Chapter 054 - The Knowledge of the Angels

Of no creature can the action or intelligence be the substance; for as being is the actuality of substance, so action is the actuality of power; only Pure Actuality can be its own actuality, because the potential is repugnant to the actual. It is, therefore, proper to God alone that His Being is His Substance, and that to act and to understand are His very Being subsistent. This is contrary, indeed, to the nature of the angels, or their substance would not be distinguished from the Substance of God, nor the substance of one angel from that of another; neither would the angelic nature constitute a hierarchy of intelligences of various perfection, as results from the diversity of their participation in the Divine Intelligence. Neither is the intelligence of the angels the same as their being: for the genus of action is twofold: either immanent (i.e. intransitive), as to feel, to will and to understand; or transitive, as to saw or to burn.

Transitive actions cannot constitute the being of the agent, because being signifies something within the agent itself, while transitive action constitutes an actual efflux from the agent: neither can immanent actions do so, because they are either absolutely infinite, as to will and to understand, or relatively so, as to feel, whereas the being of every creature is finite and determined to a certain genus and species to which it belongs. Only the Being of God is absolutely infinite and comprehends all; therefore in God alone is Intelligence, and also Being and Will.

Nor is power, or faculty, the essence of the angels or of any other creature; because faculties differ according to the diversity of their operation, and operation and being are diverse actions, the respective powers of which are substance and energy. Since, therefore, being and intelligence are not the same in the angels, it follows that neither is their essence the same as their intellectual faculty, nor is operation or faculty the essence of any creature.

Neither can we attribute to the angels an agent and possible intellect except equivocally; for the possible intellect, which indicates something potential to be reduced to actuality, may be admitted in us who do not always understand; and the agent intellect is admitted as a certain faculty which makes material things intelligible; but there is no such necessity in the angels, who are never in potentia to those things which they understand by nature, their intelligible species being always actualized; for they understand from the first, and principally immaterial things.

In us there are some faculties, the operations of which are carried on by organs in parts of the body, as sight in the eyes and hearing in the ears, while others, such as to will and to understand, are not exercised by means of organs, while the angels, who have not bodies naturally united to them, possess will and intellect only, as befits the order of the universe, which requires that the highest creatures should be purely intellectual, not only partially so, as we are.