[Evenstar1]

I have LOVED reading this thread! Great topic, Piosenniel! Very interesting commentaries so far! Very well-put, Gandalf_theGrey, Bethberry, Child of the 7th Age, mark 12_30, Birdland and Mr. Underhill! (And now I will now add my own 2 cents [img]smilies/smile.gif[/img]

Considering that Tolkien as a devout Catholic would have been very Thomistically-centered, I refreshed my memory of the Summa and confirmed my hunch that St. Thomas asserts that angels were made up entirely of soul:

There must be some incorporeal creatures. For what is principally intended by God in creatures is good, and this consists in assimilation to God Himself. And the perfect assimilation of an effect to a cause is accomplished when the effect imitates the cause according to that whereby the cause produces the effect; as heat makes heat. Now, God produces the creature by His intellect and will (14, 8; 19, 4 ). Hence the perfection of the universe requires that there should be intellectual creatures. Now intelligence cannot be the action of a body, nor of any corporeal faculty; for every body is limited to "here" and "now." Hence the perfection of the universe requires the existence of an incorporeal creature.

--Aquinas, Summa Theologica, First Part, question 50, article 1.

By this notion, the Ainur would be considered pure fea.

Secondly, as an idea as to how Tolkien would have perhaps conceptualized the existence of trees, eagles, dwarves, etc., I recalled something my father explained to me as a child: the notion that God holds each of us constantly in His consciousness. If He were ever to forget you, you would suddenly cease to exist. This thought is stated more permanently in Aquinas:

Corporeal forms, therefore, are caused, not as emanations from some immaterial form, but by matter being brought from potentiality into act by some composite agent. But since the composite agent, which is a body, is moved by a created spiritual substance, as Augustine says (De Trin. iii, 4,5), it follows further that even corporeal forms are derived from spiritual substances, not emanating from them, but as the term of their movement. And, further still, the species of the angelic intellect, which are, as it were, the seminal types of corporeal forms, must be referred to God as the first cause. But in the first production of corporeal creatures no transmutation from potentiality to act can have taken place, and accordingly, the corporeal forms that bodies had when first produced came immediately from God, whose bidding alone matter obeys, as its own proper cause. To signify this, Moses prefaces each work with the words, "God said, Let this thing be," or "that," to denote the formation of all things by the Word of God, from Whom, according to Augustine [Tract. i. in Joan. and Gen. ad lit. i. 4, is "all form and fitness and concord of parts."

--Aquinas, Summa Theologica, First Part, question 65, article 4.

I think the best understanding of this concept I've come across so far is the conversation between Eru and Aule, when Aule is about to destroy the Dwarves he's just created and Eru lovingly stops him, saying that he already holds them in his own consciousness, pointing out to Aule that the Dwarves were cowering in fear from Aule's impending death sentence upon them.

[ September 11, 2002: Message edited by: Evenstar1 ]