Religion National Angels: Collective Souls?

[Navarro]

So this argument was taken up as a digression of a digression in a thread about #MeToo. I argued that the 'national angels' described in the Bible were generally demonic forces, and my opponent accused me of misrepresenting him, arguing instead that the national angels were 'collective souls' of these specific people groups which were responsible for national character. So, we open with Daniel 10:

12 Then he said to me, “Don’t be afraid, Daniel, for from the very first day you applied your mind[ad] to understand and to humble yourself before your God, your words were heard. I have come in response to your words. 13 However, the prince of the kingdom of Persia was opposing me for twenty-one days. But[ae] Michael, one of the leading princes, came to help me, because I was left there[af] with the kings of Persia. ....

... Now I am about to return to engage in battle with the prince of Persia. When I go, the prince of Greece is coming.

The 'prince of Persia', i.e. the Persian 'national angel', fights to impede Gabriel and is defeated by Michael, who is described in Revelation as driving the fallen angels out of Heaven. Clearly on Team Evil. Then Gabriel repeats that he's going to fight the Persian 'national angel' and warns about the Greek 'national angel' as an oncoming threat to Israel.

Deuteronomy 32:

When the Most High[l] gave the nations their inheritance,
when he divided up humankind,[m]
he set the boundaries of the peoples,
according to the number of the heavenly assembly.[n]
9 For the Lord’s allotment is his people,
Jacob is his special possession. ...

15 But Jeshurun[ah] became fat and kicked;
you[ai] got fat, thick, and stuffed!
Then he deserted the God who made him,
and treated the Rock who saved him with contempt.
16 They made him jealous with other gods,[aj]
they enraged him with abhorrent idols.[ak]
17 They sacrificed to demons, not God,
to gods they had not known;
to new gods who had recently come along,
gods your ancestors[al] had not known about.
18 You forgot[am] the Rock who fathered you,
and put out of mind the God who gave you birth.

This is the description of the nations being divided - note here that the angels referenced here are assigned to the nations by God, not coming into existence as "collective souls". Furthermore these 'national angels' are here described as demons, as idols and as foreign gods. Again, clearly not "collective souls" determining natural character but malevolent spiritual beings.

We then see these 'powers and principalities', the angelic 'rulers of the nations', in the NT being referred to as forces of spiritual evil:

For our struggle[a] is not against flesh and blood,[b] but against the rulers, against the powers, against the world rulers of this darkness,[c] against the spiritual forces[d] of evil in the heavens.

And as enemies of Christ whom He triumphed over and publicly put to shame by His passion and resurrection:

Disarming the rulers and authorities, he has made a public disgrace of them, triumphing over them by the cross.

In Scripture, we find the nations of the world in prophecy being given to Jesus, not to angels, in Psalm 2:

8 Ask me,
and I will give you the nations as your inheritance,[y]
the ends of the earth as your personal property.

and Hebrews 2:

For he did not put the world to come,[e] about which we are speaking,[f] under the control of angels.

Hebrews 1 also describes angels as ministering spirits and servants, not as souls personal or collective:

Are they not all ministering spirits, sent out to serve those[ah] who will inherit salvation?

There is no reference to Michael, described in Daniel as the angel who stands up for God's people, in any of God's many castigations of Israel's sins. If "national angels=collective souls" Michael, who defends Israel and the Church, would surely be responsible for said sins - which is logically impossible as he is obviously not fallen. Furthermore, if "national angels" are "collective souls" then Michael, the "national angel" of the Church, would be its "collective soul". In that case clearly he would serve as the head of it, not Christ. Which is not only blasphemous in imputing God's glory to another, but denies us our salvation for the same reason Arianism does, since no created being can bridge the gap between God and man.

Conclusion:

"National angels" are not "collective souls". The majority of their mentions in Scripture seem to be clearly to the demonic - it may be, as C. S. Lewis speculated, that national people groups are fought over by good and bad angels. But in that case clearly the "collective soul" of a people group is not to be directly identified as an angel itself.

The very notion of immortal collective souls is also found nowhere in Scripture and put in doubt by people groups that have been destroyed in the course of history and left no surviving cultural traces in present day populations dwelling in those areas; by the fact that many people groups are plainly subdivided or part of a "meta-people-group" encompassing many similar-yet-distinct identities; by the arising of new people groups in history; and by cases of innovations and rapid cultural change among people groups.