How many angels can stand on the head of a pin? This was a serious question among Middle Age theologians (I’m talking about the medieval kind, by the way). They wondered if angels occupied any space? The question was part of a highly developed theology of the spirit world over which they poured much time and energy. Angels and demons were aplenty, in their mind if not their world, and the perched gargoyles we see in surviving churches remind us of the influence of spirit beings in more than architecture.
The Middle Ages gave way to the Reformation when a split in the Church moved many theologians toward a more carefully defined biblical theology. Conjecture and tradition took a back seat to the Bible Alone and as the Protestant Bible did not offer great detail regarding the spirit world, neither did the reformers. John Calvin in his "Institutes", for example, summed up angeology with one biblical verse, Are not all angels ministering spirits sent to serve those who will inherit salvation? (Hebrews 1:14)
The Enlightenment came on the heels of the Reformation and transcendent beings of all kinds went the way of the dodo. The spiritual world was explained rationally or dismissed altogether. One of my favorite theologians, Stanley Grenz, describes it this way, Angels became an embarrassment to Christian theologians who sought to articulate the faith in an age of science and rationalism.
This brings us to the Current Era which seems to borrow from its three predecessors. Mostly, I think, we are reacting against the anti-supernatural bias of the Enlightenment. Angels and Demons have reemerged into our national consciousness in this bizarre mix of highly sophisticated technology (thanks to the Enlightenment) combined with a deep, primordial craving for the transcendent (thanks for God).
With the musical group Train who is “Calling all angels”, we question where they are more than are they there.
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