Question Seven. Whether an Angel can Move in an Instant

486. Eleventh I ask whether an angel can move in an instant.

487. That he cannot:

Because then a greater power could move in less than an instant. Proof of the consequence: for thus does the Philosopher argue in Physics 6.3.234a22-31, that if a greater power were to move something in time, the greatest power would move it in an instant.

488. On the contrary:

Some movings by some moving bodies exist in an instant, as the illumination of a medium; therefore too the much stronger moving of an angel can exist in an instant, because the power of the mover is greater and the resistance of the medium smaller.

I. To the Question

A. The Opinions of Thomas Aquinas and Henry of Ghent

489. Here the statement is made that an angel can move in an instant, not indeed of continuous time but of discrete time; for the proof see Thomas.ST la q.53 a.3 ad 3: “Now the time of motion of an angel can be non-continuous, and thus an angel can be in one place at one instant and in another place at another instant, without any time existing in between. But if the time of motion of angel is continuous, the angel goes through an infinity of places during the whole time preceding the ultimate ‘now’.” Ibid. in corp.: “And thus it is clear that to rest for a whole time in something, as in a whiteness, is to be in that something at any instant of the time; hence it is not possible for something to rest for the whole preceding time in one term and afterwards, in the last instant of the time, to be in another term... But in the local motion of an angel there is no term of any other continuous motion.; hence it is impossible to say that he is for the whole time in some place and is, in the ultimate ‘now’, in some other place, but one must assign an ultimate ‘now’ in which he was in the preceding place.” ³⁹

490. Another doctor speaks about this time; see Henry.Quodlibet 13 q.7: “And the time measuring these sudden changes of an angel is a discrete quantity., but its parts have no permanence but exist only in passing through, and the individual parts coexist with the individual instants of our time; nor do these parts have any continuity among themselves, because between any two instants and the aforesaid changes [of the angel] one must posit a stopping of the angel at the moment at which the preceding change ends, where the angel does not change but rests through some interval and part of our time.” ⁴⁰

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.

C. Scotus’ own Response

501. I say therefore to the question [n.486] that a plurality is not to be posited without necessity,A version of Ockham’s famous razor, which at least in this form is not original to Ockham. ⁴² and there is no necessity why one should posit a discrete time that measures the motion of an angel - for whatever is secured by that discrete time is also secured by continuous time in general; for just as they [sc. those who posit such a discrete time] must say that, if an angel passes through something in an instant, he cannot immediately have another instantaneous passing through, so one can, if an angel instantaneously passes through something in an instant of common time, posit that, although he can immediately have after that instant a continuous motion in actual time, yet he cannot immediately have an instantaneous passing through. There is nothing unacceptable, then, in positing that an angel, to the extent he participates in bodily condition (that is, a condition which is in some way of the same nature in himself as in a body), also participates in some way in the measure of body; but to the extent he moves locally, he participates in a ‘where’ (which is a bodily property that is in some way of the same nature in himself as in a body); therefore he can also be measured by the measure of the first moved body.

502. And if you object that an angel could move while the heaven is stationary, so there is no need for his motion to be in time - I reply:

Peter after the resurrection will be able to walk about when the heaven is thus stationary, and yet this walking about is not imagined to be in any time other than our common continuous time, even though it takes place when there is no first motion of the heaven. The resting of the heaven itself, indeed, is (as was said before [n.178]) measured potentially by the time by which the first motion - if it existed - would be positively and actually measured; and by that potential time can another motion be measured which is then actually existing, such that there is no need for what is measured by the first heaven to depend in its essence (or in its being) on that motion (as was the case with the motion when the heaven was standing still in the time of Joshua [Joshua 10.12-14]), because this measuring of a quantity by quantity and quality is not by something on which the measured thing essentially depends (as is true in the case of quidditative measures), but it is sufficient only for that motion - when it exists - to be able to be distinctly known, according to its quantity, by a distinct knowledge of time, whether actual or potential time. And thus I say that, when this motion of the heaven does not exist, yet another motion will be able to be measured by the time of that motion of the first heaven, namely insofar as the other motion could take place simultaneously with some amount of the former motion, if the former motion existed, and takes place now with as great an amount of rest as there could be of the motion.

503. On this supposition then, that there is no need to posit for the motion of an angel a measure other than common time [n.501] - when it is asked ‘whether an angel could change or move in an instant’ [n.486], I say that change can be understood in two ways and can be said in two ways: one way includes the whole reality of motion, and the other includes the reality precisely of the term of motion.

An example. That this thing is changed from ‘where’ a to ‘where’ b can be understood in two ways: either that it possesses at once all the intermediate ‘wheres’ (in the way it would if it precisely moved successively), or that it would possess by that change exactly the ultimate ‘where’ (the way it would if the change were the ultimate term of motion).

504. In the first way - in contradiction to the second opinion [n.490] - I do not see in what way an angel could by natural power move or change in an instant, because it does not seem that he could by his natural power have several ‘wheres’ equal to himself [n.499]; in the second way [n.503] it does not seem he could not move in an instant, because the fact that the term of a motion is not immediately introduced comes from the imperfection of the power of the mover - and this imperfection is not to be attributed to an angel unless some necessity appears, because a nature should be granted as much worth as appearances allow.

II. To the Principal Arguments

505. To the argument for the opposite [n.487] I say that the consequence of the Philosopher [sc. if a greater power moves in time, a greatest would move in an instant] holds from the fact that in the antecedent is included that the measure is divisible, because of what is posited in it [sc. time, for time is divisible]; but in whatever divisible measure some power can do something, a greater power can do it in a lesser measure. But in the antecedent ‘an angel changes in an instant’ is not included that the measure is divisible.

506. This consequence, then, that ‘it moves in an instant, therefore something can move in less than an instant’, does not so much hold from true propositions and the nature of the thing, but it holds from something false that is included in the antecedent [sc. the antecedent ‘it moves in an instant’]; for this premise, that ‘whatever some power causes in a divisible measure, a greater power can cause in a lesser measure’, is true from the nature of the thing, but the minor premise - which will have to subsumed there under this true major [sc. the minor ‘an angel moves in an instant’] - is not true from the nature of the thing, but only by hypothesis, namely that ‘there is motion in an instant’. But if it be said that ‘an angel changes in an instant’, and if from this one is to infer that ‘some power should change him in less than an instant’ - then the minor thus to be assumed will not be true from the nature of the thing, nor by hypothesis, and so the consequence will not be valid. And from this it is plain that many enthymematic consequences [sc. consequences where one premise is left unexpressed] do not hold precisely by virtue of some understood truth, but sometimes by virtue of some understood falsehood, provided however a falsehood is included in the antecedent.