Article 7

In the seventh article, the question is raised whether the angel has an infinite power in relation to inferior things.

This is able to be either understood well or badly. For if it is so understood in the sense that an angel has infinite power over that which is below it, the interpretation is false and erroneous because some angel would then be able to create something below itself and to turn anything at all into anything at all, which is clearly false. It must be understood, then, that the power of an angel follows upon its nature. For just as the finite and the infinite are found in its nature, so also are they found in its power. (On created things having something of the infinite in them, see also Aquinas' commentary on proposition 17 of the Book of Causes and Summa Theologica I, q.10 a.5 ad 1.) Now the angel has a finite nature in comparison to what is superior to it; namely God, who is the infinite good and infinite being in whose likeness an angel finitely participates. Since, however, an angel does not have its form in matter, it is not limited or contracted by some matter as natural forms are. Accordingly, the power of an angel is also finite inasmuch as it is extended to determinate effects to the degree that it finitely participates in the likeness of the first cause. It is, however, infinite inasmuch as its power is not contracted as material and bodily forms are since they must act according to the exigency of matter and of an organic body. And in this way it should be said that it has an infinite power in regard to subsequent duration because its nature is such that it is able to endure perpetually since it is not measured by some period of time.