Thursday, September 15, 2011

II.2 chapter 1

We will first speak of the common division between angels and between man, how there are only two 'cities' because bad and good wills are separated the same.

We already mentioned that the holy angels and fallen angels are separated by their good or bad will, not by their nature, because God created them.
How is an evil will related to the misery of their state?
Because God is everything, and angels and man alike were created out of nothing, it is easy to see that angels and man cannot have their blessedness from their own nature ('quia ex nihilo creata est'), but must have it from God ('ex illo, a quo creata est'). (As we already stated that the only source of evil is deprivation of the good which is in God.)

But doesn't this make angels and man more wretched than other things because they can lose their blessedness?
Indeed only God cannot lose his blessedness because he has that blessedness in himself; however, angels and man that have their blessedness from God and therefore are changeable, are of a very good nature because they can share in the supreme good from God which is unchangeable. They exceed things which cannot feel anything and from nature cannot share in the highest good from God, also when they can become miserable: nobody would follow the same pattern of reasoning saying another member of the body is better than the eye because it cannot be blind. Even the fact that we call evil a vice proves that it is a good nature that was deprived.

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