Article ID: CBB001200456

The Embodiment of Angels: A Debate in Mid-Thirteenth-Century Theology (2011)

unapi

This article investigates how mid-thirteenth-century theologians grappled with questions of angelic embodiment and corporeal life-functioning. Regent masters such as Alexander of Hales, Richard Fishacre, Richard Rufus of Cornwall, Albertus Magnus, Thomas Aquinas, and Bonaventure variously employed scriptural and patristic sources in conjunction with Aristotelian philosophy to develop a basic metaphysics of angels according to which these inherently incorporeal spiritual creatures assume bodies not on account of any necessity on their part, but rather simply so that we humans might understand their divinely-ordained ministries. Because the relationship between angels and their bodies is strictly occasional and extrinsic, aiming at human instruction, embodied life-functions that are natural to humans are not natural to angels. Rather, angels merely act in anthropomorphic ways in order to fittingly reveal the divine will to human comprehension.

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Authors & Contributors
Zharkaya, Varvara
Sorokina, Maria
Siegfried Weichlein
Nikolaus Andreas, Egel
Gasper, Giles E. M.
Delhove, Arnaud
Concepts
Science and religion
Theology
Cosmology
Natural philosophy
Philosophy
Human body
Time Periods
13th century
Medieval
14th century
12th century
Renaissance
20th century
Places
Europe
Mediterranean region
Italy
France
Paris (France)
Great Britain
Institutions
Université de Paris
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