Dist. 37, Part 2, Art. 2, Q. 1
by St. Bonaventure
Source text: Public Domain Mark 1.0. English translation/apparatus/encoding: CC BY-NC 4.0, Wroot Press.
https://bonaventure.wrootpress.com/browse/1/d/37/q/bon-sent-I-d37-p2-a2-q1
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### Article II.
#### *On the changeableness of angels with respect to place.*

Next concerning the second article it is asked, namely about the change of an angel, and concerning this three things are inquired.

First it is asked whether an angel can be moved locally without a body.

Second it is asked whether he is moved through a medium, or not.

Third, whether he traverses the medium by a sudden motion, or by a successive one.

### Question I.
#### *Whether an angel can be moved locally without a body.*

As to the first, it is shown thus that an angel cannot be moved without a body.

1. Bernard, *On the Song of Songs*: "To run about and to pass from place to place belongs only to bodies": therefore, if this belongs to an angel, it does not belong save through an assumed body.

2. Likewise, by reason it appears, since whatever is moved is moved either *per se* or *per accidens*; but an angel is not moved *per se* locally, since this is proper to bodies, and that thing belongs *per se* alone in which it inheres properly: therefore if he is moved, this is *per accidens*. But what is moved *per accidens* is moved by something else being moved, as a sailor by the moved ship: therefore it appears that an angel cannot be moved unless a body is moved, and so an assumed body.

3. Likewise, everything that is moved is moved on account of need; but in the blessed angels there is no need: therefore etc. If you say, on account of our need; therefore, our need set aside, it does not appear that an angel can be moved: if therefore our need confers no power on the angel, the conclusion is plain.

4. Likewise, "everything that is moved differs from its mover," as the *Philosopher* proposes; but an angel is not distant from himself: therefore an angel is not moved by himself nor by another: therefore he cannot be moved except by moving something else, as by moving a body.

**On the contrary:**

1. *To the Hebrews*, chapter 1: *They are all ministering spirits, sent for those* etc.; but they perform some ministry without a body, such as suggesting good things and the like: therefore they can be moved without a body.

2. Likewise, Damascene: "Forthwith they are found wherever the divine bidding has commanded, by the swiftness of nature": if therefore swiftness is a disposition for motion, by their own nature they are mobile.

3. Likewise, an angel is in only one place, and is there where he operates: therefore his power is either restricted to one alone, or, if it is not restricted, neither is his substance restricted to one place. But he cannot be in many: therefore, when he is in one place, he is in potency to another. But what is in potency toward one does not become actual in it except through motion according to place: therefore etc.

4. Likewise, that he is moved without an assumed body is shown by the parallel in the soul. For the soul, stripped of the body, is borne to heaven or descends to hell locally; but it is agreed that the soul does not assume any body other than its own: therefore it is moved without a body, therefore by parallel reasoning so is the angel.

5. Likewise, an angel can be in the empyrean without a body, by parallel reasoning also on earth: therefore if by the same power by which he rests on earth he makes himself to be on earth or transfers himself: therefore it appears that without a body.

### Conclusion.

> An angel can be moved both without a body and with an assumed body: without a body by passing through a place definitively, but with an assumed body circumscriptively.

**I respond:** It must be said that an angel, as Scripture says, has the property of being moved. He is moved, however, not only by an assumed body, but also without an assumed body, since he is not of less freedom or power or nobility without a body than he is with a body.

For the understanding of the objections it must be noted that, just as to be in a place is twofold, or to be local — as the Master touches in the text — namely because something is *circumscribed* and because it is *defined*; and that is properly local which is circumscribed, but the other is in one way local and in another way not: so to be moved through place in one way is to be borne by circumscription from place to place, and this belongs to bodies alone; in another way to be moved is, less properly, to pass according to definition, and this belongs to spirits. Properly therefore by circumscription an angel is not moved, except with an assumed body; less properly, by definition an angel is moved even without a body.

**Replies to the arguments for the affirmative:**

*To 1.* From this the response to the first objection is plain, and Bernard takes *to run about* and *to pass through* according to the property of place, which is circumscription.

*To 2.* To that which is asked, whether *per se* or *per accidens*; it must be said, according to the aforesaid distinction concerning motion, that according to the first kind of motion a spiritual thing is not moved except *per accidens*, by something else being moved. For just as a sailor, by the moved ship, is moved, so a spirit, by the moved body in which he is. As to the second kind of motion, just as an angel by himself and without a body is defined to a place, so by himself he is transferred, so that nothing else is the mover, nor is it through another motion. He himself, however, raises the objection only about the first motion, which belongs *per se* to body alone.

*To 3.* To that which is objected, that everything which is moved is moved on account of need; it must be said that this is true in natural motion, in which nature does not move except by appetite for some thing, which posits imperfection in nature — because nature, having attained its perfection, comes to rest — but it is not true in voluntary motion, in which someone is moved either to acquire something else, or to display power, as a soldier is moved in the stadium. — Or it must be said that this is true in every motion, taking *need* generally as both one's own need and another's, and one's own as regards that whose privation posits imperfection, or whose privation does not posit imperfection but limitation; and so it is in the angel. For an angel, willing to do something on earth, needs to pass to earth, because he cannot be at the same time in heaven and on earth, on account of the fact that

he has finite power. And so that point is plain, that limitation does not contradict the highest perfection of a creature.

*To 4.* To that which is objected, that everything which is moved differs from its mover; it must be said that in natural motion this is true, where nothing moves itself, because nothing is reflected upon itself on account of its bond with matter: but it is not true in the will, which is an instrument moving itself; and the power which is in a spiritual substance can be reflected upon the substance, and so the mover can be the same as the moved, yet not in the same respect: because an angel is apt to be moved on the part of his *quod est* (that which he is) or substance or matter, if he has matter, but to move on the part of form, that is, of his *quo est* (that by which he is) or active power.