postman.

The Lowest hierarchy, consisting of Principalities, Archangels, and Angels, deals with human affairs. Angels, as mentioned, guard individual people. Archangels guard nations as collections of people, Michael, for instance, being the guardian of the Jewish people. Principalities guard nations as entities. It is these Choirs that are tasked with direct combat for human souls with those pernicious Intelligences we call demons.

The Upper hierarchy consists of Seraphim, Cherubim, and Thrones. These angels are entirely concerned with the worship of God. The Seraphim are rapt with love for God. The Cherubim adore through the intellect. The Thrones are more active, pictured as holding up His, well, Throne¹⁸.

But we are interested in the Middle Hierarchy for the matter of Gravity, for these Choirs, the Dominions, Virtues, and Authorities, are tasked with maintaining the underlying structure of reality, the order of the material world, in increasing levels of specificity. Thus the Dominions would structure things like “time” and “space,” and the Authorities things like geographical features. What about the Virtues though? Well, they would do things like ensure the spheres stay in their courses. However, explaining the courses of the spheres is the whole purpose of the theory of gravity, although we usually say “the planets stay in their orbits” instead.

Rather than being reductionist, and trying to say that just because things behave according to observable laws, therefore there is no intelligence behind them, say instead, things behave according to intelligible laws, and therefore, just like with all our laws, there is an intelligence behind them.

What is more, we call it the “vis” or force of gravity. Is it not odd how closely associated Forces are with Power, or “Virtue”?

1. Indeed, the concerns of the establishment did come to pass in 1789.

2. Standard translation: force, but the whole point of this article is disputing that.

3. i.e. Muh geocentrism.

4. An article on Aristotle’s four causes is upcoming!

5. Please take a deep breath; I am quite serious.

6. After the bible, of course.

7. St. Paul of Tarsus, that one.

8. By condemned heretics (Monophysites) but still contested.

9. Article en route for this as well!

10. A work of theology proper (i.e., talking about God Himself), specifically apophatic.

11. A work of, well, mystical theology.

12. A work of angelology, with which this article is chiefly concerned.

13. A work not of ecclesiology but of sacramental theology.

14. Although the others are wonderful, and I highly recommend them all.

15. Isn’t Christian Neoplatonic prose beautiful, if dense?

16. The word is from αγγελος meaning messenger.

17. But that’s a whole different article

18. The Upper hierarchy, being incorporeal beings exclusively worshipping an incorporeal being, are necessarily spoken of in metaphorical terms.