Systematic Theology, by Louis Berkhof - New Leaven

angels good, to be His messengers and to serve His elect: some of whom are fallen from
that excellency, in which God created them, into everlasting perdition; and the others
have, by the grace of God, remained steadfast, and continued in their primitive state.
The devils and evil spirits are so depraved that they are enemies of God and every good
thing to the utmost of their power, as murderers watching to ruin the Church and every
member thereof, and by their wicked stratagems to destroy all; and are therefore, by
their own wickedness, adjudged to eternal damnation, daily expecting their horrible
torments.”
Up to the present time Roman Catholics generally regarded the angels as pure
spirits, while some Protestants, such as Emmons, Ebrard, Kurtz, Delitzsch, and others,
still ascribe to them some special kind of bodies. But even the great majority of the latter
take the opposite view. Swedenborg holds that all angels were originally men and exist
in bodily form. Their position in the angelic world depends on their life in this world.
Eighteenth century Rationalism boldly denied the existence of angels and explained
what the Bible teaches about them as a species of accommodation. Some modern liberal
theologians consider it worthwhile to retain the fundamental idea expressed in the
doctrine of the angels. They find in it a symbolic representation of the protecting care
and helpfulness of God.
B. THE EXISTENCE OF THE ANGELS
All religions recognize the existence of a spiritual world. Their mythologies speak of
gods, half-gods, spirits, demons, genii, heroes, and so on. It was especially among the
Persians that the doctrine of the angels was developed, and many critical scholars assert
that the Jews derived their angelology from the Persians. But this is an unproved and, to
say the least, very doubtful theory. It certainly cannot be harmonized with the Word of
God, in which angels appear from the very beginning. Moreover, some great scholars,
who made special study of the subject, came to the conclusion that the Persian
angelology was derived from that current among the Hebrews. The Christian Church
has always believed in the existence of angels, but in modern liberal theology this belief
has been discarded, though it still regards the angel-idea as useful, since it imprints
upon us “the living power of God in the history of redemption, His providentia
specialissima for His people, especially for the ‘little ones.’” 68 Though such men as
Leibnitz and Wolff, Kant and Schleiermacher, admitted the possibility of the existence of
an angelic world, and some of them even tried to prove this by rational argumentation,
68 Foster, Christianity in Its Modern Expression, p. 114.
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