Visions
Angels
How many angels
can stand on the head of a pin?
The ultimate futile question?
And yet, rightly understood,
angels having spacial location
do not occupy space,
so an infinite number.
Infinite perhaps
as the lord's loving kindness.
A demon exorcised,
bitterly complained that
God had sent forty thousand angels
to guard the congregation that night,
How great the power,
the providence,
the all encompassing
love and care of Him
whose ways are past finding out,
who has set us unknowing
in the midst of wonder!
"Dorothy L. Sayers argued in The Lost Tools of Learning,
that the question was "simply a debating exercise" and
that the answer "usually adjudged correct" was stated as,
"Angels are pure intelligences, not material, but limited,
so that they have location in space, but not extension."
Sayers compares the question to that of how many people's
thoughts can be concentrated upon a particular pin at the
same time. She concludes that an infinity of angels can be
located on the head of a pin, since they do not occupy any
space there:"(Wikipedia)
can stand on the head of a pin?
The ultimate futile question?
And yet, rightly understood,
angels having spacial location
do not occupy space,
so an infinite number.
Infinite perhaps
as the lord's loving kindness.
A demon exorcised,
bitterly complained that
God had sent forty thousand angels
to guard the congregation that night,
How great the power,
the providence,
the all encompassing
love and care of Him
whose ways are past finding out,
who has set us unknowing
in the midst of wonder!
"Dorothy L. Sayers argued in The Lost Tools of Learning,
that the question was "simply a debating exercise" and
that the answer "usually adjudged correct" was stated as,
"Angels are pure intelligences, not material, but limited,
so that they have location in space, but not extension."
Sayers compares the question to that of how many people's
thoughts can be concentrated upon a particular pin at the
same time. She concludes that an infinity of angels can be
located on the head of a pin, since they do not occupy any
space there:"(Wikipedia)
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Angels
Angels
