1. To the doctrine of angels in general. It is objected:

(a) That it is opposed to the modern scientific view of the world, as a system of definite forces and laws.—We reply that, whatever truth there may be in this modern view, it does not exclude the play of divine or human free agency. It does not, therefore, exclude the possibility of angelic agency.

Ladd, Philosophy of Knowledge, 332—“It is easier to believe in angels than in ether; in God rather than atoms; and in the history of his kingdom as a divine self-revelation rather than in the physicist’s or the biologist’s purely mechanical process of evolution.”

(b) That it is opposed to the modern doctrine of infinite space above and beneath us—a space peopled with worlds. With the surrender of the old conception of the firmament, as a boundary separating this world from the regions beyond, it is claimed that we must give up all belief in a heaven of the angels.—We reply that the notions of an infinite universe, of heaven as a definite place, and of spirits as confined to fixed locality, are without certain warrant either in reason or in Scripture. We know nothing of the modes of existence of pure spirits.

What we know of the universe is certainly finite. Angels are apparently incorporeal beings, and as such are free from all laws of matter and space. Heaven and hell are essentially conditions, corresponding to character—conditions in which the body and the surroundings of the soul express and reflect its inward state. The main thing to be insisted on is therefore the state; place is merely incidental. The fact that Christ ascended to heaven with a human body, and that the saints are to possess glorified bodies, would seem to imply that heaven is a place. Christ’s declaration with regard to him who is “able to destroy both soul and body in hell” (Mat. 10:28) affords some reason for believing that hell is also a place.

Where heaven and hell are, is not revealed to us. But it is not necessary to suppose that they are in some remote part of the universe; for aught we know, they may he right about us, so that if our eyes were opened, like those of the prophet’s servant (2 Kings 6:17), we ourselves should behold them. Upon ground of Eph. 2:2—“prince of the powers of the air”—and 3:10—“the principalities and the powers in the heavenly places”—some have assigned the atmosphere of the earth as the abode of angelic spirits, both good and evil. But the expressions “air” and “heavenly places” may be merely metaphorical designations of their spiritual method of existence.

The idealistic philosophy, which regards time and space as merely subjective forms of our human thinking and as not conditioning the thought of God, may possibly afford some additional aid in the consideration of this problem. If matter be only the expression of God’s mind and will, having no existence apart from his intelligence and volition, the question of place ceases to have significance. Heaven is in that case simply the state in which God manifests himself in his grace, and hell is the state in which a moral being finds himself in opposition to God, and God in opposition to him. Christ can manifest himself to his followers in all parts of the earth and to all the inhabitants of heaven at one and the same time (John 14:21; Mat. 28:20; Rev. 1:7). Angels in like manner, being purely spiritual beings, may be free from the laws of space and time, and may not be limited to any fixed locality.

We prefer therefore to leave the question of place undecided, and to accept the existence and working of angels both good and evil as a matter of faith, without professing to understand their relations to space. For the rationalistic view, see Strauss, Glaubenslehre, 1:670–675. Per contra, see Van Oosterzee, Christian Dogmatics, 1:308–317; Martensen, Christian Dogmatics, 127–136.