Medieval theologians may not have agonized over how many angels can dance on the head of a pin—though the question does arise in the anonymous mystical dialogue Schwester Katrei—but on other matters angels provoked them to endless speculation. How many are there? Perhaps 34,720,000,000, but that was not the only calculation. Without bodies, how do they speak or sing? Do they have names, or even personal identities? How and why and when did some of them rebel? How do they flit back and forth between praising God in heaven and tending to people on earth? The Bible says much about angels, but they remain abstract and good to speculate about. They are ranked in a hierarchy of orders, but the theologians have different ways of organizing them. James Collins used to say that angels, rational beings like us, show what we would be without our bodies. Even disembodied, however,...

You do not currently have access to this content.