The physical universe may have signs of contingency, free will, intelligence, and so forth that point to the supernatural Mind that created and sustains it, but through what mechanism does that Mind actually exert its effects?
In classical Christian theology, God works through angels. Their role is to convey the wisdom and the power of God to his Creation. They are the expression and emissaries of his mind and power.
As Christians, we know of the existence of angels from Scripture where they are frequently mentioned as conveying messages from God, giving him glory, ordering nature, etc. It is interesting that the word “angel” itself only means a “messenger,” and doesn’t necessarily mean a particular type of spiritual being.
While angelic beings are mentioned frequently throughout Scripture, there is very little description of them in and of themselves — the mentions focus upon their actions and their words. They are servants and as such remain in the background until called upon to perform their duties. They are not the point of the story.
The formal hierarchy or “nine choirs” of angels that we are familiar with come mainly from tradition and theologians.1 Thomas Aquinas relies upon Pseudo Dionysus2 and they reason from texts such as from Ephesians 1:21 and Colossians 1:16.
Therefore I also, after I heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love for all the saints, do not cease to give thanks for you, making mention of you in my prayers: that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give to you the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Him, the eyes of your understanding being enlightened; that you may know what is the hope of His calling, what are the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints, and what is the exceeding greatness of His power toward us who believe, according to the working of His mighty power which He worked in Christ when He raised Him from the dead and seated Him at His right hand in the heavenly places, far above all principality and power and might and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this age but also in that which is to come. And He put all things under His feet, and gave Him to be head over all things to the church, which is His body, the fullness of Him who fills all in all (Ephesians 1:15-23)
Paul is describing the organization of Creation. Jesus Christ is seated to the right of the Father "above all principality and power and might and dominion and every name that is named.” He is the head of all things, particularly the Church which is his body. Though Paul does not explicitly identify them as angelic beings, “principality,” “power,” “might,” and “dominion” are interpreted as categories of angels. In the original Greek, these words are not common names, but are instead functional names. “Principality” is αρχη or arche, which means the beginning, the origin, the thing that commences. It is commonly used in Scripture. For example, it appears in Genesis 1:1, “In the beginning (arche), God made the heavens and the earth.” It also appears in John 1:1,“In the beginning (arche) was the Word.” “Power” is the word εξουσια or exousia that means to have the power of authority and the right of privilege. “Might” is the word δυναμις or dunamis that describes the possession of an inherent power. “Dominion” is κυριοτης or kuriotes which means to have the power of dominion.
In the Summa, Aquinas goes into quite a bit of “scholastic detail” on how the choirs of angels are to be named from Paul’s description and why (ST I, q. 85, a. 5.).
In his letter to the Colossians, Paul makes the same points again using the same words:
He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For by Him all things were created that are in heaven and that are on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers. All things were created through Him and for Him. And He is before all things, and in Him all things consist. And He is the head of the body, the church, who is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in all things He may have the preeminence (Colossians 1:15-18).
Fallen angels are still angels and so retain their angelic natures. In Mark 5:9, Jesus demands that a demon possessing a man tell him his name. “He replied, “My name is Legion, because there are many of us inside this man.” The word “legion” in Greek is λεγιων or legeon, which is not a generic word meaning “many,” but rather refers specifically to a military detachment as in a “Roman legion.” This suggests that the demons are not just a group of sinister pals hanging out together, but rather that they are a hierarchical group subject to authority and direction as in a military. As such, they are working with direction and purpose to affect things and make things happen. The way both good angels and bad angels are described emphasizes that both are by nature servants in a hierarchy. The leader of the angels is Christ and the leader of the fallen angels is the usurper Lucifer. Either way, their fundamental natures cannot be changed.
In a parallel way, particle physics describe the hierarchical organization of the material world.
The “Standard Model” of physics is one of the greatest achievements of science.3 One of its key features is that forces are conveyed through “particles.” Particles are not just sitting around taking up space — they are messengers that convey forces and properties. In a sense particles are “legion” too, both because they are “many” and because they are structured, follow rules, and effect things. However, as familiar as the basic idea of particles has become to everyone, it has been obvious for more than a century that no one can actually say what a “particle” really is. Even though they are the fundamental units of the material world, particles are not “real” in the way most people understand the term, but are instead intellectual and mathematical.4 Here is a representative excerpt from an article published in a mainstream science magazine:
The easy answer quickly shows itself to be unsatisfying. Namely, electrons, photons, quarks and other “fundamental” particles supposedly lack substructure or physical extent. “We basically think of a particle as a point-like object,” said Mary Gaillard, a particle theorist at the University of California, Berkeley who predicted the masses of two types of quarks in the 1970s. And yet particles have distinct traits, such as charge and mass. How can a dimensionless point bear weight?5
St. Thomas Aquinas expresses a somewhat similar idea about angels:
Some, however, have been deceived in this matter. For some who were unable to go beyond the reach of their imaginations supposed the indivisibility of the angel to be like that of a point; consequently they thought that an angel could be only in a place which is a point. But they were manifestly deceived, because a point is something indivisible, yet having its situation; whereas the angel is indivisible, and beyond the genus of quantity and situation (ST I, q. 52, a. 2, obj. 3).
However, mathematical dimensionless particles do exert very “real” effects in the “material” world.
“We say they are ‘fundamental,’” said Xiao-Gang When, a theoretical physicist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “But that’s just a [way to say] to students, ‘Don’t ask! I don’t know the answer. It’s fundamental; don’t ask anymore.’”
With any other object, the object’s properties depend on its physical makeup — ultimately, its constituent particles. But those particles’ properties derive not from constituents of their own but from mathematical patterns. As points of contact between mathematics and reality, particles straddle both worlds with an uncertain footing6
Hmm. This is sounding eerily similar to Aquinas’ describing the activity of spiritual angels upon “corporeal matter.”
There are in bodies other local movements besides those which result from the forms; for instance, the ebb and flow of the sea does not follow from the substantial form of the water, but from the influence of the moon; and much more can local movements result from the power of spiritual substances. …The angels, by causing local motion, as the first motion, can thereby cause other movements; that is, by employing corporeal agents to produce these effects (ST I, q. 110, a. 3).
In the Standard Model, forces cause specialized “carrier particles” to exert effects on “particles of matter.”
Three of the fundamental forces result from the exchange of force-carrier particles, which belong to a broader group called “bosons”. Particles of matter transfer discrete amounts of energy by exchanging bosons with each other. Each fundamental force has its own corresponding boson – the strong force is carried by the “gluon”, the electromagnetic force is carried by the “photon”, and the “W and Z bosons” are responsible for the weak force. Although not yet found, the “graviton” should be the corresponding force-carrying particle of gravity. The Standard Model includes the electromagnetic, strong and weak forces and all their carrier particles, and explains well how these forces act on all of the matter particles. However, the most familiar force in our everyday lives, gravity, is not part of the Standard Model, as fitting gravity comfortably into this framework has proved to be a difficult challenge.7
A force is an “influence” that can cause an object to change its velocity. So what is this “influence?” Don’t subatomic particles (mathematical constructs) “carry” energy and influence other particles (also mathematical constructs)? Once again, something (in this case, particles) is not truly “real” in the commonly accepted sense. This is all strange, but can we at least agree that particles have weight and solidity, in other words, they have mass?
Not exactly. In colloquial terms, “mass” is the “amount of stuff" or matter that an object contains. However, the idea of mass is also elusive. It is scientifically defined as a fundamental property that determines how much an object resists acceleration when a force is applied (such as gravity). That doesn’t sound like the notion most people have in their heads — that mass equals the “amount of stuff” in an object. In science it is defined in terms of how it reacts to something else, i.e., resistance to acceleration, not as an intrinsic quality independent and unaffected by its surroundings. In addition, according to the Heisenberg uncertainty principle,8 it is fundamentally impossible to know both the precise position and momentum of a particle simultaneously. So not only do we not know exactly what a particle is, we can’t know precisely where it is, the direction it is going, or how fast?
We can see the pickle strict materialists are in. Particles that move and affect things with of their non-physical, mathematical qualities are just as "real” as angels who also move and affect things in the universe with their non-physical, spiritual qualities.
It is quite ironic that after centuries of huffing, puffing, and sniggering by scientists, their notions of the hierarchy of particles and their functions mirror in many ways traditional notions of the hierarchy of angels and their functions.9
Pat Bartos, "A Celestial Heirarchy,” EWTN, accessed March 20, 2025, https://www.ewtn.com/catholicism/library/celestial-hierarchy-5350.
The book “De Coelesti Hierarchia” written by Pseudo Dionysus is used by Aquinas in the Summa Theologica as the basis of his discussion of the nine levels of angelic beings.
"The Standard Model,” Wikipedia, accessed March 20, 2025, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_Model.
I.e., as in non-material — maybe kind of like “spiritual?!”
Natalie Walchover, “What Is a Particle?” Quanta Magazine, November 12, 2020, https://www.quantamagazine.org/what-is-a-particle-20201112/.
Ibid.
"The Standard Model,” CERN, accessed March 18, 2025, https://www.home.cern/science/physics/standard-model#:~:text=Particles%20of%20matter%20transfer%20discrete,responsible%20for%20the%20weak%20force.
“Uncertainty Principle,” Wikipedia, accessed March 20, 2025, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncertainty_principle
Dude! Angels may get the last laugh after all.