Monday, November 06, 2006

Q54 A5: Whether there is only intellectual knowledge in the angels?

Yes. Angels have only intellect and will because the angels have no bodies naturally joined to them (Q51, A1).

In our soul there are certain powers whose operations are exercised by corporeal organs; such powers are acts of sundry parts of the body, as sight of the eye, and hearing of the ear.

There are some other powers of the soul whose operations are not performed through bodily organs, as intellect and will: these are not acts of any parts of the body.

The separated substances (i.e., angels), however, are divided into intellect and will. And it is in keeping with the order of the universe for the highest intellectual creature to be entirely intelligent; and not in part, as is our soul. For this reason the angels are called "intellects" and "minds," (Q54, A3, ad 1).

Experience can be attributed to the angels according to the likeness of the things known, although not by likeness of the faculty knowing them. We have experience when we know single objects through the senses: the angels likewise know single objects, as we shall show (Q57, A2), yet not through the senses.

But memory can be allowed in the angels, according as Augustine (De Trin. x) puts it in the mind; although it cannot belong to them in so far as it is a part of the sensitive soul. In like fashion 'a perverted phantasy' is attributed to demons, since they have a false practical estimate of what is the true good; while deception in us comes properly from the phantasy, whereby we sometimes hold fast to images of things as to the things themselves, as is manifest in sleepers and lunatics.