Angelic Bodies

Paul Griffiths (Decreation) ably defends a minority position in the history of theology, namely, that angels are not bodiless, though they are “immaterial.” They are “living creatures with discarnate bodies of energy” (125).

To defend this point, he offers this brilliant little analysis of the meaning of “matter” and “body”: “Angelic bodies . . . have mass, but not, or not necessarily matter. ‘Matter’ is a word that has no generally agreed definition in contemporary physics, and no consistent pattern of use in ordinary English. ‘Mass,’ by contrast, names, in the discourse of physics, a body’s resistance to acceleration by a force acting upon it (inertial mass), and its gravitational attraction to other bodies (gravitational mass). These may be properties of bodies without matter, which is to say bodies consisting of energy” (122).

Bodies have mass, and that means “availability and responsiveness to other bodies,” regardless of whether they have weight and extension in space. Angels have immaterial bodies, but, as bodies, are available and responsive to other bodies, especially to the body of the incarnate Son and the saints.