The Divine Congress?

In light of recent events, I find it is necessary to put in my word on that subject which so enthralls the current imagination. Long have I kept my silence, but at this point I feel compelled to give some comment upon that most burning question of our times – that is, of course: “Do angels have government?”

Consider the quote:

Such an august authority as James Madison himself cannot be doubted. But does this then mean, that angels necessarily have no government? By no means!

First, consider the use of the word “necessary.” Even if government were not necessary, that does not necessarily mean that government could not still be useful or desirable. Pizza is not necessary to human survival – and yet, the world would be a worse place indeed without it. Is government, then, like pizza?

I can think of several reasons government might still be desirable even if it were not needed. First, it might be useful. Men may need government now since without it they would disintegrate into anarchy and chaos. Maybe for angels this is not the case – without government, they can still rub along tolerably well due to their angelic natures. But there might be many inefficiencies – for example, without government, to decide any universally salient issue, they might have to hold a great angelic meeting of all the angels, each one saying his piece, followed by a long period of debate and discussion until an unanimous agreement was reached. This might take considerable time. But with government, the angels could delegate the decision making to angels they trusted, or vote on it, or just flip a coin, or whatever else angels do, and thus have the rest of their time free to go about their angelic business in peace.

Alternatively, government for angels could be a source of enjoyment – they might constitute themselves into democracies, monarchies, communes, oligarchies, and so forth not out of any pressing need for or utility of the organization, but just to relieve monotony and boredom by playing various “government games”. Government for angels would be like clubs and social circles are for men – voluntary organizations people join for their own gratification.

Last, government could be desirable for aesthetic or cultural reasons. There’s no point in building a giant frescoed parliament building when you don’t have a parliament to occupy it, or designing snappy uniforms for high-ranking officials when you have no officials. Or, angels might want government because it reminds them of their roots – it is something they have always done, and brings a sense of nostalgia and comforting tradition, like a yearly festival. This apart from the idea that traditions are valuable for their very existence itself – that keeping traditions is part of keeping with the past and embodying conservative values (and somehow I always picture angels as conservative – even communist angels). But do angels even have such traditions? Where would these traditions have originated? More on that later.

But going back to our authoritative starting quote, the form of the statement does not limit government to desirability rather than necessity, even as it pertains to angels. In fact, it may be that angels do need government. Let’s see how this would work.

The first clause states, “If men were angels…’ – a hypothetical. That is, if men were angels – not if angels were angels. What? But what do people really mean, when they state a hypothetical?

For example, you might say, “If I were Barack Obama, I would have withdrawn the troops from Afghanistan.” This is a hypothetical. This is not at all the same as saying, “Barack Obama withdrew the troops from Afghanistan.”

What do you really mean by such a conditional statement, though? For a start, let’s guess you mean something like this situation: One day, Obama got called upon to sit at the side of God and watch over the Earth. To leave his place empty, though, would bring disaster. So God decided to make you his replacement, taking your earthly form and transforming it into a form exactly identical to Obama’s, with all his thoughts, memories, and beliefs, as well as physical characteristics, so that you might fulfill his duties. In this case of “if you were Obama,” it is clear that you, exactly sharing all of Obama’s thoughts, memories, and beliefs, would have done exactly what Obama did – that is, not withdraw the troops from Afghanistan. So the statement, “If I were Obama, I would have withdrawn the troops,” does not have meaning in this sense.

What else, then, might you mean by such a statement? Another guess – you might mean that you would have withdrawn the troops if you were in Obama’s situation, that is, President of the United States. If you had been elected president instead of Obama, then you would have withdrawn the troops from Afghanistan. This makes sense, sure enough. But why not then just say, “If I were President, I would have withdrawn the troops”?

I think it most likely people mean something in the middle. That is, they’re not suggesting they would be like Obama in every aspect down to the last neuron. But they’re also not imagining a scenario so different from the present reality that someone entirely different was elected in 2012 (or 2008). They mean something more along the lines of: “If I had woken up one day and found myself in Obama’s body, perhaps with his memories but also with my own memories, beliefs, and opinions to temper whatever I received from the old Obama, then I would have withdrawn the troops from Afghanistan.”

Let’s go back to our main statement. “If men were angels,” then, does not mean the situation in which men switched places overnight with the current batch of angels, receiving all the angels’ thoughts, memories and beliefs, and retaining none of their own. In that situation, men would obviously need government to exactly the same extent as the current angels – but the question is pointless, since that “change” would be no different than leaving the present completely as-is.

What, then, if we interpreted the hypothetical as in the second Obama-related situation? “If men were angels,” then would mean: “if men were in the same situation as angels.” And what situation would that be? Well, the primary situation of angels is to live in heaven, while men live on earth. So a change in situation might most easily be taken as a change in geographic location. Our hypothetical might now be interpreted to mean: “If men lived in heaven, they would need no government.” Does this seem likely?

Well, some large purpose of government is to allocate scarce resources. Thus, in heaven where no resources are scarce, this function would be unnecessary. But would government as a whole be unnecessary? There are some things that cannot be made ‘unscarce’ by the mere presence of abundance. For example, children. A man and a woman have a child, and as people are wont to do, decide they don’t like each other and they should get divorced. Who, now, gets to keep the child? Who decides who should keep it? Even if in heaven you could somehow make an exact copy of the child so that both parents could keep it – would people really accept that? And what about the child’s soul? Can such a thing even be copied? And all this is on top of scarcities of other things, like social status, reputation, or loyalty, that people as they presently are would still desire to give and receive, even in heaven as on earth – and these things would still need some means of management to prevent conflict and war. Government, then, for men living in heaven, would still be necessary. So this should not be what is meant by the hypothetical.

The hypothetical must be interpreted, then, as some intermediate transformation taking place that makes men into angels. In this process, we imagine men might retain their thoughts and memories, and perhaps much of their culture and traditions. (Thus we see how angels could have received these things from their past as lesser beings, and why they might have then desired to continue them, as in the third reason given for why government might be desirable.) Some fundamental aspect of human nature must change, though, for men to be angels and not men. But what is the fundamental difference between angels and humans? Angels, of course, are always good. So then, for men to be angels, they must always do what is right, and pursue the good. The hypothetical can now be taken to mean: “If men were transformed in their ideals and mindsets to always do what was good, no government would be necessary.”

Should this not also be true for angels, then? No government should be necessary for them, because they always do what is good?

But angels were never men – at least, not men in the sense of sharing the same culture and traditions as the men of the present. Thus, one can imagine a situation in which angels may have started as something else and then become angels, but their starting point was such that even as angels, for them government is still necessary – even if this would not be the case for present-day men after going through angelification.

What sorts of beings would our angels have to be then, to need government as angels, where men-become-angels would not?

Consider this alternate version of history. Before men, God created another race. This race, unlike men, did not fall to temptation, and were much favored in the eyes of God. Eventually, God raised them up into angels. But this race did not start as men started. They were like children, or even less, like animals, all innocent and pure, but lacking in the functions of reason. Thus, when God raised them up, giving them angelic powers and ideals, they became something more than what they were, but still lacked many qualities separating them from a state of divinity – something much like men.

As the animals they were originally, they did not need government, since as Aristotle says, animals and gods do not need government and society, only men do. But this other race was raised through angelification, suddenly social relations, long term planning and strategy, etc. became possible for them – but only with a means for organizing to do these things. This means was government. For these angels, then, government is indeed necessary.

But then, God created another race – the race of men, like unto the present angels, but without angelic powers or their perpetual drive to the good. This race fell to temptation, and lost favor. But if men had remained in grace, what then? If God raised them to become angels – would they not then become something more than men? Something closer to gods? And then, they pass back into the realm where government is unnecessary, since as Aristotle says:

Anyone who either cannot lead the common life or is so self-sufficient as not to need to, and therefore does not partake of society, is either a beast or a god.

Yet, while such people would truly not need government, they might desire to maintain such institutions for reasons other than simple necessity.

Our present angels, though, never having been men, are not at all guaranteed to have such capabilities. Angels may then want government, they may need it – and hence I think it not unlikely that they do, indeed, have it now. At the very least, we know heaven has a king.

But turn the question around: If angels were men, would they then need government? Luckily, to this question we already know the answer – a resounding “No”: