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1. Nature Of Angels
St. Thomas [596] teaches clearly that the angels are creatures
purely spiritual, subsistent forms without any matter. Scotus says
they are composed of form and incorporeal matter, without quantity,
because, being creatures, they must have an element of potentiality.
The Thomistic reply runs thus: This potential element is first the
angelic essence, really distinct, as in all creatures, from
existence. Secondly, the real distinction between person and
existence, between quod est and existence. Thirdly, real distinction
of substance from faculties, and of faculties from acts. All these
distinctions are explicitly formulated by St. Thomas himself.
[597] .
From their pure spirituality St. Thomas concludes that there cannot
be two angels of the same species, because the only principle by which
a substantial form can be individualized is matter, matter capable of
this quantity rather than any other. Thus, to illustrate, two drops
of water, perfectly similar, are by their matter and quantity two
distinct individuals. But angels have no matter. [598] .
Scotus, on the contrary, since he admits a certain kind of matter in
the angels, maintains also that there can be many angels of one and the
same species. Suarez, in his eclecticism, admits this conclusion of
Scotus, although he sides with St. Thomas in maintaining that the
angels are purely spiritual and immaterial beings. Thomists reply: if
the angels are purely spiritual, you can find in them no principle of
individuation, no principle capable of multiplying within one and the
same species.
Form unreceived in matter, they say with St. Thomas, is simply
unique. Whiteness, for example, if conceived as unreceived in this
or that white thing, would be one and unique. If you deny this, then
you simultaneously deny the principle which demonstrates the unicity of
God, the principle, namely, which St. Thomas thus formulates:
[599] Existence unreceived is necessarily subsistent and
unique.
2. Angelic Knowledge
There are three orders of knowledge: human, angelic, divine. The
object of knowledge in general is intelligible reality. The proper
object of human intelligence is the intelligible being of sense
objects, because the human intellect has as its proportioned object the
lowest order of intelligible reality, the shadowy reality of the sense
world. By opposition, then, the proper object of angelic
intelligence is the intelligible reality of spiritual creatures.
Hence, the proper intelligible object of each particular angel is that
angel's own essence, just as God's proper intelligible object is
His own divine essence. [600] .
This position granted, let us see its consequences. The human idea,
by which man knows, is an abstract and universal idea, drawn forth,
by the intellect agent, from particular sense objects. But the
angelic idea, not being drawn from external sense objects, is a
natural endowment of the angelic intellect, infused into it by God at
the moment of creation. Hence the angelic idea is at once universal
and concrete. The angel's infused idea of the lion, say, represents
not only the nature of the lion, but all individual lions that either
actually exist or have in the past been objects of the angel's
intellect. Angelic ideas are thus participations in God's own
creative ideas. Infused ideas, then, which Plato and Descartes
falsely ascribed to men, are, on the contrary, an angelic
characteristic.
Thus these angelic ideas, at once universal and concrete, represent
whole regions of intelligible reality, and each angel has his own
distinctive suprasensible panorama. The higher the angel, the
stronger is his intelligence and the fewer are his ideas, since they
are more rich and universal. Thus, with ever fewer ideas, the higher
angels command immense regions of reality, which the lower angels
cannot attain with such eminent simplicity. [601] A human
parallel is the sage, who, in a few simple principles, grasps an
entire branch of knowledge. The stronger is the created intellect, to
say it briefly, the more it approaches the preeminent simplicity of the
divine intellect.
A further consequence. The nature of his ideas, at once universal
and concrete, make the angel's knowledge intuitive, not in any way
successive and discursive. He sees at a glance the particular in the
universal, the conclusion in the principle, the means in the end.
[602] .
For the same reason his act of judging does not proceed by comparing
and separating different ideas. [603] By his purely intuitive
apprehension of the essence of a thing, he sees at once all
characteristics of that essence, for example, he simultaneously sees
all man's human and created characteristics, for instance, that
man's essence is not man's existence, then man's existence is
necessarily given and preserved by divine causality. [604] .
Why this immense distance between angel and man? Because, seeing
intuitively, the angel sees without medium, as in clearest midday, an
immensely higher object, sees the intelligible world of spirits,
whereas man's intellect, the most feeble of all intellects, having as
object the lowest order of intelligibility, must be satisfied with
twilight glances into the faint mirror of the sense world.
A further consequence is that the angel's intuitive vision is also
infallible. But while he can make no mistake in his natural
knowledge, he can deceive himself in the supernatural order, on the
question, for example, whether this or that individual man is in the
state of grace. Likewise he may deceive himself in forecasting the
contingent future, above all in attempting to know the future free acts
of men, or the immanent secrets of man's heart, secrets which are in
no way necessarily linked with the nature of our soul or with external
physical realities. The secrets of the heart are not fragments of the
material world, they do not result from the interplay of physical
forces. [605] .
Contrary to this view, Scotus holds that the angel, though he has no
sense faculties, can still receive ideas from sense objects. This
view arises from his failure to distinguish intellects specifically by
their proper and proportioned object. Thus he goes on to say that,
had God so willed, the unmediated vision of the divine essence would
be natural to both angels and men. Thus the distinction between
uncreated intelligence and created intelligence is, for Scotus, a
distinction not necessary, but contingent. A fortiori, then, he
denies any necessary distinction between the proper object of the human
intellect and that of the angelic intellect.
Scotus further denies that the ideas by which higher angels know are
less numerous and more universal than those of lower angels.
Perfection of knowledge, he says, derives less from the universality
of ideas than from their clearness and brightness. Here Thomists
distinguish. In the empiric order, yes, clearness does not depend on
the universality of ideas. But in the order of perfection, in the
order of higher principles, themselves concatenated with the supreme
principle—in this order doctrinal clearness most certainly depends on
the universality of its ideas.
Scotus holds also that the angel can know discursively, can engage in
reasoning, a view which notably depreciates the perfection of the pure
spirit. On the other hand, he holds that the angel can know,
naturally and with certitude, the secrets of man's heart, though
God, he adds, refuses this knowledge to the demons.
Suarez, again eclectically, admits with St. Thomas that the
angelic ideas are innate, but holds, with Scotus, that the angel can
use reasoning, and can be mistaken regarding the characteristics of the
object he knows.
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