The Catechism of the Catholic Church tells us that the existence of the spiritual, corporeal beings that sacred scripture usually calls angels is a truth of faith.

Now regarding this truth, the Catechism adds that the witness of Scripture is as clear as the unanimity of tradition.

Writing more than 700 years earlier, St. Thomas Aquinas acknowledged this truth as a believing Catholic,

but he also acknowledged it as a philosopher, since he held that the existence and something of the nature of angels can be discovered by natural reason.

And so, over the course of his career, he complements his theological consideration of the angels with a distinctly philosophical consideration of them.

It's this philosophical consideration that I will discuss today, addressing what Aquinas thinks we can discern about the angels independently of revelation.

Now, when we begin to talk about angels in this way,

a well-worn question frequently pops into people's minds.

So how many angels can dance on the head of a pin?

The origin of this question is by all accounts uncertain, but even though the question's provenance

is unclear, its intent is all too clear, namely, to satirize the thought and methodology of scholastic

authors such as Aquinas. The question, therefore, is itself intended to be dismissive,

but I intend not to be dismissive of it in turn, rather my intention in this talk is to directly

engage what is asked about that PIN's head, and I will do so to make a point.

Namely, that from the consideration of objects such as pins and their heads, which are material,

Aquinas thinks that we're justified in drawing conclusions about an aspect of reality

that some would say could not be pinned down,

namely, the immaterial.

Now, to be clear, neither Aquinas nor any other scholastic thinker ever directly raised

the question about angels in relation to the head of a pin.

Still, we can nevertheless find something of an answer to it in his writings,

and in the course of searching for this answer,

...