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Because they are and act as an entourage, Barth also notes that they cannot be thought of as existing singularly, as though one could be abstracted from the many, but only in plurality. Says Barth, angels are the ‘concretely operative heavenly collective of concretely operative individual heavenly beings’ (CD III/3, p. 451). It is with this in mind that Barth refutes the idea that angelic names and titles bestow any individual distinction. The names of Michael (‘Who is like God?) and Gabriel (‘Man of God’) stand, he says, for all the angels, insofar as those names witness to God's truth as a function of the angelic service generally. Similarly, we misread scripture if and when we interpret – as the early and medieval Fathers did – titles like ἀρχαί, ἐξουσίαι, δυνάμεις and θρόνοι as distinguishing a form of militaristic hierarchy amongst the angelic beings (CD III/3, pp. 456–7). Examples of this abound, not least of all in medieval apocalyptic literature. As just one example, we could cite Tundale's Vision (1149), in which the Irish monk sees ‘nine orders of blessed spirits, namely the angels, archangels, virtues, principalities, powers, dominions, thrones, cherubim and seraphim’. See Visions of Heaven and Hell before Dante, ed. E. Gardiner (New York: Italica Press, 1989), p. 191. Barth himself has in mind particularly the ideas proposed by Pseudo-Dionysius in his Celestial Hierarchy, in which angelic beings are classed by name, title, function and status in a strict hierarchical order (CD III/3, pp. 385–9). There are two problems with this approach. First, Dionysius is guilty of an almost gnostic epistemology. His hermeneutic is governed by the presumption that scripture ‘conceals its mysteries from profane eyes . . . conceal[ing] that which is holy from those who are not initiated’ (CD III/3, pp. 385–6). This Dionysian epistemology thus restricts true knowledge of scripture to a select group of enlightened interpreters, thereby privileging cultic initiation over the dynamic work of the Holy Spirit. But Barth's critique goes further. In addition to this wrong-headed hermeneutic, the type of speculation about angelic ordering exhibited by Dionysius seeks to claim knowable individuality, when in fact we can know the angels only as a collective entourage – an entourage of individual beings certainly, but not one in which the collective can be individuated noetically. Note that Heppe similarly assumes a hierarchical ordering of angels: ‘It must be assumed that there are among them certain gradations, about which Scripture has not revealed anything adequate’ (Reformed Dogmatics, p. 210). He thereby does precisely what Barth wishes to reject – making a claim about something that must be, while at the same time acknowledging that there is no scriptural basis for such a claim.
