Annotation CL

”Son, thou art always with me.” — Luke 15:31

Whether the good angels can be bent to virtue and vice.

Jerome, in the exposition of the parable of the prodigal and thrifty sons, to Damasus, explaining this, writes thus: “‘In thy sight shall no living [one] be justified’ — he does not say, ‘shall not every man be justified,’ but ‘every living [one]’ — that is, not an evangelist, not an apostle, not a prophet; ascending to greater [things], not the angels, not the Thrones, not the Dominations, not the Powers, and the other Virtues. God alone is [he] into whom sin does not fall. The rest, since they are of free will — according to which man too was made to the image and likeness of God — can bend their will to either side.” Peter Lombard, in book 2 of the Sentences, distinction 7, says that from these words, not well considered, it could be gathered that the good and the bad angels, since both have free will, can be bent as much to good as to evil — which is certainly rejected by all theologians. Accordingly, he warns that Jerome’s opinion ought to be taken according to the state in which man and angel were first created. For both man and angel were so created that they could be bent to either [side]. But afterward the good angels were so confirmed by grace that they cannot sin; and the bad [angels] so hardened in vice that they cannot become good: and yet both have free will — because both the good, by no compelling necessity, but by their own and spontaneous will (aided indeed by grace), choose the good and reject the evil; and the bad, likewise, by [their] spontaneous will, destitute of grace, shun the good and follow the evil.