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.