The Angels
50. The Substance of the Angels
1. Creatures exist in a series of grades. They participate and represent the goodness of God in various ways. In the world about us, there are three kinds of substances: mineral, vegetal, animal. These are all bodily substances. We find also in this world the human substance which is mineral, vegetal, and animal, and yet is something more; it is not all bodily; man has a spiritual soul. To round out the order of things, there must be some purely spiritual or nonbodily substances. Thus created substances are: the completely bodily substance, the substance that is a compound of body and spirit, and the completely spiritual substance. Completely spiritual substances are called angels.
2. A bodily substance is composed of two substantial elements, primal matter and substantial form. In angels there is no compounding of matter and form. Matter does not exist in angels; they are pure substantial forms. That is to say, they are pure spirits; they are spirits with no admixture of matter in them.
3. Holy Scripture (Dan. 7:10) indicates the existence of a vast multitude of angels: "Thousands of thousands ministered to Him, and ten thousand times a hundred thousand stood before Him." Indeed, since the intention back of creation is the perfection of the universe as sharing and representing the divine goodness, it appears that the more perfect creatures should abound in largest multitude. It is, therefore, reasonable to suppose that angels exist in a multitude far exceeding the number of material things.
4. In bodily substances we distinguish their species or essential kind, and their status as individuals of that kind. For example, we distinguish in a man, (a) what makes him a human being, and (b) what make him this one human being. Now, that which constitutes a thing in its species or essential kind is called the principle of specification. And that which constitutes a thing as this one item or instance of its kind is called the principle of individuation. In all creatures, the principle of specification is the substantial form which makes the creature an existing thing of its essential kind. And the principle of individuation is matter or bodiliness inasmuch as it is marked by quantity. Since angels have in them no matter or bodiliness at all, for they are pure spirits, they are not individuated. This means that each angel is the only one of its kind. It means that each angel is a species or essential kind of substantial being. Hence each angel is essentially different from every other angel.
5. The angels are incorruptible substances. This means that they cannot die, decay, break up, or be substantially changed. For the root of corruptibility in a substance is matter, and in the angels there is no matter.
51. Angels and Bodies
1. Angels have no bodies. An intellectual nature (that is, a substantial essence equipped for understanding and willing) does not require a body. In man, because the body is substantially united with the spiritual soul, intellectual activities (understanding and willing) presuppose the body and its senses. But an intellect in itself, or as such, requires nothing bodily for its activity. The angels are pure spirits without a body, and their intellectual operations of understanding and willing depend in no way at all upon material substance.
2. That the angels sometimes assume bodies is known from Holy Scripture. Angels appeared in bodily form to Abraham and his household; the angel Raphael came in the guise of a young man to be the companion of the younger Tobias.
3. In bodies thus assumed, angels do not actually exercise the functions of true bodily life. When an angel in human form walks and talks, he exercises angelic power and uses the bodily organs as instruments. But he does not make the body live, or make it his own body.
52. Angels and Place
1. A body is naturally in a place according to its dimensions, that is, according to its measurable bodily quantity. A body is said to be in a place circumscriptively. But an angel has no bodily quantity or dimensions. Hence an angel is not in a place in the same way as a body is in a place. Still, an angel can be in a place, not as contained by the place, but rather, in a way, as containing the place. We might make a comparison (very distant and very imperfect) between angelic presence and the bodily presence of daylight in a room. The daylight is not contained by the room; we cannot suddenly close and shutter the room and imprison the daylight. It is more accurate to say that the room is in daylight than that daylight is in the room.
2. To be in a place means different things according to what is placed. God is in a place because He is everywhere. A body is in a place by its quantity or dimensions. An angel is in a place in so far as it exercises its powers there and not elsewhere. God is present ubiquitously; a body is located circumscriptively; an angel is in a place definitively. An angel cannot be in several places at once, since, as we have seen, definitive presence means presence here and not elsewhere.
3. Nor can more than one angel be in the same place at once. This is not because of the size of the place, for an angel is spiritual and has no size; size is a matter of quantity, and quantity is a property of bodies. An angel is the complete cause of the effect exercised in its place, and there cannot be more than one complete cause of the same effect. Just as it is impossible for more than one soul to be in the same human body, so it is impossible for more than one angel to be in the same place.
53. Angels and Local Movement
1. Since an angel can be in a place (by definitive presence), it can be first in this place and afterwards in that place. That is to say, an angel can move locally. But this local movement of an angel is not like the local movement of a body. An angel is in a place by exercising its powers there; it can cease to apply its powers there and begin to apply them elsewhere; and this, equivalently at least, is a kind of local movement.
2. By this sort of local movement an angel may, at will, be present successively in several places and thus may be said to pass through the space between the first and the last place of the series. Or an angel may cease to apply its powers in the first place and begin to apply them in the last, not passing through the space between.
3. Since there is succession, that is, before-and-after, in the application of an angel's powers, now here and now there, it must be said that an angel's local movement occurs in time, and is not instantaneous. This time, however, is not measurable in our minutes or seconds; these units of time are applicable only to bodily movement.
54. The Knowledge of the Angels
1. The act of an angel's understanding or intellect is not to be identified with the very substance of the angel. Only in God is operation one with the substance of the operator. An angel is a creature. Therefore, in an angel, to understand is not the same as to subsist.
2. Nor is an angel's operation of understanding the same as the angel's existence. It is in God alone that operation and existence are identified.
3. Nor is the angel's intellect the same as the angel's essence. The intellect as a faculty or power, and the exercise or operation of that power, are things which the angel has, not things which constitute the angel and make it what it is. In a creature, power, or the operation of power, is not identified with the creature's essence.
4. In the human intellect or understanding there is an active and a passive power: the active intellect (intellectus agens) works on sense-findings and renders them understandable; the passive intellect (intellectus possibilis) receives the understandable objects and expresses them within itself as ideas or concepts or expressed intelligible species. Now, an angel does not need to work out its knowledge in this way. It has its knowledge from God; its knowledge comes to it with its nature, that is, with its essence equipped for proper operation. An angel has no need to work out intellectual knowledge from sense-findings; an angel has no senses. An angel's intellect is not distinguished as an active and a passive faculty. An angel's knowledge is not acquired by effort of the knower; an angel's knowledge is imparted to it by its Creator at its creation.
5. An angel is a spirit, and hence has no sense-knowledge; it has only intellectual knowledge. But, an angel can have intellectual knowledge of the material tilings which human beings know by use of the senses.
55. THe Medium of Angelic Knowledge
1. God gives the angels their knowledge of things when he brings them into existence. This knowledge is creatural knowledge, and hence is not comprehensive, as is the knowledge of God alone.
2. An angel's ideas or intelligible species are directly imparted by the Creator; hence an angel has no need to learn. God gives to angels that extent of knowledge that he chooses to give.
3. And the extent of knowledge is not the same in all the angels. There are higher and lower angels. Each receives what is fitting and necessary for its status and the service it is to render, and therefore some angels know more than others. As we shall see later, the imparting of knowledge to angels by the Creator is comparable to light that shines through a succession of panes of glass, one under the other, so that while the light pours out at once and penetrates the whole series of panes, it may be truly said that the lower panes receive their light from the upper panes. And so the lower angels (that is, the less perfectly endowed angelic natures) are illuminated or instructed by the higher angels. Nor, as we see, does this conflict with the fact that angels have their knowledge from God as soon as they come into existence.
56. Angelic Knowledge of Nonmaterial Things
1. An angel knows itself by being itself, for God creates it knowing. In knowing itself the angel knows a nonmaterial substance.
2. The knowledge of God, existing eternally in the divine Word, is imparted, according to God's will, to the angel; and thus the angel knows itself and other things. Each angel knows every other angel.
3. An angel knows that it is God's image, and thus far it knows God naturally. God also imparts to good angels the supernatural knowledge of himself which makes them happy or blessed in the beatific vision.
57. Angelic Knowledge of Material Things
1. That an intellect (which is the spiritual faculty or power of understanding) can know material things is proved by our human experience. For we know material things by our intellect or understanding. We use our senses to know material things as singular or individual things. But we render these intelligible by the process of abstraction, and can know things in their essences, and can define them. We know material things in a nonmaterial way, by essence and definition. Now, if the human intellect can know material things, it goes without saying that the angelic intellect can know such things, for it is more perfect than ours; what the less perfect mind or intellect can do, the more perfect can surely do.
2. In human intellectual knowledge the first and fundamental elements are ideas or concepts. We form these concepts by the process called abstraction. From our sense-knowledge of individual things the intellect draws out, or abstracts, a universal awareness of these things. For example, from our sense-knowledge of a tree (which is knowledge of an individual material thing) our mind can rise to a universal grasp of what any tree is, regardless of its size, location, botanical class, and so on. We can rise to the knowledge of tree as such. Hence we say that the senses deal with the individual or singular things, but the mind or intellect deals with things in universal. And after we have grasped a material thing in universal, the mind or intellect can also know it in the singular. The intellect asks, when a sense-object is presented, what kind of thing this is; after it has grasped the kind, the essence, it adverts, by a reflex action, to the individual thing and recognizes it as one of that kind. Now, knowledge of things in universal, and knowledge of singular things, are both perfections of the human intellect. These perfections cannot, therefore, be lacking in the superior angelic intellect. Hence angels know singulars as well as essences. But, as we have already noticed, angels do not have to work out any of their knowledge by abstraction or by studious attention. They have their knowledge with their nature, whereas man has, with his nature, not knowledge, but the ability to acquire knowledge.
3. Do the angels know the future? To know the future may mean one of several things: (a) to know, with physical certitude, what will happen by the operation of existing and necessitating causes; as, for example, to know that the sun will rise tomorrow; (b) to know conjecturally from present facts and circumstances what is very likely to occur in the future; thus, for example, a physician may know that his patient will be able to go back to work next week; (c) to know, with absolute certainty, future events themselves. This third type of knowing the future exists in God alone. Both angels and men have the first two types of knowledge of the future, angels more perfectly than men. But angels do not have direct and absolute knowledge of future events.
4. The secret thoughts of a man and his inner acts of free will are known only to himself and God. A man may unconsciously give some outward sign of his thoughts and will acts, so that these may be known conjecturally even by other observant men; angels can know thoughts and will acts thus revealed. But the angelic intellect cannot penetrate directly into minds and wills. An angel cannot know our secret thoughts and will acts themselves, neither can one angel know the thoughts of another angel which depend on that other angel's free will.
5. The mysteries of divine grace, which depend entirely on God's will, cannot be known naturally by angels. By the supernatural knowledge which beatifies an angel (that is, gives it the happiness of heaven in the vision of God), angels know such of the mysteries of grace as God chooses to reveal to them. And the higher angels, by their more perfect union with God, impart knowledge of such mysteries to the lower angels.
58. The Mode or Manner of Angelic Knowing
1. An intellect is in potentiality in so far as it can know; it is in actuality in so far as it knows. An angelic intellect, in its natural knowing, has its full knowledge and there is nothing for it to learn. Yet it is not always considering everything that it knows. In regard to supernatural knowledge, the angelic intellect is always in actuality as to what it beholds in the divine Word; it may be in potentiality with reference to special divine revelations that may be made to it.
2. Angelic knowledge, arising from the vision of the divine Word (the beatific vision) is all possessed at once. In the realm of its natural knowledge, however, an angel may think of many things at once if these things are comprised under the same concept or species, but things comprised under various concepts or species cannot be all thought of at once by any creatural intellect.
3. Human intellectual knowledge is developed step by step; man advances from what he knows to what, at the start, is unknown. The process of human learning is exampled in the manner in which we prove a theorem in geometry. This way of thinking things out, step by step, is called discursive thinking or reasoning. Now, if, in the light of some master truth, we could see all that is implied in our thoughts, we should not need to work out knowledge by discursive thought. We should not, for example, need to work out the theorem in geometry, for we should instantly take in the whole demonstration and understand it thoroughly without effort. An angel actually has this type of knowledge. An angel does not require discursive thinking. In whatever area of its natural knowledge the angelic intellect is employed, it sees the whole picture; it beholds the thing thought about together with its implications and consequences, and therefore has no need to move from point to point to round out knowledge.
4. The human intellect forms ideas or concepts, and then compares these and pronounces judgment on their agreement or disagreement. Two ideas in the human mind are, when brought into comparison for judgment, in the relation of subject and predicate. When the predicate idea is found in agreement with the subject idea, the mind affirms the predicate of the subject, thus, "A stone is a substance." The mind or intellect thus composes or compounds the two ideas into an affirmative judgment. And when the predicate and subject do not agree, the mind divides them by a negative judgment, thus, "A stone is not a spiritual substance." Thus the human intellect works out its knowledge "by composing and dividing"; and from its judgments (made by composing and dividing) it works out other judgments by reasoning or discursive thinking. Now, the angelic intellect, as we have seen, has no need of this knowing process (of composing, dividing, reasoning), for its knowledge is not built up by abstraction from the piecemeal findings of senses. The angelic mind is like a clear mirror that takes in the full meaning of what it turns upon. Yet an angel understands our way of thinking and knows how we go about the business of composing, dividing, and reasoning.
5. In the natural knowledge of an angel there can be no falsehood or error. An angel knows truly all that it knows, and all that can be said of the object of its knowledge. And it goes without saying that in its supernatural knowledge an angel knows all that God wills it to know, without error or falsehood. But the fallen angels (or demons) are totally divorced from divine wisdom, and hence, in things supernatural, there can be error or falsehood in their knowing.
6. Inasmuch as angels know creatures in the Word of God, the beatific vision, they have what St. Augustine calls "morning knowledge." And inasmuch as they know creatures in the creatures' own being and nature, they have "evening knowledge."
7. It seems that St. Augustine makes a real distinction between morning and evening knowledge in the angels, for he says (Gen. ad lit. iv 24): "There is a very great difference between knowing a thing as it is in the Word of God and as it is in its own nature."
59. The Will of Angels
1. Where there is understanding of good, there is an understanding tendency to attain it. In other words, where there is intellect, there is will. There is intellect in angels; therefore there is will also.
2. In a creature, intellect and will are not identified. The angel's intellect is not the same faculty as the angel's will. These are two faculties, not one.
3. And will means free will. Will is an intellectual appetency; it is the faculty of tending to, or choosing, what is proposed by the intellect as good. Man, who is less perfect in the realm of intelligent creatures than angels, has free will; certainly, then, an angel possesses it. An angel exercises free will more perfectly than man does.
4. Man's will is subject to outside influence arising from the appetites of sense. The will is an appetency for good as such, good in its common aspects. But man's senses fix upon some particular good and tend towards it. These human sense-tendencies, when they are simple and uncomplicated tendencies, are called concupiscible appetites. And when these tendencies involve an awareness of difficulty in attaining the object (that is, the satisfying thing, the good, that they seek), they are called irascible appetites. Thus the sentient tendency or appetite called desire is a concupiscible appetite; whereas the sentient tendency of courage or daring, which tends to an object obtainable only by facing obstacle, threat, or danger, is an irascible appetite. These sentient appetites work into the intellective order in man and exercise an influence on the will and its choice. Now, since the angels have no sentient element, they are not subject to concupiscible and irascible appetites. Angels choose with a will uninfluenced by such nonspiritual tendencies.
60. Love in the Angels
1. Love is a natural inclination of a will towards its object. It is the fundamental operation of will. Where there is will, there is love. Hence there is love in the angels.
2. Love in an angel is not only a natural tendency, it is a knowing tendency of the intellectual order, and involves not only inclination but choice.
3. Every being loves itself inasmuch as it seeks its own good. Free creatures love themselves in this manner, and tend to, or desire, what will be a benefit to them. And in so far as free creatures exercise choice in striving for a beneficial object, they are said to love themselves by choice. Angels love themselves both by natural tendency and by choice.
4. Natural love of one creature for another is based upon some point of unity or sameness in lover and beloved. Since angels are all of the same spiritual nature, they naturally love one another. {-The angels are generically one; they are of the same genus or general essential class; we have already seen that they are specifically distinct, that each angel is the only one of its specific essential kind.-}
5. By natural love, angels love God more than they love themselves. All creatures belong absolutely to God; they naturally tend to God as their ultimate end or goal. Freely loving creatures must recognize God as their end or goal and tend to him before all else. Hence love of God comes naturally (in free creatures) before love of self, and is the greater love. If this were not so, natural love would be a contradiction, for it would not be perfected by attaining its true object, but would be fruitless and self-destroying.
61. The Creation of the Angels
1. Angels are creatures. They exist, not by necessity, but by having existence given to them. That is, they have existence by participation. Now, what has existence by participation receives this existence from that which has existence by its own essence. Only God exists by his own essence. Therefore, angels have their existence from God; they are created.
2. God alone exists from eternity. He creates things by producing them from nothing. Creatures exist after they were nonexistent. Hence angels do not exist from eternity.
3. It seems most likely that angels and the bodily world were created at the same time, not angels first (as a kind of independent world of spirits) and the bodily world afterwards. Angels are part of the universe, and no part is perfect if it be entirely severed from the whole, the totality, to which it belongs.
4. The angels were created in heaven. And it is fitting that creatures of the most perfect nature should be created in the most noble place.
62. Grace and Glory of the Angels
1. Although the angels were created in heaven, and with natural happiness or beatitude, they were not created in glory, that is, in the possession of the beatific vision.
2. To possess God in the beatific vision the angels require grace.
3. And, while the angels were created in the state of sanctifying grace, this was not the grace which confirms the angels in glory. Had the angels been created with the confirming grace, none of them could have fallen, and some did fall.
4. Angels were created in grace, and by using this grace in their first act of charity (which is the friendship and love of God) they merited the beatific vision and heavenly beatitude.
5. Instantly upon meriting the beatitude of heaven, the angels possessed it. The angelic nature, being purely spiritual, is not suited for steps and degrees of progress to perfection, as is the case with man.
6. The higher angels, those of more perfect nature and keener intelligence, have greater gifts of grace than other angels; for their more perfect powers turn them more mightily and effectively to God than is the case with angels of lesser capacity.
7. The heavenly beatitude enjoyed by the angels does not destroy their nature or their natural operations; hence the natural knowledge and love of angels remain in them after they are beatified.
8. Beatified angels cannot sin. Their nature finds perfect fulfillment in the vision of God; it is disposed towards God exclusively. There is in beatified angels no possible tendency away from God, and therefore no possible sin.
9. Angels who possess God in beatific vision cannot be increased or advanced in beatitude. A capacity that is perfectly filled up cannot be made more full.
63. Sin of the Fallen Angels
1. A rational creature (that is, a creature with intellect and will) can sin. If it be unable to sin, this is a gift of grace, not a condition of nature. While angels were yet unbeatified they could sin. And some of them did sin.
2. The sinning angels (or demons) are guilty of all sins in so far as they lead man to commit every kind of sin. But in the bad angels themselves there could be no tendency to fleshly sins, but only to such sins as can be committed by a purely spiritual being, and these sins are two only: pride and envy.
3. Lucifer who became Satan, leader of the fallen angels, wished to be as God. This prideful desire was not a wish to be equal to God, for Satan knew by his natural knowledge that equality of creature with creator is utterly impossible. Besides, no creature actually desires to destroy itself, even to become something greater. On this point man sometimes deceives himself by a trick of imagination; he imagines himself to be another and greater being, and yet it is himself that is somehow this other being. But an angel has no sense-faculty of imagination to abuse in this fashion. The angelic intellect, with its clear knowledge, makes such self-deception impossible. Lucifer knew that to be equal with God, he would have to be God, and he knew perfectly that this could not be. What he wanted was to be as God; he wished to be like God in a way not suited to his nature, such as to create things by his own power, or to achieve final beatitude without God's help, or to have command over others in a way proper to God alone.
4. Every nature, that is every essence as operating, tends to some good. An intellectual nature tends to good in general, good under its common aspects, good as such. The fallen angels therefore are not naturally evil.
5. The devil did not sin in the very instant of his creation. When a perfect cause makes a nature, the first operation of that nature must be in line with the perfection of its cause. Hence the devil was not created in wickedness. He, like all the angels, was created in the state of sanctifying grace.
6. But the devil, with his companions, sinned immediately after creation. He rejected the grace in which he was created, and which he was meant to use, as the good angels used it, to merit beatitude. If, however, the angels were not created in grace (as some hold) but had grace available as soon as they were created, then it may be that some interval occurred between the creation and the sin of Lucifer and his companions.
7. Lucifer, chief of the sinning angels, was probably the highest of all the angels. But there are some who think that Lucifer was highest only among the rebel angels.
8. The sin of the highest angel was a bad example which attracted the other rebel angels, and, to this extent, was the cause of their sin.
9. The faithful angels are a greater multitude than the fallen angels. For sin is contrary to the natural order. Now, what is opposed to the natural order occurs less frequently, or in fewer instances, than what accords with the natural order.
64. State of the Fallen Angels
1. The fallen angels did not lose their natural knowledge by their sin; nor did they lose their angelic intellect.
2. The fallen angels are obstinate in evil, unrepentant, inflexibly determined in their sin. This follows from their nature as pure spirits, for the choice of a pure spirit is necessarily final and unchanging.
3. Yet we must say that there is sorrow in the fallen angels, though not the sorrow of repentance. They have sorrow in the affliction of knowing that they cannot attain beatitude; that there are curbs upon their wicked will; that men, despite their efforts, may get to heaven. 4. The fallen angels are engaged in battling against man's salvation and in torturing lost souls in hell. The fallen angels that beset man on earth, carry with them their own dark and punishing atmosphere, and wherever they are they endure the pains of hell. {-For further discussion of angels, see Qq. 106-114.-}