Church Times (July 2011)

Mysterious Ministers


AS AN undergraduate, I was involved in a dangerous accident on my bicycle. I was unhurt, unlike the two people to whom the author refers in his introduction. I attributed this escape from injury to a providential interposition by an angel. Thus I read this book with particular interest.

Written in an easy, accessible style, and a fruit of the author’s own spiritual and intellectual journey, it falls roughly into two halves. The first treats the biblical material and other considerations concerning the ministry of angels, the second its application in pastoral terms. The overviews of angelic ministry in the Bible bring the reader’s attention to many of the passages on which the author later draws. Indeed, one of the values of this study is that it makes the reader aware of the richness and variety of the biblical material concerning angels. The chapter tracing the vicissitudes of angels in Christian tradition is, as the author puts it, “a whistle-stop tour of church history”, but there are particularly interesting comments on the views of Luther, Calvin, and Karl Barth. The second half of the book, with its focus on the continuing pastoral ministry of angels, will certainly inform and enrich the devotional life and pastoral ministry of its readers.

There are, however, features of the book which cause hesitation. It seems to assume that the biblical material is uniform, and can be fitted in to a pattern, or “jigsaw”, a term which the author himself uses. There is little or no mention of the fact that biblical material has its roots in a wide variety of cultural back ground; it employs different literary genres; and it contains much that is (or may be) evocative, figurative, and allusive. The author admits that a few references to angels in the OT indicate theophanies; but he does not consider the possibility that angels are not independent beings, but manifestations of God’s presence and activity, sometimes visible only to the eye of faith.

The enduring value of this study, in addition to its help in the practice of pastoral ministry, will be its insistence on the transcendent mystery of him with whom we have to do, and also its opposition to two modern fashions: on the one hand a neglect of angels and, on the other, extravagant speculation about them.

The Rt Revd Alec Graham is a former Bishop of Newcastle.