by Father Raphael V O’Connell, SJ
It may be said, however, that at least some of those who dissent from what is now the accepted teaching of the Church, are in all likelihood not employing terms in the usual sense, or are speaking metaphorically. Thus, when they speak of the angels as
corporeal , the word has, not its obvious meaning, but signifies “limited in point of space,” or “lacking absolute simplicity.” And when they apply the terms fire, ether, and the like, it is only to express in a graphic way certain attributes of the angels to which the qualities of these material substances bear a special resemblance.
Or again, it may be that some who seem to disagree with the view now universally held in the Church, are to be understood not as ascribing to the angels a body as part of their nature, but as referring to a body momentarily assumed, or, in the case of the wicked angels, permanently assigned to them as an instrument of suffering.
But however we may explain the opinions of certain of the Fathers, there is no doubt that in Holy Scripture the angels are often called spirits without any qualifying word; nor is there anywhere question of the souls of angels. Yet had they a body (whether like ours or of a more subtle, ethereal kind) combined in unity of nature with a spiritual substance, the latter would be the soul or vital principle of the compound, and we should expect to find it spoken of as such. If this is not the case, and if on the contrary the human soul is never described by the word
spirit without further qualification, the inference seems obvious that the angels are pure spirits – that is, spirits not naturally capable of union with a body.
The Council of Lateran, to which we have already referred, has this plain testimony, where it defines that God,
by His almighty power brought both creations out of nothing, that of spirit, and that of bodies; that is to say, that of angels and that of the world, and then that of man, as akin to both, being composed of spirit and of body.
Here the antithesis between body and spirit excludes the idea of the angels having like man a composite nature.
