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Our mission is to promote the Catholic intellectual tradition in the university, the church, and the wider public square.

The lectures on this podcast are organized by university students at Temistic Institute chapters around the world.

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So I was asked to do this topic on angels and demons in St. Thomas Aquinas.

That's not my particular area of expertise, however.

As was in the introduction was mentioned, I did a PhD in

biblical studies at the Catholic University of America. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to walk

through some of the different accounts in the biblical narrative that mention angels and demons.

And after walking through these accounts, I'll try to wrap up with a few thoughts of St. Thomas Aquinas

and how he reflects on these scriptural texts and has some different philosophical principles about how to interpret them. Okay.

So one of the things that I always begin with, though, when I'm talking about the scripture

in general, especially at these Thomistic Institute events, is I like to go through a few of the

ideas, the principles behind how Catholics read

the Bible, how we approach it, what we believe about it. This is important because it does

impact, whether we're aware of it or not, what we believe about the Bible does impact what we think it says.

So one of the most important documents, one of the most important pieces of writing about the Bible for the Catholic tradition,

comes from the Second Vatican Council.

So there is a document that is referred to as a dogmatic constitution,

which is just a fancy way of saying there's a dogmatic teaching of the Catholic Church.

And it's agreed upon by all the bishops and the pope.

And this dogmatic teaching is called the Word of God.

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