Scotus Academicus, Tomus quartus: De Angelis

Note 1. The name "spirit" is among nearly all equivocal terms one of the widest in scope, and it is used in various ways both by Philosophers and by Theologians. First indeed for a most tenuous and subtle thing, whether it be an accident or a substance: thus the images of things emitted from objects to the faculties are called intentional species; thus likewise the most tenuous and purer parts of the blood, through which the power of nourishing and sensing flows into the rest, are called spirits, either animal spirits, insofar as they are poured forth from the brain through the nerves for the offices of motion and sensation, or vital spirits, when propagated by the arteries from the heart they refresh the innate heat by which the life of the living being is sustained. Second, it is taken for wind, air, exhalation, etc.; hence to breathe, to respire, etc., is the same as to draw in air, and a wind rushing with excessive violence is called a spirit of storms. Third, for the soul, whether rational or sensitive: thus Ecclesiastes 3: Who knoweth if the spirit of the sons of Adam ascend upward? and if the spirit of the beasts descend downward? Fourth, for an incorporeal substance, as opposed to a gross body compacted of flesh and bones. Thus Christ the Lord, Luke 24, proving the truth of his resurrection before the Disciples, says: Handle and see, for a spirit hath not flesh and bones: for which reason the most ancient of the Theologians thought that angels consisted of aerial bodies, or of bodies so subtle that they could neither be touched nor perceived by any of the senses; and therefore that nothing prevented them from being called Spirits together with this aerial body. Finally, fifth, the name Spirit signifies an intellectual nature consisting of no matter, concreted with no body, however tenuous.

Note 2. Both the Ancients and the more Recent writers vary greatly concerning the definition of an altogether spiritual substance. First, indeed, some of the holy Fathers think that spiritual is the same as uncreated; on which account they taught that whatever is created is corporeal, and that God alone is without body. Thus St. Hilary, Canon 5. on Matthew:

There is nothing (he says) which is not corporeal in substance and creation, whether the elements formed in Heaven or on earth, whether of visible or invisible things; for even the souls, whether of those possessing bodies or of those exiled from bodies, yet receive a corporeal substance of their nature: because everything created must necessarily exist in some place.

Origen had gone before him in that opinion, for in book 1. De Principiis, chapter 6, he writes: It is proper to the nature of God alone, that is, of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, to be understood as subsisting without material substance and without any bodily admixture. Such was also the opinion of Minucius Felix, who teaches that God alone lacks both matter and body; which was likewise the opinion of the ancient and recent Platonists, who distinguished a threefold genus of substances, namely purely corporeal, as are the elements and mixed bodies; material at once and spiritual, such as men are; and corporeal and spiritual indeed but not material, such as genii and angels, consisting, they said, in a body indeed subtle and ethereal, but not material; whose opinion was also that of St. Athanasius, or whoever is the author of the book De Communi Essentia, where he defines an angel: an immaterial discursive animal ζῷον λογικὸν ἄϋλον. Caesarius subscribes to him, who in Dial. 1. question 48 says that angels are indeed ἀΰλους but not ἀσωμάτους, that is, immaterial indeed, but not incorporeal, by which words he judges, according to the teachings of the Platonists and Peripatetics, that the corporeal approaches closer to the spiritual than the material does. — A fourth genus of substance, finally, they said was God, who is neither material nor corporeal, but utterly devoid of all matter and body.

Second, some took incorporeal to mean the same as unlimited. Thus Elias in Orat. 1. Nazianz.: God alone (he says) is free from circumscription: because he alone properly lacks body; the Angels however are circumscribed, because they are not properly incorporeal, even if in respect of us they are said to be incorporeal. To him concurs a certain Faustus, whose book is held in Tome 1 of the Bibliotheca sanctorum Patrum, in which he tries to demonstrate that angels and souls are material, because they are circumscribed by places.

Third, some have used incorporeal for immutable, as may be seen in St. Augustine, Epistle 28, where, having established that the soul is incorporeal, he adds:

Lest I make the controversy about the word superfluous, or admit it imprudently. If every substance or essence is a body, or if what is more aptly so named is whatever exists in some way in itself, then the soul is a body. Likewise, if it pleases us to call incorporeal only that nature which is supremely immutable and wholly everywhere, the soul is not a body, since it is not such a thing. Further, if nothing is a body except what is fixed or moved through the space of a place with some length, breadth, and height, such that its greater part occupies a greater place, and its lesser part a lesser, and is less in a part than in the whole, then the soul is not a body.

Finally, there are not lacking among the Recent writers those who think that spiritual properly so called is the same as penetrating bodies and suffering penetration: or the same as not depending on matter: or the same as being immutable and wholly everywhere. But they stray from the concept of spirit, or of a spiritual thing: for according to the first definition, material substantial forms and accidental forms would be spiritual, since they penetrate and pervade both matter itself and the bodies which they affect or perfect. According to the second, matter itself would have to be called spiritual, because it does not depend on matter. According to the third, indeed, God alone would be spiritual in reality.

And so the Spiritual, or incorporeal, seems better able to be defined by negation of the material and gross entity of which bodies consist; so that a spiritual substance or entity is purer, thinner, and subtler than any material created or creatable entity, whether divisible or indivisible. According to this acceptance of the word Spirit, therefore, it is asked first whether angels are altogether spiritual; second, whether their natures are simple or composite.

Note 3. From the Seraphic Doctor, in 2. dist. 3. art. 1. quest. 1., an angel does not have an altogether simple essence by privation of every composition. For it is certain, he says, that an angel is composite by a multiple composition: for it can, he says, be considered in comparison to its principle, and thus it is composite insofar as it has dependence upon it: for the absolutely most simple is independent, and everything dependent falls by this very fact into some composition, because in it there differs that by which it is and what it is. Second, it can be considered in comparison to its effect, and thus it is composed of substance and potency. Third, it can be considered with respect to being in genus, and thus metaphysically it is composed of act and potency; logically indeed of genus and difference. Finally, fourth, it can be considered according to its entity, and thus as regards actual esse in it there is the composition of being and existence: as regards essential esse it is composed of that by which it is and that which it is: as regards individual or personal esse there are found in it that which it is and what it is, that is, nature and person. Therefore, when the angelic essence is said to be simple, it does not thereby exclude all the aforementioned compositions; but only that which is made either of a corporeal and spiritual nature, or of quantitative parts, or heterogeneous parts, or finally of matter and corporeal elemental form. Whether, however, it admits any composition of diverse natures, or of matter and some purest form, as both the Alensis and St. Bonaventure seem to teach, this is to be resolved; but first let there be

First conclusion. — The angels are altogether incorporeal and purely spiritual.

Proof 1. From Sacred Scripture, with all those Oracles by which the angels are called Spirits. Thus in Psalm 103: Who makest thy Angels spirits; that is, who institute as thy ministers and messengers, executors of thy commandments, those whose nature and substance is spiritual, as St. Gregory Nazianzen explains, Orat. 34, and Damascene, book 2. De Fide, cap. 3. Which St. Paul confirms, Hebrews 1: All are ministering Spirits, sent to minister, etc. The same is read often in the Gospel of the good angels, and no less of demons. Thus Matthew 8: He cast out spirits: and Luke 10: Spirits shall be subject unto you: and chapter 11.

He assumes seven other spirits worse than himself. But the name Spirit thus used in Scripture properly signifies an incorporeal thing: which indeed is clear from the supreme and lowest Spirit, namely God and the rational soul, to whom this name is given; to God indeed absolutely and by antonomasia, as John 4: God is a Spirit; but to the soul because it is distinguished from the body. Thus 1. Corinthians 5: To deliver such a one to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, that the spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord: that is, that the soul may be saved: therefore in like manner the angels, who hold a middle place between God and man, are called Spirits precisely because they are incorporeal.

Proof 2. From the definition of the Lateran Council, chapter Firmiter already praised by us, wherein it is established:

That there is one Principle of all things, Creator of all things spiritual and corporal, who by his omnipotent power together, from the beginning of time, fashioned both creatures out of nothing, the spiritual and the corporeal; namely the angelic and the worldly, and afterwards the human, as it were common, constituted of spirit and body.

By which words the Council asserts, first, that the angels were created out of nothing: therefore they were not formed from air, as Rupertus holds; nor from any matter, as some conjecture. It affirms moreover that the angels are Spirits, just as the soul of man is called a Spirit: but it is established that the rational soul is purely spiritual and incorporeal, as sanctioned in the other Lateran Council under Leo X.: therefore the angels are altogether spiritual and incorporeal. Finally, it teaches that man is a substance between the angelic nature and corporeal creature, because man consists of spirit and body: therefore since the angels are not intermediate between a spiritual and a corporeal creature, they must be altogether incorporeal.

It can be confirmed from this, that in the Second General Council of Nicaea, act 5., from the book of John of Thessalonica, rational souls and angels are placed in the same order of intellectual, or — which is the same — spiritual substances: yet rational souls are purely spiritual and incorporeal, as we saw above sanctioned in the Lateran Council under Leo X.: therefore likewise the angels are purely spiritual and incorporeal. Also in the profession of faith of the seventh general Synod, or Nicaea II., act 4., the holy angels are called incorporeal, which would be false if they were constituted partly of body and partly of spirit: We venerate (it says) the images of the saints and of the incorporeal Angels, seeing that they appeared to men in human figure, as men.

It is proved also from the holy Fathers. First indeed from St. Ignatius, who in his epistle to the Smyrnians, writing against those who in his age denied that the flesh of Christ was true and real, among other things writes:

But I know not only that he was born and crucified in the body, but also after the resurrection I know and believe him to be in the flesh. And when he came to Peter and those who were with Peter, he said to them: handle me and see, for I am not δαιμόνιον ἀσώματον, an incorporeal demon. For a spirit hath not flesh and bones, as you see me have.

From whence St. Ignatius drew these words of Christ, the opinion of the ancient authors is diverse; for Eusebius, book 3. of Eccles. history, cap. 36, candidly confesses that it is not manifest to him. Ignatius (he says), speaking of our Saviour in his epistle to the Smyrnians, cites certain words of his, whence he received them I know not. But I (he says), know and believe that after the resurrection the Lord appeared in the flesh. And when he had come to Peter and the other companions, he said to them: take hold, touch me, and see that I am not an incorporeal spirit. Origen judges, book 1. periarchon, that these words attributed to Christ were taken from the book inscribed Periodus or Doctrina Petri.

If anyone wishes (he says) to bring forward to us from that little book which is called the doctrine of Peter, where the Saviour seems to say to the disciples that he is not an incorporeal demon, we must answer him that this book is not held among the ecclesiastical writings, and we must show that neither is that writing Peter's, nor that of anyone else inspired by the Spirit of God.

But St. Jerome, in the prologue to book 18. of the commentaries on Isaiah, and in the Catalogue of ecclesiastical writers, says those words about an unbodied demon were copied out from the Gospel of the Nazarenes, for when he had spoken of St. Ignatius he adds these words:

Going forth thence he wrote to the Smyrnians, and particularly to Polycarp, commending to him the Church of Antioch, in which also, concerning the Gospel lately translated by me, he puts a testimony in the person of Christ, saying: but I also saw him in the flesh after the resurrection, and believe that it is he. And when he came to Peter, and to those who were with Peter, he said to them: behold, handle me, and see me, for I am not an unbodied demon.

But whatever may be the case about the copying of these words, it is certain that St. Ignatius was of the opinion that demons, and consequently the other angels, are incorporeal, seeing that he forges a strong argument to confirm the Catholic truth, namely that Christ clothed himself in a true and solid human body, from the fact that he himself said: I am not an unbodied demon.

Such was the opinion of St. Dionysius, book De coelesti Hierarchia cap. 1.; he calls those Spirits simple, and Intelligences veiled by no figures: Let us be carried up (he says) to the simple Intelligences of heavenly things, veiled by no figures, and their assimilations: and c. 4. De Divinis Nominibus, speaking of the angels he says: They are understood as altogether incorporeal, and as lacking matter, and as spirits understood above the worldly manner. And c. 6. he affirms that God bestows upon the supercelestial lives, that is, the angels, an immaterial immortality similar to the divine, but upon men a commixed one. Nor does he judge otherwise concerning demons, although in that chapter 4. he attributes to them fury, concupiscence, and wanton imagination: for by these he wished to signify the depraved affection of the demons, as is clear, because in the same place he asserts that the origin of evil is not to be drawn from the body; seeing that the demons are stained with the utmost malice, and yet do not consist of body.

Many other holy Fathers subscribe to them. Of the Greeks indeed Gregory Nyssenus, Epistle to Eustathia, which is the eightieth among the Epistles of Basil, where he says: The nature of man is compounded of soul and body: but the Angelic has received an incorporeal nature. And in Oration 4. on the Lord's prayer: Every rational nature (he says) is divided into a corporeal and an incorporeal nature: moreover the Angelic creature is incorporeal, we are the other. Nazianzen subscribes, Orat. 34., where he expressly says that the angels are incorporeal, and approaching nearest to God. To these plainly agrees St. Chrysostom, Hom. 22. on c. 6. of Genesis, where he proves that the angel fell before man had been carried into Paradise, because he envied him: Otherwise (he says), how would it be consonant with reason for an incorporeal angel, placed in such dignity, to envy a man girded about with a body? But he mocks, because he was cast down from the supreme glory into the extreme ignominy, although he was incorporeal. St. Damascene assents, book 2. De Fide cap. 3., where he defines an angel as An intelligent substance devoid of matter and body: although compared with God they must be held material and corporeal.

Very many prove the same truth from the Latins. Thus St. Leo the Pope, Epistle 93., writes: The true faith, which is Catholic, confesses the good substance of all creatures, whether spiritual or corporal. Very many others subscribe, who, interpreting that word of the Apostle to the Hebrews, All are ministering Spirits, pronounce the angels to be altogether incorporeal: thus Saints Ambrose and Jerome on those words.

It can also be persuaded by theological reason: The first indeed our Alensis supplies, q. 20. member 1.: God was able to produce a creature altogether incorporeal, and it was fitting for the completion of the universe that that creature be produced: therefore it must be affirmed that it was so fashioned: but that creature altogether incorporeal is called the angel: therefore truly God formed it. The major is evident, as regards the first part; since God produced the rational soul, incorporeal and intellectual, as an incomplete substance, to be the form of the body; why then could he not also produce an integral and complete intellectual and incorporeal substance, without any relation to a body? The minor also holds; for it belongs to the completion of the Universe that all grades of things be in it: therefore just as in it there is the grade of complete and incomplete corporeal substance, so likewise there ought to be the grade not only of incomplete spiritual substance, such as the rational soul is, but also of complete, such as the angel is.

Then, where one extreme and a mean are given, it is fitting that the other extreme also be given: for just as (says William of Paris, second part de Universo) oximel is given, which is composed of honey and vinegar, it follows also that vinegar separated from honey, and honey separated from vinegar, be found in nature: but in the order of beings something altogether material is given, as bodies, and something holding a middle manner, as man, who is partly corporeal, partly spiritual: therefore the other extreme ought also to be admitted, namely a purely spiritual substance, which we call the angel. Finally, if the angels had some body, especially compacted of air, as those hold who feel them to be corporeal: but the body of an angel cannot be called aerial: partly because in it organs, nerves, and other things of that kind necessary for motion and the operation of corporeal life require the commixture of the four primary qualities, which an aerial body lacks: partly because the body of an angel ought to be more excellent than the human body: but a purely aerial body is not more perfect than a human body: nay, less perfect; for every elemental body is less perfect than a mixed body: partly finally because the angelic body ought to be most solid and altogether indissoluble, otherwise it would be subject to destruction, nor could the angels accomplish such marvelous works as reason and experience teach are done by them: but an aerial body cannot be altogether solid and indissoluble, for air easily yields and dissolves: therefore an angel cannot have an aerial body.

The aforesaid reasons can be confirmed from this, that by the command of Christ the Lord a legion of demons was driven out by one man

Sacred Scripture relates, Luke 8. Now a legion contains six thousand six hundred sixty-six: Moreover, says Richard Victorinus, book 4. De Trinit., if so many were cast out by one man, so many were in him before the casting out. If demons have bodies, where, I ask, were they in him? in the spirit, or in the body? But it is established, because every body has length, breadth, height, namely local dimensions, and by that very fact cannot subsist without local capacity, which indeed spirit altogether lacks: therefore they were not in the spirit, but in the body. But how, or in what part of the man did so many bodies dwell? But however subtle, two bodies, especially of the same quantity, cannot occupy one and the same place: therefore of what smallness, I ask, do you think the angelic body to be, if you believe that even the mere skin of a man taken off from the body could contain so many angelic bodies!

Nor does it matter that St. Augustine, Epistle 115., discussing aerial and ethereal animals and bodies, that is, angels and demons, writes: It is by no means absurd that those who accomplish in their works something with an aerial or ethereal body which they naturally penetrate, use far greater facility in moving whatever they wish, etc. For this is true, that it is not a body, since impenetrable quantity belongs naturally to any body; nor can it be separated from it except by miracle.

You will say 1. Sensible and corporeal generation presupposes a body: but Sacred Scripture attributes corporeal generation to the angels: therefore it presupposes a body to be in them. The major holds: the minor is proved from Genesis 6: The Sons of God, seeing the daughters of men that they were beautiful, took to themselves wives of all whom they had chosen, etc. In which passage, where our version has the phrase Sons of God, the Seventy Interpreters read Angels of God. Whence very many of the holy Fathers judge that the first sin of the angels was that commixture with women.

Thus teaches first of all St. Justin Martyr in the First Apology, where, having said that God committed the world, founded by himself, to the care and providence of the angels, he adds:

The angels, moreover, having followed this order, were captivated by intercourse with women, and begot sons, whom we call demons; and besides they afterwards subjected the human race to themselves, partly by magical writings, partly by the terrors and punishments which they inflicted, partly by the institution of sacrifices and burnt offerings and libations, of which they began to stand in need, after they had subjected themselves like slaves to the disturbances of their lusts; and they sowed among men murders, wars, adulteries, lusts, and every kind of wickedness.

Tatian, the disciple of S. Justin, taught in his book against the Greeks that not all demons are clothed in flesh, but are endowed with most subtle coverings, as it were of fire and air;

demons, he says, are not all endowed with flesh, but there inheres in them a spiritual concretion, such as that of fire, such as that of air: moreover the bodies of demons can be perceived only by those who are fortified with the Spirit of God, not likewise by the rest, that is, by living beings. For what is lesser cannot comprehend that which is greater.

Athenagoras, himself a contemporary of S. Justin, teaches the same thing in his Plea for the Christians, where, after saying that certain of the angels persevered faithful in their office, he adds:

Others wantonly abused the nature and substance entrusted to them, and misused their dominion; both those set over matter and the forms inherent in it, and those others who occupy themselves about that first firmament. Know indeed that we say nothing rashly and without witness: but declare what has been pronounced by the prophets. And these men, having slipped into desire for virgins, were overcome by the enticements of the flesh; while the latter, behaving negligently, and wickedly occupied in the administration of what had been committed to them, went astray. Moreover, from those who consorted with virgins were born those whom they called giants.

S. Clement of Alexandria was imbued with this same opinion, for in book 2 of the Paedagogus, chapter 2, he says that certain angels abandoned the beauty of God on account of a beauty that withers, and therefore fell from heaven to earth. He declares this more fully and more distinctly in book 5 of the Stromata, where he says: Those angels to whom the heavenly lot had fallen, having fallen down to pleasures, revealed the mysteries to women, etc.

Lactantius confirms these things admirably in book 2 of On the Origin of Error, chapter 14, where he writes:

When, therefore, the number of men had begun to increase; God, providing lest the devil — to whom he had given power over the earth from the beginning — should by his frauds either corrupt or scatter abroad the men whom he had made at the beginning of things, sent angels for the guardianship and cultivation of the human race: and because free will had been given them, he commanded above all that they should not, stained by contact with the earth, lose the dignity of their heavenly substance: namely, he forbade them to do the very thing which he knew they would do, so that they could not hope for pardon. And so while they dwelt among men, that most deceitful ruler of the earth gradually led them little by little into vices by their very association, and defiled them with unions with women.

And shortly after he adds: Thus two kinds of demons came into being, one heavenly, the other earthly. These are unclean spirits, the authors of the evils that are done: of whom the same devil is prince.

S. Ambrose seems to descend into this same opinion in several places, but especially in book 1 of De virginibus, where he writes: how illustrious a thing it is that angels fell from heaven into the world on account of their intemperance; and that a virgin passed from the world into heaven on account of her chastity. S. Cyprian also subscribes to him in the book De disciplina et habitu virginum, where, after having inveighed against the vain ornaments of women, he adds: all which things sinful and apostate angels disclosed by their arts, when, cast down into earthly contagions, they withdrew from heavenly vigor.

Above all the rest, however, Tertullian defends this opinion, who in the book De velandis Virginibus, chapter 7, weighing that saying of the Apostle in chapter 11, that women ought to be veiled in the Church because of the angels, gathers from it that Virgins ought much more to be covered:

For if, he says, it is because of the angels, namely those whom we read fell from heaven before God on account of concupiscence for women, who can presume that angels already stained in body and desiring the remnants of human lust did not rather burn with passion for Virgins, whose flower excuses even human lust?

He concludes: Therefore so dangerous a face ought to be veiled, which has hurled scandals even up to heaven. S. Ambrose seems to favor the same opinion in book 1 of De Virginibus, where he says: Chastity made the angels; for whoever preserved it is an angel; whoever lost it is the Devil.

I deny the minor. In proof of which I say that in the Hebrew text, and in the Seventy, as also in the Vulgate, it is read as the sons, not the angels, of God, as is clear in the more correct exemplars, as S. Augustine observes lib. 15. De Civit. Dei, cap. 23.: and by the name of the sons of God are most fittingly understood the sons of Seth and Enos, who being devoted above other men especially to divine worship were called sons of God on account of piety, whether paternal or their own; who, mingled with the daughters of men, that is, women sprung from Cain and his posterity, men devoted above all to earthly and corporeal pleasure, begot Giants. Or else by the name of the sons of God are understood men of lofty stature, according to the usage of Scripture, which calls things most high by the name of God in the Hebrew manner of speaking, as the cedars of God, the mountains of God. Or finally, by the name of the sons of God are understood the sons of Magnates and Princes, according to the Hebrew Elohim: which name Sacred Scripture attributes not only to God, but also to Princes and judges, in Exodus 7 and Psalm 81; whose sons, mingling with the daughters of the common people and of the lowborn, begot Giants, that is, men stouter than the rest, and more prone to lust; as the holy Chrysostom, Augustine, and Cyril of Alexandria interpret.

And Scripture favors this exposition: since it subjoins that the flood was sent by God on account of the sins of men, especially on account of that commingling of the sons of God with the daughters of men: therefore that commingling must be understood not of angels, but of men. Hence it appears how far those strayed from the truth who judged that the first sin of the angels was corporeal lust, whereby the flood was brought about: for long before, the angels had fallen; for their Prince, not long after the creation of the world, tempted and seduced our first parents. Add that Christ the Lord expressly pronounces angels incapable of generation; for he says in Luke 20, in praise of Virginity: The children of this world marry and are given in marriage; but they who shall be held worthy of that world and of the resurrection from the dead shall neither marry nor take wives: neither can they die any more: for they are equal to the angels.

To the SS. Fathers cited in the objection. I say that they embraced that opinion on occasion of the book inscribed The Revelations of Enoch, a fragment of which Scaliger produces in his notes on Eusebius, which book Tertullian in the place cited above tries to assert among the sacred books, although it was long ago regarded as apocryphal: which may certainly be observed from these words of S. Hilary on Psalm 132:

Now this is told, concerning which even some book or other exists, that the angels, coveting the daughters of men, when they descended from heaven, met together especially on this high mountain. But we pass over these things. For the things which are not contained in the book of the law we ought not even to know; and they are mentioned only for this reason, that our profession admonished us through the prophet concerning this mountain of God. Certainly today the nations venerate this mountain with profane religion, and bear witness to the interpretation of its name, which is anathema, in that very seat of impious superstition.

You will say 2. Sacred Scripture affirms that angels are perceptible to human senses, and appeared in human form to the Patriarchs and Prophets; for Abraham received three of them at his table, Jacob wrestled with an angel through the whole night, he saw also angels ascending and descending, as related in Genesis 18. 19. 28. 32.; and in the book of Tobias the angel Raphael was companion to the younger Tobias on the way, ate with him, and taught him that demons would be driven away by burning the liver of the fish, as appears in chapters 6 and 8. Finally, demons are tormented with the fire of hell, Matthew 25., are taken captive in chains, Jude 6., are dragged down by cords into Tartarus 2 Peter 2., from all which it is evident that angels are corporeal.

I answer the prior points. The angels performed all these things not in their own body, but in one assumed and formed, whether out of air, or out of some other thin and subtle material: for angels can form bodies for themselves and move them locally, and present themselves visible in them and converse with men, although in those bodies they exercise the works of corporeal life not truly, but only in appearance, according to that saying of Tobias 12: I seemed to you to eat and drink: but I use invisible food and drink, which cannot be seen by men; that is, the beatific vision, which in the Scriptures is wont to be explained by the metaphor of a banquet. But as to being tormented physically or morally by the fire of hell, they need not be corporeal: for separate souls, though purely spiritual, are tormented there. And indeed the liver of the fish burned, in Tobias 6, drove away a demon morally, because clearly the religious fumigation was joined to prayers and to the practice of chastity, and furthermore prefigured Christ, the sacred Fish, burned in the fire of love in his Passion; as Augustine expounds, sermon 4 on the SS. Peter and Paul, and Prosper, book De Promissionibus, part 2. c. 39. So also in exorcisms, fumigations applied torment demons morally, or hinder them, either because they are sacred, or because they are made in contempt of them, or because they are apt for tempering the humors, so that they can make use of them less conveniently; finally, the cords and chains with which they are said to be bound are understood tropically, as the nature of Spirits requires, for spiritual coercion and binding to a fixed place: which detention can be exercised by means of bodily things, at least morally.

You will say 3. In the Second Council of Nicaea, act 5, the opinion of John, Bishop of Thessalonica, is approved, asserting that angels are to be depicted, but not God himself.

Since indeed, he says, truly God is incorporeal and uncircumscribable: but intelligible creatures are not wholly incorporeal and invisible as God is. Therefore they are in place and are circumscribed. But if anywhere you find angels, or demons, or souls called incorporeal, for this reason they are so called, because they do not consist of the mixture of the four material elements: nor are they such thick and solid bodies as surround us. For truly, to speak the truth, although they are invisible with respect to us, nevertheless they have been seen by many, and perceived by sense in the form of their proper bodies: seen, I say, by those whose eyes God opened: and since they are circumscribed by place, it is sufficiently shown that they are not wholly incorporeal as God is.

Which opinion the Synod seems indeed to have approved, since when Tarasius, the President of the Council, had recited it, the whole Synod said: Even so, Lord.

I answer. The Council approved only the Conclusion excerpted from the aforementioned opinion, namely, that angels can be depicted, because they appeared to men at times in human form; not that one, that they are corporeal. Which indeed is plain, both because the Council approved only what it excerpted from the book of John of Thessalonica, which Tarasius proposed: but he, wisely omitting the error about the corporeity of the angels (about which there was then no question, but only about the cult of the sacred Images), proposed only that angels can be depicted, according to the opinion of John of Thessalonica, because they appeared in human form: The Father shows, he says, that angels too must be painted, since they are circumscribed, and have appeared to many in the form of men: upon hearing which the Synod immediately subjoined: Even so, Lord.

Therefore that acclamation of the Council falls only upon what Tarasius had just said, who in reciting the opinion of John seized upon one thing only, namely, that angels can be painted, because they are circumscribed, that is, defined within a certain place, and appeared in human form; but deliberately omitted the other reason adduced by John, namely, that they are corporeal, and that they appeared in their own body. Then also because the Council in the fourth act recites and approves the opinion of S. Athanasius asserting that angels are incorporeal: nay, in the same place this profession of faith is read: We venerate the Images of the saints, and of the incorporeal angels, who like men appeared to the just in human figure: and therefore nothing against our assertion is proven from this Council.

You will say 4. That opinion must be approved which the holy Fathers teach and defend by common reckoning: but almost all, both Greeks and Latins, teach that angels are corporeal: therefore they must be said to be such. Proof of the minor. First, for Methodius the martyr seems to assign to angels a body of pure air and fire: Indeed, he says, their bulk is compacted of pure air and fire, and it is of the same substance as the angels, it cannot possess the quality of earth. S. Basil subscribes in the book De Spiritu Sancto, c. 16, where, after saying the holy angels are airy or fiery spirits, he adds: They are both in place, and become visible in the form of their proper bodies, appearing to those who are worthy. S. Ephrem agrees, in the Sermon on the nature of God not to be scrutinized at all. And Caesarius approves, in the first Dialogue, question 48: Angels, he says, are indeed incorporeal according to us, but body in itself; just as wind, or fire, or smoke, or air; for they are thin and immaterial bodies, secreted from our grossness. Macarius holds the same opinion, in the fourth Homily, where concerning angels he writes:

Everything is body according to its nature; whether it be an angel, or a soul, or a demon. For although these bodies are thin, nonetheless in the character and representation of their substance, according to the subtlety of their nature, they are subtle bodies: just as this body of ours is a gross body according to its substance.

The Latin Fathers second the Greek Fathers. Above all Tertullian, in the book De Carne Christi, chapter six: It is agreed that the angels bore no flesh of their own, being, as it were, of spiritual nature, yet of some body, though of their own kind, but transformable into human flesh for a time, that they might be seen and converse with men. Similarly S. Ambrose, book 11 De Abraham, chapter 8, refuting the opinion of the Peripatetics, who asserted that heaven is a fifth substance diverse from and uncompounded with the four elements, prescribes thus universally: But we think nothing immune and exempt from material composition, except that alone venerable substance of the Trinity, which is truly pure and simple, of sincere and unmixed nature. He judges, therefore, that even the angels consist of elemental substance. Which certainly he had drawn from the Platonists, for Apuleius, in the book On the Demon of Socrates, writes: Demons are animals in genus, passive in mind, rational in intellect, aerial in body, eternal in time. And S. Gregory the Pope, homily c. 10 on the Gospels, calls the angel who appeared to the shepherds at the birth of Christ a rational animal. To be seen also in book 2. Moral. cap. 2.

S. Augustine thinks the same, teaching in several places that angels are corporeal. Thus in the second book De Trinitate, c. 1, he says: That they can change and alter their body — which they do not obey, but govern as subjected to them — into forms adapted and suited to their actions as they will, according to the power attributed to them by the Creator: and in book 3 De Genesi ad litteram he teaches that demons are aerial animals, because the nature of aerial bodies flourishes in them, and therefore are not dissolved by death, because the element prevails in them which is more apt for acting than for suffering. The same holds in Epistle 175, where, answering Nebridius asking how angels can insert good or evil thoughts into us, he says: By no means is it absurd that those who act something in bodies by means of an aerial or ethereal body, which they penetrate by natural order, should use far greater facility in moving whatever they will. Justin the martyr, in the Dialogue with Trypho; Clement of Alexandria, book 1 of the Paedagogus, c. 6, constantly affirm that angels are corporeal, and can be deluded by the same corporeal pleasures as men, and boil with the heat of concupiscence; whence it came about that they burned with mad lust for the daughters of men.

In which opinion they had several followers among the aforementioned, especially Origen, who although in book 1 De Principiis, c. 1, and 3, last chapter, says: Therefore this whole account contains this, that God created two general natures; the visible nature, that is, corporeal, and the invisible, which is incorporeal. And this most openly of all in book 4 of the same work, c. 2:

But again he declared that all things visible and invisible were created through Christ, by which it is shown that there are in creatures also certain substances invisible in their property. But these, although they are not themselves corporeal, nevertheless use bodies, although they themselves are better than corporeal substance. But that substance of the Trinity, which is the principle and cause of all things, from which are all things, and through which are all things, and in which are all things, must not be believed to be a body, or to be in a body, but wholly incorporeal.

Although, I say, in those and similar passages Origen seems to assert that angels are devoid of all matter and body; nevertheless, he says they are incorporeal only to this extent, that their bodies are subtle and ethereal, not material and coarser, as human bodies are. Which he manifestly indicates in the proem of the book De Principiis; for when he had said that the word incorporeal is not used in Scripture, someone objects to him a passage from a little book inscribed the Doctrine of Peter, in which Christ says to his disciples that he is not an incorporeal demon. To which objection he replies first that this book is apocryphal, nor is it held among the ecclesiastical books of Peter. Then he subjoins that even if its authority were admitted, that word incorporeal would not have to be understood in that sense in which ethnic authors use it, for

the body of a demon, he says, is not like this our coarser and visible body, but is naturally subtle, and thin as an aura; and on this account it is either reckoned by many, or called, incorporeal.... In the custom of men, however, everything which is not of such a sort (that is, a solid and palpable body) is named incorporeal by the simpler or less instructed; as if anyone should call this air which we enjoy incorporeal, seeing that it is not such a body as can be grasped and held, and resist pressure.

Similar things occur in book 2 on the Song of Songs. S. Methodius the martyr seconds him, who assigns to angels, on Psalm 144:

God ordered and made all things; to some he gave sense and intellect and immortality, as to angels; to some he gave sense and intellect with mortality, as to men; to some the sense of body, but neither intellect nor immortality, as to cattle; to some truly neither sense, nor intellect, nor immortality, as to herbs, trees, stones; yet even these cannot be wanting in their own kind.

He holds, therefore, that angels are endowed with sensitive life just as men and brute animals; and thereupon he thinks they have a soul and a body; although elsewhere he asserts that he has nowhere read in the Scriptures of the Law that angels have souls. Whence St. Fulgentius in the book De Trinitate concludes:

That angels are composed of a twofold substance is asserted by great and learned men, that is, from an incorporeal spirit, by which they never depart from the contemplation of God, and from a body, through which they appear from time to time to men....... They say that they have an ethereal body, that is, one of fire. But the evil angels, that is, the demons, have an aerial body.

To these the Venerable Bede consents in book 1 De elementis philosophiae, where he writes concerning angels:

Some say that their bodies are so subtle that they cannot be perceived by sense; hence, in respect of our bodies, which are dense and thick, they are called spirits, just as air, although it is a body, is nevertheless on account of its subtlety called spirit.

This Blessed Gregory confirms, who in the Moralia book 11, chapter 2, speaking of angels says: in comparison with our bodies they are spirits, but in comparison with that supreme and uncircumscribed Spirit, they must be called bodies. This again they prove by the authority of Blessed Augustine, who sets down in the Enchiridion a certain chapter on what kind of bodies angels have. Cassian has things very similar to these, conference 1, chapter 13, where he writes:

For although we may pronounce that there are certain spiritual natures, such as the Angels and the other powers, and even our own soul, or certainly this subtle air; nevertheless they are not to be judged incorporeal in any way, for they have of themselves a body by which they subsist, though more tenuous than we, for they are bodies according to the sentence of the Apostle, who says thus: and there are celestial bodies, and terrestrial bodies.

Of the same opinion also are SS. Damascene book 2 De fide orthodoxa chapter 3, and Bernard in the Canticles sermon 5, and very many others besides.

I answer 1. Indeed, in truth many of the holy Fathers thought that angels have a body, whether aerial or ethereal. But very many protest against it, as we said above on page 27. Hence the minor must be denied: since nowhere was there in this matter a common and concordant doctrine of the Church, nor do those who hold that angels are corporeal confirm it either from Scripture or from the tradition of the ancients, as Origen himself confesses in book two of De Principiis chapter 8, where, having written that it does not seem absurd, concerning the holy Angels and the other celestial powers, to say or to think that they have souls, he adds: although this is established by the authority of no Scripture.

I answer 2. When the holy Fathers and ecclesiastical writers assert that angels are corporeal, they use the word body in diverse ways, and in a looser signification, namely either insofar as it is opposed to shadow or phantasm, and it signifies an existing thing, in which sense a body is attributed to God by Tertullian, and on this account angels can truly be called corporeal: or they use body for everything that is not of the same immateriality as God, in which sense St. Augustine, vol. 3, in the book De spir. et anima chapter 18: "The soul," he says, "in respect of the incorporeal God is corporeal; nothing invisible and incorporeal is by nature to be believed except God alone, who on that account is called incorporeal and invisible, because he is infinite and uncircumscribed:" or finally, by the name of body the Fathers understand either those movements of anger, envy, and other depraved affections after the manner of perverse men by which demons are tossed about: or the punishments which those arch-enemy angels endure from bodily things, especially fire, after the manner of bodies: or finally by body they understand that disturbance of the prevaricating angels from heaven and their casting down to lower places that are truly corporeal and coarser, where they are detained after the manner of bodies and pay the penalties of the crime they committed. Hence Origen, vol. 1 on John, says that demons were condemned to a coarser body according to the measure of their crimes, and Minucius Felix says that these spirits lost the simplicity of their substance. Indeed even St. Augustine, book 3 of De Genesi ad litteram, chapter 10, says: "But if those transgressors before they transgressed bore heavenly bodies, neither is it wonderful if they were changed by punishment into an aerial quality."

I add. Very many of these seem to waver and be in doubt in defining this matter: for first Origen himself in book 6 against Celsus says that Angels lack a body: "We," he says, "think that the fiery substance does not burn, nor does the soul of man, or an angel, dissolve into fire." Similarly St. Basil in book 4 against Eunomius affirms that the nature of angels lacks a body and is endowed with reason. As regards St. Augustine, however, it is established that he determined nothing certain in this matter, as is clear from very many of his writings, but especially in the Enchiridion chapter 58, where he says that he does not know whether the Sun and Moon and all the stars belong to the Principalities and Powers as their bodies. Indeed in book 1 of the Retractationes chapter 11 and book 2 chapter 14 he retracts what he had written elsewhere, namely that angels are souls, and says they must be called not souls but spirits, whom he confesses are not clothed over with a body, since they do not have the nature of souls. Hence Theodoret places the questions about the corporeity or spirituality of Angels among useless and superfluous disquisitions. Yet finally, provided one confess that angels were created by God, he leaves everyone free thereafter to determine the rest according to his judgment. "If anyone," he says, "shall say that the choirs of angels were made before heaven and earth, he does not offend the word of piety." But to press verbose contentions, which profit nothing except the subversion of those who hear them, the divine Apostle expressly forbids. Such too was the humble hesitation of mind of Peter Lombard, the Master of the Sentences, in this matter. For in book 2, distinction 2, question 2, having expounded the opinion of SS. Augustine and Jerome about the creation of the Angels, he then subjoins: "We approve what was said before more for the understanding we have captured, saving however reverence for the secrets in which nothing is to be rashly asserted." But after the definition of the Lateran Council, whoever today should affirm that angels are corporeal would have to be held, if not for a heretic, certainly for rash and presumptuous.

You will say 5. With Cajetan and certain of the Recentiors affirming that angels are corporeal because all the grades of living things must be conceded, seeing that they are necessary to the perfection of the Universe: therefore just as there are given vegetative things without sense, and sentient things without progressive motion: so there ought to be given intelligences without sense, with only progressive motion, such as will be Angels endowed with ethereal or aerial bodies: therefore such must be conceded.

I deny the consequence. For although it may seem required for the perfection of the Universe that in it there be all possible grades of being, namely to be, to live, and to understand; nevertheless it is not necessary that all the modes in which such grades can be possessed exist in fact. Wherefore although it would not involve a contradiction for there to exist an intellectual form informing a non-sentient body, which would in no way use senses for receiving intelligible species, but only for motion and certain other effects; nevertheless it does not follow that that mode of possessing intelligence without sense is necessarily desired: both because not all the specific or generic grades of living things that can exist must exist in reality, since the perfection of the Universe is not as great as it could have been, but as great as God willed: and because the manner of understanding without sense, and with only progressive motion, does not constitute a special grade of being; but is only a special mode of possessing the grade of intellectual being.

You will say 6. Angels, especially wicked ones, have some sympathy and antipathy with certain corporeal things. Thus at the sound of David's harp the demon departed from Saul. Thus Tobias 6, verse 8 and chapter 8, verse 2 says that a demon was put to flight by the smoke of the liver of a certain fish, and his witchcraft repelled. Indeed we see that demons are kept away by various bodily remedies and amulets, and their infestations hindered. The same power of tormenting and expelling demons, as Delrio says, book 2, q. 30, sect. 3, some attribute to rue, baths, goat dung, and flogging: therefore they seem to have in themselves something of corporeal qualities contrary to the qualities of those things.

I answer. These effects do not arise from natural power and opposition between the things themselves and the demons; but from this, that God sometimes uses natural and bodily things as instruments, as it were, assumed for driving away demons: as appears from the examples brought forward. Add that the virtue of Raphael and the holiness of David conduced to restraining these spirits. I confess, however, that certain natural things by their own power conduce to restraining the Demon and impeding and mitigating his infestations; namely when the humors of the man vexed by the Demon remove noxious matters in which the Demon chiefly lodges, and which he uses to infest the man.

Second conclusion. — Angels are not composed of matter and physical form.

This follows from the preceding. And it is proved by all those texts of the holy Fathers in which they teach that angels are incorporeal and entirely simple as regards their nature; for it is established that they are composed both from subsistence and from spiritual accidents, namely intellection, volition, and the like, which kind of composition no one will deny in the angels. It is evident moreover from this, that the angelic nature is more excellent and nobler than the rational soul: but the rational soul, as we said above, is simple and immaterial: therefore much more the angels.

You will say 1. St. Augustine, book 7 of De Genesi ad litteram chapter 6, affirms that God created from the beginning a certain spiritual matter from which He drew forth the human soul, and from which the soul has that it is mutable from virtue to vice, and conversely, just as the body is mutable into infirmity; or, as he adds:

Just as the flesh in its nature either progresses so as to be beautiful, or declines so as to be deformed: it also had matter, that is, earth, from which it might be made so as to be flesh entirely; so perhaps the soul also could have, before it became that very nature which is called soul (whose beauty is virtue, whose deformity is vice), a certain matter of its own kind, spiritual, which was not yet soul: just as the earth of which flesh was made was already something, although it was not flesh.

Boethius subscribes to him in the book De Unitate et Uno, where he teaches that the same is the matter of corporeal and spiritual things: > Since, therefore (he says), matter formed in the highest things is the form of intelligence, and the rational form of the soul; then afterwards the form of the sensible soul; then the form of the vegetative soul; then the form of nature: finally, however, it is the form of the body; this does not happen from the diversity of the power of the agent, but from the aptitude of the receiving matter.<

And finally, when he treats of the various kinds of the One, among other things he says that there is a certain something, known as one through the cognition of simples, as an angel, and the soul, each of which is one by the conjunction of matter and form. Rupert consents to them in book 2 of De Victoria Verbi Dei chapter 12, where he judges that angels were created from matter.

I answer 1. That St. Augustine uttered those things not by affirming, but rather by trying out and doubting. Then, by the name of matter he does not understand prime matter, which is receptive of all physical forms; but an informity, or potentiality, as it were, proportionally common to corporeal matter and spiritual substance: for just as prime matter is of itself formless, so the Angel is first created according to natural things before he turns to the Word by whom he is illuminated; and therefore he is said to be produced in intelligible potency, proportionally to matter, which is in potency to forms. Or finally I say that perhaps he spoke in the opinion of the Platonists about ideas and intelligible forms, such as Plato constituted abstracted from bodies, and in which the Platonists wished matter to be, in which those intelligible forms would inhere; For, says Plotinus, Enneads 2, book 4,

since there are many species in those ideas, there must be something common in them: but also something proper, whereby one differs from another. This proper thing, therefore, and that discerning difference, is the proper form. But if form inheres, there is also the formed, around which the difference is. Underneath, therefore, lies the matter, which receives that form.

In which same sense Rupert, praised above, seems also to have spoken.

To Boethius I say. That he in the book De duabus naturis et una persona Christi asserts that there is no matter in things lacking a body,

Every body that subsists in generation and corruption seems to have common matter, but not everything from everything, or in everything, or can act, or be acted upon: but corporeal things can in no way be changed into incorporeal, since they participate in no common underlying matter, which may be changed into either one by the qualities received: for the substance of every incorporeal nature leans on no material foundation.

Therefore either Boethius militates against himself, or in the place cited in the objection he uses matter in the sense of the mind of the Platonists, namely for the idea, which, like matter, preexists in the divine mind for forming spirits, from which they have, first, that they are; then, that they are such, that is, living and understanding. Thus teaches St. Maximus in the fifth scholion of the book De Divinis Nominibus;

Invisible (he says) and supreme minds, were first partakers of essence, or existence, and afterwards of life and wisdom; for just as in us matter was first produced of which we are; so in minds lacking a body that is understood in place of matter which is the form of each one through life, and through which he is substantiated unto life, and wisdom, and likeness.

You will say 2. With St. Bonaventure: no mutable thing is simple: but the angel by his nature is mutable: therefore he is not simple, but composed: but what is composed and mutable consists of matter, which is the principle of mutability and composition; For (says St. Augustine 12. Confessionum) every mutable thing intimates to our knowledge a certain informity, by which the form is received, or changed, or turned: and Boethius book 3 of De Trinitate: "Nothing that is truly form can be subjected to accidents."

I concede the whole argument, but deny what was assumed. For angels are mutable according to accidental perfections; and thus they have composition, not only from essence and existence, but also from subject and accident; because intellection and volition perfect the intellect and will of the Angel, and consequently intellect and will are in potency to them. And thus Augustine and Boethius, praised by St. Bonaventure, can be explained, namely that in angels there is the ratio of potency and subject in respect to the accidental form which inheres in the angels; whence angels are not simple acts, insofar as simplicity denies all real composition, which is the divine simplicity: but only insofar as simplicity is opposed to composition from matter and physical form.

You will say 3. Nothing acts and is acted upon in the same respect and by the same respect: but the same Angel acts and is acted upon, namely he illuminates the lower angels or men, and is illuminated by the higher angels and by God: therefore he has one principle according to which he acts, and another according to which he is acted upon: but the principle according to which he acts is form, and the principle according to which he is acted upon is matter: therefore in the Angel there is composition from matter and form.

I answer. To act and to be acted upon intentionally in the Angel belong differently with respect to the same entity and faculty, either toward the effect which he produces, or toward the principle from which he receives something: as similarly it is established of the human intellect, which although it is one simple and individual faculty, nevertheless is denominated and is agent and patient, as appears from the Physics. Here therefore it must be observed that although it may seem difficult to define what St. Bonaventure willed, I judge nevertheless that he intends nothing else than that the Angel has composition from metaphysical matter and form, that is, from genus and difference; for in the first question he speaks thus: The essence of every creature is composed from diverse natures, and those two are related after the manner of actual and possible, and thus after the manner of matter and form, and therefore that position seems truer, namely that in the Angel there is composition from matter and form.

But he indicates this more clearly in question 2, when he says: Granted that the Angel has composition from matter and form, the name of matter being taken broadly for everything potential, which comes together with another unto the constitution of a thing as its foundation. Therefore he does not speak of physical matter, strictly so called; but of the generic grade, which is called matter metaphorically, and by a certain proportion which it has with matter, as was said in the Logic.