Whether There Is Natural Love or Dilection in an Angel?
Objection 1: It would seem that there is no natural love or dilection
in the angels. For, natural love is contradistinguished from
intellectual love, as stated by Dionysius (Div. Nom. iv). But an
angel's love is intellectual. Therefore it is not natural.
Obj. 2: Further, those who love with natural love are more acted
upon than active in themselves; for nothing has control over its own
nature. Now the angels are not acted upon, but act of themselves;
because they possess free-will, as was shown above (Q. 59, A. 3).
Consequently there is no natural love in them.
Obj. 3: Further, every love is either ordinate or inordinate. Now
ordinate love belongs to charity; while inordinate love belongs to
wickedness. But neither of these belongs to nature; because charity is
above nature, while wickedness is against nature. Therefore there is
no natural love in the angels.
_On the contrary,_ Love results from knowledge; for, nothing is loved
except it be first known, as Augustine says (De Trin. x, 1,2). But
there is natural knowledge in the angels. Therefore there is also
natural love.
_I answer that,_ We must necessarily place natural love in the angels.
In evidence of this we must bear in mind that what comes first is
always sustained in what comes after it. Now nature comes before
intellect, because the nature of every subject is its essence.
Consequently whatever belongs to nature must be preserved likewise in
such subjects as have intellect. But it is common to every nature to
have some inclination; and this is its natural appetite or love. This
inclination is found to exist differently in different natures; but in
each according to its mode. Consequently, in the intellectual nature
there is to be found a natural inclination coming from the will; in
the sensitive nature, according to the sensitive appetite; but in a
nature devoid of knowledge, only according to the tendency of the
nature to something. Therefore, since an angel is an intellectual
nature, there must be a natural love in his will.
Reply Obj. 1: Intellectual love is contradistinguished from that
natural love, which is merely natural, in so far as it belongs to a
nature which has not likewise the perfection of either sense or
intellect.
Reply Obj. 2: All things in the world are moved to act by something
else except the First Agent, Who acts in such a manner that He is in
no way moved to act by another; and in Whom nature and will are the
same. So there is nothing unfitting in an angel being moved to act in
so far as such natural inclination is implanted in him by the Author
of his nature. Yet he is not so moved to act that he does not act
himself, because he has free-will.
Reply Obj. 3: As natural knowledge is always true, so is natural love
well regulated; because natural love is nothing else than the
inclination implanted in nature by its Author. To say that a natural
inclination is not well regulated, is to derogate from the Author of
nature. Yet the rectitude of natural love is different from the
rectitude of charity and virtue: because the one rectitude perfects
the other; even so the truth of natural knowledge is of one kind, and
the truth of infused or acquired knowledge is of another.
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