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The Scriptures never speak of the body of an angel, and
frequently call the angels spirits. When spirit is
predicated of intellectual creatures, it is used in
opposition to body.[1196]
The Fourth Lateran Council declared: "At the same
time in the beginning God established from nothing both
creatures, the spiritual and corporeal, that is, the
angelic and the mundane, and finally the human creature as
a common creature constituted from spirit and
body."[1197]
In this definition is clearly defined: 1. the existence
of the angels; 2. their real distinction from corporeal
creatures and from man, who is both spiritual and
corporeal. This is equivalent to stating that the angels
are incorporeal. This, however, is not properly defined
but merely declared; what the Council was expressly
defining was the unity of the first principle against the
Manichaeans.
After the Fourth Lateran Council it was considered
temerarious to attribute to the angels a body however
subtle, and after the twelfth century theologians commonly
taught that the angels were absolutely incorporeal.
St. Thomas shows that the perfection of the universe
requires intellectual creatures, who are able to know
God. "Since intellection is not an act of the body nor
of any corporeal power, the union of a body is not part of
the nature of the intellectual substance as such; it is an
addition,....because it is imperfect, inasmuch as the
object (of the corporeal being) is the lowest
intelligible of sensible things. In any genus where
something imperfect is found, it is fitting that the
corresponding perfection in that genus
pre-exist."[1198] Otherwise creation would be
truncated and, as it were, mutilated.
As Cajetan points out, a more perfect creature can
always be produced, but it is reasonable to infer that the
perfection of the universe requires a purely intellectual
creature as one genus of being.
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