Annotatio VIII

”Let there be a firmament.” — Genesis 1:6

Augustine, in the second book On Genesis to the Letter, chapter 17, in expounding the passage before us, hands down that the angels, both good and evil, have subtle bodies;¹ and in the third book of the same work, chapter 10, he shows these to be aerial, but indissoluble through death, because in them the elements more apt for acting than for suffering prevail — that is, air and starry fire (which two are more apt for acting, as earth and moisture for suffering). Agreeing with this opinion, in Epistle 115 to Nebridius he writes that angels are aerial or ethereal living beings of the keenest sense. And in the third book On the Trinity, chapter 1, he says they have a spiritual body — not one to which they are subject, but one which they bear as subject [to them]. In the exposition of the eighty-fifth Psalm he asserts that the bodies of the blessed after the resurrection will be such as are the bodies of the angels; and he repeats this very thing in the explanation of Psalm 145, adding that the angelic body is inferior to the soul. Likewise in the 11th book The City of God, chapter 23, he teaches that the bodies of demons are aerial; and in the 15th book The City of God, chapter 23, he asserts that demons have such bodies as they can couple with women. And in the book which is entitled (under Augustine’s name) On Ecclesiastical Dogmas, chapters 11 and 12, it is most constantly affirmed that nothing is incorporeal except God, but that the angels, and all the celestial powers, are corporeal.

Peter Lombard (2 Sentences, distinction 8) says that Augustine brought these things forth not thinking so himself, but reporting the opinion of others² — though nevertheless it is not likely that Augustine spoke from another’s opinion in so many places, but rather from his own, imitating namely Philo (in the book On the Fashioning of the Six Days), Origen (in the first book of the Peri Archōn, ch. 6, and in the second book of the same work, ch. 2), Lactantius, Hilary, Basil, and the consensus of nearly all who wrote in his time. To this opinion subscribe John Cassian (7th book of the Collations, chapter 13), John Damascene (second book of the Theology, ch. 3, and the third book against the Iconoclasts), and likewise the Second Nicene synod, in whose fourth session the words of John, Bishop of Thessalonica, are approved, who writes in this manner: “Concerning the Angels and archangels, and their powers — to which our soul also is joined — the Catholic Church itself thinks thus: that they are indeed intelligible, but not entirely devoid of body, but endowed with a thin and aerial or fiery body, as it is written: ‘Who makes his angels spirits, and his ministers a burning fire.’³ And thus we have learned that many of the holy Fathers thought — among whom is Basil surnamed the Great, and blessed Athanasius, and Methodius, and those who stand [in succession] from them; but God alone is incorporeal. And although the angels are not corporeal as we are — namely [made] of the four elements and of that gross matter — yet no one would call either the angels, or the demons, or the soul incorporeal.”

From these dissent St. Thomas and most professors of Scholastic Theology, following (they too) authors not to be ashamed of, especially Dionysius the Areopagite:⁴ who in the first chapter of the Celestial Hierarchy names the Angels not only incorporeal and immaterial substances, but also deiform simplicities and immaterialities. With him concur Chrysostom (homily 22 on Genesis, and the homily on 1 Corinthians 17 & 32, and in the explanation of the sixth chapter of Isaiah), and Cyril (in the fourth book of the commentaries on John, ch. 10). Nor does the decree of the Lateran Council dissent from these, decreeing that one must believe not only corporeal but also incorporeal creatures — that is, angels — to have been founded out of nothing.

Although I myself think this latter opinion the stronger — because the angels need bodies neither for subsisting, nor for understanding, nor for moving themselves — yet in this part I choose to embrace the modesty of Bernard, who in the fifth homily on the Canticle of Canticles, leaving such a controversy undiscussed, concluded his sermon with these words:⁵ “But whether these spirits have natural bodies, as men have their own, or whether the spirits themselves take up bodies when there is need, and again, the work completed, lay them aside into the same matter from which they were taken, to be dissolved — I do not wish it to be required of me. The Fathers seem to have thought diversely about such things; nor is it clear to me from what [source] I should teach either alternative, and I confess that I do not know. But I judge that the knowledge of these things does not contribute much to our progress.” Thus he.