Scotus Academicus, Tomus quartus: De Angelis

Since the name "angel," according to its etymology, is a term of office, not of nature, it accordingly has a threefold attribution and signification: First, indeed, it befits all those who are deputed by God to fulfill some task; for, as Tertullian says in book adversus Iudaeos chapter 9., God has been accustomed to call Angels those whom he appointed as Ministers of his power; on which account Priests are called angels in Malach. 2.: The lips of the priest keep knowledge, because he is the angel of the Lord of hosts. Likewise S. John the Baptist in Matth. 11. is called by Christ the Lord the Angel of the Lord; according to that prophecy of Malachias 3.¹ Behold I send my Angel. While weighing these words

S. Chrysologus, serm. 127. 79., John, says he, is a school of virtues, a masterwork of life, a model of holiness, a rule of justice, a mirror of virginity... John greater than man, equal to the angels, summit of the law, voice of the apostles, silence of the prophets. S. Augustine had gone before in book 15. chapter 23. De Civitate Dei, where he writes: That there were even men called Angels of God, the same holy Scripture most abundantly bears witness; for of John too it is written: Behold I send my Angel etc. Hence Tertullian in the book contra Iudaeos, chapter 9., explaining the same prophecy of Malachias, says: Nor is it new for the Holy Spirit to call angels those whom God appointed as ministers of his power. *Indeed Christ the Lord himself in Isaiae 9., according to the version of the 70. Interpreters, is called the Angel of great counsel: and in Malach. 3. the Angel of the Testament: but by a term of office, not of nature, as Tertullian says in the book De Carne Christi chapter 14. For the same reason, those who are driven by the princes of demons so as to oppose men's salvation are called their angels. Thus Matth. 25.: Who is prepared with the Devil, and his Angels. Second, the stricter usage of this name designates only that intellectual, spiritual, complete substance, having no commerce with any earthly and material composition, whatever its status and order may be: on which account the word angel befits not only the blessed minds but also the most wretchedly lost demons. Third, finally, Theologists customarily use this name to signify those spiritual Intelligences which fill the third order in the last Hierarchy, and are deputed by God to the guardianship of men. But here we are speaking only of angels according to both the latter usages.

Note 2. Since there is a twofold genus of demonstration: namely one which they call a priori, by which an effect becomes known through its cause; another which they subname a posteriori, by which of course a cause appears through its effect; thence it is asked whether either one or both of these can persuade the existence of the angels. Now it is certain that it cannot be demonstrated a priori: since that demonstration gathers the existence of an effect from the existence of its productive cause, on account of the strict and necessary relation between the two: yet no cause can be assigned, nor devised, by which the angels would necessarily be said to exist: for that cause would be either intrinsic or extrinsic. But no intrinsic reason of necessarily existing can belong to them; since God alone has from himself and in himself the necessity of being, whereas the other beings from him are altogether contingent, and can be or not be. Likewise no extrinsic cause of this necessary production can be assigned; since God is the freest Maker of all beings outside himself, and can produce things at his nod and will, or leave them forever unproduced: therefore there remains only to weigh the question concerning a demonstration to be drawn from the effects of the angels, if any have been wrought by them.

Note 3. Three effects above all can be assigned from which the existence of the angels can be gathered: namely the motions of the Heavens, which Aristotle taught to be perpetually moved by Intelligences, book 1. De Caelo chapter 9.; likewise those stupendous works which are seen to be done by Magi: finally those marvelous deeds which we see done by the possessed and Energumeni, exceeding their powers. Now it is certain that the regulated motion of the Heavens is a weak argument for demonstrating the existence of the angels; both because several Philosophers contend not without reason that they are moved by their own form in regular fashion: then because there are far more Intelligences than Heavens; and therefore their existence cannot fittingly be inferred from the motion and number of the Heavens: finally because God himself can give the ordered motion to the Heavens, just as he gives the firm stability to the earth, per se. — There remains therefore to determine whether from either of the other two heads the existence of the angels can be evinced with sufficient force, so that no one possessed of reason can gainsay this truth. Therefore two things come to be determined in this Question: First, whether it is certain by faith that the angels exist: Second, whether the same can also be persuaded demonstratively by reason, or at least very probably.

First conclusion. — It is certain by faith that there exist spiritual natures superior to and more excellent than man, which we call angels.

And this is confirmed by innumerable texts of Scripture, both in the Old and in the New Testament. First, indeed, Scripture introduces them speaking with God and men about divine things and things surpassing sense, as is seen in Genesis 18., Judic. 2., Isa. 6., and almost throughout the books of Daniel, Tobias, and Apocalypse 2. and following; and therefore it indicates them to be endowed with intellect. Next, it affirms them to be subject to God, by whom they are sent into ministry; and that they praise, honor, adore him as their Lord and God. Heb. 1. vers. 14., Psal. 99. vers. 7., Daniel. 3. vers. 58., Apocal. 22. vers. 9. and elsewhere. Third, it asserts them to be superior to and more excellent than men, 2. Petr. 2. vers. 11. where of the evil angels it is said: Angels though greater in strength and power: and Psalm. 8.² You have made him a little less than the Angels, which is interpreted even of Christ himself considered according to human nature, and thus inferior to the angels, by S. Paulus Hebr. 2. vers. 9., S. August. in Tract. De Cantico novo chapter 7. Fourth, as often as Scripture extols men above others on account of some singular prerogative, so often it compares them with the angels as with more perfect beings. Thus 2. Regum chapter 14., the woman addressing David, says: You, my Lord the King, are wise, as the Angel of God has wisdom: thus Acts 6.: The Jews saw his face (Stephen's) as it were the face of an Angel: thus S. Paulus ad Galatas 4.: As an Angel of God you received me. — It is confirmed further by the fact that holy Scripture attributes various properties and actions to the angels which can fall only to a spiritual creature: one is to see God, Matthaei 18.: Their Angels always see the face of my Father who is in Heaven: another is to bless and praise God, which Scripture everywhere attributes to the angels. Thus Psalm. 148.: Praise him, all his Angels, praise him, all his Virtues. A third is to guard men. Thus Psal. 90. and Matth. 4.: God has commanded his Angels concerning you, to keep you: to which also pertains directing, defending, illuminating, teaching, instructing, and speaking to men, which holy Scripture certainly attributes to the angels many times, especially Exod. 23.: Behold I will send my Angel, who shall go before you, and keep you in the way, and bring you into the place which I have prepared: take heed to him, and hear his voice, etc. Finally, a fourth property of the angels is to be endowed with the faculty of free will, since they can sin and become worthy of punishment, as in fact befell the rebellious angels, according to that saying of 2. Petri 2.: God spared not the angels that sinned, etc.; all of which and similar things can be attributed only to an intellectual creature. Therefore that the angels exist is most certainly established out of

holy Scripture, and also by the consensus of all the holy Fathers, and the oracles of Councils, especially the Lateran Council under Innocent III., chapter Firmiter, where among other things it is said that God is the Creator of all things visible and invisible, spiritual and corporal; who created both natures, the spiritual and the corporeal, namely the angelic and the worldly.

Nor does it matter that some report that this Council indeed proposes and recounts these things by way of doctrine, but does not so determine and define them as matters of faith. That, I say, is no obstacle, both because the other things proposed in the same chapter are truly matters of faith: why then should not also the existence and spirituality of the angels be of faith? Add that although it recounts and proposes this by way of doctrine, it at least supposes this doctrine to have been approved and determined by the Church, and confirmed by innumerable oracles of Scripture and of the holy Fathers.

You will say. If the existence of the angels could be persuaded from the aforesaid texts of Scripture, especially because they signify that there is some spiritual creature superior to and more excellent than man: yet there is no such thing: which S. Augustine proves in the book De Quantitate Animae chapter 34.: Just as, he says, it must be confessed that the human soul is not God, so it must be presumed that nothing among all the things he created is nearer to God: and lower down he teaches that something is inferior to the soul of man, namely the soul of the brute, something its equal, such as an angel, but nothing better: and in book 3. De Libero Arbitrio, he says, Rational souls are unequal in office to the higher Powers, but equal in nature: and in lib. 83. qq. quaest. 54.: Nothing is better than the rational soul, except God: and he repeats the same in book 3. contra Maximinum chapter 25. where he seems to rebuke him for having said, The angels are greater than Christ according to the form of man. To him subscribes S. Bernardus in book 5. De Consideratione chapter 3.: God is Spirit (he says), and so are the angels, and they above you: but God is superior by nature, the angels by grace: therefore from the degree of a creature more excellent than men it is not rightly inferred that the angels exist.

I answer 1. The aforesaid Fathers do not impugn the existence of the angels, but assert it, as clearly appears from their cited words. Second, they can be benignly understood, either as meaning that nothing is nearer to God in the order of spiritual substance than the soul, since by this account it is equal to the angels: or that it does not befit the angels to be superior to men in the vision and fruition of God, or in other offices which they perform toward men, but only by a special benefit and grace of God, which he can certainly grant to men with similar liberality. Their meaning, therefore, is not that the angels are not more excellent than man in nature; since the royal prophet affirms that man was made a little less than the angels, Psal. 8., as was said above, and S. Peter testifies that the evil angels are greater than man in strength and power, 2. cap. 2. And Job. 41. says of Satan: There is no power upon earth that can be compared with him. As therefore he excels men in power, so also in perfection of nature. This very thing S. Augustine teaches in Tractate 110. where he gathers from the irremissible sin of the angels the excellence of their nature above men, That the guilt, he says, was judged the more damnable, the loftier the nature was: whence lib. 11. De Civit. Dei, cap. 5. he says: The angelic nature precedes all the other things which God created in dignity of nature; and therefore the former texts placed in the objection must be benignly expounded, lest S. Augustine seem to contradict himself. Add that in book 1. Retractationum chapter 26., reviewing the words of the aforementioned question 54., he seems to correct them: Where I said (he says) that what is better than every soul, that we call God; it ought rather to have been said, better than every created spirit.

You will insist. In every genus of things, that which has the character of end is far more excellent than that which does not obtain a like character: but in the genus of creatures man has the character of end, not so the angel; since all things are for men; indeed even the angels themselves, since all are ministering Spirits sent in ministry for the sake of those who receive the inheritance of salvation: therefore even according to natural things man is more excellent than the angel.

The Seraphic Doctor answers in 2. Dist. 1. q. 2. that something has the character of end in two ways: namely either to supply indigence, as a house for man; or to receive its influence; thus man is for God: but that which has the character of end in the latter way is nobler, not however that which has it in the former way; because since man needs all things, the angel none, except God; therefore all things are for man, but not for the angel, in token of which the angel was created at the beginning, man truly on the sixth day. Whence the angel can be said to be for man, and man for the angel: for, says the Seraphic Doctor in the same place, man has aptitude for falling frequently, and possibility of rising again: but the angel standing, permanence in standing, and falling, impossibility of rising again: therefore the angel standing sustains man, or human infirmity: and man rising again repairs the ruin of the angelic. Therefore in a way the angel is for man, and man in a way for the angel; and therefore they are equal according to ordination to an end; because each is ordained to eternal felicity. But they are unequal according to the dignity of nature, since the angel is wholly spiritual, while man is partly spiritual, partly corporeal.

Second conclusion. — The existence of the angels is sufficiently gathered from experience sought among Magi and Energumeni.

For many things are seen to be done daily, both by Magi and by Energumeni and the possessed, utterly exceeding their powers; and therefore to be referred back to some superior cause which moves them to accomplish such things: but this can be nothing other than an angel. Proof. if besides the angel any motive cause of their works could be assigned, it would be above all either God, or men themselves, or separated souls, or finally some irrational creatures inferior to men: but neither of these can be asserted.

Certainly not God, since by the Magi themselves many nefarious and most disgraceful things are perpetrated, prohibited by God, and most unworthy of God, to the ruin of men and to the hatred and injury of God himself. Moreover, at the invocation of the divine Numen the attempts of the Magi frequently vanish into smoke, and their witchcrafts are dissolved.

Similarly the possessed and Energumeni are sometimes healed by medicines and music, at least for some interval, as we read in 1. Regum c. 16., that whenever the evil Spirit of the Lord seized Saul, David took the harp, and struck it with his hand, and Saul was refreshed, and felt easier, for the evil spirit departed from him: which is surely a sign that the demon does not torment the possessed except by stirring up their corrupt humors, without using which he could neither vex them nor work such stupendous things in them: but if God were the maker of all these things, he would have no need of the humors of bodies; and consequently his effect could be hindered neither by medicine, nor by music, nor by any other corporeal remedy.

Add that those substances which the Magi use in accomplishing their witchcrafts are for the most part most filthy, most mendacious, and most shameless: since sometimes they accomplish their spells with toads and other such most base and horrible things, whereby they incite to the gravest crimes, to contempt and hatred of God, to blasphemies, to poisonings, and other similar things, which it would be a great crime to refer back to the most holy God.

Nor indeed can these things be referred back to men themselves: since many of their works far surpass human powers, for instance to bring forth answers about things asked from the presence of stones and statues, to represent absent things in mirrors and water, to reveal the most hidden secrets, to declare what is happening in the most remote places, to stir up storms in a moment, to leave a house with doors closed, and imprint footprints without any contact of the body: to speak foreign tongues acquired by no use and no discipline, and to perform other things of this kind; which Delrio reports most fully in the Disquisitione magica, and which can in no way be referred back to men themselves: and therefore they must be referred back to demons.

For, as Lactantius says in book 2. De Origine erroris chapter 15.

The whole art of the magicians and their power consist in the inspiration of these demons; by whom, when invoked, the sight of men is deceived with blinding illusions, so that they do not see the things that are, and think themselves to see the things that are not. These, as I say, are contaminated and lost spirits who wander over all the earth, and work the solace of their own perdition by the perdition of men. And so they fill all things with snares, frauds, and errors. For they cling to each individual man, and occupy all houses door by door; and thus they take the name of Genii. For in the Latin tongue demons are so interpreted. Men consecrate them in their innermost shrines, pour out wine to them daily, and knowingly venerate demons as though they were earthly gods, and as though they were repellers of the evils which they themselves bring about and inflict. And since they are thin and imperceptible spirits, they insinuate themselves into the bodies of men, and, secretly working in the inward parts, corrupt them, excite diseases, terrify their minds with dreams, shake their souls with frenzies, so that men, compelled by these evils, are driven to have recourse to their aid.

Nor, again, can all these works be attributed to irrational creatures: because the things we have mentioned are not done without the use of reason; for, for example, that an unlettered energumen should suddenly and fluently speak a foreign idiom, or tell of things far off and past, even the most hidden, disclosing all the circumstances, and likewise of any sciences and arts whatsoever, cannot happen without an intellectual substance, distinct from their own soul, which speaks through those men: for their soul of itself alone, or through any physical alteration of humors, nay, through the application of any non-intelligent physical cause, cannot attain such knowledge, which requires so great human study.

Add that what is wont to be done by the magicians, with certain small objects applied and words also uttered, manifestly exceeds all the power of words and of any corporeal substance whatsoever.

Moreover, the works of the magicians are done with reference to certain signs, and through pacts and covenants according to the will of those who use them: but signs move only the knowing powers, to which they signify something; pacts also and covenants look to intelligent causes. For things which lack intellect and reason know neither pacts, nor when one must act according to a pact. Add that those magical spirits choose, at the magicians' discretion, upon what they act. As when they send disease or sleep upon someone far removed and designated by the magicians, or represent his face in a mirror, leaving aside the intermediate persons, who equally, nay rather more, ought to be so affected, if this were done through natural and necessary causes without voluntary choice. For natural causes operate more upon bodies nearer and subject to themselves, and affect in the same way those things which are capable of the same effect, nor could they choose that, of many equally subject and capable things, they represent this rather than that, or afflict with disease or sleep. Therefore these stupendous works performed by the magicians and energumens cannot be referred back to the irrational creatures which they use.* *Convinced at length by these considerations and arguments, the most impious and audacious of the recent atheists, Machiavelli, admitted spiritual substances, that is, angels, as the authors of these stupendous effects. For in libro 1. disputationum, cap. 36., when he had said that great movements are wont to be predicted, both in cities and in provinces, and to be announced by certain signs or the presages of men, the same author afterwards writes thus:

As I will readily confess myself ignorant of the cause, so the thing itself, both from ancient and from new examples, must be acknowledged and confessed: that all great movements, whatever they be, which have happened to any city or to any Religion, are wont to be predicted and proclaimed either by diviners, or by some report, by prodigies, or by celestial signs.

From what source, however, those prodigies and celestial signs proceed, he could not otherwise explain, than by referring them to spirits. For when he had professed himself ignorant of the cause, he afterwards subjoins these things:

Unless perchance, with certain philosophers, we should judge it to be foretold that the air is full of spirits and intelligences, who, foreseeing future things and sympathizing with human misfortunes, announce them to men through signs of this kind, so that they may be able to prepare and fortify themselves against them in good time.

Which sufficiently shows that, since he was unwilling to have recourse to the supreme cause, he found none more fitting than the aerial spirits.*

But those stupendous and extraordinary events cannot be referred back to souls loosed from their bodies; both because the soul does not seem to have more natural power to move or change some body when it is loosed from the body than when it informs it; for the natural power of acting follows the natural condition of the agent: but the natural condition of the rational soul is that it be the form of the body, toward whose reunion, even when separated from it, it has an appetite, as a part toward its companion; and so its power does not seem greater outside the body than in the body, otherwise it would be far better for it to be separated from every body than to inform it, and so it would not desire union with it, since that union would be contrary to its nature, evidently depriving it of the outstanding power due to it; both because, although I do not judge the separated soul to be deprived of every motive power for the local motion of itself and of other things, God of course supplying what is lacking on the part of contact and of an organ, I would nevertheless not think it endowed with so great a power of understanding and moving as to be able to know the internal acts, at least of the imagination, which the magicians and energumens disclose with no external sign given; and also to move enormous weights which scarcely a hundred men could lift; and to shake huge houses and entire cities, and the very earth: as those spirits very often do when they are compelled to depart from the possessed bodies by the power of the prayers and exorcisms of the Church: and finally because those spirits, whenever they are pressed by the exorcists to betray their name, always confess themselves to be demons: who, then, will think them to be souls loosed from the body?

You will say 1. That although Aristotle teaches that besides the Intelligences moving the celestial orbs there are also others, he nevertheless does not admit demons, that is, evil angels: nay, in Sectione 3. problem. q. 1., speaking of those who are said to be stirred by the divine breath, or boil over with a lymphatic spirit, he asserts that this happens from a natural intemperament; so that those laboring under grave melancholy are able to accomplish all that we see performed by energumens.

I answer. that he wanders far from the truth, for besides that Plato in the Sympos.; Trismegistus in the Pimandro, and other princes of ancient philosophy confess that demons exist: it is certain that a man, infirm and weak, through any alteration made by melancholy or other humors, cannot speak skillfully in a foreign idiom previously unknown to him, nor report with certainty the things done afar off, nor accomplish the other things which energumens are wont to perform: and therefore it is necessary that the energumen be agitated by some Spirit which knows those things from elsewhere and can accomplish them.

You will insist. he who is called an energumen could have fallen into that temper of imagination with which the framers of foreign languages were affected when they called them into use and established them: and so, with no external spirit stirring him, he himself will be able to speak in a foreign idiom unknown to him before. Moreover, there can sometimes be such a defecation of the bilious humor and fiery vigor that, loosing the roughness and sluggishness of the organs, it leaves the mind free, and as it were released from the organs; by which it will come about that it discovers and lays open any truth inaccessible to the senses and previously unknown to it, as sometimes happens to those suffering a burning fever, who, while they suffer a wandering of the mind, sometimes utter wonderful things and express thoughts in an idiom previously unknown to them. Finally, it happens not rarely that energumens are more sharply tormented at certain periods of the Moon; which is surely an indication that they suffer only from a vitiated humor: and so from these things the argument for persuading the existence of the angels is slight, and almost none.

I deny the consequence. and to the first member of the insistence I say that any temper of the humors whatsoever has no commerce with the utterance and signification of any word whatsoever: since we form those words as we will, and receive through them the knowledge of what is signified, notwithstanding the varying temper of our humors; and so that utterance of the energumen in foreign idioms does not proceed from the affection of his humors. Add that the institutions of each idiom were many, and that at different times, now these, now those words being used to signify this or that; and consequently they had a varying temper of humors, which no man can reproduce. To the second part of the insistence, I say that the bond of the rational soul with the organs of the senses is so strict and tenacious that, unless it be either wholly loosed from the body, or God teach it divinely through ecstasy, it can perceive nothing without the benefit of the senses, as the continued experience of all men in every age testifies: for whatever physicians sometimes chant to the contrary about the feverish, everyone who is wont to visit the sick will deem a sheer fiction and an old wives' tale.

Finally, to the third part of the insistence, I reply that it ought not to seem a wonder that energumens are variously affected at the different periods of the Moon; for since the evil spirit sitting upon them torments them through a bitter affection of the humors, he more easily pours out his rage upon them when the humors either too much abound or too much fail.

Add that this is the accustomed cunning of the demons, that they lie hidden under other creatures, namely inasmuch as the bitterness of the disease is attributed not to themselves, but to some other external cause. Which S. Chrysologus elegantly indicates, Homil. 52., where, speaking of that lunatic whom Christ the Lord healed, he says:

The demon, as was his art, did not then wish to be seen, fitting the man's passions to the courses of the moon: he harassed the body at the moon's increments, so that what was of diabolical crime and fury might be believed to be of the moon. Thus he mocked men, circumvented the ignorant; he brought infamy, among the slothful, upon a creature which, created for light alone, knows not how to harm men, whom it is compelled rather to help by continual service.

Tertullian had already closed the way to this, Apologeticum 22., saying: Demons, taking certain lots of the times, emulate the Divinity, while they steal divination.

*To this is added that if the things which are set forth about the good and bad angels in S. Scriptura — about their origin and apostasy, about apparitions, temptations, infestation of bodies or possession, or the casting out of them; and how they pervade the whole world, seduce men, transform themselves into angels of light, and promote the kingdom of Antichrist in signs and prodigies of falsehood: if, I say, these and very many similar things may be allowed to be ascribed to the errors and hallucinations of the imagination, no literal sense will any longer remain in the sacred words; but it will be lawful to transform everything into a perpetual allegory, so that whoever sets himself to their reading, as if led around by illusions, will seem not to read what he reads; and will be bound to seek another sense than that which the words sound. How absurd and impious these things are, no one of sound mind fails to see; for this is nothing else than to permit the divine Scripture to the wandering of the human mind, and to instill a certain subtle atheism into the souls of men, by which it will come about that this most certain rule of faith is wholly stripped of its divine authority.*