Scotus Academicus, Tomus quartus: De Angelis

Note 1. That is called incorruptible not only which in fact is not subject to corruption, but also which cannot be subject to it. Now corruption can be taken in two ways: first, more broadly, for any cessation of a thing that passes from being into non-being, in which sense corruption signifies the same as cessation or failure, and incorruptible the same as indefectible. Second, more strictly, for the destruction or dissolution of a substantial composite constituted of matter and form: just as the generation opposed to it is the production and bringing-forth of a substantial composite.

Note 2. Something can be called naturally indefectible in three ways. First, absolutely, because it is of such a nature that it can be destroyed by no power and reduced to nothing. Second, that which according to the ordinary power of God as agent, namely according to the exigency of natural causes, ought not to be destroyed; either because there is none among natural causes that can destroy that thing, or because none demands its destruction. Third, finally, that is said to be naturally incorruptible which from its intrinsic principles demands never to fail: but once it has received existence, it requires to preserve it forever.

Note 3. Regarding the resolution of the present Question there are, we hold, three opinions. First, indeed, the heretics called Libertines denied that angels and rational souls are immortal, so that just as they had a beginning so they would also have an end, since they will that immortality belongs to God alone, whose created things cannot share. Second, there are some who affirm that angels are naturally and intrinsically defectible and persevere by God's favor alone like other beings, because since they were drawn from nothing they also of themselves demand to pass back into nothing. Third, finally, others contend that they naturally require incorruption; so that they could be destroyed and annihilated only by God's extraordinary power. Three things therefore must be established here: first, that the angels will never perish; second, that by God's absolute power they can fail; third, that from their intrinsic principles they demand to subsist forever.

First conclusion. — The angels will exist forever, and will never be subject to any destruction. This is a matter of faith; and it is gathered from all those texts of Sacred Scripture by which it is established that the good will persevere eternally in glory and the wicked in punishment, as is read in Matt. 25, Luke 20, and the Apostle Jude verse 6, where it is said that the angels who did not keep their principality were reserved under darkness in eternal chains. — It is likewise confirmed by the Letter of Sophronius recited at the sixth General Synod, action 11, and approved at action 13, where we read this:

God presiding over his works and constituting for all things a temporal beginning subjected sensible things to temporal end; but intellectual and invisible things he deigned worthy of this better dignity; and they do not die at all nor are corrupted, in the way sensible things flow away and pass through, but he bestowed on them grace restraining them from that corruption and from death. Thus the souls of men remain incorrupt, thus the angels persevere immortal.

The same is gathered from the Council of Lateran under Leo X, in which at session 8, as one of the errors ever rejected by the Church, their assertion is condemned, who dared to say that the rational soul is mortal. And he adds: With the approval of the sacred Council we condemn and reprove all who assert that the intellectual soul is mortal, seeing that it is not only truly and per se and essentially the form of the human body, but also immortal. But if immortality belongs to the rational soul, which has commerce so akin with the mortal body, much more must it be granted to the angel, who has no affinity whatever with matter.

This same thing the Holy Fathers prove, who with St. Dionysius chapter 4 De Divinis Nominibus confess that the angels have everlasting life, incapable of being diminished, freed and liberated from every destruction and death; or with St. Athanasius Treatise On the Definitions, that angel and soul may be called eternal; Because, he says, although they have had a beginning, they are immortal, and will live forever: or with St. Basil on Psalm 44, saying that the angels are not mutable in their being, because in the state in which they are created, in that they remain perpetually, the substance of their own nature remaining simple and the same immutable, etc. From all these it is established that it is the common faith and doctrine of the Church that angels are incorruptible and immortal.

You will say. God alone in the Sacred Scriptures is called immortal, 1. Timoth. 6, Who alone has immortality: therefore immortality belongs neither to angels nor to rational souls.

I answer. that the words mortal and immortal can be taken threefold: First indeed for a thing mutable from one state to another, in which sense St. Augustine Epist. 28 shows that the soul of man is partly mortal and partly immortal:

The soul of man, he says, is immortal according to a certain mode of its own, for it is not altogether as God, of whom it was said that he alone has immortality; for Sacred Scripture commemorates many deaths of the soul, such as that: let the dead bury their dead, etc.

Whence secondly De Trinitate, chapter 9:

Mutability itself, he says, is not unfittingly called mortal, according to which even the soul is said to die; not because it is changed and turned into body or some other substance; but in its very substance whatever it now is or was in another way is found mortal insofar as it ceased to be what it was.

— Second, that is called immortal which has it not from itself but from elsewhere that it cannot die, by which reason angels are called by some holy Fathers partly mortal, partly immortal, because although they are incorruptible of themselves, they can nevertheless by divine power be reduced to nothing. — Third, finally, that is called immortal which can fail neither of itself nor through another: in which sense God alone is immortal.

Second conclusion. — The angels are not absolutely incorruptible with respect to the extraordinary power of God. So the Subtle Doctor in 1. distinct. 8. q. 5. num. 22., where he affirms that no being besides God is necessary; I say, he says, that nothing other than God is immutable, speaking of mutation that is a turning-about, because nothing other than God is formally necessary. Since therefore the existence of the angels is not absolutely necessary but contingent — indeed God could have not produced them — therefore they cannot be called absolutely incorruptible: for just as they were formed out of nothing, so by the extraordinary power of God they could again pass into nothing.

This same thing holy Cyril proves in book 20 of the Thesaurus, where he shows that the Son of God is more excellent than the angels, in that he exists necessarily and immutably; while they, should the Creator will it, could be reduced to nothing.

For although, he says, an angel is in a certain way immortal, because of the will and grace of the Creator so constituted concerning him: nevertheless, since he has a principle of existing, he could surely also attain an end; for natural prerogatives are valid indeed for those possessing them, but not against God their maker. Just as fire has the force of burning, but not

against God: and an angel is indeed immortal, but not against God.

By which words Cyril intends two things: First, that just as fire is so naturally combustive that its force can be suspended by no created agent, but only by God, so the angel is so immortal that he can be hindered from being perpetual by none other than God alone. Second, that although the angel is incorruptible by his nature, he can nevertheless be destroyed if God wills it, namely if God were to cease conserving him; For (as St. Augustine says in Letter 56.) things have failing or being able to fail for no other reason except that they were made out of nothing: so that what they are and that they remain... belong to his goodness and omnipotence, who supremely is, and is the maker.

The same is taught by very many of the holy Fathers, who teach that the angels are immortal not by nature but by the grace of God alone, because just as they can have a beginning by divine power, so also destruction; since they will that immortality belongs to God alone, whose created things become participants for as long as it has pleased God. Which St. Ambrose teaches excellently in book 3 De fide, chapter 2. Nor, he says, is an angel immortal naturally, whose immortality lies in the will of the Creator. St. Damascene subscribes, book 2. chapter 3. An angel, he says, is immortal not by nature but by grace; for whatever had a beginning can by its own nature also cease. St. Hilary also favors this on Psalm 148, where explaining those words: He set a commandment, and it shall not pass, he says:

That they should remain forever in that which they are (the angels and rational souls) is not to be understood as belonging to their nature, but to the commandment of him who is able to bring to things substituted out of nothing the nature of eternity: for, he says, the commandment shall not pass, that is, there shall be no end to his mandate: in eternity they remain, to whom the power of eternity has granted eternity.

This truth did not escape even the Platonic philosophers; for Plato himself in the Timaeus introduces the highest God addressing the lesser gods, namely the angels, thus:

Attend to these things, you who are sprung from the seed of the gods, whose works I am parent and maker; the things made by me have not been dissolved without my consent. Although every bond can be loosed. Yet it is in no way the part of the good, overcome by reason, to wish to dissolve them. But since you have come to be, you cannot be immortal and indissoluble. Nevertheless you shall by no means be dissolved, nor shall any deed of death destroy you, nor any craft stronger than my counsel; which is a greater bond unto your perpetuity than those by which you were bound when you were begotten.

Third conclusion. — The angels are incorruptible and immortal from their intrinsic principles. This Conclusion follows from the preceding ones.

It is further proved. that that is incorruptible from within which does not intrinsically consist of matter, which is the principle of corruption: but, as was said in the previous question, angels are altogether immaterial: therefore also incorruptible. — Second, everything that has nothing in itself by reason of which it demands to be destroyed, and can receive nothing that overturns its existence, is incorruptible from within: but the angels have nothing in themselves by reason of which they demand to be destroyed, because they do not consist of contraries or of a subject admitting qualities contrary to their substance's corruptive [principles], since they are utterly incorporeal; nor can they receive anything that destroys their existence, because they cannot receive any quality disposing to a substantial form incompatible with the angelic form in the same subject; for thus they ought to consist of matter, which is therefore said to be the principle of corruption insofar as, having propensity toward all forms, it can admit contrary qualities which destroy the present form and prepare for the introduction of another: therefore the angels are incorruptible from within. — A third argument holy Maximus the martyr supplies in the little work De immortalitate animae, where he proves the soul is immortal from the fact that it is simple. Which he proves thus:

Nothing whatsoever, he says, can entirely corrupt itself, otherwise it would not have been constituted at all: for things are corrupted from contraries; therefore everything that is corrupted is dissoluble; but that which is dissoluble has several parts; and that which is composed of parts consists certainly of diverse parts: now that which is diverse is not the same. Wherefore the soul, since it is simple, and not consisting of differing parts, is neither composite nor dissoluble, and therefore will be free from corruption and immortal.

All these things can be said far more of the angels, since they consist of a more excellent nature.

You will say 1. The Holy Fathers praised above in Concl. 2 affirm that the angels are immortal not by nature but by grace: therefore they judge them not to be naturally and intrinsically incorruptible.

I answer. that the particle ex natura can be taken in two ways: First, as signifying the same as from the force of its essence, and of itself and independently of the influx of anyone else; in which sense the angels cannot be called immortal by their nature, for this would be to say that they are altogether independent, which is heretical. Therefore against this sense the Holy Fathers oppose that they are immortal by grace, that is, by the benefit of creation and conservation, which because it is granted freely by God is also called grace by the Fathers of the Council of Africa, cited in St. Augustine Letter 95. Not undeservedly is it called the grace of God by which we were created, that we might not be nothing... because it was given not by the merits of any preceding works, but by the free goodness of God. Nor does it matter that the conservative concourse seems naturally owed to the angel, if he is immortal by nature; for from that it does not follow that he cannot be called by grace, since it is something following upon creation, which was granted gratuitously and without any preceding merits; for things that follow upon a free gift are sometimes also named by grace: thus although eternal glory is owed as the reward of good works, the Apostle nevertheless calls it grace in Rom. chapter 6. — Second, by the word ex natura, as signifying the natural inclination and exigency toward always subsisting and never failing; in which sense the Holy Fathers do not deny that the angels are indefectible by their nature: seeing that since they are incorporeal and include in themselves no principle of corruption and failure, they naturally demand to subsist perpetually, so that destruction and failure would be for them altogether against nature, just as for fire the stripping of its native heat would be violent, and for secondary causes the privation of the divine concourse naturally owed to them for operating.

You will insist. Therefore the holy Fathers affirm the angels to be corruptible by nature because they were created out of nothing and tend toward nothing by their nature: but that which thus verges toward nothing cannot be said to be incorruptible according to natural inclination, nor can destruction be for it contranatural and violent, nay rather it is conformable to its native propensity: therefore, etc.

I distinguish the minor. that which tends toward nothing from some intrinsic principle liable to corruption and failure, and can either be destroyed by corruptive causes or cease through the negation of further concourse of God as agent according to the exigency of secondary causes, cannot be said intrinsically incorruptible — I concede: that that which can be destroyed only by the extraordinary power of God exercising his supreme dominion over creatures even against their natural order and exigency cannot be said incorruptible — I deny. Therefore I confess that the angels are by their nature in obediential potency such that they can be destroyed by God: but I deny that this destruction would be conformable to their intrinsic principles and connatural to them; and therefore they must truly always be said incorruptible by their nature.

You will press 1. What is natural to a thing carries with it in it repugnance to the opposite: but the angel has no repugnance such that he could fail and perish by the extraordinary power of God: therefore immortality and indefectibility is not connatural to him. The major stands, because since the heating power is connatural to fire, therefore fire has repugnance to not heating: ergo in like manner, if immortality were connatural to the angel, it would carry in him repugnance such that he could die and fail even by the extraordinary power of God; for what is repugnant cannot be done even divinely.

I distinguish the major. that it carries repugnance to the opposite when it happens to a thing through agents acting according to the order and exigency of nature — I concede: that it happens by a preternatural way — I deny; therefore immortality, which is connatural to the angel, carries in him repugnance such that he could fail either of himself or through extrinsic causes naturally corruptive of him: yet not therefore does it declare repugnance such that he could be destroyed and annihilated by God acting beyond nature. For just as fire, although it has innate heating power, can nevertheless not heat, namely if God does not concur with it for producing heat; so similarly the angel could fail, if God should determine not to conserve him of himself, although he has from elsewhere the innate power toward incorruption.

You will subjoin. The angels have no repugnance to being annihilated by God: but this non-repugnance is a true natural potency, at least passive, toward non-being: therefore they can fail by their nature; and therefore are not naturally indefectible.

I deny the minor. for this non-repugnance carries only the obediential potency, by which every creature is subjected to God, so that he may make in it or of it whatever does not involve contradiction. Whence it follows that God, annihilating an angel, would do no violence to him, because although then he would act against the particular inclination that the angel has toward enduring forever; yet he would not act against the universal inclination, which as part of the Universe he has toward obeying the Creator: just as heavy bodies are not said to suffer violence while they move upward, lest they impede a vacuum: because although they act against their particular inclination, they nevertheless serve the good of the Universe, toward which they are more inclined than toward their own particular convenience.

Finally you will press. Non-repugnance, or logical potency, in the angel, to be produced, suffices that he can naturally be created by God: therefore the same non-repugnance to destruction will suffice that he can naturally be annihilated.

I deny the consequence. and the reason of the disparity is, that before his production the angel did not demand by his nature to be produced, since he then was nothing: but once produced purely spiritual, he of himself demands and requires to subsist perpetually and to be conserved by God, since he has in himself no principle of corruption and failure; for which cause his production can happen naturally, but not so his annihilation.