Question One. Whether an Angel is in Place

189. As to the second part of this distinction, in which the Master [Lombard] treats of ‘where the angels were created’, what remains for inquiry is the place of an angel [n.1], and first whether an angel is in place.

190. It seems that he is not:

Boethius On the Seven Days, “It is the mind’s common conception that incorporeal things do not exist in place.”

191. Further, Augustine 83 Questions q.20 seems expressly to prove that God does not exist in place using this middle term, “because he is not a body;” but this premise is true of an angel; therefore the conclusion is true of an angel too.

192. Augustine also says about God in Literal Commentary on Genesis 8.26 n.48 that “he moves the corporeal creature through place and time but the spiritual creature through time only;” therefore he denies local motion of the spiritual creature, and so he denies that the spiritual creature exists in place.

193. Further, Aristotle Physics 4.4.212a20-21 says that “place is the ultimate limit of the containing body, etc.” [n.219]; but no body contains an angel, because the container is more actual than the contained and no body is more actual than an angel; therefore etc.

194. Further, everything that is in place has a location; but location only belongs to something extended, a quantum. The point is plain because ‘position’ is in one way a difference of quantity, and in this way it only belongs to quantity; in another way it is taken as a category, and in this way it is a property founded on quantity; therefore in neither way does it belong to an angel; therefore place does not belong to an angel either.

195. Against this there is:

The Master [Lombard] in the text, d.2 ch.4 n.14, and in d.37 chs.6-8 nn.345-49, and he adduces authorities as well.

196. Damascene chs.13, 16, 20; see him in those places [nn.199, 215].