Seraphicus Supra Angelicum: Universal Hylomorphism and Angelic Mutability

Abstract

Seraphicus Supra Angelicum:Universal Hylomorphism and Angelic Mutability* Brendan Case (bio) One of the great philosophical and theological debates in the second half of the thirteenth century concerned the metaphysical constitution of angels, namely whether they are, like trees and cats and humans, composed of "form" and "matter," in the sense given those terms by the then newly ascendant Aristotle.1 In this period, the field was roughly divided between universal hylomorphism, maintaining that angels are form/matter composites, and (let's call it) spiritual immaterialism, maintaining that spiritual beings such as angels are pure, self-subsistent forms. The former position was championed especially though not exclusively by Franciscan theologians (notably the "Seraphic Doctor," St. Bonaventure of Bagnoregio), and the latter by Dominicans (notably the "Angelic Doctor," St. Thomas Aquinas).2 In time, support for universal hylomorphism collapsed even within the Franciscan Order,3 with the result that spiritual immaterialism has [End Page 19] become the default position about the angels for Christian thinkers drawing on the broad Platonist-Aristotelian metaphysical tradition.4 In my view, this is an unfortunate circumstance, since spiritual immaterialism fails on its own terms, offering vague suggestions at best of how angels could be capable of intellectual and volitional change.5 As such, universal hylomorphism ought to be the angelology of choice for anyone thinking about the angels in the terms set by classical metaphysics – assuming, of course, that it can withstand the objections traditionally leveled against its own coherence.6 [End Page 20] This essay attempts to make good that peremptory judgment, in five parts. After a brief introduction to Aristotelian hylomorphism and its relevance for thought about the angels, I consider Thomas Aquinas's bid to explain the angels' mutability in terms of their composition out of essence (essentia) and being (esse), or (in the more widely accepted distinction framed by Boethius) out of "what it is" (quod est) and "by which it is" (quo est).7 (I will refer to this as the "Boethian distinction," and to the composition it picks out as "Boethian composition.") I then set out and concur with Bonaventure's doubts about whether the Boethian distinction provides a sufficient basis for explaining angelic mutability, before turning to the rival accounts of the angels offered by Aquinas's Franciscan contemporaries, especially the authors of the Summa Halensis8 and Bonaventure, both of whom grant that angels include Boethian composition, but deny that it suffices to explain how they can be the subject of accidental change, such as the fall from beatitude to wretchedness. For this, they insist, hylomorphic composition is necessary as well.9 [End Page 21] I conclude my defense of universal hylomorphism by considering (and again concurring with) Bonaventure's and William de la Mare's responses to Aquinas's key objection to universal hylomorphism, that intellection would be impossible for an angel so constituted. Aristotelian Hylomorphism: Corruptible Bodies, Intelligences, and Angels10 All parties to our debate agreed that the central case of a hylomorphic unity is a physical (sc. locally moveable) substance (an atom of gold, a tree, a cat), which is generated from the corruption of other substances.11 As Aquinas reads Aristotle's own account of it,12 the story of hylomorphism begins with those pre-Socratic thinkers, such as Thales and Empedocles, who denied that the medium-sized dry goods of ordinary experience were genuine individuals, identifying them instead as mere momentary congeries of some more basic, elemental substance.13 The [End Page 22] appeal to the complementary union of form and matter, by contrast, is an attempt to account for the existence of genuine individuals under conditions of change, to show how, for instance, a tree might be thought of as an individual substance over and above the sum of its changing physical parts. As the scholastics interpreted them, Platonist and Aristotelian theories of matter aimed to distinguish accidental change within a particular substance from the generation and corruption of substances as such: "They distinguished intellectually," Aquinas noted, "between the substantial form and matter, which they posited as uncreated; and they perceived that transmutation came about in bodies according to their essential forms."14 The key innovation in these theories, of...