Chapter 45: Angels

[Otto]

Young Nathe McClean, who has fallen in love for a milkmaid and seems to
think 'God must have sent me an Angel', a very popular phrase in popular
music by the way, asks RC at the end of the chapter:

"tho' we know the Duck has been transform'd by Love, what of the Angels,--
that is, may they...um..."
"Aye, they do that, Lad, and they drink and smoke, and dance and gamble
withal. That ev'ryone knew that." (451.5-8)

No, this was new to me and I dare to question if it's official Christian
doctrine, or:

"Some might even define an Angel as a Being who's powerful enough not to be
destroy'd by Desire in all its true and terrible Dimensions. Why,-- a drop
of their Porter? 'twould kill the hardiest drinker among ye,-- they smoke
Substances whose most distant Scent would asphyxiate us, (...)" (451.8-12)

"true and terrible Dimensions" reminds me of the Rilke-quote, the opening of
the First Elegy quoted in one of the earliest GR-reviews:

"Who, if I screamed, would hear me among the angelic orders?
And even if one of them suddenly pressed me against his heart,
I would fade in the strength of his stronger existence.
For Beauty is nothing but the beginning of Terror
that we're still just able to bear, and why we adore it
is because it serenely disdains to destroy us."
(R. M. Rilke, Duino Elegies)
http://www.nytimes.com/books/97/05/18/reviews/pynchon-rainbow.html

Not merely a reference too but somehow elaborated, twitched, set contrary to
sins "up there", where they are, as we learn, no sins at all:

"And who's to say that Human sin, down here, may not arise from this very
inadequacy of ours, this failure of Scale, before the sovereign commands of
Desire,--" (451.15-17)

What kind of view of "Sin" is this?

Otto