Now that my book on Tolkien’s Thomistic metaphysics is published, it’s of course time for me to start noticing all the things I (inevitably) failed to include. In this discussion, for example, of the power of Aquinas’s angels over the physical world, one of the passages that might be added is the following objection and Aquinas’s response to the role of the angels in bringing the animals before Adam to name (ST I, Q. 96, art. 1):
Objection 1: It would seem that in the state of innocence Adam had no mastership over the animals. For Augustine says (Gen. ad lit. ix, 14) that the animals were brought to Adam, under the direction of the angels, to receive their names from him. But the angels need not have intervened thus, if man himself were master over the animals. Therefore in the state of innocence man had no mastership of the animals.
Reply Obj. 1: A higher power can do many things that an inferior power cannot do to those which are subject to them. Now an angel is naturally higher than man. Therefore certain things in regard to animals could be done by angels, which could not be done by man; for instance, the rapid gathering together of all the animals.
To the angels’ many other powers, accordingly, Aquinas adds this: an (unexamined and unexplained) capacity to gather animals together in a short amount of time. Aquinas may not, unlike Tolkien, have sub-creative angels, but he does allow for shepherd ones.
The Flame Imperishable 