Wednesday, November 22, 2006

Q58 A3: Whether an angel's knowledge is discursive?

No. There is no discursive process at all in angels because in the truths which they know naturally, they at once behold all things whatsoever that can be known in them.

But human souls which acquire knowledge of truth by the discursive method are called "rational"; and this comes of the feebleness of their intellectual light. For if they possessed the fulness of intellectual light, like the angels, then in the first aspect of principles they would at once comprehend their whole range, by perceiving whatever could be reasoned out from them.