The Hierarchy of Angels

The nine choirs are usually listed in three groups of three. First seraphim, cherubim, and thrones. Then dominions, virtues, and powers. Then principalities, archangels, and angels.

The individual names are genuinely biblical. Isaiah sees the seraphim above the throne. Cherubim guard Eden and overshadow the Ark. Paul, writing to the Colossians, sweeps up "thrones or dominions or principalities or powers" in a single line, and to the Ephesians he names principalities and powers again as what Christians actually contend with. What Scripture never does is arrange these terms into a ranked system. Paul is not publishing an organisational chart; he is saying that whatever these powers are, Christ made them and Christ outranks them.

The arrangement into nine comes from a treatise called The Celestial Hierarchy, written around the sixth century by an author who signed himself Dionysius the Areopagite, the Athenian converted by Paul in Acts. He almost certainly was not, which is why scholars now call him Pseudo-Dionysius. The mistaken attribution gave the work enormous authority for a thousand years, and Aquinas engaged with it seriously. The scheme is beautiful, it is old, and it is theology rather than revelation.

So how much is binding? The Church teaches that angels exist, that they are personal beings with intelligence and will, that they are pure spirit without bodies, and that they serve God and are sent to serve us. Augustine put the useful distinction plainly: angel is the name of an office, not of a nature. What they are is spirit. Angel describes what they are sent to do.

The nine-fold hierarchy is not in that category. A Catholic is entirely free to find it illuminating and entirely free to be unconvinced by the details. What is not optional is the reality behind it: that creation is larger than what can be measured, that it is populated by beings who serve God, and that some of them are assigned to you.

For most people the practical part is the bottom of the list rather than the top. The seraphim are magnificent and remote. The angel actually mentioned in connection with your own life is the guardian, and that is the one worth praying to tonight.

In the order St. Thomas Aquinas takes from Pseudo-Dionysius, from the highest to the lowest, with the place in Scripture each name comes from:

1. Seraphim. The “burning ones”, closest to God. Isaiah sees them above the throne: “Each one had six wings. With two he covered his face. With two he covered his feet. With two he flew” (Isaiah 6:2). St. Thomas says their name is taken from the fire of love.
2. Cherubim. The fullness of knowledge. They guard the way back to Eden: “he placed cherubim at the east of the garden of Eden, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to guard the way to the tree of life” (Genesis 3:24). Ezekiel sees them with four faces each (Ezekiel 10:14).
3. Thrones. Those on whom God, in the old image, is seated: the ones who receive him most familiarly. Named by St. Paul in Colossians 1:16.
4. Dominions (or Dominations). The first of the middle choirs, who direct what the lower choirs carry out. Colossians 1:16 and Ephesians 1:21.
5. Virtues. In the tradition, the choir through which miracles are worked. From the Greek dynameis, “powers” in the sense of mighty works, which the World English Bible translates “power” in Ephesians 1:21.
6. Powers. The choir that keeps order, and in St. Gregory the Great’s account holds back hostile spirits. From the Greek exousiai, which the World English Bible translates “authority”.
7. Principalities. The leaders of the lowest sphere, traditionally set over nations and peoples. “Neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities… will be able to separate us from God’s love” (Romans 8:38-39).
8. Archangels. Messengers of the greatest things. The word is used twice in the New Testament, in 1 Thessalonians 4:16 and Jude 1:9, where St. Michael is called “the archangel”.
9. Angels. The choir nearest to us, the messengers of everyday care, among them the guardian angels: “in heaven their angels always see the face of my Father who is in heaven” (Matthew 18:10).

Why do the names sound unfamiliar in a modern Bible? Because St. Paul’s Greek words for the middle ranks are ordinary words for rule, authority, power and dominion, and a modern translation renders them that way: “far above all rule, authority, power, dominion, and every name that is named” (Ephesians 1:21). The older names, Dominations, Virtues, Powers, Principalities, come from the Latin Bible, and those are the names the tradition kept.

The nine are grouped in three hierarchies of three, sometimes called spheres or triads. St. Thomas explains the grouping by what each sphere knows and does. The highest hierarchy, he writes, “contemplates the ideas of things in God Himself; the second in the universal causes; and third in their application to particular effects” (Summa Theologiae I, q. 108, a. 6).

• The first sphere: Seraphim, Cherubim, Thrones. Named for their nearness to God. Their work is adoration, the “Holy, holy, holy” that Isaiah heard and that the Church still sings at every Mass.
• The second sphere: Dominions, Virtues, Powers. Named for government. They order the whole of creation according to God’s plan.
• The third sphere: Principalities, Archangels, Angels. Named for carrying out the work. These are the ones sent, to peoples, to great moments in salvation history, and to each person.

The picture is of an ordered household rather than a chain of command in which God is far away. Every choir exists for the praise of God, and even the lowest serves at his direct command. The Catechism puts the purpose of all of them in one line: “Angels are spiritual creatures who glorify God without ceasing and who serve his saving plans for other creatures” (CCC 350).

Almost every list of the choirs online gives one order as if it were the only one. There were two. Pseudo-Dionysius, writing around the year 500 in The Celestial Hierarchy, gives the order above. St. Gregory the Great, preaching in Rome at the end of the sixth century, gives a slightly different one: Seraphim, Cherubim, Thrones, Dominions, Principalities, Powers, Virtues, Archangels, Angels.

St. Thomas sets the two side by side and notes that they “agree as regards all except the ‘Principalities’ and ‘Virtues’”, and that each can claim support from St. Paul, because St. Paul himself lists the middle ranks in a different order in Ephesians 1:21 than in Colossians 1:16. Then he gives both a verdict. Of Dionysius’s order: “This explanation of the orders is quite a reasonable one.” Of Gregory’s: “The disposition of the orders which is mentioned by Gregory is also reasonable.” He even concludes that little or no difference exists in reality between them (Summa Theologiae I, q. 108, a. 6).

That is the tone the whole subject deserves. The greatest theologian of the Middle Ages, writing about the ranking in detail, calls two different orders reasonable. He does not call either one revealed.

The existence of angels is. The Catechism says so without qualification: “The existence of the spiritual, non-corporeal beings that Sacred Scripture usually calls ‘angels’ is a truth of faith” (CCC 328). It teaches that they are “personal and immortal creatures” with intelligence and will (CCC 330), that the Church joins them in the liturgy and asks their help (CCC 335), and that “Beside each believer stands an angel as protector and shepherd leading him to life” (CCC 336).

The ranking is not. The Church has never defined the number of the choirs or their order, and the Catechism, which sets out what Catholics believe about angels in a dozen paragraphs, does not list the nine choirs at all. The names come from Scripture; the arrangement comes from Pseudo-Dionysius, Gregory and the theologians who followed them. A Catholic may find it beautiful and helpful, as the Church’s tradition has for fifteen centuries, and may equally hold it lightly. What no Catholic may do is treat it as a map of rank and power to be used, which is where many “angel hierarchy” pages online end up.

No, though it is one of the most common things said at funerals. Angels and human beings are different kinds of creature: an angel is pure spirit, and a human being is a soul made to be united with a body, which is why Catholics believe in the resurrection of the body. A person who dies does not change species.

What Scripture promises is something close to it and better. Jesus says of the risen that “they can’t die any more, for they are like the angels and are children of God, being children of the resurrection” (Luke 20:36). St. Thomas reads this to mean that by grace the saints can be raised to a glory equal to the angels in any of the choirs, while by nature they remain human (Summa Theologiae I, q. 108, a. 8). Your grandmother is not your guardian angel. She may well be praying for you, which is what the communion of saints means, and you have a guardian angel as well.

The best-known prayer built on the nine choirs is the Chaplet of St. Michael, which gives one salutation to each choir in turn. For something shorter, this prayer asks God to let us share the praise the choirs already give him: