Under-Realized Angelology

I am currently reading John Frame's, The Doctrine of the Christian Life. It is Frame's 1069 page opus on Christian ethics. I have been wading through it and it has been most beneficial. As I read through, I thought I would post some interesting/challenging quotes and ideas presented by Frame.

In chapter 15 entitled, "Our Ethical Situation", Frame asks, "how does the Bible characterize our ethical environment?" He states, "there are various levels of facts that we deal with in the world. These include God, angels, human society, individual existence, and nature." Angels, I have to be honest, are not beings I often consider when making ethical decisions. Here is an excerpt:

"Part of the problem is that modern people have lost touch with the supernatural and preternatural. They have become skeptical of any world or any beings beyond those that are detectable by our senses. Christians believe in God, But they have absorbed enough of the antisupernaturalism of modern culture that belief in angels seems foreign to them. It seems that belief in God is hard enough. Why add further difficulty by bringing angels into it? And if God is sovereign, what need do we have for preternatural beings? God is the one who judges and blesses us, sometimes in extraordinary ways. Why are angels important?

But Scripture itself mentions angels over three hundred times. This suggest that we need to take angels into account in our ethical decisions. Being a modern person myself, I don't pretend to have gotten very deeply into the doctrine of angels, but I would cautiously venture the following thoughts."

The main ideas are as follows:

1. "The doctrine of angels rebukes the smallness and impersonalism of our cosmology."

2. "Angels participate in kingdom warfare. The main point here is that we should not base either our hopes or our fears on the empirical situation alone."

3. " Angels are witnesses to human salvation. Although angels participate in the redemptive drama, there is another sense in which they are spectators rather than participants. Redemption doesn't extend to them." He goes on to say, "It is our privilege to teach the angels by our words and life."

4. "The doctrine of angels is a measure of the greatness of our salvation in Christ, for salvation lifts us above the angels."

See Hebrews 2:9 and the implications of the church sharing in Christ's exaltation.

---John M. Frame, The Doctrine of the Christian Life (P&R 2008) 253-256

For a further study on angels I would recommend Angels and Demons: What Do We Really Know About Them by Peter Kreeft.