# All Saints' / Souls' Days question

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/all-saints-souls-days-question/823782>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [October 31, 2018, 12:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/all-saints-souls-days-question/823782 "2018-10-31T12:57:03Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 4\
**Page:** 2

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**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\
**Post date:** [November 1, 2018, 8:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/all-saints-souls-days-question/823782/21 "2018-11-01T20:28:18Z")

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Angels are people. What they are not is human.

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**Author:** ![EscAlaMike](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/escalamike/32/4177_2.png) [@EscAlaMike](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/EscAlaMike)\
**Post date:** [November 1, 2018, 8:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/all-saints-souls-days-question/823782/22 "2018-11-01T20:40:59Z")

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> [@Kamino\_Neko](#):
>
> Limbo is…rather iffier a thing than Purgatory. It’s where children who die unbaptized - and thus still tainted by Original Sin, and barred from Heaven, but incapable of having committed any personal sins, and thus not deserving of punishment - are supposedly sent. But official belief is that it may be empty since God can still take them into Heaven if He wants, and since God is all about love, why wouldn’t He?

Purgatory is Catholic dogma.

Limbo is a theory that was put forward by Catholic theologians centuries ago, but it has never been elevated to dogma.

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**Author:** ![bump](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7c8e57/32.png) [@bump](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bump)\
**Post date:** [November 2, 2018, 3:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/all-saints-souls-days-question/823782/23 "2018-11-02T15:30:56Z")

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> [@Chronos](#):
>
> Angels are people. What they are not is human.

Kinda depends on how you define ‘people’, doesn’t it?

And IIRC, there’s been debate about the degree of free will that angels would have, so maybe they’re not “people” as we’d conceive of them.

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**Author:** ![senoy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/dbc845/32.png) [@senoy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/senoy)\
**Post date:** [November 2, 2018, 3:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/all-saints-souls-days-question/823782/24 "2018-11-02T15:54:59Z")

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> [@bump](#):
>
> Kinda depends on how you define ‘people’, doesn’t it?
> 
> And IIRC, there’s been debate about the degree of free will that angels would have, so maybe they’re not “people” as we’d conceive of them.

‘Person’ in theology has a specific definition. It is usually rendered something like ‘individual substance of a rational nature.’ where individual means distinct and unique, rational means possessing of intellect and substance means hypostasis or underlying ‘realness.’ (Of course, this definition is why traditionally religious people didn’t have as much of a problem with abortion and it was only with the advent of scientific knowledge of development that they did, but that’s a different discussion.)

If we assume a traditional understanding of angels (which certainly one can argue against), then they are individual, they have ‘reality’ and they have intellect, so they are ‘persons.’

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