Summa summae S. Thomae sive compendium theologiae

St. Thomas, qq. 52 and 53.

You will ask 1° whether the angels are in a place.

I answer that they are in some manner in a place¹. It is clear from Scripture, which relates that the angels operate immediately around us, move themselves from place to place, and are in certain places. See Gen., XVIII, 2-16, and XIX, 1-22; Judges, II, 1-5; Tob., VIII, 3; Luke, II, 9-15; Matt., XXVIII, 2-7; Apoc., XII, 7.

You will ask 2° how the angels are in a place.

I answer. To be in a place is said in four ways: circumscriptively, definitively, sacramentally, and everywhere. To be in a place circumscriptively is for the thing located to be so surrounded or circumscribed by the place that the whole of the thing located corresponds to the whole of the containing place, and each part of the thing located to each part of the containing place, as liquid in a vessel. For something to be in a place definitively is for it to be so determined to one place that it is, as it were, bounded or defined by that place, and cannot at once and at the same time occupy another adequate place. To be in a place sacramentally is proper to the body of Christ in the Eucharist, and is to be under the species of bread and wine after the manner of a spiritual substance, yet in such a way that it can at the same time be elsewhere, if the bread and wine are consecrated elsewhere. To be everywhere is understood from the terms themselves.

It is certain that the angels are not everywhere, for that is proper to God; nor are they sacramentally, because that mode of existing is proper to Christ by force of the consecration; nor are they in a place circumscriptively, since, being pure spirits, they lack the quantity of mass which is the ground for being located circumscriptively. It remains, therefore, that they are in a place definitively.

You will ask 3° by what the angels are in a place.

I answer that they are in a connatural place through an operation that is virtually transient — that is, one that produces some effect outside itself².

Proof. An angel is in a place by that through which it really touches the place. But it does not really touch the place except through an operation virtually transient. Therefore. — The major is certain, both from the example of bodies — for a body is said to be in a place through its quantity, because through this it touches the place — and

from reason, because to be in a place is to be physically present to it and undistant, and consequently really to touch it.

Proof of the minor. 1° — Contact is twofold: one properly so called, which is of dimensive quantity, and this does not befit an angel; the other improperly so called, which is of the quantity of power, namely its act, or an operation virtually transient, by which it subjects a body or place to itself and makes it depend on itself. Therefore. 2° — An angel touches a place and becomes present to it by that through which it occupies a place now greater, now smaller, now indivisible. But it has this only through an operation virtually transient, which, since it is free, is terminated now at a great, now at a small, now at an indivisible place; for although this angelic operation is in itself and on the part of the angel indivisible, it is nevertheless virtually, and on the part of its term, divisible.

I said: « at least in a connatural place. » A connatural place is called that to which an angel applies itself by free will, and which it accordingly subjects to itself; a violent place, on the contrary, is that to which it is bound against its will, and by which it is thereby prevented from operating and existing elsewhere.

The common opinion of the Thomists, therefore, is that angels are in a violent place, not through operation, but through passion; because the ground of being located in spiritual substances is the contact of the power of the locatable thing and of the place, as has been said. But just as an angel, through operation, touches the body on which it acts, subjecting it to itself, so through passion it is touched by a body as by an instrument of a higher power, and is subjected to it and becomes present to it. Nor is this to change the formal grounds of existing in a place, but to assign them proportionately; just as we say that the body of Christ is in heaven through the contact of extensive quantity, and in the sacrament indivisibly through consecration.

Moreover, many think that angels, even in a violent place — as the demons in hell — operate more or less, according as they are more or less bound and prevented from operating here or there; for if those who are in the air, and are tormented by the fire of hell, are nonetheless permitted to operate, why not those existing in hell? But what do they do there?

They act upon others, tormenting one another; they act upon the souls of the reprobate, tormenting them, as instruments of divine justice.

From the preceding doctrine you will gather: 1° that an angel can be at once in several inadequate places, even distant ones, within the sphere of its activity, without existing in the middle — for example, in the four corners of a hall, without existing in the middle — because it can operate in the four corners without operating in the middle.

You will gather 2° that, if we speak strictly, an angel is not properly in a place, but only improperly so; because, speaking strictly and philosophically, only that place is properly called a place which circumscriptively contains the thing located — which does not befit angels, who are in a place rather by containing and subjecting the place to themselves through operation, than by being contained by it. If, however, we speak generally of place, so that whatever is really and substantially present to a place is said to be in that place, then angels are truly and properly in a place. Whence the author rightly observed that to be in a place is said equivocally of an angel and of a body³.

You will gather 3° that angels can be moved locally, namely in the same manner in which they are in a place⁴; because the local motion of angels is nothing other than the diverse contacts of diverse places, not at once, but successively. But since angels are not everywhere, they can touch diverse places successively. Therefore they can be moved locally. And Scripture openly teaches this. Thus Matt., XXVIII, 2: An angel of the Lord descended from heaven. Luke, I, 11: The angel Gabriel was sent to the virgin. Matt., IV, 11: Angels came and ministered to him. Job, I, 7 and II, 2, Satan says: I have gone round about the earth, and walked through it, and elsewhere many times.

You will gather 4° that an angel can pass by a discrete motion from one extreme to another, without passing through the middle⁵. Here

the imagination resists, because it does not transcend the continuum, and does not apprehend spiritual things except after the manner of bodily ones. Let the imagination, therefore, be dismissed, and let reason alone be heeded. But reason teaches that, since an angel is in a place through a free operation, which does not depend on the place, but makes the place depend on itself, it can operate in one place — say, at one end of this hall — and immediately operate at the opposite end, without operating in the middle, and thus pass from one extremity to the other, without passing through the middle.