neo-x wrote:Jac, I'm being D.Advocate here...
I don't think Paul's point is that so much far off. He is right when he says there is no explicit statement regarding sex in angels. Now personally I don't think angels came down and procreated...but that being said, there is some good cause to see why the procreation story carries some food for thought. First Angels have passed themselves around as humans, secondly, they ate, with the lord when the visited abraham. Now, eating is as much a part of nature as sex, so I would ask how do you guys explain that, do angels have stomachs, disgestion and a large intestine?...because for them to have stomachs and then not eat is against natural law, hence evil and that can not be, since that can't be then how come they are eating in the first place, do they have teeth, saliva? Can they change themselves? What about satan, does satan has power? how come he turned the sticks of Pharoah's magicians into snakes?
We have warrant to assert that angels have the naturacl capacity to digest food. It doesn't follow that they have the natural capacity for procreation. On the other hand, I've provided warrant as to why they
cannot procreate.
By the way, Angels always show as males when in human form, that atleast establishes a bias towards the appearence. They don't appear as females for some reason. Why do you think that is? I am not saying that angels are males but why not appear as human females then? One must wonder.
Perhaps some of it was cultural. Angels obviously do not have a sex. And who says that angels have
not appeared as females? Some interpret Zech. 5:9 in just such a way. But even if that is rejected, I don't see what inferences we should draw from the generally masculine apprearance of angels. As I said, perhaps it was just due to cultural issues. To say much here seems to me to be an argument from silence.
How do you assume that angels are rational beings or that they are forbidden to marry? how rational is rational here? And Jesus' words don't say angels are forbidden to marry but that in heaven there is no marraige. one reason being that there are all males, atleast that is how they show up to be.
Angels are rational creatures by definition, and Christ tells us that they are not given in marriage. "Forbidden" may be too strong a word. The point is that they just
don't marry. To argue that they don't marry because they are all male is, again, just an argument from silence.
In the last sentence here you said,
They do not have that as a natural capacity. That is, they are not capable of engaging in the act itself.
But even animals can have sex, but sex is not just marrige then. If someone has the natural capacity to have sex, then going backwards from this reasoning that just means they are married...and that is how earlier, most early marriges worked. If we can count Adam and eve and family and the rest and down the line to even times of patriachs too.
Animals don't have a rational nature. It is also incorrect to say that just because someone has sex that they are married. Marriage is a covenant entered into by a man and a woman for the ultimate end of procreation and the rearing of children. Whether or not any given marriage achieves that end is neither here nor there. That's what it is for. It is, by nature, a public, though sacred, institution. It is the basis of family. The sexual union is a part of the marriage, but it is not identical to the marriage.
My problem with this is, how do you define, as to how rational does one have to be to qualify as a rational being?
There's no hard and fast rule. It's something we know primarily by experience. Plants like grass and trees have a vegetative soul. They are not self-conscious or rational in any sense whatsoever. Animals like dogs and cats have a sensitive soul and appear to be self-conscious insofar as they have faculties such as imagination and recall. Humans have a rational soul and are fully self-concious. The highest of one type of soul and the lowest of another can sometimes be very close. So the venus fly trap looks as if it is an animal in some of its capacities, and some muscles behave little differently than plants, but that's just due to our tendancy to see patterns. Just so, the highest primates can appear very rational at times. In fact, some computers, can, too. But all that, again, is just a matter of drawing inferences from patterns.
In any case, by any standard, angels are rational creatures. They have intelligence and are capable of making moral decisions. In fact, Scripture says that for the time being they are even higher than we are.
Second, how is marriage and sex intertwined like this? I can understand under NL, when one has the ability to have sex, then marriage is one outcome. What I don't understand is that is does not necessarily carry forwards the conclusion you are trying to get here. Lets say we follow your reasoning, and say that angels came down, procreated, and according to NL the procreation is not evil. Ok fine, thats okay. But then God would have to see how each creature born from such procreation behaves, right? Then sin and punishment which we see via the flood would be on how these creatures behaved, not how were born...because on the flip side, if I argue that sons of seth and the worldly people got married, the result was the same, and the reason was not that seth descendants married the ungodly group but what they did afterwards, because on your own reasoning, the act of procreation between these two groups can't be called evil under NL.
1. Marriage, again, is a
sexual union. It is the foundation of society, of family, etc. Marrriage is not merely sex, but it is at least the union in which that act occurs, and that act is essentially procreative (which is why marriage and family goes together). To take sex out of marriage is to deny what marriage
is, and to have sex outside of marriage is to engage in what is essentially a
marital act. Once again, the natural end (so natural law) of sex is procreation; but procreation is to take place in a marital context. Thus, sex is to take place in a marital context. To deny then, the marital context, is to deny the act should occur.
2. No, God would not need "to see how each creature born from such procreation behaves." The behavior of the children says nothing about the goodness of the sexual act or marital union. This is one of the reasons that the arguments of the "sons-of-god-are-angels" line is just silly. They somehow assume (without warrant) that angels can marry (which the text denies), that they can procreate (which is contrary to natural law), and that they are able to do so with human beings (what?!?) and that the children are therefore non-humans, and yet still presumably able to procreate with humans, too (again, what?!?), and all this to the extent that the Flood was necessary (even though God says that sin, not genetic problems, was the cause). The "theory" is wrong and simply irrational on every conceivable level. And further, these same advocates don't bother explaining why angels don't continue to do so. After all, the text does say that the nephilim were on the earth after the flood, so apparently we have to assume that angels went and married women after the flood, too! So why aren't we still seeing this?
Anyway, all this is just off point to my basic argument. The fact remains -- human sex necessitates a marital context, such that humans the capacity and obligation to marry before sex; angels share with humans a rational nature, and it is that rational nature that points to marriage as the obligatory context for marriage; so it seems that were angels to have the natural capacity for procreation they would first have the obligatory capacity for marriage. But angels are not given in marriage (as per Christ), so modus tollens, angels do not have the natural capacity for procreation.
Once again, you can reject the argument by denying NL all together. Alternatively, you could show within NL assumptions that my argument fails, which means you would have to show that angels can legitimately (that is, without sin) procreate outside of (legitimate?) marriage. Neither of those options are vialble to me, so I am left with the obvious conclusion that angels simply cannot procreate.
Third, satan being a fallen angels was able to change sticks to snakes, as I wrote above, if angels don't have sex organs, then can they not change themselves?
So how do you see it?
It's not simply a matter of having the organs. It is a matter of capacities--basic abilities, if you will. So demons seem to have the natural capacity to change sticks into snakes. Fine. That doesn't mean that they have the power to produce life. Look at it this way: if a scientist were to "build" a "sperm"-cell from scratch, would it be able to impregnate a woman?
The answer is no. In fact, scientists have grown sperm cells that they have called "artificial," but that's still just the outworking of what stem cells can do
by nature. I cannot emphasize enough the basic proposition of natural law:
things do what they do because of what they are. that means that things are what they are becuse they have an internal unity, not an external one. I can build something that looks and behaves like a person, but if it is not a person, then it's just an artifact--a good copy, perhaps, but not really the thing it is mimicking.
So I have absolutely no reason to believe whatsoever that angels can mimick the ability to produce life such that they actually produce it. There is simply no reason to believe that they have that natural capacity.
Please understand that my argument is not intended to be a demonstration that angels
cannot procreate. What I am arguing is that all evidence suggests that they do not have that capacity and, more importantly, that there is absolutely no warrant for thinking that they do. All these arguments along the lines of, "Well, what if this were possible?" mean nothing, because just because something is possible it doesn't mean that it is warranted. It is, after all, possible that the sons of God were aliens from the plant Xevlofur. It is possible that these same aliens stole Jesus' body and impersonated Him. But do we have absolutely any reason whatsoever to suppose such fanciful interpretations?
None at all. They are unwarranted, and so to assert that they should be considered as viable options--much less to assert that they actually are right--is downright irrational. And precisely the same thing is true with this absurd "sons-of-god-are-angels-and-their-offspring-were-monsters-and-thus-the-flood" routine. It's just irrational. On every conceivable level.