in a
Roman Catholic church in
Warsaw as a
metaphor of the
seal of confession The Medieval Christian concept of angels derives from Hebrew and Greek scriptures. In the
Bible, angels are anthropomorphized intermediaries between God and humanity. Some angels appear to be impersonal forces of the divine will, while others have individual names and personalities. In the formative stage, the Christian concept of an angel characterized the angel as a 'messenger' of God. The word "angel" can be drawn to the term or role of a "messenger" throughout the Bible in both old and new testaments - (
Hebrews 1:14) calls them "ministering [or serving] spirits", sent by God to aid the "heirs of salvation". Later came identification of individual angelic messengers:
Gabriel,
Michael,
Raphael, and
Uriel. Then, in the space of slightly over two centuries (from the 3rd to the 5th) the image of angels took on definite characteristics both in theology and in art.
Ellen Muehlberger has argued that in
Late Antiquity, angels were conceived of as one type of being among many, whose primary purpose was to guard and to guide Christians.
Bible (
Nativity Scene). Photo from the "Virtual Vertep Vision" collection, 2025. Angels are represented throughout
Bibles as
spiritual beings which are intermediate between God and humanity: "For thou hast made him [man] a little lower than the angels, and hast crowned him with glory and honour" (). Christians, based on Psalms and Genesis 2:1, believe that angels were the first beings created by God before the creation of Earth (; ). Greek translations of the Hebrew Bible refer to intermediary beings as angels, instead of
daimons, thus giving raise to a distinction between
demons and angels. In the
Old Testament, both benevolent and fierce angels are mentioned, but never called
demons. The symmetry lies between angels sent by God, and intermediary spirits of foreign deities, not in good and evil deeds. In the
New Testament, the existence of angels, just like that of demons, is taken for granted. They can intervene and intercede on behalf of humans. Angels protect the righteous (, ). They dwell in the heavens (, ), act as God's warriors () and worship God (). In the parable of the
Rich man and Lazarus, angels behave as
psychopomps (). The
Resurrection of Jesus features angels, telling the woman that Jesus is no longer in the tomb, but has risen from the dead. Angels don't marry (, , and ).
Paul the Apostle acknowledges good (2 Cor 11:14; Gal 1:8; 4:14) and evil angels in his writings. According to 1 Corinthians 6:3, angels will be judged by God, implying that angels can be both good and evil. Some scholars suggest that Gal 3:19 means that the Law of Moses was introduced by angels rather than God, combined with his statements in
Galatians, implies a negative role. In
Colossians 2:18, Paul criticizes the worship of angels.
Interaction with humans , by
Carl Heinrich Bloch (1834–1890) Three separate cases of angelic interaction deal with the births of
John the Baptist and
Jesus. In (
Luke 1:11), an angel appears to
Zechariah to inform him that he will have a child despite his old age, thus proclaiming the birth of
John the Baptist. In Luke 1:26,
Gabriel visits
Mary in the
Annunciation to foretell the
birth of Jesus. Angels proclaim the birth of
Jesus in the
Adoration of the shepherds in Luke 2:10. According to Matthew 4:11, after Jesus spent 40 days in the desert, "...the
Devil left him and, behold, angels came and ministered to him." In Luke 22:43 an angel comforts Jesus during the
Agony in the Garden. In Matthew 28:5 an angel speaks at the empty tomb, following the
Resurrection of Jesus and the rolling back of the stone by angels. In a biography of
Gemma Galgani written by Germanus Ruoppolo, Galgani stated that she had spoken with her
guardian angel. '', by
Gustave Doré in 1855
Pope John Paul II emphasized the role of angels in Catholic teachings in his 1986 address titled "Angels Participate In History Of Salvation", in which he suggested that modern mentality should come to see the importance of angels. According to the Vatican's
Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, "The practice of assigning names to the Holy Angels should be discouraged, except in the cases of Gabriel, Raphael and Michael whose names are contained in Holy Scripture."
Theology By the late 4th century, the
Church Fathers agreed that there were different categories of angels, with appropriate missions and activities assigned to them. There was, however, some disagreement regarding the nature of angels. Some argued that angels had
physical bodies, while some maintained that they were entirely spiritual. Some theologians had proposed that angels were not
divine but on the level of immaterial beings subordinate to the
Trinity. The resolution of this Trinitarian dispute included the development of doctrine about angels. According to
Augustine of Hippo, the term 'angel' refers to "the name of their office, not [...] their nature", as they are pure spirits who act as messengers, clarifying: "If you seek the name of their nature, it is 'spirit'; if you seek the name of their office, it is 'angel': from what they are, 'spirit', from what they do, 'angel'."
Gregory of Nazianzus thought that angels were made as "spirits" and "flames of fire", following Hebrews 1, and that they can be identified with the "thrones, dominions, rulers and authorities" of Colossians 1.
Forty Gospel Homilies by
Pope Gregory I (c. 540 – 12 March 604) noted angels and archangels. The
Fourth Lateran Council's (1215)
Firmiter credimus decree (issued against the
Albigenses) declared that the angels were created beings and that men were created after them. The
First Vatican Council (1869) repeated this declaration in
Dei Filius, the "
Dogmatic constitution on the Catholic faith". In the Middle Ages, theologians had to address Augustine's ideas of "angelic knowledge", as set out in
De Genesi ad litteram, which he divided into "morning" knowledge, knowledge of Creation before it is created derived from direct access to the Word of God, and "evening" knowledge, knowledge of Creation derived from perceiving it after it has been created.
Thomas Aquinas (13th century) related angels to
Aristotle's
metaphysics in his
Summa contra Gentiles,
Summa Theologica, the 8th question of
Quaestiones Disputatae de Veritate, and in
De substantiis separatis, a treatise on angelology. Aquinas varied significantly from the Augustinian view in two major respects: angels were not created in an initial state of bliss, and only beatified angels have "morning" knowledge. In other words: angels have an angelic nature, but in their natural states have no access to Divine "morning" knowledge of Creation, which they only gain with supernatural assistance. This was Aquinas' most original contribution to Christian angelology. Although angels have greater knowledge than men, they are not
omniscient, as Matthew 24:36 points out. According to the
Summa Theologica, angels were created instantaneously by God in a state of
grace in the Empyrean
Heaven (LXI. 4) at the same time when he created all the contents of the corporeal world (LXI. 3). They are pure spirits whose life consists in knowledge and love. Being bodiless, their knowledge is intellectual and not through senses (LIV. 5). Differently from humans, their knowledge is not acquired from the exterior world (having acquired all knowledge they would ever receive in the moment of their creation); moreover they attain to the truth of a thing at a single glance without need of reasoning (LV. a; LVIII. 3,4). They know all that passes in the external world (LV. 2) and the totality of creatures, but they don't know human secret thoughts that depends on human free will and thereby are not necessarily linked up with external events (LVII. 4). They don't know also the future unless God reveals it to them (LVII. 3). According to Aquinas, angels are the closest creatures to God. Therefore, like God, they are constituted by pure
form without
matter. While they do not have a physical composition of matter and form (called
hylomorphism), they possess the metaphysical composition of act (the
act of being) and potency (their finite essence, yet without being Each angel is a
species which a unique individual belongs to; angels differ one from another by way of their unique and irrepetible form. In other words, form - and not matter - is their
principle of individuation. == Islam ==