SECOND ARTICLE: WHETHER THE ANGELS UNDERSTAND THROUGH SPECIES TAKEN FROM THINGS

St. Thomas invokes the authority of St. Augustine, who taught that sensible creatures were first produced by God as intelligible beings in the mind of the angels and then in the nature of things. St. Augustine came to this conclusion because of his Platonic philosophy, in which even our ideas are derived from a supersensible divine illumination.

St. Thomas shows why this innatism should be admitted in the case of the angels but not in man. His reasoning: operation follows being, and the mode of operation follows the mode of being. But the angel's mode of being is absolutely immaterial and independent of the body. Therefore the angel's mode of operation and of understanding is also without any acceptance from a body; it is by an intelligible influx from God the author of nature. On the other hand, the intellective soul would be united to a body without any reason if the soul did not obtain its intellective perfection from the body.[1204] Thus the imagination is the highest point of the lowest order of sensible knowledge, and our intellect is the lowest point of the highest order of intelligence. Hence the adage: the highest of the lower order touches on the lowest of the higher order, even though, absolutely speaking, there is a vast difference between the two. Here we see the subordination of beings and we conclude that man, a rational animal, is not a genus but a determined species, in the sense that there cannot be many species of rational animals. Rational animal implies the meeting point of the highest in the lowest order and the lowest in the highest order.

Objection. If from the instant of their creation the angels receive from God ideas of things, including those of individuals, the angels naturally know future contingents, which is against the opinion commonly held.

Reply. Actually these ideas represent only existences and they are suited to represent futures inasmuch as these futures are derived from the divine ideas and when they will be according to the divine will. Even God Himself does not know from eternity future contingents except as they are dependent on the decree of His will.