Natures of Fire is a book about the magnificence of God's holy angels. It takes aim at the numerous errors of movements such as the New Age to explain the truth about angels in light of the Church's teaching and tradition have presented them through the ages. There are also many deficient cultural notions about angels that come through bad art or poor catechesis. But Natures of Fire is not a dry list of doctrinal teachings. It presents a fresh view of angels through dynamic storytelling, vignettes of saints, down-to-earth theological reasoning, and above all, through the many examples of good Christian angel art. The book ends with the personal witness of the author who was once very directly saved from death by his guardian angel.
Undoing certain myths and misconceptions about angels is what sets Natures of Fire apart from other books with similar content. Readers learn, for example,
Nine myths about angels that we should stop believing immediately;
Why angels were not created to save us from car accidents (although they do that at times, as the author can personally attest);
Why angels don’t actually sing;
The reason why there are no female angels;
The two classes of angels that have wings (and the seven that don't);
Why we must avoid one type of angel if we value our lives; among other truths.
My favorite part of the book are the chapters on angel art. In attempting to undo myths and misconceptions about angels, it was also necessary to give some idea of correct and creative ways to present them in art that doesn't violate their nature. In the history of angel art, there is both good and bad angel art and even much beautiful angel art that leads to misconceptions about their nature. In the final chapter, I use some of the best artistic depictions of angels throughout history as case studies to confirm the insights about the angelic nature. Due to cost, the book does not contain pictures but provides a list of great angel art through the centuries which anyone can find on the internet.
Appendix 1: Fire and Ice
If God’s angels are fire, then Satan’s angels – demons – are ice, in a spiritual sense. And needless to say, fire and ice don’t mix.
I’m speaking here not of a difference in their natures, which are both angelic, but of the character of their personalities. Angels and demons are spiritual persons in every sense, endowed with intellect and will, created with a personal ego and identity, which is to say that both angels and demons have a very personal involvement in their respective missions.
They put their whole personalities into their objectives, for good or evil.
Scripture and the Church’s teaching on hell suggest that the state of damnation is a kind of torture of flames (which I hope I never have to verify by personal experience), but that’s not a description of the demonic personality. Demons are ice angels.
We understand physical cold as an absence of warmth. Spiritual cold (evil), then, is an absence of goodness, just like darkness is an absence of light. Demons as persons lack any shred of goodness or light.
In his famous work, The Inferno, the medieval poet Dante Alleghieri had an intuition of this inversion of the right order of things when he placed Lucifer at the lowest point of hell encased in ice, chewing for all eternity on Judas, the traitor, and Brutus, the betrayer of Julius Caesar. For Dante, betrayal was the greatest sin because he considered it Satan’s original sin against God.
Common sense also recognizes the difference between a person with a warm personality, full of goodness and life, versus someone with a frigid personality whose negative characteristics flow out of a life of misery or evil.
My sister tells the shocking story of a chance encounter she had with one of the 9/11 hijackers, Mohammed Ata, who came into a convenience store she was managing prior to the 2001 attack. She recalls a literal chill run down her spine the moment she laid eyes on him. She didn’t understand the ice-cold feeling at the time, but later she saw his picture identifying him as one of the hijackers, and then she understood the freezing aura the man’s very persona seemed to exude.
In an even more penetrating way (because they are spiritual beings), demons are ice-cold spiritual vacuums, totally devoid of all good. They are malevolent personalities who have deliberately chosen their own personal hell away from God and against God. In so doing, their angelic mission became more sinister than the worst possible criminality we can imagine on earth. They know they cannot destroy God, so they propose to destroy His children.
If it’s hard to get your mind around how ice angels can co-exist with the fires of hell, think of what we mean when we use the term “freezer burn”.