Wednesday, November 08, 2006

Q56 A3: Whether an angel knows God by his own natural principles?

Yes. The angels can have some knowledge of God by their own principles because since God's image is impressed on the very nature of the angel in his essence, the angel knows God in as much as he is the image of God.

Yet he does not behold God's essence; because no created likeness is sufficient to represent the Divine essence. Such knowledge then approaches rather to the specular kind; because the angelic nature is itself a kind of mirror representing the Divine image.

Since an angel's intellect and essence are infinitely remote from God, it follows that he cannot comprehend Him; nor can he see God's essence through his own nature. Yet it does not follow on that account that he can have no knowledge of Him at all: because, as God is infinitely remote from the angel, so the knowledge which God has of Himself is infinitely above the knowledge which an angel has of Him.