Dr. Peter Kreeft on Angels & Demons: Who They Are, and How They Influence Us

without any further ado i want to allow me to introduce our first speaker dr peter craft he's a professor of philosophy at boston college and king's college he is the author of numerous books as well as popular writer of christian philosophy theology and apologetics he's formulated 20 arguments for the existence of god together with ronald toselly he is his intellectual reputation stems from his strength in debating and summarizing the philosophical arguments of the major western philosophers he has debated several academics in issues related to god's existence he is a regular contributor to many christian publications uh he's in a wide a demand for a speaker he's a at conferences and is the author of 67 books including angels and demons jesus shock and the fundamentals of faith so the title of dr craft's talk is angels and demons who they are and how they influence us please give dr craft a warm round of applause i begin with an apology i will certainly disappoint you because the title of my book on angels and demons is angels and demons what do we really know about them and my basic answer is not really much and i'll simply pick out 10 to 20 points from my book and speak about each one of them that i find kind of interesting and i think you will too for a few minutes it's not a carefully organized outlined talk but if you've read my book before i apologize a second time for giving you nothing new uh because if it was worth saying i should have put it in the book and if it's not worth saying i shouldn't say it now i'm not an expert on angels there are no experts on angels they don't exist there's just people that are fascinated with angels we probably know about as much about angels as our pets know about us in fact i suspect that the angel's attitude towards us is something like our attitude towards our beloved pets so why did i write a book about angels because i find them fascinating and why did you come here because you find them fascinating why they're different they're other they're fascinating for the same reason that men find women fascinating and women find men fascinating they're weird it's mars and venus we're especially fascinated by intelligence in non-human forms that's why we write science fiction stories about other species which probably don't even exist and that's why all kids love stories about talking animals they're different angels are vastly superior to us and that's another reason we find them fascinating their minds and wills are much stronger than ours they don't have bodies and they don't have bodily senses and they don't have the emotions that come from the body so in a sense we have an advantage over them they they can never appreciate the smell of a well-broiled steak and we can on the other hand they're they're super einstein uh einstein to them is an idiot now we prefer equality to elitism in politics and that's all very good because we don't want to concentrate too much power anywhere but uh the universe doesn't run by politics god didn't create a democratic egalitarian universe he created a universe in which he is not a one of the creatures he's infinitely superior to everything the angels are vastly superior to us we're vastly superior to the animals dogs are vastly superior to fleas animals are vastly superior to plants plants are vastly superior to rocks so the universe is a hierarchy a natural hierarchy and in a democratic society we we lack that we lack heroes uh to look up to somebody once said to me i hope in heaven we're all going to be equal and i said i hope we're not because how awful it would be not to be able to look up to anybody no the brits got it right they they don't have a a king or a queen that can do much harm but they do have somebody that they can look up to and have a lot of fun doing that well angels and demons can do a lot of good and harm unlike the british king or queen so they're even more serious why does our society ignore angels and demons and spiritual warfare i think most people think even many christians think that angels are somehow unscientific that they're the primary example of the supernatural and the supernatural is not a word that you find in cocktail parties the thought is that somehow science has disproved the supernatural and angels and miracles well if somebody ever says that to you ask them which science did that which discovery of which scientist made where and when proved how has disproved the existence of the supernatural and you'll get a stony silence the contest is not between religion and science there is no such thing as a war between religion and science there is not a single casualty of that war it's a war between two religions the religion of science and the religion of god so that's part of spiritual warfare well even though there's no good scientific reason for not believing in angels aren't there scientific reasons for believing in angels no i don't think there are i think there are however good logical philosophical reasons for believing in angels and there are certainly uh conclusive theological reasons for believing in angels the purely rational logical reason for believing in angels is a probability look at the universe it's full of every possible form of life downwards we don't just have human beings inhabiting a place like the moon we've got millions of species of plants millions of species of animals millions even of insects only it's full god is an incredibly creative artist well okay so you've got chemicals which are very varied you've got plants which are very varied you've got animals which are very varied you've got humans which are very varied and then you've got god with nothing in between us and god how much of a gap is there between us and rocks quite a bit so god filled that gap with all sorts of plants and animals how much of a gap is there between us and god an even greater gap and god didn't feel that not likely so from the analogy with the animals i think it's very likely that there's just as much of a variety upwards as there is downwards now our minds are so weak that we think of angels as just one thing angels we don't think of angels as having an incredible variety like animals or plants but i think that there's an even greater variety among angels than there is among organisms thomas aquinas who is probably the smartest man who ever lived argued that each angel is so different from every other angel that each angel is his own species or the only member of the species so the difference between let's say saint michael the archangel and saint gabriel the archangel is not like the difference between fido and spot but like the difference between cat and dog why don't we see that because we're dumb we see each other that way sometimes for instance to orientals all accidental accidentals look alike and vice versa uh whites often say all blacks look alike to me black sometimes say all whites look alike to me well that's just a prejudice based on ignorance and that's how we feel about angels well we can easily overcome our ignorance of each other but it's very difficult to overcome our ignorance about angels can you be a christian without believing in angels is it theologically necessary to believe in angels well angels are not the very center of christianity christ is in fact they are his angels the new testament says when he comes he will come with his angels not just the angels but if you believe in christ and if you don't you're not a christian if you believe christ is divine the infallible son of god then you have to believe in angels because jesus did he not only believed in them he created them and while on earth he was ministered to by them uh well demons too yeah that's part of the package deal he not only talked about them he met them and he was tempted by satan and overcame him so if angels don't exist then jesus was mistaken and if jesus was mistaken then he's not divine and if he's not divine then christianity isn't true so it's part of the package deal a necessary part even for protestants because it's in the bible and the catholic church has explicitly defined angels as de fite that is a non-negotiable dogma of the faith if angels are pure spirits if they're invisible then how can we meet them how can we see them well those are two different questions you can meet them spiritually you can meet them by faith and prayer and hope and love and conversation and it's a two-way conversation just as prayer with god is a two-way conversation god talks back and wants to and he uses his angels to do that but do people sometimes see angels you ask quite frequently in the bible people see angels all the time take angels out of the bible and well you've got quite a bit left but you'll need a lot of strokes of the scissors to get all the verses about angels out of the bible in fact i counted once the word angel is used 298 times in the bible i didn't go through every word i just use a concordance but that's quite a few times angels sometimes assume bodies they disguise themselves as human beings like the three angels that met abraham and warned him to get lot out of sodom hebrews tells us be sure to practice hospitality because many people have entertained angels unawares that homeless hungry bum that comes to your door that might be an angel in disguise angels often disguise themselves but their disguises are much better than ours we send our little kids out on halloween sometimes disguised as angels and they don't fool anybody but when god sends his angels disguised as human beings he usually fools us so watch out in the jewish tradition there's a way of discerning whether when you think you've seen an angel you really have and that's really an angel that assumed a human body without a mother and without a birth certificate but a real human body that can do physical things or whether it's just a vision sometimes people see angels in visions and if you're not certain which it is the advice is to offer the angel some food now angels always accept hospitality and after the angel leaves count the food if there's some missing it had a body if not it's just a vision jews are very practical you see and that's probably what jesus disciples did in the upper room after he appeared to them after the resurrection some of them said it's a ghost and jesus said i'll prove i'm not a ghost how did he do it he ate some food ghosts don't eat are angels beautiful yes our art is fascinated with angels but it's woefully inadequate people who have seen real angels almost always say that the attempts of the greatest artists to portray how beautiful angels are falls flat on its face well when angels manifest themselves as human beings they have ordinary human bodies that aren't that different than our bodies if they were that different the disguises wouldn't work but sometimes people see angels especially in visions that can't be described the categories just aren't there they say for instance very often that the light that angels has uh seems to come out of them instead of bouncing off of them it's not ordinary sunlight and it's very very bright but it doesn't hurt your eyes and sometimes they say the the colors were not like any earthly color you can't even imagine a new color but when they see angels sometimes they see new colors how can angels be so beautiful if they have no bodies well the most beautiful thing in the world is a beautiful soul look at mother teresa uh here's one of the most beautiful souls that ever lived and one of the most ugly bodies all those wrinkles the contrast that is part of the humor god has a great sense of humor if you doubt that god has a great sense of humor uh stare at an ostrich for about two minutes in the face i dare you this is a woman's conference is there anything especially feminine about angels are there any female angels or are all angels male well the first and literal answer to that question is no there are no female angels and there are no male angels either they don't have biological bodies and therefore they're neither male nor female like god nevertheless masculinity and femininity aren't just biological masculinity and femininity are qualities of your soul and not just of your body if you deny that if you say that bodies are innately male or female but souls have nothing to do with masculinity or femininity then you're not only a very bad psychologist and you deny that there's any difference between the masculine mind and the feminine mind but you also are implicitly a materialist you're saying that that souls are just sort of like like wispy clouds of of vapor like ghosts they don't have solid personalities well souls are more solid than bodies when you see a hollywood movie and somebody dies they picture that on the screen usually by a kind of a ghost or a mist or something really thin barely barely real leaving the body that's totally wrong it's the body that's the ghost it only lasts 70 80 90 years it's the soul that's solid so they should picture that as as the disillusion of the ghost that is the corpse leaving a really solid immortal soul well solidity is a kind of physical image for realness so the realness of spiritual qualities like spiritual masculinity and femininity is much solider and eternal and lasting than mere biological gender i don't know whether there are actually feminine versus masculine angels whether they're differentiated that way or whether every single angel has all the qualities of what in us is either masculine or feminine the jury is out on that one the church hasn't decided theologians haven't decided in many traditions there are female as well as male angels in other traditions they're only i didn't mean male i meant masculine uh only the one kind but all angels come to us from god and therefore they are pictured in the bible always in masculine form as god is that's not because god is only one of the two genders it's because he comes to us as the other and we are all women that's not male chauvinism it's female chauvinism all souls are feminine to god he impregnates us we don't impregnate him so that non-inclusive gender language in the bible about god doesn't so much protect the masculinity of god as protect the femininity of human souls by the way all the saints and mystics say that i think it's very significant though that women see angels much more often than men do there's a lot of stories about people meeting angels and i'm as a philosopher sort of professionally skeptical and suspicious but some of them must be true and i've met some people who have seen angels and i've met some people who have written about them for instance joan webster anderson is a good faithful catholic and a sane woman and she's written some some pretty good books about angels and all the people who write such books notice that women tend to see angels more often than men do why is that well it's probably because there's a genuine difference between the feminine and the masculine mind it's not an absolute difference it's like the difference between our bodies and our voices there's a genuine difference but it's not an exclusive difference women tend to be more intuitive and more sensitive to relationships men tend to be more analytical and more objective that's no longer politically correct to say too bad god didn't consult the politically correct dictionary before he created the universe angels don't reason from one step to another they're not analytical they just see intuitively simply and well this is very politically incorrect but this this is how women think my wife and i are constantly misunderstanding each other because i'm in a little analytical and she's intuitive so i'll ask a question and she'll give an answer to the question that i was go planning to ask two questions later this happens all the time now i'm the caterpillar step one step two step three she's the eagle oh you're going to step 12. well women are more on that angelic wavelength they just see what do angels do all day isn't it well first of all they don't have days so they don't get bored they do three things all the time eternally that never get boring and we're gonna do these three things too in heaven forever and never get bored knowing god loving god and praising god and as an overflow from that knowing and loving pray and praising each other there's no limit to knowledge you want to know more and more and more and more nobody says i want to know 313 things but not 314. same with love and the same with praise which is love based on knowledge or comes from knowledge and love well what kind of love do angels have then if angel's knowledge is different than ours and superior to ours and they just see they sort of read the mind of god in different ways kind of mental telepathy how do they love well in a very different way than human loves they understand human loves but they don't have them let's distinguish eight different forms of love first animal appetite they don't have that because they don't have animal bodies secondly greed or acquisitive desire they don't have that that's fallen third puppy love or infatuation well this happens to human teenagers but not to angels angels are never teenagers they're never born they're never infants they're fully adult as soon as they're created fourth romance deep puppy love the romeo and juliet dante and beatrice love that's a beautiful thing but angels don't fall in love that way either that's specifically human the fifth is instinctive affection or liking the kind of love based on comfortable familiarity especially in a family well angels don't have families so they don't have that kind of love either a sex love would be sympathy or pity that's a feeling a feeling with or feeling for another person now angels can certainly understand human feelings probably better than we can they're great psychologists but they don't have human feelings they can't become distressed themselves for instance and they don't fall in love because they're loving all the time the ocean doesn't get wet because it's wet all the time a seventh kind of love is friendship and i'm not sure whether angels have something like human friendship or not the ancient greeks and romans thought friendship was the highest form of human love because it was the most spiritual and the least physical aristotle distinguishes three kinds of friendship and if he's right the angels can't have any one of the three because one is based on need and the angels don't have our dependencies and our needs except mentally to hire angels second is based on pleasure you're bored so you want somebody to make you laugh well angels don't get bored and they don't need to change their pleasure level and the third is based on equality uh i respect you i see the same things you see our minds are similar and angels aren't really equal to each other they're in a hierarchy so i think they don't have human forms of friendship and i don't think they have special friendships but i'm not sure of that they certainly are friends that is they have good will now good will can be either friendship or charity and charity is certainly what the angels have they they're pure charity so pure that they have to disguise themselves or we'd confuse their love with something like ferocity c.s lewis's description of an angel in his science fiction novel perolandra by the way if you want a really good fictional treatment of angels read perilandra one single changeless expression so clear that it hurt and dazzled him was stamped on each face and there was nothing else there at all what this one thing was he could not be certain he concluded in the end that it was charity pure spiritual intellectual love shot from their faces like barbed lightning it was so unlike the temporary loves that we experience that its expression could easily be mistaken for ferocity well let's get down to the practice how do angels interact with us how do they help us how do they affect our minds uh they can't read your mind unless you open your mind to them they have so to speak spiritual ears though they don't have physical ears so unless you speak they won't hear you unless you will to communicate with an angel an angel can't force himself on you and neither can a demon but they have great mental telepathy and they're great psychologists and they understand you very well and god has sent them to help you in that spiritual area and not to take advantage of god's gifts is very very foolish and since angels are so brilliant and so powerful and so charitable this is an incredibly powerful gift that god has given us they can't do things that interfere with your free will they can't put judgments in your mind or choices in your will but they can put images in your imagination and they can put feelings into your heart see images and feelings don't compel you they can help you or harm you the one triangles help you the ones from demons harm you they're raw material but you get to make the last choice you know the old picture of a demon whispering in one ear and an angel whispering in the other ear well that's one vote against you and one vote for you and you get to decide the the election by casting the deciding vote intellect and will are spiritual angels share them with us emotions and imagination are quasi-physical they're partly physical and partly spiritual so they can be directly influenced by angels and demons very often you you get an idea you wonder where that idea came from boy what a good idea i didn't figure that out for myself uh and it just pops like a bubble in your mind it's probably an angel what about demons same thing they can't get at your inner self unless you open yourself to them which is a very foolish thing to do by the way if you know anybody who has a ouija board persuade them to burn it that's how the exorcist happens that movie which was the scariest movie ever made two people actually died of fright in seeing that movie was based on an actual literal real case the names and places were changed but it's a real case and uh the person who got possessed opened himself by a ouija board but unless you open yourself to a demon demon possession is impossible christians are automatically protected against that possibility uh demons bother you in three different ways experts in this area which i certainly am not distinguished temptation oppression and possession all christians are tempted christ himself was tempted some christians are oppressed they have deep darkness to distinguish this spiritual oppression from a clinical depression is very difficult because even in a clinical depression there's almost always both a a spiritual and a physical component this is much more supernatural and requires supernatural help to overcome but it's not yet possession they can't get as far as your free will unless you let them and that's of course the stupidest thing you could possibly do so on the one hand we have to take demons very seriously as we take angels very seriously on the other hand we have to laugh at them and say you fools don't you know you're doomed luther's hymn a mighty fortress is our god has exactly the right biblical attitude towards towards demons the prince of darkness grim but we tremble not for him his rage we can endure for lo his doom is sure one little word shall fail him that word above all earthly powers no thanks to them abideth that word is christ it's no contest in the book of revelation there's a a picture of the last event in human history where christ and antichrist or christ and the devil are fighting and all of human history is at stake there there was a similar fight when christ in his first coming met the devil and was tempted three times and i think that third temptation was the most serious where the devil showed him all the kingdoms of the world and said i will give these to you if only you bow down and worship me now what could possibly have tempted christ to bow down and worship the devil all the money in the world that's ridiculous you wouldn't even be suckered in by that temptation but the devil's got souls christ came to earth to save human souls and probably many of the saints say this the severe temptation that he endured in the garden of gethsemane was god allowing satan to show him how he would fail that many people would be in hell forever many of his beloved children would not ever see his face how awful well in the temptation in the wilderness the devil is probably saying you came to succeed in saving these people do you really love them you want to save them all i got them in prison and i'll let them out and there'll be nobody in hell i'll empty hell for you and you'll save everybody nobody none of your beloved children will ever suffer in hell what do you have to do to do that bow down worship me wow that's a temptation does the end justify the means does a very very very good end is there any end better than that end the salvation of the whole human race no does a very very good end justify a very very bad means is there anything more bad than refusing to worship almighty god no so jesus attempted to be a pragmatist he resisted all right we have another fight between christ and antichrist or christ and satan at the end of the world and there's two beasts two animals that are symbols the lamb and the dragon and the word for lamb which is of course christ the lamb of god is arneon now the greeks had a lot of lambs their favorite meat so there's a lot of different words for lamb and arneon means not just ma lamb but we meek little cute little innocent little lambkin the greeks also had a lot of mythological beasts such as dragons and the word there for dragon therion means monster or monstrous beast or horrible horrifying terrifying beast something you meet only in your worst nightmare so now you've got the heavyweight championship of the universe and your salvation is at stake and in this corner the wee little lamb and in this corner the fire breathing dragon and you're looking on at that prize fight and you say uh oh it's a fixed fight you're right the dragon doesn't stand a chance you see the lam's got a secret weapon blood his blood he eggs satan on i like muhammad ali's version of that come on come on hit me hit me and the devil does and that's his trap imagine how the devil rejoiced when he heard those words from the cross my god my god why is thou forsaken me he won no he didn't he lost that was precisely the trap if you saw that great movie the passion of the christ you might remember that at the moment that christ died you heard a horrible groan from the earth that was satan so he can't win so in one sense we shouldn't fear him in another sense we should because he's like in the book of job god allows satan to do work but limits him first he says you can touch jobs obsessions but don't touch his body and job overcomes that temptation then second interview god says okay you can touch his body but not his self god limits satan's work god lets satan do his dirty work satan's like a sparring partner we have to fight in order to get strong but god limits how much evil can do so in one sense fear him he's fearful in another sense uh looking at it from god's point of view god will never let you tempted be tempted more than you can endure you might think he does but he doesn't how do demons tempt us well through the world and the flesh the world the flesh and the devil are the three sources of temptation and the devil almost always uses the world and the flesh now the flesh is fallen human nature not just the body but the soul too which is weak and that doesn't change much so most temptations throughout history have come from the flesh from innate fallen human nature stupidity selfishness lust greed today we're in an unusual situation because the devil's got the world on his side a lot most of our temptations come from our fallen society or the world they come from outside it's it used to be socially acceptable to be virtuous and socially bad to be vicious now it's opposite you'll get noticed and adored if you develop certain vices and if you develop virtues you'll get snubbed so the devil's got a a new weapon so we've got to be aware of that but both the flesh and the world have to go through your mind and the devil has to go through your mind that's where it all begins there's an extremely practical verse about spiritual warfare in one of paul's letters where he says take every thought captive and bring it to christ it all begins with your thoughts so a thought reap an act sow an act reap a habit sow a habit reap a character sow a character reap a destiny buddha who was a great psychologist although a terrible theologian began his most popular book the dhammapada with these lines everything that we are is a result of how we think it begins where our thoughts begin it moves where our thoughts move it ends where our thoughts end that's true therefore think rightly don't say christ i'll give you these parts of my life but i keep my inner thoughts to myself don't don't keep your inner thoughts to yourself say christ be the lord of my thought and therefore of my life what can you do to fight in this spiritual war uh the theme of spiritual warfare is on almost every page of the bible it's amazing how little we hear about this even in theology courses whenever i mentioned in any class the students are suddenly silent because they know there's something there and they know they haven't heard much about it so the first thing we can do is be aware that we're at war what happens when you know you're at war is adrenaline pumps into the brain and you're suddenly very aware as you weren't before you thought those were butterflies no they're live bullets you are thought you were running across a nice green meadow with round rocks no those are land mines oh it's a battlefield and when you develop that wartime consciousness you stop complaining about little things like lumpy pancakes or beds on a battlefield nobody thinks about that gives you a sense of perspective so that's the first thing you can do second thing is be aware who your enemy is they your enemy is not flesh and blood your enemy is not the democrats or the republicans or even the aclu or planned parenthood your enemies are evil spirits and how do these evil spirits get at you the primary way is your own sins those are the devil's colonies in your heart and life so be utterly uncompassionate to your sins be like jesus in that first scene in the movie the passion of the christ he's in the garden of gethsemane and it's dark and he's being tempted and he's depressed and the snake takes advantage of that opportunity and sneaks up on him and as soon as christ notices the serpent without a minute's hesitation stomp no mercy saint benedict tells us that that's the way to interpret psalm 137 that beautiful psalm that begins so tenderly by the waters of babylon there we sat down and wept when we remembered zion our captors asked us to sing the songs of zion how could we sing the songs of beautiful zion in a foreign land beautiful tensitive tender and then it ends with these shocking verses this is part of divine revelation god wants you to know this and do something with it o babylon destroyer blessed be he who grabs your little babies and smashes their brains out against the curb stone that's in the bible how do you interpret that well you interpret every verse in the bible by the whole you don't take a thing out of its context and the overall context of the bible is the revelation of god's love towards all mankind so that can't be interpreted literally how do you interpret it here's what benedict says those babies are baby thoughts and babylon isn't the literal babylon it's the devil's kingdom and the devil's kingdom exists in your own heart so as soon as you find a baby thought that's evil have no mercy on it dash it against the rock that is christ men and women have to learn from each other men tend to be warriors women have to be warriors too women tend to relationships men have to learn that too that's why god created two genders we have an immense amount to learn from each other so here i am a man preaching to women about the need to be a warrior but throughout the animal kingdom you know the fiercest warrior is always the mother if adam had been a good warrior and prevented eve from being tempted by the devil we wouldn't be here we'd still be in the garden of eden the strongest weapon that you possibly have to defeat the devil is jesus christ the angels are his angels he has already defeated the devil i saw satan fall like lightning from heaven says jesus and he has come just to put the the last chapter in the story so have the hope not just the vague optimism but the sure and certain hope that we're on the winning side no matter how bad things get no matter how bad the world gets no matter how bad society gets no matter how bad people that you love get no matter how bad your own feelings get god is in control and therefore every single weapon that he gives to us from that precious blood and body of christ that has already beaten the devil two thousand years ago and which we just received an hour ago literally into our bodies from that the most powerful weapon of all to his word scripture to his angels our warrior friends to a single word from a friend who just happens to cheer you up today that's from god too everything in our lives is part of the spiritual warfare this is not just one of many themes this is the overall theme we we usually think of our lives as a kind of triangle you're over here and your problems are over here and god's up here so in order for you to solve your problems you've got to connect with god that's that's not bad but i've got a better picture instead of a a three-pole relationship think of a two-pole relationship here's you and here's god and everything else is jacob's ladder a highway where god's 18 wheelers the angels come up and down between you and him everything in your life is a part of that relationship the word religion literally means relationship that's the big picture and angels are part of that big picture fight on the right side and be sure that you're going to win in jesus name amen

Channel: Catholic Diocese of Arlington

Views: 120,010

Keywords: Peter Kreeft (Author), Angel (Mythical Creature), Demon (Mythical Creature), Catholicism (Religion), Roman Catholic Diocese Of Arlington (Religious Jurisdiction), Thomas Aquinas (Saint), Philosophy (Professional Field), Theology (Field Of Study), Jesus Christ (Deity), God (Deity), Christianity (Religion), Holy Spirit (Deity), Spiritual Warfare (TV Subject), Religion (Literary Genre)

Id: cvSsXK174aQ

Length: 46min 37sec (2797 seconds)

Published: Thu May 01 2014