When originally created by God, all the angels had a free will. Indeed, their eternal destiny depended on how they would use their freedom. Mysteriously the angels could choose between the real good and the apparent good. They could choose between submitting and refusing obedience to their Creator. We know what happened. Some angels refused to bend their wills to the Divine will, and they were eternally condemned for their pride. Others freely surrendered their wills to the Almighty and are the angels about whom we are mainly speaking in this conference.
So much good and true in this piece!
But then he says this: "If a human being was never able to see with bodily eyes, or hear with bodily ears, or feel with bodily touch, or taste with bodily tongue, or smell with bodily nostrils - that person would never have a single thought. All our knowledge derives from our bodily powers."
And he repeats it too: "Our minds, I repeat, are only potentially knowledgeable before they acquire knowledge and then potentially knowing when they do not attend to the knowledge they have acquired. The knowledge of angels does not depend on sense experience."
It is unfortunate because, though repeated twice, it's not true. We do know things even without sense. Many things. It would be better and truer to say that we ourselves are angels entombed in flesh, and limited by flesh, but that when our spirits are freed of flesh, at death, we see beyond the limitations of the flesh.
This is why the congenitally blind, who have never seen in their lives and who do not see in any of their dreams, nevertheless see clearly and reported fully sighted experiences (and confusion over color) in those cases in which a congenitally blind person has had a traumatic accident, clinically died, and been medically rescuscitated.
They have no memories of sight, and no knowledge of what they see, and yet they DO see when they leave their bodies.
It should never be said that our minds and our thoughts originate completely in our senses. It is false, and demonstrably so.
It would be better to say that we are angels dipped into flesh for a time, and limited by the flesh, for God's inscrutable purposes. That is far closer to the truth, and may perhaps even be the LITERAL truth, depending the extent to which a soul that has left its body is in the same condition and has the same abilities as an angel.
However, to the exxtent that the angels, or the greatest among them, were created at the dawn of existence, that is not so of us. Those blind who see in their death experiences before rescuscitation return with memories of sight, and are forever after as the formerly sighted as opposed to congenitally blind who have never seen. BUT they do not report memories spanning back to the beginning of time, or indeed spanning before their term of years. From this, we have evidence that we really do come into being at some point around our conception, and are not pre-existing beings waiting in heaven for our chance to take a dip in flesh.
There is plenty of good data about these things that allow us to move past speculation or reliance on pure revelation.
Anyway, interesting topic. Thank you.
The Angels in Sacred Scripture
Angels in the History of the Church
Angels - in Heaven, on Earth and in Hell
Catholic Q&A: Angels and Demons (Fr. Thomas J. Euteneuer)
Question: “Are there really such things as guardian angels?”
This seems suggest that God needs assistance, and to my mind undermines monotheism.