On Angels

"What does it mean to be created in the image of God? How do we differ from the angels. Jesus says we were created a little lower than the angels. But I often hear that human beings on reserruction will exalted above the angels. For example...Paul says that we will actually judge angels. How will we judge angels if they are invisible to our sight our whole life. And does this imply that we are somehow exalted above them or merely fellow servants. "

What it means that we are created in the image of God is that we are beings with the ability to love in the way God loves. This is most important in regards to our ability to reason and to will, both of which are necessary to love in the way God loves, who is both Reason and Love.

We differ from the angels in several important ways. First, we are corporeal, they are not. This means that we are souls, they are not. We have the commingling of a physical body with a spiritual component, while they are entirely spiritual beings. This results in them not being bound or limited by physicality. So they do not die, do not eat, do not sleep, etc. They are not limited to any particular shape, indeed one could say best that they have no shape save what they let us see them have. They are often depicted as powerful warriors or fierce beasts in the Old Testament.

The second difference, and this is more crucial, is that while angels and humans both have reason and will, they differ in key ways. Angels, because they are not physical or part of the material universe, do not exist in Time as we do. Their wills, as a result, are fixed, they have made their decision to be with God or not with God, and this decision is set from the moment of their Creation. There is no time for them to change them in. And related to this is the issue of their reason, which is perfect in a way human reason cannot be (since human reason is in part bound by our material cognitive processors, the brain). Angelic reason is thus more certain and clearly aware of everything. When they made their choices, the angels had rationally concluded to do so in a way to make even the most logical humans seem infantile. There is no going back on a conclusion reached in this way, via the epitome of logical reasoning.

It is thus that we are inferior to the angels, in terms of pure splendor, might, power, etc. We are finite, infintessimally small creatures in comparison, bound to weak, sickly bodies, and we are Fallen. The majority of the Angels never fell, and never know disease or weakness, and exist eternally in the communion of the Saints, so they are with God always.

Yet because the Angels never fell as a whole, and because those angels who did cannot ever repent, in another sense humanity has been blessed far beyond the Angels, for humans can always repent of their sins and rejections of God and return to Him, a boast not even the great and mighty Angels can make. And what is more, God Himself, in the Second Person of the Trinity, Jesus the Christ, came to Earth and lived as a Man, a human person, an honor and privilege that the Angels have never known. When His faithful are Raised and Glorified at the end of the world, we will receive glorified bodies like to Christ's own Body after the Resurrection, the perfection of what we are into what we were meant to be. This too, none of the Angels can boast, and in this way, in sharing in the majesty of Christ, particularly in the Eucharist and eventually in Heaven itself, we are above the Angels. But make no mistake, all of us, every one, is a servant of the God, the Most High. None of us is anything more.

And in the case of those Fallen Angels, the devils and demons, we will stand with Christ, as His faithful sheep, as judgment is passed against them and all who did not come to Him. Whether or not we can see them will be, at that point, moot.