Chapter 051 - The Relation of Angels to Bodies

Angels have not bodies united to them by nature, because, inasmuch as they are intellectual substances, remote from matter, it does not belong to them to be united to a body; for the act of understanding is not corporeal or dependent upon corporeal power. In every department of being, where the imperfect is found, the perfect pre-exists, and since, in the order of intellectual substances, we find the human soul acquiring a knowledge of sensible things by means of bodily senses, some intellectual substances must exist, not united to body, which do not so acquire knowledge; and these we call Angels.

These angels assume bodies, not by imaginary vision as some have held, but in order to be really visible, as we read in Scripture; and such bodies, condensed out of air, represent their perfections for our benefit, who are to be their future companions in glory. In these bodies they do not, absolutely speaking, exercise any operation of life; for the nature of vital operation consists in the possession of life as the potential principle of such action. They can, however, perform certain actions which do not depend upon the soul, such are motion, sleep, etc.