Chapter Nine of the Second Decade
On the power and sagacious resistance of angels, concerning which three little questions will be resolved
Question One of Chapter Nine of the Second Decade
On the threefold conflict of angels
It is asked how many kinds of battle and conflict there are among angels.
To this it is answered that there is said to be a threefold conflict or resistance among angels, because a good angel is said to resist an evil angel, an evil angel is said to resist a good angel, and a good angel is said to resist a good angel.
First, a good angel resists an evil angel when he restrains the latter’s power of harming.
Whence it is said in Revelation, chapter 20, that a good angel bound the devil—that is, impeded his power—so that he might not tempt as greatly as he wishes to tempt, that is, even unto a fall.
Here take notice that the devil’s power is bound principally by God, and instrumentally by an angel and by a human being, insofar as angels and holy human beings, in the power of God, have constrained and expelled a demon.
Second, an evil angel resists a good angel when the evil one endeavors to impede what the good angel intends to do, but does not prevail, as is said in Revelation, chapter 12: “The dragon fought with Michael and his angels, and they did not prevail, neither was their place found any more in heaven.”
Third, a good angel is said to resist a good angel, as is said in Daniel, chapter 10, where the angel Michael, prince of the Jews, speaking of another angel, the prince of the Persians, says thus: “The prince of the kingdom of the Persians resisted me for twenty-one days.”
Gregory, expounding these words in the Moralia, says that both angels were good and nevertheless had conflict and discord with one another. This conflict does not oppose the unity and charity which exist among good angels.
Whence it must be understood in this way.
It happens that different merits are found in different nations, according to the diversity of which it appears that one nation ought to be subject to another or to be freed from its dominion.
So it was then among the Jews, because Daniel’s prayer, so far as it was in itself, merited the liberation of the people; but the sins of the people, and also the benefit which the Jews produced in the kingdom of the Persians while the knowledge of God was diffused through them, stood to the contrary.
Therefore, the conflict which existed among such good angels was nothing other than a different presentation of merits, concerning which each angel consulted the divine will.
For the angel who presided over the Jews alleged the repentance of the Jews and the injustice of the people who detained them, and therefore he sought their liberation.
On the contrary, the angel of the king of the Persians said that divine worship and the name of God were being made public through the Jews and that it was therefore fitting for them to remain in that country. And thus, so far as it was in him, he alleged that the people of the Jews ought not to be liberated.
This contrary allegation of merits, therefore, was the conflict of the angels.
And because the angels did not immediately cognize what the divine will ordained concerning the things to be done, one angel is said to have resisted the other for as long a time as God himself delayed revealing the liberation of the Jews to the angel who presided over them, or for as much time as God delayed revealing to Daniel the liberation or a revelation of this kind.
These things are from Thomas upon Book II of the Sentences, distinction 11, question 2, article 5.