B. Rejection of the Opinions

491. Against the first position [n.489] I argue thus:

For he seems to contradict himself. For he seems to posit that an angel exists in place through operation; and if he is understanding the operation of an angel that passes over into a body, then that operation will exist in time or in an instant of common time; but if he is understanding an angel’s immanent operation, namely intellection or volition, then (from what was said earlier in the discussion of aeviternity [nn.153-67]) that operation is neither in our common time nor in any other time but is, according to him, in aeviternity. Therefore etc.

492. Besides, his reasoning does not seem conclusive, because then it follows that, in the ultimate instant of pronouncing the words of consecration [sc. in the eucharist], the true form of bread would be there that was there before during the whole time of the pronouncing.

493. Likewise it follows that, when air has remained in darkness for the whole of a time, the air would be in darkness in the ultimate instant of the illumining of this dark air, and thus it follows that illumination does not take place in an instant.ST Ia q.53 a.3: “But sometimes the term ‘to which’ is immediate to the term ‘from which’, as in the case of those changes where the change is from privation to form..., as with illumination; and in these changes too there must be a time annexed to them, since it is clear...that the air is not illumined and in darkness at the same time. But not in such a way that the departure or passage from one extreme to the other takes place in time, but one of the extremes is conjoined to the local motion of the sun (as with illumination), and in the term of that motion there is also a term of the change. Hence all such instantaneous changes are terms of the same motion.” ⁴¹

494. And if you say that this illumining is ‘the term of a local motion’ whereby the sun is made present to the medium - on the contrary:

Let the sun be posited as created de novo and the medium as pre-existing. Then too, although the illumining of the medium (done by the sun made present in this way) goes along with the ‘where’ terminating the local motion, yet the illumining is not per se the term of the local motion but is some ‘where’ acquired by the sun itself; nor even can this happen without the air having remained in darkness up to that instant.

495. Further, if an angel - whatever time he is resting at - has to have moved in the ultimate moment of that time at the same ‘where’, then he never move, either in continuous time or in discrete time.

496. Proof of the consequence:

I take some part of the time at which the angel is at rest and at which, consequently, he changes in the ultimate moment of it.

Even if he should change in some instant of discrete time, I ask: is that instant immediate or mediate with our instant that terminates the time of his resting? If mediate then between our instant (at which the angel has moved) and that instant there is a time in between, at which too the angel would be resting; therefore in and at the ultimate instant of that time he will have changed, and so in that mediate instant (at which he was posited as changing) he does not change. But if the instant is immediate, I ask what within our time corresponds to it? If an instant, then an instant in our time is immediate to an instant [sc. of the angel’s time] (so our time is discrete [sc. as the angel’s time is posited to be discrete]); if time corresponds to it, then the angel does not in that instant instantaneously change, because - according to you - that instant coexists with a part of our time, in which or at which he can continuously change or be at rest.

497. It is because of this argument perhaps [sc. the last argument in the previous paragraph] that the second position [sc. of Henry, n.490] posits that between two instants of discrete time a quasi-intermediate rest of the angel occurs along with an intermediate part of our time.

498. But it was proved above [nn.161-62] against this second position that there is no need for the operation of an angel to have duration along with an instant of our time; so neither will that operation be the reason for the resting of the angel at the term of a sudden local motion. To say ‘therefore it will also be necessary to posit that the angel rests after the sudden local motion’ does not seem to be an argument but merely a subterfuge, to prevent our time being posited to be discrete from the fact that such local moving of an angel is posited to be a discrete time.

499. Further, as to what it [sc. the second position] posits that in such a ‘now’ an angel can locally move, so that he has several equal ‘wheres’ all at once between which there will only be an order of nature, or an order in imagination and not in duration - it seems to be impossible that an angel should, by his own power, have several equal ‘wheres’ “in one instant of his time and of ours”. And this is made clear by the example of the heavy object (which they [sc. Henry and his supporters] adduce for the opposite): for if a vacuum could give way to a body placed in it (and thus if there were motion in a vacuum), there would be no intelligibility in a heavy object’s being in several ‘wheres’ equal to it, but it would be first in one ‘where’ before it was in another ‘where’, and first in a prior ‘where’ before it was in a later ‘where’ [n.431]; and one part of the heavy object would be in a place first in duration before another part of it was.

500. And what he himself [sc. Henry] adduces about a body that passes through an infinity of ‘wheres’ in a finite time, because of the fact that it is only in those ‘wheres’ potentially - this does well prove that the time of an angel can be made of infinite parts of the same quantity and that yet in that time he can pass through an infinite space; but it does not prove that he can pass through so much space in a single instant; rather it proves the opposite; for a body passes through a whole space thus in some period of time, because in different parts of the time it passes through different parts of the space.