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St. Thomas holds that all the angels were elevated to the state of
grace before the moment of their trial, because without sanctifying
grace they could not merit supernatural happiness. With this doctrine
Scotus and Suarez agree. They also agree in saying that most
probably all angels received this gift at the moment of their creation.
All three teachers, following St. Augustine, [611] hold
that the revelation had the obscurity of faith. [612] The three
agree also in saying that after their trial the good angels were
immovably confirmed in grace and received the beatific vision, while
the wicked angels became obstinate in evil. But, notwithstanding this
agreement, there remain three problems concerning the state of the
angels before and during their trial. On these problems St. Thomas
again differs widely from Scotus and Suarez.
1. Natural Happiness
St. Thomas holds that at the very moment of their creation the angels
received all their natural perfection of spirit and their natural
happiness, because their innate knowledge proceeds instantaneously,
without succession, from faculty to act. Hence, at the very moment
of creation, they have perfect intuition of their own nature, and in
that nature as mirror they know God as author of that nature, on which
their own natural law is inscribed. Simultaneously also in that same
moment they know all other angels, and have instantaneous use of their
own infused ideas.
Here Scotus and Suarez do not follow St. Thomas. They deny,
first, that angels had natural beatitude from the moment of creation.
They hold, secondly, that the angels could, from that first moment,
sin against the natural law directly and immediately. In reply,
Thomists simply insist that pure spirits must from their first moment
of creation, know their own selves perfectly as pure spirits, and
hence know their own nature as mirror of the Author of that nature,
and consequently must love that Author as the source of their own
natural life, which they necessarily desire to preserve.
2. Instantaneous Choice
At the very moment of creation, so St. Thomas, the angels could
not sin, but neither could they fully merit, because their very first
act must be specially inspired by God, without their own
self-initiated interior deliberation. But at the second instant came
either full merit or full demerit. The good angel after the first act
of charity, by which he merited supernatural beatitude, was at once
among the blessed. [613] Just as immediately the demons were
repudiated.
Hence, with St. Thomas, we must distinguish three instants in the
life of the angel: first, that of creation; second, that of merit or
demerit; third, that of supernatural beatitude [614] or of
reprobation. We must note, however, that an angelic instant, which
is the measure of one angelic thought, may correspond to a more or less
long period of our time, according to the more or less deep absorption
of the angel in one thought. An analogy, in illustration, is that of
the contemplative who may rest for hours in one and the same truth.
The reason for the instantaneousness of the divine sanction after the
first angelic act, fully meritorious or fully demeritorious, has been
given above. Angelic knowledge is not abstract and discursive like
ours, but purely intuitive and simultaneous. The angel does not pass
successively, as we do, from one angle of thought to another. He
sees at once, simultaneously, all the advantages and disadvantages.
Hence his judgment once made is irrevocable. There is nothing he has
not already considered.
What kind of sin was that of the demons? Pride, says St. Thomas.
[615] They chose as supreme purpose that which they could obtain
by their natural powers, and hence turned away from supernatural
beatitude, which can be reached only by the grace of God. Thus,
instead of humility and obedience, they chose pride and disobedience,
the sin of naturalism.
Scotus and Suarez, as we have seen, since they hold that the angelic
knowledge is discursive and successive, maintain likewise that the
angel's practical judgment and act of choice are revocable, but that
after many mortal sins, God no longer gives them the grace of
conversion.
3. Source Of Angelic Merit
St. Thomas holds that the essential grace and glory of the angels
does not depend on the merits of Christ, because "the Word was made
flesh for men and for our salvation." Christ merited as Redeemer.
Now the essential grace of the angels was not a redemptive grace.
[616] And their essential glory, he says elsewhere,
[617] was given them by Christ, not as Redeemer, but as the
Word of God. Yet the Word incarnate did merit graces for the
angels, graces not essential but accidental, to enable them to
cooperate in the salvation of men.
Scotus again differs. Since the Word, he says, also in the actual
plan of Providence, would have become man even if man had not sinned,
we should hold that Christ merited for the angels also their essential
grace and glory. And Suarez holds that Adam's sin was the occasion
and condition, not of the Incarnation, but of the Redemption. Even
if man had not sinned, he says, the Word would still perhaps have
become incarnate, but would not have suffered. Hence, he concludes,
Christ merited for the good angels their essential grace and glory,
and is therefore their Savior.
Thomists reply that Christ is the Savior only as Redeemer. But for
the angels He is not Redeemer. Further, they reflect, if the
angels owed to Christ their essential glory, the beatific vision,
they would, like the just of the Old Testament, have had to wait for
that vision until Christ rose from the dead.
Let us summarize this Thomistic treatise on the angels. The main
point of difference from Scotus and Suarez lies in the specific
difference between angelic intelligence and human intelligence, a
difference that depends on their respective formal object, his own
essence for the angel, for the man the essence of the sense world known
by abstraction. Hence angelic knowledge is completely intuitive.
From this position derive all further conclusions of St. Thomas, on
angelic knowledge, will, merit, and demerit. This Thomistic
[618] conception of pure spirit is much higher than that of
Scotus and Suarez. This treatise also throws much light on the
following treatise where St. Thomas, in studying the nature of man,
dwells on the quasi-angelic state of the separated soul.
A last remark. St. Thomas, as he proceeds, corrects the grave
errors of the Latin Averroists, who looked upon all immaterial
substances as eternal and immutable, as having a knowledge eternally
complete, as depending on God, not for creation, but only for
preservation. [619] .
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