“My Name is Legion”: The Biblical Episode of Gerasene in the Light of Thomas Aquinas’s Theory of Angelic Location

Abstract

“My Name is Legion”: The Biblical Episode of Gerasene in the Light of Thomas Aquinas’s Theory of Angelic Location* Juan Eduardo Carreño ON THE BASIS OF various well-known scriptural passages and philosophical and theological arguments, a tradition that includes such figures as Tertullian, St. Ambrose of Milan, St. Gregory the Great, and St. John Damascene argues that the angel possesses some kind of corporeality.1 Although St. Augustine seems to grant a degree of credibility to these arguments, he avoids a conclusive judgment.2 [End Page 233] Pseudo-Dionysius, on the other hand, opts decidedly for the thesis of a complete angelic spirituality, but his influence on this specific question is felt only several centuries later.3 This hesitant attitude regarding the angelic ontological structure is perpetuated over the course of the medieval period. Although the thesis of an angelic corporeity continues to have considerable weight until the thirteenth century, authors of such standing as Peter Lombard, St. Bernard, and St. Albert the Great follow the example of the bishop of Hippo, opting to postpone a final ruling on the issue.4 On the other hand, from the twelfth century on, thinkers such as William of Conches, Abelard, and Hugh of St. Victor openly defend angelic incorporeity, in line with that supported by Pseudo-Dionysius and anticipating, to some extent, the position Saint Thomas Aquinas will develop in the next century.5 In parallel, a fourth hypothesis begins to gain strength in this period, especially among the friars minor, in which the imprint of the Jewish-Arab thinker Solomon Ibn Gabirol is powerfully felt.6 According to this interpretation, the idea of incorporeity does not necessarily imply a complete [End Page 234] immateriality, since the notion of matter is, in fact, broader and more generic than that of body. One of the most prominent exponents of this position, St. Bonaventure, will argue that the angel has no body but instead a type of matter he describes as subtle.7 As is well known, St. Thomas8 is unequivocal and consistent in defending the thesis of the complete immateriality of the angel. The separated substance, he claims, is a substantial form that exists by itself and without the need to actualize a material co-principle. From this absolute immateriality, he derives what for the later tradition will become the classic attributes of the angel, including its incorporeity and immortality9 and the fact that each [End Page 235] individual angel exhausts its own species.10But the simplicity of the separated substance is not absolute but relative, he adds in response to Ibn Gabirol, to the extent that the angelic essence does not identify with its esse, as is the case with God.11 This, of course, raises the question of the angel’s relationship with time and place.12 Regarding the former, St. Thomas takes up the idea—which enjoyed a certain consensus among his contemporaries—of aevum as a different and in some sense intermediate kind of duration between eternity and time. This aeviternity corresponds to a sort of existence that he describes as a “simultaneous totality” in which, strictly speaking, there is no before and after, but of which, however, prior and later can be predicated.13 Although discussions on this subject were not lacking, the truth is that it was the second point—the locus [End Page 236] angelii—that caused the fiercest disputes in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Indeed, St. Thomas’s position concerning the relationship of the angel with place was subject to harsh criticism in the decades following the condemnations of 1277.14 The focus of this article is the difficulty involved in reconciling St. Thomas’s conclusion regarding the impossibility of two or more angels occupying the same place and the well-known passage of Mark 5:9, where a demoniac, interrogated by Jesus of Nazareth, replies, “My name is Legion, because we are many.” Although the framework of the question is undoubtedly theological, its treatment will allow us to recapitulate and explain some aspects of the natural and metaphysical philosophical theory of St. Thomas. I. The Relationship of the Angel with Place in...