Article 7 — Whether angels or demons can assume bodies

The seventh point of inquiry is whether angels or demons can assume bodies. (Parallel texts: ST I.51.2; In II Sent. 8.2.)

Obj. 1: And it would seem that they cannot. For a body cannot be united to an incorporeal substance except either in being or in movement. Now, angels cannot have bodies united to them in being, because they would then be naturally united to them, which is contrary to what has been said. (Q. 6, a. 6.) Therefore, it follows that they cannot be united to bodies except as moving them. But this does not amount to an assumption of the body, since then angels and demons would assume every body that they move, which is clearly false, for an angel moved the tongue of Balaam’s ass, and yet we do not say that he assumed it. Therefore, we cannot say that angels or demons assume bodies.

Obj. 2: If angels or demons assume bodies, this is not because they need to, but either for our instruction (as regards the good angels) or for our deception (as regards the wicked angels). But an imaginary vision would be enough for either of these things. Therefore, it seems that they do not assume bodies.

Obj. 3: God appeared to the Patriarchs in the Old Testament just as angels are stated to have done, as Augustine proves. (Augustine, On the Trinity 3.11–12 (PL 42:881–86).) Now, we must not say that God assumed a body except in the mystery of the Incarnation. Therefore, neither do angels assume bodies when they appear.

Obj. 4: Just as it naturally befits the soul to be united to a body, so is it naturally befitting to an angel not to be united to a body. Now, the soul cannot leave the body at will. Therefore, neither can an angel assume a body.

Obj. 5: No finite substance can perform several activities at the same time. Now, an angel is a finite substance. Therefore, he cannot simultaneously administer to us and assume a body.

Obj. 6: There should be proportion between the thing assumed and the one assuming it. But there is no proportion between an angel and a body, since they belong to wholly different genera and are therefore incompatible with each other. Therefore, an angel cannot assume a body.

Obj. 7: If an angel assumes a body, this will be either a heavenly body or one with the nature of the four elements. But it cannot be a heavenly body, since the body of the heavens cannot be divided or forced out of its place. Nor can it be an igneous body, for then he would consume the other bodies with which he came into contract, nor an aerial body, since air is shapeless, nor an aqueous body, for water does not retain shape, nor an earthly body, since they disappear suddenly, like the angel who appeared to Tobias (Tobit 12:21). Therefore, they do not assume any kind of body.

Obj. 8: Every assumption terminates in some kind of union. But none of the three modes of unity mentioned by the Philosopher in Physics 1 can result from an angel and a body; for they cannot be one by continuity, by indivisibility, or in account. (Aristotle, Physics 1.2, 185b5–25.) Therefore, an angel cannot assume a body.

Obj. 9: If angels assume bodies, the bodies assumed by them either really are or are not as they appear to be. If they really are, since sometimes they appear as men, the body assumed by them will be a real human body, which is impossible unless we say that an angel assumed a man, which would seem to be improbable. And if they are not, this again is seemingly unfitting, since pretense is unbecoming to the angels of truth. Therefore, in no way does an angel assume a body.

Obj. 10: As stated above, angels and demons cannot produce effects in these bodies except by the mediation of natural powers. (Q. 6, aa. 3–5.) Now, natural powers are not implanted in corporeal things for forming the species of the human body otherwise than by a determinate mode of generation, and through a determinate seed; and it is plain that angels do not assume a body in this way. And the same argument applies to the other bodily forms in which angels appear at times. Therefore, this cannot result from their assuming bodies.

Obj. 11: In order to put a body in motion, the mover must influence the body moved. But it cannot do this without some kind of contact. Therefore, because an angel cannot be in contact with bodies, it would seem that he cannot move a body, nor consequently assume one.

Obj. 12: Someone will reply to this that angels by their command move bodies with local movement.

On the contrary, as is proved in Physics 7, the mover and the moved must be together. (Aristotle, Physics 7.2, 243a28–244a25.) But it does not follow from the fact that an angel commands something by his will that he is together with the body that is said to be moved by him. Therefore, he cannot command it by his mere will.

Obj. 13: As stated above, bodily motion does not obey angels at a nod, as regards its formation. (Q. 6, aa. 3–5.) Now, shape is a kind of form. Therefore, by his mere command an angel cannot shape a body so that it have the appearance of a man or something of the kind wherein he might appear.

Obj. 14: The Gloss on Psalm 11:4, the Lord is in his holy temple, says that, (Glossa interlinearis, at Psalm 10:5 (in Glossa ordinaria 3, 509–10).) although the demons exercise an external power over idols, they cannot reside in them or, for the same reason, in other bodies. But if they assume bodies, they must be in the bodies assumed. Therefore, we must not say that they assume bodies.

Obj. 15: If they assume bodies, they are united either to the whole body or to part of it. If they are united to a part only, they will be unable to move the whole body unless they move one part by means of another; and this would seem to be impossible unless the assumed body has organs appointed for movement, and this is peculiar to ensouled bodies. And if they are united immediately to the whole body, the angel must be in each part of the body assumed, and of course wholly so, since he is indivisible. Hence, he will be in several places at the same time, which belongs to God alone. Therefore, an angel cannot assume a body.

On the contrary, it is related that the angels who appeared to Abraham came to him in assumed bodies (Gen 18:2), and the same is said of the angel who appeared to Tobias (Tobit 3:17). (Douay-Rheims: Tobit 3:25.)

I answer that some of those who believe the statements of sacred Scripture about angelic apparitions have said that an angel never assumes a body. This is clear for Rabbi Moses, who holds this view; this is why he says that all the apparitions of angels related in the sacred Scriptures occur in a vision of prophesy, that is, in an imaginary vision, the seer being either awake or asleep. (Moses Maimonides, The Guide for the Perplexed 1.49.)

But this does not safeguard the truth of Scripture, because the very expressions used by Scripture indicate what things are real occurrences and what occur through a mode of prophetic vision. Thus, when we ought to understand an apparition to be a mere vision, it employs words denoting a vision, for example: the spirit lifted me up between the earth and the heaven and brought me in the vision of God in Jerusalem (Ezek 8:3). Therefore, it is clear that when things are simply stated as occurrences, we are to take them as such, and this applies to many apparitions in the Old Testament.

We must admit, then, without any qualification that the angels do sometimes assume a body by fashioning a sensible body and offering it to external or corporeal vision, even as at other times, by producing forms in the imagination, they cause themselves to appear in imaginary visions.

This is fitting for three reasons.

First and chiefly, because all the apparitions of the Old Testament were ordered to that apparition whereby the Son of God appeared visibly on the earth, as Augustine says. (Augustine, On the Trinity 3.11–12 (PL 42:881–86).) Therefore, since the Son of God took to himself a real body, and not an imaginary one (as the Manicheans pretended), it was fitting that the angels also should appear to men by assuming real bodies.

A second reason may be gathered from the words of Dionysius in his letter to Titus. (Pseudo-Dionysius, Letter to Titus, Letter 9 (PG 3:1103–18).) Thus, he says there that, among other reasons why in the divine Scriptures divine things are made known to us under sensible signs, there is this one, that the whole man may be perfected by participating as far as possible in divine things, by grasping the intelligible truth not only by his intellect but also by perceiving it in his sensible nature by means of sensible forms, which are images as it were of divine things. Therefore, in like manner, seeing that angels appear to man in order to perfect him, it is fitting that they not only enlighten his intelligence by intellectual vision, but also that they profit his imagination and exterior senses by imaginary visions, namely, of the bodies they assume. Therefore, this threefold vision is mentioned by Augustine. (Augustine, On the Literal Interpretation of Genesis 12.7, 12.24 (PL 34:459–60, 471–72).)

A third reason may be that, although the angels are by nature above us, it is possible for us by grace to attain an equality and fellowship with them; for it is written that they will be as the angels in heaven (Matt 22:30). Hence, in order to display their companionability and kinship to us, they become conformed to us in their own way by assuming a body; and thus, by assuming what is ours, they enable our intellects to rise to what is peculiar to themselves, just as the Son of God, by descending to us, raised us to things divine. As to the demons, when they transform themselves into angels of light, they endeavor to deceive us by doing what the good angels do for our profit.

Reply Obj. 1: An angel does not assume every body that he moves. To assume is, as it were, to “take to oneself” (ad se sumere). Accordingly, an angel assumes a body, not that he may unite it to his nature as a man takes food, nor to unite it to his person as the Son of God took human nature, but so that he might represent himself, in the same way as intelligible things can be represented through sensible things. Thus, an angel is said to assume a body when he fashions himself a body in such a way that it is adapted to represent him, as Dionysius explains at the end of The Celestial Hierarchy, by saying that the bodily shapes signify the angelic properties. (Pseudo-Dionysius, The Celestial Hierarchy 5 (PG 3:195–98).)

Reply Obj. 2: As already stated, not only imaginary but also corporeal vision is useful for our instruction.

Reply Obj. 3: As Augustine says, all the apparitions of God related in the Old Testament were effected by the ministry of the angels, who fashion certain forms, whether imaginary or corporeal, whereby they lead the seer’s mind to God, (Augustine, On the Trinity 3.11–12 (PL 42:881–86).) even as it is possible to lead man to God by sensible signs. Accordingly, in these apparitions, the angels assumed the bodies that appeared, yet God is said to have appeared in them, because he was the end whereto the angels intended to raise man’s mind by means of these representations. And this is why in these apparitions Scripture sometimes states that God appeared, and sometimes an angel.

Reply Obj. 4: Nothing has a power that surpasses its own being, since everything’s power flows from its essence or presupposes it. And since the soul is united through its being to the body as its form, it is not in its power to release itself from union with the body; and in like manner, it is not in the angel’s power to unite himself in his being to a body as its form, but he can assume a body in the manner indicated above, to which body he is united as its mover and as what is expressed by a shape is united to the shape.

Reply Obj. 5: These two activities—the assumption of a body and ministering to us—are ordered the one to the other; therefore there is nothing to prevent both being done at the same time.

Reply Obj. 6: Between an angel and a body there cannot be proportion of commensuration, since their respective magnitudes are not of one same genus or of the same account. But nothing prevents an angel from having a certain relationship to a body such as that of a mover to the thing moved, or of what is expressed by a shape to the shape; and this may be called proportion.

Reply Obj. 7: An angel can assume a body from any element as well as from several elements mixed together. It is, however, more fitting that he assume a body from the air, which condenses easily so as to take and retain shape and reflect various colors from other bodies, as may be seen in the clouds; and as far as the present question is concerned, there is no difference between pure air and steam or smoke, which tend to the nature of air.

Reply Obj. 8: By that division the one is divided simply. However, an angel is not united to a body in this way, but only in a qualified sense, such as that of the mover with the thing moved, or what is expressed by a shape with the shape itself, as stated above.

Reply Obj. 9: Those bodies that the angels assume do indeed have real forms as regards what the senses can perceive, forms that are essentially sensible (for example, color and shape), but not as regards the nature of a species, which is sensible accidentally. Nor must this be any pretense, since angels do not present human forms to their eyes in order to be taken for a man, but so that angelic powers may be known by means of human characteristics; thus, neither are metaphorical expressions false wherein certain things are signified based on their likeness to others.

Reply Obj. 10: Although the natural powers of bodies do not suffice to produce the real species of a human body except by the way of generation, they suffice to produce a likeness of a human body as regards its color, shape, and like external accidents. This would seem to apply particularly to certain of these accidents which can be produced by the local movement of certain bodies, by which vapors are condensed or rarefied, and clouds given various shapes.

Reply Obj. 11: An angel moving a body induces the movement therein and touches it not by corporeal contact but by a spiritual one, through its own power.

Reply Obj. 12: A power must execute the angel’s command; whence he must be in a certain spiritual contact with the body that he moves.

Reply Obj. 13: Shape is a form that can be produced in matter by cutting, and condensing, or rarefying, or drawing or some like kind of movement; therefore, the same argument does not apply to this kind of form as to others.

Reply Obj. 14: We may understand something as being “in” a body in two ways.

First, as contained within the boundaries of its quantity; and in this way, nothing prevents a demon from being in a body.

Second, as present in the essence of a thing as giving it being and acting in the thing; this belongs to God alone, although he is not a part of anything’s essence.

Moreover, the sense of the Gloss is that the demons were not in idols as idolaters imagined them to be, namely, such that the idol and the indwelling spirit became one thing.

Reply Obj. 15: An angel is wholly in the whole body assumed and in each and every part of it, for the same reason the soul is as well; for though he is not the form of the body assumed, as the soul is, he is yet its mover, and the mover and the moved must be together. (Aristotle, Physics 7.2, 244a24–25.) Yet, it does not follow that he is in several places at the same time, because the whole assumed body in relation to the angel is as one place.