|
Objection 1: It would seem that there is no natural love or
dilection in the angels. For, natural love is contradistinguished
from intellectual love, as stated by Dionysius (Div. Nom. iv).
But an angel's love is intellectual. Therefore it is not natural.
Objection 2: Further, those who love with natural love are more
acted upon than active in themselves; for nothing has control over its
own nature. Now the angels are not acted upon, but act of
themselves; because they possess free-will, as was shown above
(Question 59, Article 3). Consequently there is no natural
love in them.
Objection 3: Further, every love is either ordinate or inordinate.
Now ordinate love belongs to charity; while inordinate love belongs to
wickedness. But neither of these belongs to nature; because charity
is above nature, while wickedness is against nature. Therefore there
is no natural love in the angels.
On the contrary, Love results from knowledge; for, nothing is loved
except it be first known, as Augustine says (De Trin. x,
1,2). But there is natural knowledge in the angels. Therefore
there is also natural love.
I answer that, We must necessarily place natural love in the angels.
In evidence of this we must bear in mind that what comes first is
always sustained in what comes after it. Now nature comes before
intellect, because the nature of every subject is its essence.
Consequently whatever belongs to nature must be preserved likewise in
such subjects as have intellect. But it is common to every nature to
have some inclination; and this is its natural appetite or love. This
inclination is found to exist differently in different natures; but in
each according to its mode. Consequently, in the intellectual nature
there is to be found a natural inclination coming from the will; in the
sensitive nature, according to the sensitive appetite; but in a nature
devoid of knowledge, only according to the tendency of the nature to
something. Therefore, since an angel is an intellectual nature,
there must be a natural love in his will.
Reply to Objection 1: Intellectual love is contradistinguished from
that natural love, which is merely natural, in so far as it belongs to
a nature which has not likewise the perfection of either sense or
intellect.
Reply to Objection 2: All things in the world are moved to act by
something else except the First Agent, Who acts in such a manner
that He is in no way moved to act by another; and in Whom nature and
will are the same. So there is nothing unfitting in an angel being
moved to act in so far as such natural inclination is implanted in him
by the Author of his nature. Yet he is not so moved to act that he
does not act himself, because he has free-will.
Reply to Objection 3: As natural knowledge is always true, so is
natural love well regulated; because natural love is nothing else than
the inclination implanted in nature by its Author. To say that a
natural inclination is not well regulated, is to derogate from the
Author of nature. Yet the rectitude of natural love is different from
the rectitude of charity and virtue: because the one rectitude perfects
the other; even so the truth of natural knowledge is of one kind, and
the truth of infused or acquired knowledge is of another.
|
|