Section III: The Nature of Angels
SECTION III: ON THE NATURE OF THE ANGELS
§ 41. The question What sort did God create? is asked with greater profit. Their nature is described with the word “spirit” (Heb. 1:14), and for this reason we claim that they are nonmaterial and incorporeal: “For a spirit does not have flesh and bones” (Luke 24:39). Now, as to the fact that Origen (De princip., bk. 2, ch. 23), Tertullian (Adv. Praxeam, p. 409), Macarius (Homily 4, p. 45), and Cassian (Collat. 7, ch. 13) attribute a body to angels, Damascenus (Orth. fid., bk. 2, ch. 3) explains that this was said with respect to God; for, when a comparison is made with Him, the angels are not completely incorporeal. One would be more correct in saying that the angels are not completely uncompounded and pure actualities [actus purissimos] with respect to God. Boethius says, “An angel is composed of ‘where it is’ and ‘what it is.’ ” It is common to say that an angel has actuality and potentiality. Augustine (De haeres., ch. 86) excuses Tertullian in this way: that with the word “body” he means nothing else but essence. Consequently, the fathers teach with great unanimity that angels have no bodies. (See Ignatius, Epist. ad Trall.; Basil, Hom. quod Deus non sit auctor mali; Nazianzen, Orat. 2 de theol.; Gregory of Nyssa, De vit. Moys.; Chrysostom, on Genesis, homily 22; Epiphanius, Haeres. 26; Fulgentius, De fide ad Petrum, ch. 3; Gregory the Great, Moral., bk. 9, ch. 9; etc.)
The bodies in which angels have appeared.
§ 42. Moreover, when they occasionally assumed bodies, this happened “by accommodation” [κατ’ οἰκονομίαν], for, by their own nature, spirits do not depend on bodies. Therefore they were not giving form to, but standing in the form of, that assumed body. Rabbi Moses posited that such appearances happened only in prophetic vision, but Thomas refutes this (De pot. Dei, q. 6, art. 7). Tertullian writes (De carne Christ., p. 26): “It is evident that the angels did not wear their own bodies inasmuch as they are of spiritual nature and substance. They can transform for a time into human flesh that they may be seen by people and interact with them.” Ludovicus Vives (Schol. super August. De civ. Dei, bk. 15, ch. 23) writes:
To those who read his works—namely, De natura daemonum and De Genesi ad literam—it is quite certain that Augustine felt that angels and demons were endowed with bodies, so certain that this need not be shown at greater length. He did not speak as from someone else’s opinion in so many places the way the Lombard says, “There are some who think,” but he spoke out of his own opinion. In doing this he followed the precedent of authors of good reputation: first, all the Platonic scholars; then Origen, Lactantius, Basil, and the consensus of the writers around his own time. Michael Psellus (De daemon., trans. Ficinus: “The ministering spirits, as St. Paul asserts, which are sent must have bodies in which to move, stand, and appear openly.”), and later Augustine, attributes to angels the most insubstantial of bodies which escape all sight and are fit for acting but not for being acted upon.
So much for Vives.
Bernard writes in almost the same sense (Song of Songs, sermon 5): “How do the angels fulfill their ministry without bodies, especially when they work among those who dwell in bodies? One does not run around nor go from place to place except in a body.” He finally concludes that “angels need a body to help,” and that “God alone is incorporeal and neither helps using a body nor is helped by a body.”
In regard to the assumed bodies of angels, see also Scaliger (Exerc. 559, sect. 13).