I. To the Question

310. To the question [n.284] I answer yes - because everything that is receptive of the forms of some genus, and that is not of itself determined to any one of them, nor is unlimited, can be moved or changed from one of these forms toward another (this proposition is plain of itself, because the subject includes the predicate); but an angel is receptive of some ‘where’ definitively and not circumscriptively (as is plain above, in the first question on the place of an angel [nn.245-246]), nor is he unlimited as to all of them, because he is not immense; therefore he can be moved continuously from one ‘where’ to another ‘where’. And that he can do so continuously is plain, because between two ‘wheres’ there are infinite intermediate ‘wheres’ (which is proved by the continuous movement of a body through all those ‘wheres’); now an angel can pass through all those ‘wheres’ such that he is not in any of them save indivisibly - and consequently he cannot pass through them all unless he is moved continuously.

311. There is also a confirmation of this, that the blessed soul will be equal to an angel, according to the promise of the Savior in Matthew 22.30; but the blessed soul -rather the most blessed soul - that is Christ’s was moved locally, because it descended into hell, as an article of faith says [sc. in the Creeds].

312. From the Scriptures too it is plain that angels are sometimes sent in an assumed body [Genesis 19.1-22, Numbers 22.22-35, Judges 6.11-22, 13.3-21, Tobit 5.512, 22, Matthew 18.2-7, Luke 1.11-20, 26-38, 2.9-15, Acts 12.7-10]; and if they were then moved along with the body, it seems that there was some passive motion in them different formally from the passive motion of the body itself, because they were not formally anything of the body itself.

313. Likewise it is credible that they are frequently sent without a body, as in the case of the angel sent to Joseph about the conception of the Blessed Virgin [Matthew 1.20-21, also 2.12-13, 19-20].