The great enigma
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The existence of angels, although an article of faith, has long been disputed even among Christians. The progress of science, however, now permits us to propose a theory on the way in which these spirits, having a real existence, affect matter.
The fourth Lateran Council states: "At the beginning of time, the omnipotent God formed spiritual creatures and corporal matter - that is, the angels and the world - out of the void, then the human creature, which contains both because it is composed of body and spirit."
The Council was basing its statement essentially on the opening of Genesis: "In the beginning, God created heaven and earth" (Gen 1:1), then: "Yahweh God shaped man from the soil of the ground" (Gen 2:7).
The body of man was not therefore made out of the void by God, but out of the earth created before him and, originally "a formless void" (Gen 1:2).
A plausible hypothesis would be that the spiritual creatures, acting as secondary causes, might have affected "the earth" in its initial state of "formless void" in order to shape it and structure it, so that it might form the body of the first man and, finally, that of Christ.
According to the teaching of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, paragraph 308: "The truth that God is at work in all the actions of His creatures is inseparable from faith in God the creator. God is the first cause, who operates in and through secondary causes."
Thus, according to the theory proposed, God created Adam's body through the intermediary of secondary causes: angels. Adam's soul, in contrast, was created directly by God, who "blew the breath of life into his nostrils; and the man became a living being" (Gen 2:7).
But the angels had an indirect role in the creation of the soul of Adam, for his soul would not have been able to exist without the simultaneous creation of his body through their intervention.
The same thing applies to the descendants of the first man, and that is why "the Church teaches that every spiritual soul is created immediately by God - it is not 'produced' by the parents" (Catechism of the Catholic Church, paragraph 366).
In contrast, the body of a child is indeed 'produced' by the seed of the parents; as with all material objects, however, it has been shaped by an angelic act, which, in this case, is invisible and therefore often unknown or contested.
The ways in which "the spiritual creature "acts upon" the fleshly creature "therefore merit examination".
In the Old and New Testaments, angels appear in human form or in the form of strange combinations of creatures: it is therefore a question of interpreting complex metaphors. They are at all times ministers of the divine will, and owe their name, angelos, which in Greek means "messenger", to this function.
An angel is a pure spirit, not attached to a body. Appearance in human form is nothing but an illusion, and the angel may continue his mission without his true angelic nature being recognized until he reveals the fact, as was the case with the Archangel Raphael and young Tobit: "You thought you saw me eating, but that was appearance and no more. Now bless the Lord on earth and give thanks to God. I am about to return to Him who sent me from above... And he rose into the air" (Tob 12:19-20).
Why is it that man does not normally see angels? Because matter - and our eyes are made of matter - can only perceive matter. An angel, on the other hand, being a spiritual creature, is aware of other spirits and therefore is aware of a man's soul. When he dies, a man is stripped down to his immortal soul and through his soul perceives other spirits, including angels.
For, going beyond the notion of the visible and invisible, in order to understand the difference between the nature of a spiritual creature and that of a material creature, we need to reflect on the moment of the beginning of creation. In creation theory, was God obliged to make a spiritual universe and a material universe out of nothing, as Genesis relates? If the answer is yes, that implies a constraint upon the Trinity.
The Son, the image of the Father, must necessarily reproduce that which the Father does. However, the Father, principle of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, is thus twice a principle, while the Son, principle of the Holy Spirit, is only a single principle. We are talking about operations said to be ad intra, within the Trinity. How can the Son be the image of the Father if He is not twice a principle?
The Son is indeed twice a principle, but ad extra, as far as the creation is concerned. He is, in a virtual sense, in the infinity of possible worlds that God knows within Himself, and which remain virtual. He is, in a real sense, in the actual world, which, for all eternity, He freely chose to create, through his Incarnation, thus bestowing His reality: "The Life" known as Jesus.
In order to be the perfect image of the Father, the Son must be like the Father, however unlikely this may seem: the principle not only of the Holy Spirit, but also of the Son - in other words, of Himself. He is therefore, ad extra, in incarnating as a man, His own principle and element.
The principle is by definition distinct from the element of which it is the origin.
The Son therefore has, ad extra, a constituent-principle and a constituent-element, which are distinct. The first is spiritual: it is His invisible soul. The second is material: it is His visible body. In the image of Him, the same applies to every human being. The union of soul and body constitute human nature.
"One person in two natures" is how, in 680, the Council of Constantinople summed up the mystery of the Incarnation, in which the person of Christ assumes both divine and human nature simultaneously.
The Son could not have incarnated into a world which did not exist, and so, with a view to His arrival, i.e. to the Incarnation, God created a receptacle for the constituent-principle of the Son and a receptacle for His constituent-element, that is, the heaven and earth of Genesis, afterwards called the spiritual universe and the material universe or the invisible world and the visible world, all of which is expressed in Christ.
Each angel, inasmuch as he is an element of heaven, is also a receptacle for the Son-principle ad extra and therefore participates in the work of the Incarnation.
The two receptacles participate as such in the Incarnation, given that, without them, the latter could not come about: their cooperation is therefore necessary. In the same way that the Fiat of Mary had to open the visible universe to Christ's body, the angelic 'Yes' also, indirectly, had to open the invisible universe to Christ's soul by creating His body. We will come back to this point and also to the way in which the angel participates in the Incarnation by arranging the original matter with this in mind.
We need to make a distinction here between the active Incarnation, the work of three persons since all three incarnated, and the passive Incarnation, the work of the Son alone since only He underwent incarnation.
St Paul described the double role of the Son, creator and creature: "He is the image of the unseen God, the first-born of all creation, for in Him were created all things in heaven and on earth: everything visible and everything invisible…all things were created through Him and for Him. He exists before all things and in Him all things hold together…" (Col 1:15-17).
Without being a requirement of faith, the existence of the three hierarchies of angels postulated by Dionysius the Areopagite is very probable, as is that of the nine choirs enumerated in the Bible.
Each hierarchy contains three choirs. The first is composed of Seraphim, Cherubim and Thrones; the second, Dominions, Principalities and Powers; the third, Virtues, Archangels - a name given also to Seraphim - and Angels - also a generic term to signify any purely spiritual creature.
Only the members of the first hierarchy are quantified: seven Seraphim, four Cherubim, twenty-four Thrones. As regards the other angels, we only know that they are extremely numerous: St John saw myriad upon myriad (Rev 5:11) and Daniel saw ten thousand million (7:10).
According to St Thomas Aquinas, the first hierarchy contemplates the reasons for things in God Himself and reflects Him, and so it is through this hierarchy that we obtain the most faithful image of Him. In effect, when the three choirs of the first hierarchy appear as a set, they constitute the theophany detailed to a greater or lesser extent by Ezekiel (chapters 1 and 10) and St John (Rev chapter 4).
These details are not given to us by Scripture without good reason, and we are justified in trying to arrive at an interpretation of their meaning.
The Seraphim constitute the first choir of the first hierarchy, the closest to God whom they contemplate. Why are there seven Seraphim? What do they see?
They all, simultaneously, contemplate the triune God. Given that no subject may have more than one object at a time, should there not, according to the mystery of the Holy Trinity, be four visions: that of the one God and those of His three persons, received by only four Seraphim, rather than seven? We cannot answer this without calling upon an intratriune concept: the circumincession.
This dogma revealed by Jesus - "Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me?" (John 14:10) - was taught by the Council of Florence. "Because of the unity of the divine being, the Father is entirely in the Son, and entirely in the Holy Spirit; the Son is entirely in the Father, and entirely in the Holy Spirit; the Holy Spirit is entirely in the Father, and entirely in the Son."
There is, therefore, for the Seraphim, no contradiction between the fact that each of the three persons is God and the fact that there is only one God, since each time that he contemplates a person, he knows that the two others are present in Him, although hidden: he knows, therefore, that he is in the presence of the triune God. The union of the two other persons constitutes a non-personal intratriune relationship.
There are three non-personal intratriune relationships: the union of the Father and the Son - the active desire from which proceeds the Holy Spirit - and also that of the Father and the Holy Spirit and that of the Son and the Holy Spirit.
These three relationships, distinct from the three personal relationships that each constitute one person, are three extra representations of God. The contemplation of these three relationships must therefore be undertaken by three supplementary Seraphim, which indeed brings the total membership of the first choir in the first hierarchy to seven.
In the Bible, the seven Seraphim are presented in various ways. St John talks of "seven eyes, which are the seven spirits that God has sent out over the set world" (Rev 5:6). For Zechariah (4:10) "These seven are the eyes of Yahweh, which range over the set world." The Seraphim also appear in the form of" seven lamps, with seven openings for the lamps on (the lamp-stand)" or of "seven flaming lamps burning, the seven Spirits of God" (Zec 4:2; Rev 4:5).
The "seven eyes" are God's gaze, looking through the medium of the seven Seraphim that contemplate him; "the seven flaming lamps burning" symbolize the seven Seraphim reflecting God.
The light shining on the highest branch of the lamp-stand is, by virtue of this fact, the most noteworthy, and the Seraph that reflects this light is also the most noteworthy, the one who contemplates one God in three persons: formerly Lucifer, perhaps?
After the choir of Seraphim, those of the Cherubim and the Thrones follow in order, each carrying mysterious symbols. But why should there be four Cherubim and twenty-four Thrones? Their number is determined by the image of God, which they perceive and reflect.
The second choir of the first hierarchy sees God through the first choir, as though through a stained glass window, and in the same way the third choir sees God through the second choir.
Seen by the Cherubim, the assembly of Seraphim - written below in bold - summarizes four divine images: the three persons alone, with their complements, and one God in three persons. In order to contemplate and reflect these four objects, four subjects are needed, and these are the Cherubim.
Theology does not encourage the introduction of mathematical elements. However, mathematics - which, in its most global form, is the theory of the set - is no more than a convenient and effective extension of written or oral logical expression. Therefore, provided that we faithfully observe the facts - sometimes mathematical in form - as we do here, mathematics is not barred access to the field of the sacred.
Thus, the relationship between the choir of Cherubim and that of the Seraphim is more easily demonstrated if expressed in a mathematical form and, first and foremost, if the Father, Son and Holy Spirit are represented respectively by the numbers 1, 2 and 3.
Let the Choir of seven Seraphim be: 1(32) 12(3) 2(13) 23(1) 3(21) 31(2) (123)
Let the Choir of four Cherubim be: ((1) (23)) ((2) (31)) ((3) (12)) ((1)(2)(3))
Explanation: In the first line, the seven Seraphim are represented by figures in bold type. Next to each of the first six, in brackets and in standard type, is the hidden complement, which we can see makes up the triune set.
Circumincession implies that the three persons are never separated, since each is in each of the two others. We use brackets to indicate clearly that the content is hidden as far as the respective Seraphim is concerned, i.e. invisible, and the same applies for the Cherubim, whose gaze passes through the latter.
The seventh Seraphim - (123) - contemplates the image of one God in three persons. Mathematical consistency would require the addition of his complement, empty set, Ø, which we mention for the record: it would no doubt be reckless to imagine the Seraphim harbouring a heaven emptied of its angelic content.
Presented thus, the seven Seraphim are the sub-sets of a set of three elements: {123}, which appears in the series - in the form (123) - because each set is a sub-set of itself.
At the same time, there is a fundamental difference between the sub-set (123) placed in brackets and the set {123}placed in a brace, the latter signifying in mathematical terms that the set is not ordered, in other words that none of its elements is placed before any other. The elements all occupy the same place, each necessarily residing in each of the other two. There is therefore circumincession.
The set {123}, seat of the circumincession of the three persons, is not part of the seven sub-sets that represent the Seraphim: where should it be placed?
In the theophanies, it appears close to the Seraphim: "On the form of a throne was the form with the appearance of a human being…the sight was like the glory of Yahweh" (Ezk 1:26, 28). St John also saw "the One sitting on the throne, who lives for ever and ever" (Rev 4:10). This is therefore the image of the Everlasting contemplated by the Seraphim "the seven spirits of God" (Rev 4:5), before the throne.
The four Cherubim appear in the second line, contemplating God through the Seraphim, without perceiving the hidden elements. They are represented by four sets, each containing the three persons, and arranged in four different ways because of the fact of circumincession.
The first set reflects the union of the Father with the two other persons, the second reflects the union of the Son with the two other persons, the third reflects the union of the Holy Spirit with the two other persons, and the fourth reflects the union of the three persons in one God.
In the Biblical theophanies, the central throne is the scene of strange events - "Flashes of lightning were coming from the throne, and the sound of peals of thunder" (Rev 4:5) - for which the Cherubim and Ezekiel's living creatures (moving without ceasing) could be partly responsible.
Since each of the four Cherubim reflects God, they may each occupy the throne, but evidently can only do so in succession: while one is sitting on the throne, the three others surround it. And, indeed, St John saw that "In the middle of the throne and around it were four living creatures" (Rev 4:6).
By changing places in this way, the four "living creatures" - the Cherubim - are in constant permutation and thus occupy, in turn, twenty-four positions, since the number of permutations of four elements is 4 x 3 x 2 x 1 = 24.
It is through the Cherubim, who occupy these twenty-four positions in turn, that the members of the third choir, the Thrones, who are correspondingly twenty-four in number, contemplate God.
The Cherubim and Thrones, extraordinary Biblical figures often present at the same time, are described in detail by Ezekiel and St John, who says of the Cherubim: "The first living creature was like a lion, the second like a bull, the third living creature had a human face, and the fourth living creature was like a flying eagle" (Rev 4:7). Ezekiel (1:10, 10:14) uses similar terms, but why does he attribute four faces to each of the Cherubim?
First of all, what are we to make of these strange beings? They are evidently not the four Evangelists, whom we mention for the record, but symbols representing the four divine images described above. It is not essential to try to discover which corresponds to which animal: it would be difficult, and serve no point, since we understand their overall significance. There is anyway a simpler way.
Ezekiel refers to animals with four faces. We can therefore represent each of the Cherubim schematically by an object with four equal faces: a regular tetrahedron, in which each plane reflects one of the four divine images already mentioned. (For greater clarity, we will describe these four again: the first symbolizes the union of the Father with the two other persons, the second symbolizes the union of the Son with the two other persons, the third symbolizes the union of the Holy Spirit with the two other persons and the fourth symbolizes one God in three persons.)
We have seen that, for St John, each of the Cherubim had only one face: that of a lion, a bull, a man or an eagle. So, in the model proposed here, each one of St John's Cherubim corresponds to one of the four planes of the tetrahedron. Each of Ezekiel's Cherubim, on the other hand, possesses four faces, and therefore corresponds to the total number of planes in the tetrahedron.
Ezekiel repeats his description several times, so could not have made a mistake. The Cherubim of St John must therefore also have had four faces, but perhaps the Evangelist only described one because the others were hidden: when we look at one plane of a tetrahedron, we cannot see the others.
If all the Cherubim possess the same four faces, how can we distinguish one from another? The answer is that they never show their three complementary faces.
In other words, the permanently visible face of one reflects the person of the Father, united with the persons of the Son and the Holy Spirit; the visible face of another reflects the person of the Son, united with the persons of the Father and of the Holy Spirit; the visible face of another reflects the person of the Holy Spirit, united with the persons of the Father and of the Son; the visible face of the last reflects God in three persons.
The fact that each of the Cherubim always presents the same face seems to be corroborated by Ezekiel's description: "And each one moved straight forward; they went where the spirit urged them, they did not turn as they moved" (Ezk 1:12).
With St John as with Ezekiel, the Cherubim and the Thrones appear together. St John sees the latter sitting on twenty-four thrones around the throne of God and coordinating their movements with those of the Cherubim (Rev 4:4). But the Thrones are also undoubtedly symbolized by wheels.
Ezekiel describes one wheel for each of the Cherubim, saying "The wheels shared the spirit of the animals" (Ezk 1:20). He had a vision of this Cherubim-wheel assembly surrounding the divine throne several times, for example when the glory of the Lord leaves Jerusalem: "The winged creatures then raised their wings and the wheels moved with them, with the glory of the God of Israel over them, above" (Ezk 11:22). Daniel also saw Thrones and flaming wheels (Dan 7:9).
We may presume, since each of the four Cherubim has a wheel close to him, that each wheel bears six Thrones that symbolize the six permutations in which the member of the Cherubim concerned occupies the prime position. For example, in representing the Cherubim by 1, 2, 3 and 4, the six permutations in which the number 1 comes first will be:
(1, 2, 3, 4) (1, 2, 4, 3) (1, 3, 4, 2) (1, 3, 2, 4) (1, 4, 2, 3) (1, 4, 3, 2)
And the wheels are turning, since "they were called in my hearing, the whirling wheels" (Ezk 10:13), possibly in order to signify the speed of the permutations.
It is likely that the members of the second and third hierarchies contemplate God through the first hierarchy. According to Ezekiel (Ezk 10:12) "Their entire bodies, their backs, their hands, their wings, as well as the wheels, had eyes all the way round (the wheels of all four)." However, eyes often symbolize the gaze of the angel towards God in Scripture, as well as the gaze of God through the angel.
Angels act as secondary causes in the Biblical domain, and their ways of moving are determined by the original structure of the universe.
"Heaven and earth" in Genesis (Gen 1:1) are two sets, which are traditionally superimposed. They are not disjointed or separate: they therefore have an interface, a common border.
This is the origin of what the Bible calls the abyss: it is that part of the lower set which is found beneath the intersection, and which, in etymological terms, being in a lower position, is also called infernal (in Latin infernos, below).
The existence of thedeep abyss is evident in verse 2 of the first chapter of Genesis: "darkness covered the face of the deep."
The original universe is thus a set consisting of three sub-sets created simultaneously: the upper part, the lower part and their intersection.
In this schema, the intersection is "the earth" of the Bible, the intermediary stage from which Jesus "descended into hell" then "ascended into heaven" and which may be visualized as the intersection between the two spheres.
In mathematical terms, an intersection is itself a set: the set of the elements that belong to the two sets of which it is the common border. It must contain at least one element from each of these two sets.
Although the elements in the upper set, the angels, are extremely numerous, the lower set, in contrast, originally contained only one element: the primordial matter of the "formless void", whose higher part, known as the "waters" were shaped by the action of the angels. The Biblical text describes this initial situation: "Darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters" (Gen 1:2).
Within the abyss, known as hell, we sometimes locate (in no particular order): the limbo where infants who die unbaptized are found; the place known as "the bosom of Abraham" where the Just formerly awaited their deliverance by Jesus Christ, whose descent "into hell" is recalled by the Creed; and Purgatory. But most of the time we take hell to mean the dwelling of the damned. Since all these souls cannot be mixed together, there must be different levels within this lower sphere. This is why we often refer to it in the plural: infernal regions, bowels of the earth and so on.
Hell would exist even if there were no damned. It is probably a question of the negative state of universe falling into the past, where its elements are indefinitely reduced.
Perhaps this explains the fire of hell, eternal death, which burns the bodies of the damned, reducing them infinitely without consuming them. Thus, St Theresa of Avila received a vision of the place reserved for her in hell if she died in a state of mortal sin: she found herself enclosed in a cell, whose walls were forever closing in on her.
As we have just seen, angels must be present in the intersection, and therefore on earth: so what do they do, and how do they do it?
Angels carry out God's will. The will of God is first and foremost to incarnate the Son. The Incarnation requires the existence of a receptacle. The receptacle for the body of Christ is the Virgin Mary, who is herself the product of a long process of development in the visible world, according to that which cosmologists have called the Anthropic Principle. In their view, if the constants of the universe had been even slightly different, mankind would not have appeared. They have concluded that the universe has evolved with a view to the appearance of man - its final cause - and we will be more specific: one particular man, the Christ, within the womb of His Mother.
How did the angels manage to guide the evolution of the universe from the "formless void" of Genesis, the primordial continuum, right through to the body of Christ? Did they all descend from heaven in order to take action within the intersection?
According to information in the Bible, angels come and go between heaven and earth, as Jacob saw in his dream: "There was a ladder, planted on the ground with its top reaching to heaven; and God's angels were going up and down on it. And there was Yahweh, standing beside him" (Gen 28:12, 13). Jesus confirms these comings and goings: "In all truth I tell you, you will see heaven open and the angels of God ascending and descending over the Son of man" (John 1:51).
All the angels, being by definition future receptacles of the Son principle ad extra, were most certainly obliged to cooperate with the Incarnation, which could not take place without them.
According to Suarez, the Spanish Jesuit and theologian, God showed the newly created angels the incarnate Word in the future, and asked them to adore Him. Lucifer and one-third of the angels (Rev 12:4), motivated by pride, refused to lower themselves in such a way before a human creature, even if He was the Son of God.
In Revelation (passim), St John tells how Michael and his angels drove Lucifer and his horde out of heaven, throwing them down to earth, then down into the abyss and, more precisely, into hell "the lake of fire and sulphur" where "they will be tormented day and night, forever and ever." For the time being, the bad angels still have the power to climb up out of the abyss, to set themselves against the will of God by tempting man so that he will turn away from the incarnate Word.
There were still therefore very many angels, two-thirds of the original force, who passed through the intersection in order to arrange it so that it might form the body of Christ. They thus manipulated the Biblical "earth" to create the chain of events that go from the creation of the world to the conception of Jesus, and which ensure the permanence of the existing universe until the return of Christ, at the end of time.
In order to understand how the angel shapes the earth, described as "a formless void" in Genesis, we start with the original state of the universe as described by modern physics. We are talking about "the primitive atom" - a unique cosmic phenomenon named by Father Lemaître - whose explosion, the Big Bang, is thought to have created the existing universe.
It is generally thought that this singular phenomenon was exclusively to do with photons, perhaps even a question of one single photon with an infinite density. The Book of Genesis should therefore mention the creation on the first day of a universe consisting exclusively of photons, which is the case: "God said, 'Let there be light', and there was light… And the evening and the morning were the first day" (Gen 1:3-5). But light is composed of photons. So this is a universe of light, containing, just like the "primitive atom" all the photons of the world, which were, according to Scripture, created on the first day.
It is not a tendentious argument to connect the photon of Genesis with that of the Big Bang, since the same particle is present in both cases. But what is the connection between the Fiat lux and the Big Bang?
We should not confuse the creation of the universe of photons with its explosion, necessarily two successive events. However, in the six days that follow the Creation in the Bible, no breaking-up of this universe is related: on the contrary "God saw all that He had made, and indeed it was very good" (Gen 1:31).
Therefore, however incredible it may seem, the Big Bang must have happened after the seventh day of creation.
According to this hypothesis, Adam and Eve, who were created on the sixth day, would have lived in a universe of photons. This would explain their initial immortality, for they would have been made of photons, and the photon itself cannot die, as we know from the fact that light emitted by stars takes several billion years to arrive on earth. In the same way, all the creatures would have been composed of photons.
The loss of this immortality is a consequence of original sin. The latter, perhaps the splitting of a high-energy photon into matter and antimatter, initiated the transformation of a universe of photons into a material universe, in which "Cursed is the ground " (Gen 3:17) and man is subject to death: taken from the ground "to dust (he will) return" (Gen 3:19), unable to turn the clock back to the garden of photons, whose entrance is now guarded by "the great winged creatures and the fiery flashing sword" (Gen 3:24).
The noise of the photon explosion - the Big Bang - still rumbles faintly throughout the existing universe, in the form of a fossilized murmuring - a cosmological thermal radiation, distant memory of the catastrophic sin.
And so we discover, in Genesis, after the seventh day, a reference to the deterioration of earth caused by original sin. St Paul sees this deterioration extended to "the set of creation" (Rom 8:22), even though he does not specifically attribute the reason to original sin.
Although this decidedly new interpretation of the cause of the Big Bang seems logical, it will not be followed up further here, as it would be difficult at present to ensure that the basis of the argument would be accepted.
On the other hand, it is undeniable that a universe of photons was created first and deteriorated into two universes: one made of matter and the other antimatter (for the moment not subject to scientific observation, for reasons which are still unsure, including the failure to consider the fall of antimatter in the past).
Physics states the fact without offering an explanation, its laws not being applicable before the Big Bang since the space-time continuum described by them is thought to have been created 10-43 second afterwards.
Scripture is a little more explicit, and states that light was not created out of nothing, but out of the original earth, the "formless void" We know about some of the elements in the process: it happened in the intersection, where it would seem to be connected with the coming and going of the angels, which would imply discontinuity. The initial result was the creation of innumerable elements, photons, all as identical as the imprint of a single seal.
Even though science does not know, and does not want to know, how the photon was created (this question being seen as metaphysical), it does at least provide vital information about its physical characteristics.
A fundamental particle, the photon is the quantum of the electromagnetic field; put more simply, it is the vector of the energy that it carries in varying quantities. It appears to be in constant movement, with the speed known as the speed of light.
And, most importantly, the photon, like the original universe, is capable of splitting into pairs of matter and antimatter. Concentrating on this property, we will try to determine its characteristics and to verify whether they correspond to the characteristics of an angelic seal stamped onto matter.
Depending upon the amount of energy that it carries, the photon can split into three distinct pairs of matter and antimatter: an electron and a positron, a muon and an antimuon and a tau and an antitau. The muon is a large electron and the tau an even larger electron, the adjective indicating not size but mass.
The positron, antimuon and antitau are antiparticles of the electron; the muon and the tau are distinguishable from these because they revolve in the opposite direction. If the particle meets its antiparticle, their opposite rotations cancel each other out, and they are annihilated, forming a photon again. They behave as if they were one and the same element: for example, an electron that reverses its rotational sense becomes a positron.
Rotation in this context has a temporal significance. Thus, it has been said that a positron is an electron reversing the course of time, the phenomenon evidently being connected with the inversion of its rotational sense.
The positron thus goes from the present towards the past and, inversely, the electron goes from the present towards the future. When they meet, their rotations towards the future and the past neutralize each other and create a charge based in the present: the photon. Briefly, it is as though the electron carried a future charge, the positron carried a past charge, and the photon carried a present charge. The constituent element of the universe is therefore Time.
We come across this temporal sense in the astrophysicists' concept of the universe, currently being compared to a hypersphere inflated with Time. In this schema, the past is inside the hypersphere (the abyss of the Bible?), the future is outside it and the present is on the surface. We may develop this analysis further, in the wake of quantum physics, by supposing that the expansion of the hypersphere is intermittent.
In an essay entitled "For a logic of the elementary universe", we have tried to show that the basic constituents of matter are three elementary particles, each carrying a 'coloured' charge which may be assimilated into a temporal charge, i.e. a present, past or future charge.
We will not now go into the realms of what is a relatively complex theory, but simply accept that the photon reproduces circumincession, because it is the product of the three 'coloured' charges that it contains, each being contained within each of the two others. If the theory is accurate, this fact proves that the photon is an image of the Trinity, the first image engraved in the primordial continuum at the moment of the creation of the world.
Created by an angel, the photon must necessarily retain the temporal characteristics of the angel. But why is an angel the vector of time? Why is time accorded this overriding priority in creation? Because, as we shall see, time is life.
The angel contemplates and reflects the Triune God, but the latter is Himself defined in Exodus (3:14, 15) in relation to time "I AM WHO I AM…This is my name for ever, and this my title for all generations."
St John takes this definition of God further in Revelation: "From Him who is, who was and who is to come" (Rev 1:4). It is a formula repeated several times in the same text; for example "I am the Alpha and the Omega, says the Lord God, who is, who was and who is to come, the Almighty" (Rev 1:11). The notion of the past and future is here added to that of the present.
God made the world in His image, and therefore created it with a temporal dimension. He thus conveyed to it BEING, that is, existence, reality and life - and far more, in the person of His Son incarnate.
The Incarnation was the final cause of creation and could, in a form different from the one we know, have stopped at restoring to man the supernatural life that he enjoyed in the Terrestrial Paradise. Following the original sin, however - Felix culpa, happy fault, sings the Church in the Exultet of Holy Saturday - the Incarnation offered mankind Eternal Life: the very life enjoyed by God, who knows how to bring a greater good out of any evil.
The angels, secondary causes, were sent to inscribe the primordial matter with the three temporal elements - present, past and future - and to combine them in order to constitute the Body of Christ.
Scripture attributes this mission particularly to the first choir of the first hierarchy. Zechariah and St John, already quoted, refer respectively to the seven eyes of the Eternal, which range over the set world, and the seven spirits of God sent out over the set world. The Eternal of the armies - the armies of the angels - Himself says "Now I shall bring in my servant the Branch, and I shall remove this country's guilt in a single day… For this is the stone which I have put before Joshua, a stone on which are seven eyes; and I myself shall cut the inscription on it" (Zec 3:9).
From this and other neighbouring texts (Isa 4:2; Jer 23:5 and 33:15), it emerges that the Branch is the Christ, and that the Eternal, through the intermediary of the Seraphim acting as secondary causes, will cause Him to take on a material form. As we have seen, all of the faithful angels work together on this plan, which we will now try to describe at an elementary level, by considering the action of one single angel.
The name of aevum has been given to angelic time, undoubtedly in order to measure the comings and goings of angels between heaven and earth as described by Jacob, during which the angels leave heaven and penetrate into the intersection described above, then return to their starting point and so on. So how was this carried out, and what are the consequences?
Invisibility is one of the characteristics of an angel, since matter sees matter and not spirit. On the other hand, with the aid of optical instruments, the human eye is able to observe the changes made to the primordial continuum by the angel because they are part of the matter of the visible world.
It is difficult to represent this continuum: the earth formless and void. It was evidently not earth as a solid element, but a changeable continuum, known as "the waters" in the first chapter of Genesis. The angel, in contrast, had a shape and a fullness.
The distortion of the continuum by the angel may by visualized, very approximately, by using Einstein's image of the universe as "a field of lumps and bumps."
When the angel left heaven in the process of coming down from heaven to earth, he caused a small distortion in the upper edge of the intersection, which has already been described. This upper edge then moved up into the space that he had just left, forming one of Einstein's lumps in the continuum.
The symmetrical and inverted depression was created by the presence of the angel inside the intersection. The space in the continuum occupied by the angel is therefore equal to that of the protrusion.
When the angel left the continuum in order to go back into heaven, he prompted two phenomena:
1- He left his 'absence' in the continuum, a vacuum or hole that closed up under the pressure of the surrounding continuum.
2- Re-entering heaven, he pushed out the continuum, which had taken his place. The protrusion then disappeared, only to reappear and disappear in succession, while the comings and goings of the angel continued. The same applies to the symmetrical depression.
The lump and bump in the continuum symbolize a particle and an antiparticle of intermittent existence because of the passing to and fro of the angel. If the angel's oscillation stopped, the continuum would resume its undifferentiated state. This would explain the intermittent nature of quantum physics and the existence of matter and antimatter.
Within this schema, a photon, the product of the union of a particle with its corresponding antiparticle, would be represented by the fusion of a protrusion with its corresponding depression.
It would be a risky business to go into the activities of the seven Seraphim and the other angels in detail. Is this what Sumerian cosmogony was trying to symbolize with the seven-storeyed ziggurat rising up towards the heavens, corresponding with inverse symmetry to the seven concentric circles in the pit of the abyss?
The Incarnation created the invisible universe and the visible universe so that they could receive, respectively, the soul and the body of Christ, in whom all creation is expressed.
The Incarnation was made possible by the Fiat of Mary and the action of the Good Angels, who structured the visible world in such a way that it might receive the body of Christ.
We have tried to show that the invisible seal of the angels shaped the formless earth, and that its existence may be detected indirectly through the imprint that it has left.
This brings to an end the essay begun in "Science and Faith" (www.mundicreator.com), which is concerned primarily with the process of the creative Incarnation. At this point, we are faced with a shattering realization.
The Incarnation was decided for all eternity because God, who is immutable, does not change His mind. In His infinite bounty, He chose to do something unique: out of all the possible worlds that He was aware of, He chose to create the one in which He would suffer the most, and even die, in order to convey His eternal beatitude to the greatest number of His beloved. Those who fail to benefit from His sacrifice on the Cross are those who, like the Bad Angels, do not, and never will, want to benefit.
We know that "God is love" (1 John 4:8), but we are still overwhelmed by the tragic proof of this truth, through the enormity of the sacrifice offered by Christ.