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It is sometimes thought that the treatise of St. Thomas on the
angels is an a priori construction, having as its sole foundation the
book of Pseudo-Dionysius, called De coelesti hierarchia. This is
a misconception. Scripture itself is the foundation on which St.
Thomas rests. Scripture gives him the existence of angels, their
knowledge, their number, their differences in good and evil, their
relations to men. Pertinent and numerous texts appear already in the
Old Testament, in Genesis, Job, Tobias, Isaias, Daniel, the
Psalms. Angels appear in the New Testament, at our Lord's
birth, Passion, and Resurrection. St. Paul enumerates them:
thrones, dominations, principalities, powers. [593] .
Here lies the foundation of the treatise on the angels. These
testimonies show that the angels are creatures indeed, but higher than
men. Though at times they appear under a sense form, the common term
by which they are called, i. e.: spirits, justifies us in saying
that they are purely spiritual creatures, notwithstanding the
difficulties which several early Fathers found in conceiving a creature
to be real unless it had at least an ethereal body.
To this spirituality of the angels, St. Thomas gave greater scope
and precision. By distinguishing also in the angels the orders of
nature and grace, by deduction from the interior life of God, from
the character of the beatific vision, which is a supernatural gift for
any intelligence inferior to God, from the doctrine on grace and the
infused virtues, St. Thomas defended and explained the tradition,
summarized thus by St. Augustine: [594] Who gave to the good
angels their good will? No one but He who, at their creation,
founded their nature, and, simultaneously, gave them the gift of
grace.
In this outline of the treatise on the angels we will emphasize its
essential principles, noting opportunely the opposition raised by
Scotus, [595] and in part by Suarez, who, as often
elsewhere, searches here also for a middle ground between St. Thomas
and Scotus. These differences appear chiefly in the doctrines
relating to the nature of angels, their modes of knowing and loving,
and to the manner of their merits under grace. Those who seek detailed
exposition can easily find it in the works cited. Our chief interest
in this treatise on angels is to clarify from on high the treatise of
St. Thomas on man.
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