Article 4 — Whether there is an agent and a potential intellect in an angel?

Objection 1: It would seem that there is both an agent and a potential intellect in an angel. The Philosopher says (De Anima iii, text. 17) that, in the soul, just as in every nature, there is something whereby it can become all things, and there is something whereby it can make all things. But an angel is a kind of nature. Therefore there is an agent and a potential intellect in an angel.

Obj. 2: Further, the proper function of the potential intellect is to receive; whereas to enlighten is the proper function of the agent intellect, as is made clear in De Anima iii, text. 2, 3, 18. But an angel receives enlightenment from a higher angel, and enlightens a lower one. Therefore there is in him an agent and a potential intellect.

On the contrary, The distinction of agent and potential intellect in us is in relation to the phantasms, which are compared to the potential intellect as colors to the sight; but to the agent intellect as colors to the light, as is clear from De Anima iii, text. 18. But this is not so in the angel. Therefore there is no agent and potential intellect in the angel.

I answer that, The necessity for admitting a potential intellect in us is derived from the fact that we understand sometimes only in potentiality, and not actually. Hence there must exist some power, which, previous to the act of understanding, is in potentiality to intelligible things, but which becomes actuated in their regard when it apprehends them, and still more when it reflects upon them. This is the power which is denominated the potential intellect.

The necessity for admitting an agent intellect is due to this—that the natures of the material things which we understand do not exist outside the soul, as immaterial and actually intelligible, but are only intelligible in potentiality so long as they are outside the soul. Consequently it is necessary that there should be some power capable of rendering such natures actually intelligible: and this power in us is called the agent intellect.

But each of these necessities is absent from the angels. They are neither sometimes understanding only in potentiality, with regard to such things as they naturally apprehend; nor, again, are their intelligible objects intelligible in potentiality, but they are actually such; for they first and principally understand immaterial things, as will appear later (Q. 84, A. 7; Q. 85, A. 1). Therefore there cannot be an agent and a potential intellect in them, except equivocally.

Reply Obj. 1: As the words themselves show, the Philosopher understands those two things to be in every nature in which there chances to be generation or making. Knowledge, however, is not generated in the angels, but is present naturally. Hence there is no need for admitting an agent and a potential intellect in them.

Reply Obj. 2: It is the function of the agent intellect to enlighten, not another intellect, but things which are intelligible in potentiality, in so far as by abstraction it makes them to be actually intelligible. It belongs to the potential intellect to be in potentiality with regard to things which are naturally capable of being known, and sometimes to apprehend them actually. Hence for one angel to enlighten another does not belong to the notion of an agent intellect: neither does it belong to the potential intellect for the angel to be enlightened with regard to supernatural mysteries, to the knowledge of which he is sometimes in potentiality. But if anyone wishes to call these by the names of agent and potential intellect, he will then be speaking equivocally; and it is not about names that we need trouble.