A few months ago, I was in a conversation with a friend (a former classmate and now a fellow seminary professor at a different institution). She mentioned at some point that she didn’t believe that angels really exist. “They don’t fit within my metaphysics,” she explained.
I was flummoxed. I couldn’t recall ever hearing anyone say that before. But as I thought about it, I began to understand where the problems might arise. How to we make sense of the salvation or damnation (I assume those are the right words; cf. Mt 25:41) of angels, when it appears that there there was some point at which they made a decision whose effects are everlasting? And even more, what do we make of the seeming fact that they have no further chance to love or reject God? Perhaps their one choice means that they will never have any other desire to have that which they currently do not possess?
I was flummoxed. I couldn’t recall ever hearing anyone say that before. But as I thought about it, I began to understand where the problems might arise. How to we make sense of the salvation or damnation (I assume those are the right words; cf. Mt 25:41) of angels, when it appears that there there was some point at which they made a decision whose effects are everlasting? And even more, what do we make of the seeming fact that they have no further chance to love or reject God? Perhaps their one choice means that they will never have any other desire to have that which they currently do not possess?
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