VIDEO: Fallen Angel in London?

An angel-like creature, complete with wings as arms, allegedly fell out of the sky in Central London, causing a huge stir.

Immediately after landing, it was whisked away by security operatives, who’ve been silent on the matter since.

Tests will be conducted on the creature, no doubt.

Of course, most stories that go viral don’t do so because they are true, but because they are intriguing.

So, the odd creature could also be just a human dressed up to look like an angel, who may have flown off a building.

According to Wikipedia, Christians inherited Jewish understandings of angels, which in turn may have been partly inherited from the Egyptians. In the early stage, the Christian concept of an angel characterized the angel as a messenger of God.

Later came identification of individual angelic messengers: Gabriel, Michael, Raphael, and Uriel. Then, in the space of little more than two centuries (from the 3rd to the 5th) the image of angels took on definite characteristics both in theology and in art.

According to St Augustine, ” ‘Angel’ is the name of their office, not of their nature. If you seek the name of their nature, it is ‘spirit’; if you seek the name of their office, it is ‘angel’: from what they are, ‘spirit’, from what they do, ‘angel’.”

Basilian Father Thomas Rosica says, “Angels are very important, because they provide people with an articulation of the conviction that God is intimately involved in human life.”

By the late 4th century, the Church Fathers agreed that there were different categories of angels, with appropriate missions and activities assigned to them. There was, however, some disagreement regarding the nature of angels.

Some argued that angels had physical bodies, while some maintained that they were entirely spiritual. Some theologians had proposed that angels were not divine but on the level of immaterial beings subordinate to the Trinity. The resolution of this Trinitarian dispute included the development of doctrine about angels.

The angels are represented throughout the Christian Bible as spiritual beings intermediate between God and men: “You have made him [man] a little less than the angels …” (Psalms 8:4-5). The Bible describes the function of angels as “messengers” but does not indicate when the creation of angels occurred.

Christians believe that angels are created beings, based on (Psalms 148:2-5; Colossians 1:16): “praise ye Him, all His angels: praise ye Him, all His hosts … for He spoke and they were made. He commanded and they were created …”. The Forty Gospel Homilies by Pope Gregory I noted angels and archangels. T

he Fourth Lateran Council (1215) declared that the angels were created beings. The Council’s decree Firmiter credimus (issued against the Albigenses) declared both that angels were created and that men were created after them. The First Vatican Council (1869) repeated this declaration in Dei Filius, the “Dogmatic constitution on the Catholic faith”.

Thomas Aquinas (13th century) relates angels to Aristotle’s metaphysics in his Summa contra Gentiles, Summa Theologica, and in De substantiis separatis, a treatise on angelology. Although angels have greater knowledge than men, they are not omniscient, as Matthew 24:36 points out.