De Moor IX:5: Angels as Creatures, Part 4

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Upon this Question I impose an end, by citing the consent, to which MARESIUS appeals, Systemate Theologico, common place V, § 31, note a, page 217b, both of the Most Illustrious COCCEIUS, who in his Summa Theologiæ, chapter XVI, § 31, has:  Angels are not Everywhere, as Durandus[1] maintained, but in a certain place; and in a place, not as περιέχοντι/encompassing, through co-extension and commensuration, with a part located outside of a part, and not in a place as a place, but definitively, that is, here and not elsewhere; and of JULIUS CÆSAR SCALIGER, who in his de Subtilitate, Exercitation CCCLIX, Section V, wrote:  Not by operation is an Angel in its Place, but by definition:  in this manner, I say, he is there, not here.  In matters removed from sense, the human tongue stammers.  For operation is not a necessary accompaniment of beings; but Where is a necessary circumstance of all beings, with God alone excepted.  Indeed, that this opinion, resting upon Sacred Scripture, was approved by all Christian antiquity, and by the wisest and most acute Philosophers, MARESIUS affirms in the same place.  And that I have not rashly considered above that saying, What is nowhere is not, as a universal Axiom and common notion, is evident from the things that MARESIUS in the same passage has:  In one word, says he, those that deny that the Angels have any Where, dash against common sense, according to which the very Gentiles have established, that what is nowhere is altogether without being.  That saying belongs to ARISTOTLE, book IV, Physics, chapter I (opera, tome I, page 489):  Τὰ ὄντα πάντες ὑπολαμβάνουσιν εἶναι ποῦ·  τὸ γὰρ μὴ ὂν, οὐδαμοῦ εἶναι, all beings presuppose being in a place:  for to be nowhere is to be nothing.  This saying belongs to CICERO, book I of Tusculan Disputations (chapter VI) concerning souls after death:  If they exist, they are not able to be nowhere.  That saying of PLATO in Parmenides, with Clauberg[2] himself citing him in his de Cognitione Dei et nostri, Exercitation LXVI, note 4:  What is nowhere is absolutely nothing.  AUGUSTINE gave his voice in support of that truth, de Animæ immortalitate, chapter I (opera, tome I, column 287):  Whatever is, is not able to be nowhere:  compare VRIESIUS’ Exercitationem de Mente sola Cogitatione, § 8; VAN MASTRICHT’S Gangrænam Novitatum Cartesianarum, posterior Section, chapter XXIII, § 1-6, pages 403-408; ANTONIUS HULSIUS,[3] Theologicis hypothesibus, disputation XXX, § 20, part 2, pages 391, 392.

Now, from the assertion of this determinate Presence of Angels in some certain Place our AUTHOR in his Compendio deduces a sure consequence, that multiple Angels are indeed able to be in the same Place; but, that the thesis is false, which affirms that One Angel is able at one and the same time to be present at Multiple and scattered Places; which is found in the work of WITTICH, Theologia pacifica, § 183:  Since the presence of Angels, says he, only consists in their operation ad extra, there shall be no contradiction, should we say that an Angel is able at one and the same time to produce two or more operations ad extra, and so is able to be in two or more spaces, that is, with respect to those diverse operations.  But, as Wittich derives this Conclusion concerning the possible Presence of Angels in multiple scattered Places from the supposed Presence of Angels only with respect to external Operations; so, and we have refuted this Premise, and shown its futility, we suppose that the Consequence derived hence will fall of itself.  Neither is Wittich helped by the things that he additionally produces in confirmation of this Conclusion:

α.  Either the second hypothesis is false, concerning an Angel operating by his mere efficacious Will, which our AUTHOR will refute in § 10.

β.  Or the history of the Angel slaying in one night in the camp of the Assyrians one hundred and eighty-five thousand men, 2 Kings 19:35, where Wittich posits, that nothing else is able to be thought to be in the Angel, through which so many thousands of men were killed, except his bare Will; and then he supposes, that the same Angel is easily able to be conceived to have willed at one and the same to time to kill the man that was stationed at the beginnings of the camp, and that man that was in its extremities, and so with respect to these two Operations was at one and the same time present in two divers Places.  But our AUTHOR and others observe, 1.  that one hundred and eighty-five thousand are read to have been killed in one night, but not in one and the same Moment.  2.  That Angels are able to operate now here and now elsewhere, not indeed in one and the same instant, but with only an incredibly brief interval intervening, because of their wonderful Power and swiftness, whereby they are moved most rapidly from one place to another.  3.  That the manner of that slaying of so many thousands of men is not evident to us.  4.  That, although an Angel is present only in some determinate Space, the same Space with respect to quantity is not easily to be determined by us:  compare below, § 10; VAN MASTRICHT, Gangræna Novitatum Cartesianarum, posterior Section, chapter XXIV, § 1-6, pages 409-416.  Among other theses, the Curators of the Academy at Leiden, on January 16, 1676, judges that this also was to be marked with censure, that Angels are able to be in scattered Spaces, and to operate in them at the same time:  see what might be alleged for excusing the same in HEIDANUS’[4] Consideratien, etc., pages 82-87.

[1] Durandus of Saint-Pourçain (c. 1275-c. 1332) was a French Dominican philosopher and theologian.  He lectured and wrote commentaries on Lombard’s Sentences.  In some matters, he differed from the great Dominican theologian, Thomas Aquinas, and became known as the Doctor Resolutissimus for his firm adherence to his novel positions.

[2] Johann Clauberg (1622-1665) was a German Reformed theologian and Cartesian philosopher.  He served as Professor of Philosophy and Theology at Herborn (1649-1651), and as Professor of Theology, Ethics, and Politics at Duisburg (1652-1665).

[3] Antonius Hulsius (1615-1685) was a Dutch Reformed philologist and theologian.

[4] Abraham Heidanus (1597-1678) was a Dutch Reformed minister and Cocceian theologian.  He served as professor of theology at Leiden from 1648 to 1676, but was ultimately dismissed for his Cartesianism.