The Literal Meaning of Genesis (continued)
BOOK EIGHT 65
Hence, they become partakers of His eternity, truth, and will forever beyond time and place. They are moved, however, by His command even in time, although He is not moved in time. They do not turn from or withdraw from the contemplation of Him, but they simultaneously contemplate Him without the limits of space and time and carry out His commands in their subjects, moving themselves through time and moving bodies through time and space in accordance with what is proper to their activity. Hence it is that God by the twofold working of His providence is over all creatures, that is, over natures that they may have existence, and over wills that they may do nothing without either His command or His permission. !°7
CHAPTER 25
How creatures receive intrinsic or extrinsic and corporeal or incorporeal help.
46. The whole corporeal creation, therefore, does not receive extrinsic assistance from any corporeal source.!°8 For outside of this whole corporeal creation there is no corporeal being; otherwise it would not be the whole. But intrinsically it is helped by an incorporeal force, since it is God who makes it possible for it to exist, For from Him and through Him and in Him are all things. 10°
Parts of this same whole are enabled by intrinsic help (or I should say, are made) to be subsistent beings; and they are assisted extrinsically by some corporeal force in their development, for example, by food, by cultivation of the land, by medicine, and by anything that serves for adornment so that they may be not only healthy and productive but also fair to behold.
47. Spiritual creatures, if they are perfect and blessed, as is the case with the holy angels, in so far as their own well-being is concerned are assisted only intrinsically by an incorporeal force in order to exist and be happy. God speaks to them interiorly in a mysterious and indescribable manner, not by letters put down with corporeal instruments, not by words sounding on corporeal ears, not by the likenesses of bodies produced imaginatively in the spirit,!!° as, for example, in dreams or in a transport of the spirit, which in Greek is called ecstasts (a word which we have been using as a Latin word). This kind of vision, it is true, is more interior than what the soul perceives when using the bodily senses as messengers; nevertheless, it is similar to corporeal vision, so that when it happens it either cannot in any way be distinguished from corporeal vision or at best can be distinguished only rarely and with difficulty. It is also more external than the kind of vision that takes place when the rational and intellectual soul beholds its object which it sees in unchangeable truth in the light of which it judges all else; and for these reasons the vision of ecstasy, in my judgment, should be classed as coming from an extrinsic source.'!!
A spiritual and intellectual creature, therefore, which is perfect and blessed, as the angels are, with respect to its own existence, wisdom, and beatitude is helped only intrinsically, as I have said, by the eternity, truth, and love of its Creator.!!? If we must say that the angels receive any extrinsic help, perhaps we should say that they are helped only by the fact that they see one another and rejoice that they are joined in one society with God, that they see all creatures in these companions,'!* and that therefore they give thanks and they praise their Creator. With respect to the activity of the angels by which God's providence looks out for the various classes of creatures in all the world, especially for the human race, they provide extrinsic help not only through visions presenting the likenesses of bodies'!* but also through bodies themselves that are subject to the power of angels.