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In Daniel, there is an angel who has to fight for nearly three weeks in order to deliver his message, and isn't able to overcome until Michael intervenes. If there was a battle this hard, it makes me wonder if the Angel could have lost.

Is there anything in the tradition about whether or not Angels can be killed or die of other causes?

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2 Answers

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Luke 20:36

and they can no longer die; for they are like the angels

Suggests: no

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Very interesting indeed. I had not made that connection before! – LoveTheFaith May 6 '12 at 20:13
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See, I might not believe any of the Bible, but I'm not ignorant of it ;) – Marc Gravell♦ May 6 '12 at 20:19
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Yeah, I gotta say - that's an amazingly good catch. I would have thought to go to the demons being cast in the lake of eternal torment, but you nailed this one. Thanks! – Affable Geek May 6 '12 at 22:24
@MarcGravell Yes, for if you believed then you would know that it is not how much you knew, but how much you did with what you knew that matters in the end. – LoveTheFaith May 8 '12 at 4:56
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@LoveTheFaith one doesn't need to be religious to know that knowledge/wisdom, by itself, achieves little – Marc Gravell♦ May 8 '12 at 5:39
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up vote 4 down vote

As far as Apostolic Tradition is concerned, angels cannot die, because they are spirits.

Death = reduction of a composite being into its component parts.

Man is a composite being- body + soul. So man can die if these components are separated. Since angels are not composite beings, angels cannot die.

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To add a bit to lovethefaith's answer, I would say that there is more than one kind of death. If you're talking about physical death, then lovethefaith's answer is spot-on. However, if you talk about spiritual death as separation from God, then evil angels (aka demons) are either already dead, or will be at the Judgment. I would tend to the latter option, as demons are present in this world right now, and God is, of course, omnipresent. – Adrian Keister May 7 '12 at 11:12

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