My wife and I recently had a conversation instigated by a book she is currently reading about angels. The question came to mind about angels/spirits being "somewhere". My responsive thought process went something like this: it seems like we cannot speak of an angel or demon actually being anywhere because they do not possess a physical body. Yet they truly exist. The closest thing to which I can compare it, is to a concept. We can point to a chair, but not the concept of a chair. A concept is a non corporeal thing, yet still real. The difference of course, is that an angel is a rational being.
I would suggest that this non-location-based existence explains how a spiritual entity can seemingly be an influence everywhere at once.
This also might help explain how we can pray to the saints and understand that they can hear our petitions and pray for us.
I would suggest that this non-location-based existence explains how a spiritual entity can seemingly be an influence everywhere at once.
This also might help explain how we can pray to the saints and understand that they can hear our petitions and pray for us.
To borrow from concepts popularized by science fiction and fantasy, I tend to view the domain of angels/spirits as being on another plane of existence, or alternate dimension, if you will. By necessity, that dimension would have to be separate from our own, and have entirely different parameters. We are accustomed to being bound by space and time, and it is this assumption by which human assumptions that God must be a spatiotemporal entity are consigned to failure. But as it is written, a thousand years is as a single day to Him, and a day is as a thousand years, I take this to mean that He exists outside of time. And why should He be bound by a parameter of His own creation, any more than a carpenter must be contained within a house he builds?
ReplyDeleteA separate plane of existence is hard to imagine, that entire worlds exist all around us but yet are beyond our reach or detection. I can go up and down the dial on my radio and think I've found all the stations, and if I'm stuck in AM frequency, that's a reasonable assumption. But if I switch to FM frequency I can go up and down the dial again and find entirely separate stations in what seems to be the exact same place. Without any claims on being an expert, I'm thinking the frequency analogy is apt, as I've been given to understand that all matter in *our* universe has a unique resonance. Why should/could there not be an ethereal realm of an entirely different 'bandwidth' or resonance? It could be interwoven, underlying, overlain, parallel, etc, I don't have much in the way of a point of reference, and can't triangulate it...nor was I meant to. But those that dwell there need not have a strictly physical body if it's not a strictly physical domain per se.
To a certain extent, entities that reside on this alternate plane of existence may have a limited ability to alter their resonance to manifest their will in our dimension, or may at times be granted full access by the Master Spirit (God), to perform specific tasks, etc. When this idea first occurred to me I thought it odd that they could do this, then I thought perhaps they think it odd that we cannot. But perhaps it's an innate ability of the spirit being, and we have been given but a small seed of a spirit, just enough to mold in the shape of the Creator but not enough to escape the confines of our spatiotemporal 'proving grounds' until separated by biological death.
Anyways, I'm just spitballin' here...