Part II, Chapter III, Section 2, Article 1: The Supernatural Endowment of the Angels

Pohle, God the Author of Nature and the Supernatural, Part II, Chapter III, §2, Article 1 (pp. 325–330)

Section 2: The Angels and the Supernatural Order

Article 1: The Supernatural Endowment of the Angels

1. Their Elevation to the State of Grace

After having created the Angels, God did not leave them in puris naturalibus, but endowed them with sanctifying grace. Thus they became His adopted children and received a claim to the beatific vision. This is the unanimous teaching of Catholic theologians, and it is based upon Divine Revelation. Being “saints,”¹ “angels of light,”² “elect angels,”³ “sons of God,”⁴ and so forth, the Angels must necessarily be conceived as endowed with sanctifying grace. There is no ground for the assumption⁵ that the demons never enjoyed such a supernatural endowment. On the contrary, it is quite certain that all the Angels without exception were elevated to the supernatural order.⁶ We read in the Epistle of St. Jude: “Non servaverunt suum principatum⁷, sed dereliquerunt suum domicilium” — And the angels … kept not their principality, but forsook their own habitation; i.e., they did not preserve their supernatural prerogatives, but relinquished their place of honor. Consequently the demons too, before the Fall, were endowed with grace.⁸

According to the more common opinion of Catholic divines, the Angels are endowed with grace each according to the measure of his natural perfection, i.e., the natural prerogatives with which he was created. This doctrine has nothing in common with Pelagianism; for it is not merit (meritum naturae), but the disposition of each Angel’s nature which guides God in distributing His graces. In the words of St. Basil, “The Powers of Heaven are not holy by nature, but they possess the measure of their sanctification from the Holy Ghost, according to the rank by which one excels the other.”⁹ Or, as St. John Damascene puts it, “They partake of light and grace, each according to his dignity and order.”¹⁰ According to this theory the Seraphim¹¹ rank first in the order of grace, because their nature is the most perfect; while the “Angels,” simply so called, occupy the lowest rung of the ladder. But since this teaching cannot be demonstrated from Revelation, its value does not exceed that of a probable opinion.¹²

2. When Were the Angels Sanctified?

A number of medieval theologians¹³ held that all the Angels remained for some time after their creation in the pure state of nature and were elevated to the state of supernatural grace at a later date. St. Thomas demonstrated by weighty arguments that the sanctification of the Angels must have been contemporaneous with their creation.¹⁴ Among the Fathers this view had been championed by St. Augustine: “Deus angelos cum amore casto, quo illi adhaererent, creavit, simul in eis condens naturam et largiens gratiam” — God created the Angels with a chaste love, by which they adhered to Him, endowing them with grace at the same time that He created their nature.¹⁵ Though not an article of faith, this opinion has become the prevailing one in consequence chiefly of its having been adopted into the Roman Catechism. St. Thomas himself had previously championed the contrary view as the more common and probable one.¹⁶

3. The Probation of the Angels

It is the teaching of the Fathers, unanimously defended by Catholic theologians, that, like men, the Angels had to undergo a probation, during which they found themselves in the status viae and had to merit the beatific vision of the Blessed Trinity. The fact that they were able to merit the beatific vision presupposes that while in the wayfaring state they received an external revelation of the truths necessary for salvation, and, like man, were bound to prepare themselves by a free act of internal faith for the attainment of eternal happiness.¹⁷ Gennadius¹⁸ taught that the Angels were simultaneously raised to the state of grace and glory in the instant of their creation. But this opinion is incompatible with the revealed truth that some of them apostatized. If the fallen Angels had been constituted in the state of glory, it would have been impossible for them to sin, because the beatific vision of God completely abrogates the creature’s freedom of choosing evil.¹⁹

Cfr. Catech. Rom., P. 1, c. 2, qu. 17: “Cum illud sit in divinis litteris, diabolum ‘in veritate non stetisse,’ perspicuum est, eum reliquosque desertores angelos ab ortus sui initio gratia praeditos fuisse” — Since Holy Scripture says that the Devil “stood not in the truth,” (John VIII, 44), it is clear that he and the rest of the rebel angels were gifted with grace from the very moment of their creation. This sentence does not, of course, decide the question at issue.

How long the period of probation lasted, whether but a single instant, or two morulae, or three,²⁰ is a matter of pure conjecture. The only thing that we must hold as an article of faith is that a portion of the Angels came forth unsullied, while the remainder fell and were cast into hell. The good Angels “stand before the Lord,”²¹ “before his throne,”²² they dwell in “the heavenly Jerusalem,”²³ i.e., “in heaven.”²⁴ Christ expressly teaches: “Their [little children’s] angels in heaven always see the face of my Father who is in heaven.”²⁵

That the grace and glory enjoyed by the Angels is a supernatural state follows from what we have said in a previous Chapter of this volume on the essence of the Supernatural,²⁶ and also from the rejection by the Church of Baius’s propositions: “Nec angeli nec primi hominis adhuc integri merita recte vocantur gratia;” “Et bonis angelis et primo homini, si in statu illo perseverasset usque ad ultimum vitae, felicitas esset merces, et non gratia;” “Vita aeterna homini integro et angelo promissa fuit intuitu bonorum operum, et bona opera ex lege naturae ad illam consequendam per se sufficiunt.”²⁷ The condemnation of these propositions proves that the special endowment of the Angels, like that of man, was essentially supernatural.

Notes

Note on this transcription: footnote 7’s citation was not clearly recoverable from the scan (the surrounding footnote numbering jumps from 6 to 8); the Greek term given is a reasonable reconstruction based on the Latin it glosses (principatum) rather than a confirmed transcription. Footnote 11’s Hebrew etymology for “Seraphim” was reconstructed from context with good confidence, matching the standard derivation from the root meaning “to burn.”