Part I (Prima Pars) Part 88 (2/2)
(4) Whether he understands by composing and dividing?
(5) Whether there can be error in the angel's intellect?
(6) Whether his knowledge can be styled as morning and evening?
(7) Whether the morning and evening knowledge are the same, or do they differ?
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FIRST ARTICLE [I, Q. 58, Art. 1]
Whether the Angel's Intellect Is Sometimes in Potentiality, Sometimes in Act?
Objection 1: It would seem that the angel's intellect is sometimes in potentiality and sometimes in act. For movement is the act of what is in potentiality, as stated in _Phys._ iii, 6. But the angels' minds are moved by understanding, as Dionysius says (Div. Nom. iv).
Therefore the angelic minds are sometimes in potentiality.
Obj. 2: Further, since desire is of a thing not possessed but possible to have, whoever desires to know anything is in potentiality thereto. But it is said (1 Pet. 1:12): ”On Whom the angels desire to look.” Therefore the angel's intellect is sometimes in potentiality.
Obj. 3: Further, in the book _De Causis_ it is stated that ”an intelligence understands according to the mode of its substance.”
But the angel's intelligence has some admixture of potentiality.
Therefore it sometimes understands potentially.
_On the contrary,_ Augustine says (Gen. ad lit. ii): ”Since the angels were created, in the eternity of the Word, they enjoy holy and devout contemplation.” Now a contemplating intellect is not in potentiality, but in act. Therefore the intellect of an angel is not in potentiality.
_I answer that,_ As the Philosopher states (De Anima iii, text. 8; Phys. viii, 32), the intellect is in potentiality in two ways; first, ”as before learning or discovering,” that is, before it has the habit of knowledge; secondly, as ”when it possesses the habit of knowledge, but does not actually consider.” In the first way an angel's intellect is never in potentiality with regard to the things to which his natural knowledge extends. For, as the higher, namely, the heavenly, bodies have no potentiality to existence, which is not fully actuated, in the same way the heavenly intellects, the angels, have no intelligible potentiality which is not fully completed by connatural intelligible species. But with regard to things divinely revealed to them, there is nothing to hinder them from being in potentiality: because even the heavenly bodies are at times in potentiality to being enlightened by the sun.
In the second way an angel's intellect can be in potentiality with regard to things learnt by natural knowledge; for he is not always actually considering everything that he knows by natural knowledge.
But as to the knowledge of the Word, and of the things he beholds in the Word, he is never in this way in potentiality; because he is always actually beholding the Word, and the things he sees in the Word. For the bliss of the angels consists in such vision; and beat.i.tude does not consist in habit, but in act, as the Philosopher says (Ethic. i, 8).
Reply Obj. 1: Movement is taken there not as the act of something imperfect, that is, of something existing in potentiality, but as the act of something perfect, that is, of one actually existing. In this way understanding and feeling are termed movements, as stated in _De Anima_ iii, text. 28.
Reply Obj. 2: Such desire on the part of the angels does not exclude the object desired, but weariness thereof. Or they are said to desire the vision of G.o.d with regard to fresh revelations, which they receive from G.o.d to fit them for the tasks which they have to perform.
Reply Obj. 3: In the angel's substance there is no potentiality divested of act. In the same way, the angel's intellect is never so in potentiality as to be without act.
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SECOND ARTICLE [I, Q. 58, Art. 2]
Whether an Angel Can Understand Many Things at the Same Time?
Objection 1: It would seem that an angel cannot understand many things at the same time. For the Philosopher says (Topic. ii, 4) that ”it may happen that we know many things, but understand only one.”
Obj. 2: Further, nothing is understood unless the intellect be informed by an intelligible species; just at the body is formed by shape. But one body cannot be formed into many shapes. Therefore neither can one intellect simultaneously understand various intelligible things.
Obj. 3: Further, to understand is a kind of movement. But no movement terminates in various terms. Therefore many things cannot be understood altogether.
_On the contrary,_ Augustine says (Gen. ad lit. iv, 32): ”The spiritual faculty of the angelic mind comprehends most easily at the same time all things that it wills.”
_I answer that,_ As unity of term is requisite for unity of movement, so is unity of object required for unity of operation. Now it happens that several things may be taken as several or as one; like the parts of a continuous whole. For if each of the parts be considered severally they are many: consequently neither by sense nor by intellect are they grasped by one operation, nor all at once. In another way they are taken as forming one in the whole; and so they are grasped both by sense and intellect all at once and by one operation; as long as the entire continuous whole is considered, as is stated in _De Anima_ iii, text. 23. In this way our intellect understands together both the subject and the predicate, as forming parts of one proposition; and also two things compared together, according as they agree in one point of comparison. From this it is evident that many things, in so far as they are distinct, cannot be understood at once; but in so far as they are comprised under one intelligible concept, they can be understood together. Now everything is actually intelligible according as its image is in the intellect.
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