Christianity is a conspiracy theory

Christians are people who believe in a God they cannot see, in a man who rose from the dead after being publicly executed, in countless phenomena denied by modern science (walking on water, passing through walls, stilling a storm with a word, healing a disease with a touch, hearing a message spoken in a foreign language as if it were in one’s own, and much more), in unseen and immaterial inimical intelligent powers constantly assaulting and accusing and harassing and possessing human beings, in a world beyond this world that cannot be measured or accessed through empirical or other typical instruments of knowledge, in an ongoing contest or battle between that world and this world (carried out chiefly by the aforesaid intelligent powers, some of whom are good, some of whom are evil), in the real presence of a once-dead man’s bodily elements—his very flesh and blood!—available in bread and wine that, Christians readily admit, are chemically and constitutionally identical to ordinary bread and wine, the sole difference being the words spoken over them, words that mediate the omnipotent power of, again, the invisible Creator with whom we began.

Christians are weird. Our beliefs are bizarre. Our doctrines are wacky. We are not ordinary people, if by “ordinary” you mean adherents of the reputable epistemology of the secular West as defined by scientism, empiricism, and Enlightenment.

Being an orthodox Christian, attending a traditional church, will only ensure that you are a spookier person, in all the ways outlined above, and thus less “normal” in your beliefs. You’re bound to become the kind of person who believes that exorcisms happen. Who believes that angels and demons are rampant. That our enemy is not flesh and blood but the principalities and powers and rulers of this present darkness.

Going to church, you’ll come to take for granted that this world of ours is headed somewhere, that it is governed by an all-knowing and all-powerful Intelligence, that despite the charnel house that is this earth and its history the secret heart of the cosmos is infinite Love, that in the end all shall be well and all manner of thing shall be well. Also that, more than occasionally, saints levitate.

You’re weird! You’re a Christian! The blood spilled on a tree by a Galilean Jew two millennia ago saves you from the wrongs you’ve committed against the Creator of the universe! Right? It makes perfect sense to me, but then again, I’m a Christian. Maybe common sense isn’t our forte.

If others suspect of us of a grand delusion, a sort of mass psychosis or hypnosis, who can blame them? Christianity is a conspiracy theory. There are devils hiding around every corner. None of this can be studied in a lab. All of it is taken on trust.

Whether that means they are crazy for not believing it, or we are crazy for buying it, one of us is right and one of us is wrong. More to the point, “what’s reasonable” isn’t the criterion for deciding. We don’t as a general matter know in advance what counts as reasonable. “What’s reasonable” is the question.

And by definition, it’s question-begging to suppose otherwise.

Angels

A few years back I had one of those serendipitous reading moments when all at once an unexpected theme or subject emerges from disparate and seemingly unrelated texts. The first was the Space Trilogy by C. S. Lewis; the second, the Catholic Catechism; the third, On the Orthodox Faith by St. John Damascene. The topic? Angels.

Space Trilogy

Lewis’s work is saturated with the angelic, and the adventures of Ransom in space (and on earth) are no different. Among Lewis’s many gifts, as both a novelist and a theological thinker, is his ability to depict supra-cosmic creaturely life in its necessary ineffable grandeur without becoming either saccharine or anthropomorphic. The angels aren’t like us only somewhat not. They exist on a wholly other level. The image that sticks with me, from one of the first two novels in the Space Trilogy, is Ransom’s impression that, though an angel manifesting to him inside a house is somehow or other present to his senses, the angel nevertheless appears aslant—as though the axis on which he stands were unrelated to the earth’s axis, or any other in this universe.

Angels are also present in The Screwtape Letters and The Great Divorce, among other works. My sense is that angels serve two functions in Lewis’s spiritual imagination. First, they represent and embody a rebuttal to a disenchanted, depopulated cosmos. From one angle, it’s a simple assertion: If God exists, then there’s nothing spookier, metaphysically speaking, for there to be other spiritual beings; it’s only natural. From another angle, it’s a powerful rebuttal: If angels exist, then the very notion of a mechanistic cosmos devoid of God and the soul and the moral law is bunk.

Second, Lewis rightly portrays the angelic in its double dimension: not only the good, but also the bad. He writes of demons, in other words. No reader of the Bible could plausibly imagine that whatever created life transcends us is only beautiful and glorious; it also includes the horrific and the wicked. It includes Satan and all his pomp. Lewis thinks that is morally and metaphysically interesting, which it is, and therefore worth writing about in an age like his (and ours), which it was (and is).

Catechism

Around the time I was making my way through the Space Trilogy, I read the following section in the Catechism of the Catholic Church. It comes from Part I, Paragraph 5, titled “Heaven and Earth.” It’s part of an exposition of what Christians believe, following the Rule of Faith codified in the creedal narration of biblical teaching. Here’s what it says:

The Scriptural expression “heaven and earth” means all that exists, creation in its entirety. It also indicates the bond, deep within creation, that both unites heaven and earth and distinguishes the one from the other: “the earth” is the world of men, while “heaven” or “the heavens” can designate both the firmament and God’s own “place”—”our Father in heaven” and consequently the “heaven” too which is eschatological glory. Finally, “heaven” refers to the saints and the “place” of the spiritual creatures, the angels, who surround God.

The profession of faith of the Fourth Lateran Council (1215) affirms that God “from the beginning of time made at once (simul) out of nothing both orders of creatures, the spiritual and the corporeal, that is, the angelic and the earthly, and then (deinde) the human creature, who as it were shares in both orders, being composed of spirit and body.”

I. THE ANGELS

The existence of angels—a truth of faith

The existence of the spiritual, non-corporeal beings that Sacred Scripture usually calls “angels” is a truth of faith. the witness of Scripture is as clear as the unanimity of Tradition.

Who are they?

St. Augustine says: “‘Angel’ is the name of their office, not of their nature. If you seek the name of their nature, it is ‘spirit’; if you seek the name of their office, it is ‘angel’: from what they are, ‘spirit’, from what they do, ‘angel.’“ With their whole beings the angels are servants and messengers of God. Because they “always behold the face of my Father who is in heaven” they are the “mighty ones who do his word, hearkening to the voice of his word.”

As purely spiritual creatures angels have intelligence and will: they are personal and immortal creatures, surpassing in perfection all visible creatures, as the splendor of their glory bears witness.

Christ “with all his angels”

Christ is the center of the angelic world. They are his angels: “When the Son of man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him. . . .” They belong to him because they were created through and for him: “for in him all things were created in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or authorities - all things were created through him and for him.” They belong to him still more because he has made them messengers of his saving plan: “Are they not all ministering spirits sent forth to serve, for the sake of those who are to obtain salvation?”

Angels have been present since creation and throughout the history of salvation, announcing this salvation from afar or near and serving the accomplishment of the divine plan: they closed the earthly paradise; protected Lot; saved Hagar and her child; stayed Abraham’s hand; communicated the law by their ministry; led the People of God; announced births and callings; and assisted the prophets, just to cite a few examples. Finally, the angel Gabriel announced the birth of the Precursor and that of Jesus himself.

From the Incarnation to the Ascension, the life of the Word incarnate is surrounded by the adoration and service of angels. When God “brings the firstborn into the world, he says: ‘Let all God’s angels worship him.’” Their song of praise at the birth of Christ has not ceased resounding in the Church’s praise: “Glory to God in the highest!” They protect Jesus in his infancy, serve him in the desert, strengthen him in his agony in the garden, when he could have been saved by them from the hands of his enemies as Israel had been. Again, it is the angels who “evangelize” by proclaiming the Good News of Christ’s Incarnation and Resurrection. They will be present at Christ’s return, which they will announce, to serve at his judgement.

The angels in the life of the Church

In the meantime, the whole life of the Church benefits from the mysterious and powerful help of angels.

In her liturgy, the Church joins with the angels to adore the thrice-holy God. She invokes their assistance (in the Roman Canon’s Supplices te rogamus. . . [“Almighty God, we pray that your angel . . .”]; in the funeral liturgy’s In Paradisum deducant te angeli . . . [“May the angels lead you into Paradise . . .”]). Moreover, in the “Cherubic Hymn” of the Byzantine Liturgy, she celebrates the memory of certain angels more particularly (St. Michael, St. Gabriel, St. Raphael, and the guardian angels).

From its beginning to death human life is surrounded by their watchful care and intercession. “Beside each believer stands an angel as protector and shepherd leading him to life.” Already here on earth the Christian life shares by faith in the blessed company of angels and men united in God.

The claim that the existence of angels is de fide—a revealed truth of the faith incumbent on all Christians to believe—struck me like a thunderbolt. And yet the rehearsal of the witness of Scripture and sacred tradition makes clear the warrant for the assertion. Angels are everywhere in the biblical story. And as St. Luke knew well, they show up at the biggest moments. They are, as the Catechism teaches, Christ’s own angels, the heavenly messengers and soldiers of Israel’s Messiah. And they aid the church on earth in various ways, largely invisible and mysterious, but nevertheless as our guardians and helpers and, ultimately, our fellow servants of the Lord. They join us in worship. Or rather, we join them.

The Damascene

The very same week, perhaps even the same day, that I read that section of the Catechism I read the following from St. John of Damascus; it’s found in Book II, chapter 3 of An Exposition of the Orthodox Faith, which was written in the early to mid eighth century:

[God] is Himself the Maker and Creator of the angels: for He brought them out of nothing into being and created them after His own image, an incorporeal race, a sort of spirit or immaterial fire: in the words of the divine David, He makes His angels spirits, and His ministers a flame of fire: and He has described their lightness and the ardor, and heat, and keenness and sharpness with which they hunger for God and serve Him, and how they are borne to the regions above and are quite delivered from all material thought.

An angel, then, is an intelligent essence, in perpetual motion, with free-will, incorporeal, ministering to God, having obtained by grace an immortal nature: and the Creator alone knows the form and limitation of its essence. But all that we can understand is, that it is incorporeal and immaterial. For all that is compared with God Who alone is incomparable, we find to be dense and material. For in reality only the Deity is immaterial and incorporeal.

The angel's nature then is rational, and intelligent, and endowed with free-will, changeable in will, or fickle. For all that is created is changeable, and only that which is uncreated is unchangeable. Also all that is rational is endowed with free-will. As it is, then, rational and intelligent, it is endowed with free-will: and as it is created, it is changeable, having power either to abide or progress in goodness, or to turn towards evil.

It is not susceptible of repentance because it is incorporeal. For it is owing to the weakness of his body that man comes to have repentance.

It is immortal, not by nature but by grace. For all that has had beginning comes also to its natural end. But God alone is eternal, or rather, He is above the Eternal: for He, the Creator of times, is not under the dominion of time, but above time.

They are secondary intelligent lights derived from that first light which is without beginning, for they have the power of illumination; they have no need of tongue or hearing, but without uttering words they communicate to each other their own thoughts and counsels.

Through the Word, therefore, all the angels were created, and through the sanctification by the Holy Spirit were they brought to perfection, sharing each in proportion to his worth and rank in brightness and grace.

They are circumscribed: for when they are in the Heaven they are not on the earth: and when they are sent by God down to the earth they do not remain in the Heaven. They are not hemmed in by walls and doors, and bars and seals, for they are quite unlimited. Unlimited, I repeat, for it is not as they really are that they reveal themselves to the worthy men to whom God wishes them to appear, but in a changed form which the beholders are capable of seeing. For that alone is naturally and strictly unlimited which is uncreated. For every created thing is limited by God Who created it.

Further, apart from their essence they receive the sanctification from the Spirit: through the divine grace they prophesy : they have no need of marriage for they are immortal.

Seeing that they are minds they are in mental places , and are not circumscribed after the fashion of a body. For they have not a bodily form by nature, nor are they extended in three dimensions. But to whatever post they may be assigned, there they are present after the manner of a mind and energize, and cannot be present and energize in various places at the same time.

Whether they are equals in essence or differ from one another we know not. God, their Creator, Who knows all things, alone knows. But they differ from each other in brightness and position, whether it is that their position is dependent on their brightness, or their brightness on their position: and they impart brightness to one another, because they excel one another in rank and nature. And clearly the higher share their brightness and knowledge with the lower.

They are mighty and prompt to fulfill the will of the Deity, and their nature is endowed with such celerity that wherever the Divine glance bids them there they are straightway found. They are the guardians of the divisions of the earth: they are set over nations and regions, allotted to them by their Creator: they govern all our affairs and bring us succor. And the reason surely is because they are set over us by the divine will and command and are ever in the vicinity of God.

With difficulty they are moved to evil, yet they are not absolutely immovable: but now they are altogether immovable, not by nature but by grace and by their nearness to the Only Good.

They behold God according to their capacity, and this is their food.

They are above us for they are incorporeal, and are free of all bodily passion, yet are not passionless: for the Deity alone is passionless.

They take different forms at the bidding of their Master, God, and thus reveal themselves to men and unveil the divine mysteries to them.

They have Heaven for their dwelling-place, and have one duty, to sing God's praise and carry out His divine will.

Moreover, as that most holy, and sacred, and gifted theologian, Dionysius the Areopagite , says, All theology, that is to say, the holy Scripture, has nine different names for the heavenly essences. These essences that divine master in sacred things divides into three groups, each containing three. And the first group, he says, consists of those who are in God's presence and are said to be directly and immediately one with Him, viz., the Seraphim with their six wings, the many-eyed Cherubim and those that sit in the holiest thrones. The second group is that of the Dominions, and the Powers, and the Authorities; and the third, and last, is that of the Rulers and Archangels and Angels.

Some, indeed, like Gregory the Theologian, say that these were before the creation of other things. He thinks that the angelic and heavenly powers were first and that thought was their function. Others, again, hold that they were created after the first heaven was made. But all are agreed that it was before the foundation of man. For myself, I am in harmony with the theologian. For it was fitting that the mental essence should be the first created, and then that which can be perceived, and finally man himself, in whose being both parts are united.

But those who say that the angels are creators of any kind of essence whatever are the mouth of their father, the devil. For since they are created things they are not creators. But He Who creates and provides for and maintains all things is God, Who alone is uncreated and is praised and glorified in the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

Doesn’t that fill you with awe and delight? St. John’s quotes and references could lead us down further paths: to the Pseudo-Denys and St. Gregory Nazianzen, backward to St. Augustine and forward to St. Anselm and St. Thomas Aquinas, even on to Karl Barth, who has a hefty angelology for a modern theologian.

The point I drew from this exegetical serendipity at the time, and draw now, is rather plain. Prior to reading these texts I had the theoretical knowledge of angels: I could have told you what the theological tradition says about them. But to read these two estimable authorities devote such loving attention to them, in tandem with Lewis’s novelistic rendering, brought home to me at a deeper level—in my heart, in my soul—just how wonderful as well as important the angelic is to the life of the church and the testimony of the gospel. And ever since I’ve noticed my hackles are raised, my antennae buzz, when the over-educated but under-informed among my fellow believers, but primarily among pastors, roll their eyes at ostensibly silly and outdated things like “angels and demons.” (Usually prefaced by that absurd and meaningless modifier, “literal.”) I do my best not to be That Academic who flies in to correct and rebuke. But it gets under my skin. For the condescension is wholly unearned. It’s not as though an archeologist or astronomer discovered the nonexistence of angels in 1927. They are no more subject to empirical investigation than God. Yet true-blue believers in God in the year of our Lord 2021 look down their noses on every other Christian, past and present, themselves excepted as if it were everyone else, and not themselves, who are the naive, the unenlightened. But, again, such haughty know-it-alls didn’t arrive at a considered conclusion about angelic superstition by a process of reasoning. They did so as a function of their class and education; possibly through half-skimming a now-forgotten but once-faddish academic in grad school.

To which I say: Get over yourself. There’s nothing culturally hip about being a Christian who believes all the spooky stuff—God, resurrection, incarnation, miracles, et al—minus angels. You don’t get any societal cache for it, even if it makes you feel set apart from the losers and boobs who read the Bible “literally.” Face it: You’re one of us. You’re among the shabby and disreputable, at whom the well-to-do look down their noses. Embrace it! It’s okay. It’s part of the deal.

You have our blessing. Permission granted. Believe in angels. One day you might even find that you need one.

Aliens

Last month Ezra Klein wrote a refreshing column on the UFO revelations of the last few months (and years).* It was refreshing because it not only carefully distinguished between alien and supernatural but also avoided the silly trope that the existence of alien life would undermine, transform, or even substantially affect the doctrines or practices of major world religions like Christianity. Here’s the money graf:

There is a thick literature on how evidence of alien life would shake the world’s religions, but I think Brother Guy Consolmagno, director of the Vatican Observatory, is quite likely right when he suggests that many people would simply say, “of course.” The materialist worldview that positions humanity as an island of intelligence in a potentially empty cosmos — my worldview, in other words — is the aberration. Most people believe, and have always believed, that we share both the Earth and the cosmos with other beings — gods, spirits, angels, ghosts, ancestors. The norm throughout human history has been a crowded universe where other intelligences are interested in our comings and goings, and even shape them. The whole of human civilization is testament to the fact that we can believe we are not alone and still obsess over earthly concerns.

This is exactly right. At least for Christians, while the discovery of alien life would be momentous as a discovery, and while it would certainly raise theological questions, it would not in the least threaten or even disturb faith in the gospel. Whatever exists in the cosmos—indeed, whatever exists outside of time and space that is not God—is a fellow creature, just like us, created by the God of Abraham from nothing, just like us. Read C. S. Lewis or Mary Doria Russell or Michel Faber or any other science fiction author from the last century who has imagined intergalactic missions to meet or learn from or evangelize non-terrestrial rational species. Lewis in particular loved to speculate that Jesus’s comments about “other sheep, not of this fold” in John 10:16 applied not only to gentiles but, potentially, to intelligent life elsewhere in the universe. Who knows?

Whatever the answer, the collective response from Christians to the demonstrable existence of alien life will and should comprise four options: doxology; wonder at the mysteries of creation; desire, with appropriate caution and within limits, to learn more about and form some relationship with these fellow creatures; and, for the most part, getting on with the business of life.

Kudos to Klein for seeing that, and cutting through the nonsense.

*In my own mind, there are five possible interpretations of the seemingly physics-defying happenings recorded and witnessed by the pilots (and their flight cameras): (1) human technology; (2) alien technology; (3) natural occurrences; (4) supernatural phenomena; (5) nothing—a trick of the light, a fault of the eyes, a mistake of the video, or some other similar explanation. It seems to me the only frightening option is the first, though perhaps I should be more fearful of the second.