A Project Genesis website

The Status of Angels

Answered by Rabbi Azriel SchreiberFurther responses from Rabbi Eliahu Levenson

Question

Why were angels created?

Answer

Apparently G-d wanted to populate both the heavens and the earth with thinking beings; and in both cases the beings weren't perfect – they had free will, and were capable of sin.

Follow-up questions (2)

Question

What is the diffrence between an angel and an archangel?

Answer

Angels can be likened to electrical charges. They are given a function and like closing an electric circuit, they do precisely what they were programmed to do. There are countless angels, but a few have a special and important designation, such as overseeing whole nations. These are sometimes called archangels. Gavriel and Michael would be names you have heard before.

Regards, Eliahu Levenson

Question

I didnt know that angels have free will. I thought that they just do what G-d tells them to do. Did succumbing to women in Genesis 6:1 count as an exercise of their free will?

Also, it was said that our actions as men impact the spiritual world as well (ie fallen angels. Does that mean that there were no fallen angels before the fall of man?

Thank you

Answer

What needs to be understood first and foremost is that nothing has any power or ability to defy G-d that G-d has not given and allowed to be used. Humans have the ability to “fall” because G-d provides us the ability as assess good and evil and choose between them. I am not satisfied that Bereishis (Genesis) 6:1-2 involves anything other than human beings, but let’s say, since we are speaking of an esoteric passage about an esoteric subject, that there really were some angels that G-d gave some limited ability to “choose” and some of these had human/angel involvements.

Even if this actually occurred, these angels would still be unable to defy G-d in any way other than what G-d allowed, and they could not exist for even an instant longer than G-d allowed them to exist. In other words, they would still be doing G-d’s bidding, for G-d created evil as a mechanism which “people” could use to raise themselves to spiritual heights unattainable any other way.

Regards, Eliahu Levenson