Monday, December 04, 2006

Q61 A4: Whether the angels were created in the empyrean heaven?

Yes. It was fitting for the angels to be created in the highest corporeal place, as presiding over all corporeal nature (whether it be styled the empyrean heaven, or whatever else it be called) because spiritual creatures were so created as to bear some relationship to the corporeal creature, and to rule over every corporeal creature.

Strabus, commenting on the text "In the beginning God created heaven and earth," says: "By heaven he does not mean the visible firmament, but the empyrean, that is, the fiery or intellectual firmament, which is not so styled from its heat, but from its splendor; and which was filled with angels directly it was made."

The angels were created in a corporeal place, not as if depending upon a body either as to their existence or as to their being made; because God could have created them before all corporeal creation, as many holy Doctors hold. They were made in a corporeal place in order to show their relationship to corporeal nature, and that they are by their power in touch with bodies.