A. What it is for an Angel to assume a Body

7. First, what it is for an angel to assume a body.

To assume is not, to be sure, to inform a body, nor to unite it to himself hypostatically, but only to be the intrinsic mover of a body and to be there definitively, which is a way of being there other than by operation, as is plain above about the location of an angel [Ord. 2 d.2 nn.310, 246]; and also - on account of the proof that God is everywhere ‘since he operates everywhere’ - because if being there definitively and operation were the same mode of being in something, there would be a begging of the question and the argument would proceed from the same to the same.Tr.: that is, if ‘definitively there’ and ‘operation’ meant the same, the argument ‘an angel is definitively there because he operates there’ would reduce to ‘an angel operates there because he operates there’. ¹¹ In addition an angel is said to assume according to this, for he assumes a body - that is ‘takes it to himself’ - at the moment when he uses it as an instrument for exercising the operations proper to himself; and this assuming is not said to happen when an assumed body is moved by local progression, because such motion fits the end for which such body is assumed.Tr.: that is, an angel who, for example, moves a heavenly body is not said to assume the heavenly body he moves, for the heavenly body’s motion is the proper end of that body. ¹²