Sunday, November 21, 2010

limits of man vs. angels in Pico's Heptaplus

129 top Following Thomas, in his Heptaplus Pico discusses angels as a “composition of act and potency

134 It is a difficult question why man has this privilege of being in the image of God. If we reject the folly of Melito, who represented God in human form, and revert to the nature of reason and mind, which like God is intelligent, invisible and incorporeal, we shall prove that man is like God, especially in that part of his soul which displays the image of the Trinity. But let us recognize that as in the angels these same things are much stronger and less mixed with the opposite nature than in us, the angels have more likeness and affinity with the divine nature.

134 Let us recognize that as in the angels these same things are much stronger and less mixed with the opposite nature than in us, the angels have more likeness and affinity with the divine nature.

135 We seek something peculiar to man in which we may ascertain both the dignity proper to him and the image of the divine substance which he shares with no other creature. What can it be but the substance of man which (as some Greek commentators intimate) encompasses by its very essence the substances of all natures and the fullness of the whole universe? I say by its very essence, moreover, because not only the angels, but any intelligent creatures whatever include all things in themselves in some degree when, filled with their forms and reasons, they know them.

135 The difference between God and man is that God contains all things in Himself in their origin, and man contains all things in himself as their center.

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