For example, if angels are intelligence without bodies, as Aquinas defines them, then they would not apprehend things as we do, in time, needing one moment and then another moment to process phenomena, using sense organs and the apparatus of the mind, but instead would apprehend things instantaneously, from the moment of their creation, as if through osmosis. Neither would they age or die, for that is what bodies do, and they have no corporeality. Thus, when John mentions a “war in heaven,” what he might really be describing is a conflict that is utterly intangible, without blood, to be sure, but also without even a measurable transaction (which is not to say an effect), almost as if the event is decided in advance, the way a mathematical problem already has an answer, regardless of whether someone gives expression to it.