The Ordinatio of John Duns Scotus :: Ordinatio. Book 2. Distinctions 4 to 44. ::

Single Question. Whether an Angel can assume a Body in which he may Exercise Works of Life

1. About the eighth distinction I ask whether an angel can assume a body in which he may exercise works of life.

2. That he cannot.

Because, if he does, then he has a greater unity with the body assumed than with one not assumed, because ‘to assume’ is ‘to take to oneself’; but this does not seem possible, because he cannot be the form of the body (as is plain, for he is naturally a separate form), nor can the body be assumed by him in unity of supposit, in the way the Word assumed our nature; therefore there will only be the unity of mover to movable. But he can have such unity to a non-assumed body (as to the heaven which he moves); therefore etc .

3. Further, second, if an angel assumed a body, he would either assume an elemental body - which does not seem to be the case, because that body does not have the accidents of body, as color and the like qualities that appear; or he would assume a mixed body, which seems not to be the case; first because an angel does not seem to have the active power for mixing the elements according to the mixture of a mixed body, for since the form of a mixed body is a substantial form, a devil would be able to transmute matter into a substantial form immediately, which is false, because he can do it neither by natural action (for he is not naturally determined by the Creator for such action), nor artificially (for, according to the Philosopher, Meteorology 4.3.380b16-24, “art does not follow nature in perfection of effect,” and the gloss says this on Exodus 7.12, “And the rod of Aaron devoured, etc.”); second, because the whole agency of nature cannot generate a mixed body as perfect as the human body. Nor does the angel assume a celestial body - as is plain, because a celestial body does not receive foreign impressions nor, consequently, the operations of life.

4. Further, third, if an angel can exercise the operations of life in an assumed body, then there is there something alive. The consequent is false, because a body is not alive save by a form of life informing it; but there is no such form there. The proof of the consequence is that vital operations belong to the composite (On the Soul 1.1.403a5-7, On Sense and Sensed Object 1.436a6-11) - because a form separate from matter cannot transmute matter, Averroes on Metaphysics 7 com.28; but in the acts of life, at least the acts of the vegetative soul, there is transmutation; therefore etc .

5. To the opposite:

Genesis 18.1-19 on the three angels appearing to Abraham, and the whole of Tobit about Raphael, and Judges 12.2-23 about the angel appearing to Manuel and his wife.

I. To the Question

6. In this question three things need to be looked at according to what the three arguments [nn.2-4] touch on.

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.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.¹²

B. What Sort of Body an Angel assumes

8. Second I say that an angel does not assume a celestial body [n.3]. Nor does he assume an elemental body in which he may appear, because he does not visibly appear in an elemental body, nor is an elemental body susceptive of the accidents in which he appears [n.3]. But mixed bodies - already generated by nature - he can assume, as the corpse of a dead man or a stone or something similar.

9. However, when he assumes some body which does not seem to have been first caused or formed by natural causes but seems to be as it were caused then and to disappear at once - complete with operation - (as was the case with Raphael and the angel appearing to Manuel [Tobit 12.21, Judges 13.20-21]), then it seems probable that the body is a mixed one, because of the accidents that appear in the body, but not mixed with full mixture, both because such a mixed body could not be suddenly formed thus by generation - and because such a body would not be of a nature to be generated save according to the determinate process of nature, and the sort of body there is not according to nature (for example, if an angel appears in the body of a man not previously generated by nature - which body would not be of a nature to be generated save in a mother). Nor can it be said that an angel at once induces the form in the matter, because he cannot induce a natural form - but all he can do is use active and passive elements together in a suitable way and put them next to each other in a place suitable to the celestial bodies, so that a particular form may be induced that is of a nature to be induced by such particular celestial agents. Therefore, a body that is as it were suddenly formed and dissolved is mixed with imperfect mixture (of the sort that can be induced suddenly as it were by natural agents, when they are brought close to the elements), such that this sort of body is more like an impression, which is something imperfectly mixed; and a sign of this comes from corruption, because, when such a body disappears, there does not remain anything of the sort of body that the assumed body would naturally be immediately resolved into if it had been perfectly mixed (for the body of a man, if it were perfectly mixed, is not of a nature to return to anything but a corpse); rather, it is resolved at once into elements, just as it was able to be immediately generated from elements because of their imperfect mixing.

C. What Works of Life an Angel can Exercise in an Assumed Body

10. On the third point [n.6] I say that an angel can cause all local motion in an assumed body - and so the motion that seems to be by progress, the motion too that would be of inhaling and exhaling, the motion of eyelids and hands and the like. And the reason is that there is no imperfect body in the universe that does not have in its active virtue some ‘where’; the point is plain about a heavy body with respect to the center; therefore much more does an angel have this with respect to a body.

11. But of the natural operations that consist in doing and undergoing, of which sort are the sense operations - an angel has no power for these, because these are not of a nature to be received save in a thing composed of an organic body (at least a perfectly mixed one) and of a soul, to the extent the soul has perfective power; and neither of these is present there [sc. in the imperfectly mixed body assumed by an angel], neither such mixture nor perfecting soul - and so in such a composite body there is simply no sensation. The operations too that consist truly in true action, of which sort are the vegetative operations, do not belong to that composite body, because these operations are of a nature to belong to an animate composite body (which is not the sort there), or of a nature to belong to a perfectly mixed body (for example, if flesh were to generate flesh [sc. by nutrition]); but neither exists there.

12. Now as to the knowing which the angel seems to have about particular facts, hearing or seeing them, this is nothing other than intellection; and the angel can express that intellection by forming words and moving the tongue locally. As to the vegetative acts too that appear - if we are speaking of true nutrition, nothing there is nourished; but if we speak of the eating that precedes nutrition, it is nothing other than the division of the food by the local motion of the jaws and the drawing of it into the stomach by local motion (and then the exhaling and resolving of it into humors and elements can take place) - and these local movements can be done in a body by the active virtue of an angel.

13. And as has been said about the nutritive power, so must it be said about the power of growth, because there is no nutrition or growth there; however there can be juxtaposition there, if the angel wishes suddenly to add elements - which can be imperfectly mixed for such imperfect mixture - to his [assumed] body, so that it may seem to grow.

14. And should you say, ‘if eating is not an operation of life, then the argument about Christ’s eating with his disciples - to prove his true resurrection [Luke 24.41-42, Acts 10.40] - is not valid, which is against the saints,’ I reply:

There are many other arguments in the Gospel more efficacious than this one to prove Christ’s resurrection - and this one, along with the others, does well prove it, although not by itself alone. Or I say that Christ’s eating was a true eating, ordered to true nutrition, because it is not unacceptable to me that a glorious body could convert non-glorious body into itself, just as it can exist together with a non-glorious body. Nor is it corruptible for the reason ‘that it can convert another into itself’; for God could make a glorious body in the smallest quantity and grow it through eating, and yet nothing of what was nourished or grown would be corrupted. But in the sort of bodies assumed by angels there is no nutrition or improvement but only addition and juxtaposition.

15. However, as to the generative power, one must say that this happens by virtue of semen, deposited by the father into the woman, in which is preserved the virtue of the father, as is commonly said. If a bad angel can get that semen from another - by being a succubus - and keep it in its natural quality (agreeable to its natural generation) until he transfers it, he himself does nothing there save that he first receives (in the assumed body) what is moved locally by its being deposited, and then he moves this locally to another part where he is an incubus; and if the semen has not lost its natural quality before it is received in the mother, then generation can happen through it just as if it were immediately transferred by the first depositor into the same mother. And in this way is generation attributed, not indeed to a good angel (because far be it from a good angel to mix himself up in such vileness), but to a demon, whom it befits to generate like this -because the same demon, first a succubus and then an incubus, receives the semen transferred by the first depositor and next transfers it into the mother.

II. To the Principal Arguments

16. To the first principal argument [n.2] I say that the heaven is not said to be assumed, because an angel does not assume the heaven for any special assumption or form, and especially that whereby he intends to appear visibly to us; likewise, an angel that moves the heaven moves it perpetually and so does not assume a body temporarily. The ‘assuming’ in question here is appropriated for a body that is moved for a time, and moved for the sake of some effect that will visibly appear to men.

17. To the second [n.3] I say the answer is clear from what has been said [n.9], that an angel assumes a body imperfectly mixed - which indeed the angel himself does not bring into existence by his own power, but he only unites mixable things with each other and in respect of the heaven, in such proportion as such form can be induced through the virtue of the heaven and the mixable things.

18. To the third [n.4], it is plain [nn.10-12] that no act of the vegetative or cognitive power belongs properly to an angel in a body, or even to the body, but only acts of the motive power do; not, to be sure, acts of the organic motive power, of which sort is the motive power of an animate body (because its acts belong to the composite, as do also acts of the cognitive and vegetative powers), but acts of a higher motive power whereby an angel can move from place to place a body that does not disproportionately exceed the angel’s motive power.

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