And therefore others have held that there is another life after this life, inasmuch as a man only lives according to his soul after death; and they held this life to be sufficient for fulfilling the natural desire for obtaining happiness. This is why Porphyry said that souls, in order that they might be blessed, must flee every kind of body, as Augustine states in his book on the City of God.¹ And this is why these people did not hold that there was a resurrection. But different people with these opinions had different false foundations. For certain heretics held that all corporeal things were from an evil principle, while spiritual things were from a good principle; and according to this it was necessary that the soul not be entirely perfect unless it was separated from the body, by which it is weighed down from its own principle, the participation in which makes it happy. And therefore all those of heretical sects who hold that corporeal things were created or formed by the devil deny the resurrection of the body.

Now the falsity of this fundamental principle was shown in the beginning of Book II.¹ But some people held that the whole nature of man existed in the soul, so that the soul uses the body as an instrument or as a sailor uses a ship. Therefore, according to this opinion it follows that the beatified soul by itself would not be frustrated in a natural desire for beatitude; and so it is not necessary to hold that there is a resurrection. But the Philosopher sufficiently destroys this fundamental principle in On the Soul 2,² where he shows that the soul is united to the body as a form to matter. And so it is clear that if a person cannot be happy in this life, it is necessary to hold that there is a resurrection.

To the second question, it should be said that those things whose account is taken from the nature of the species must likewise be found in everything that belongs to the same species. But such is the resurrection, for, as is clear from what has been said, this is its account, that the soul, in the final perfection of the human species, cannot be separated from the body. Therefore, no soul will remain separated from the body in perpetuity, and so it is necessary that just as one will rise, all will rise.

To the third question, it should be said that any motion or action is related to a nature in three ways. For there are some motions or actions of which nature is neither the principle nor the terminus; and other motions are sometimes from a principle above their nature, as is seen in the glorification of the body, but sometimes from just any another principle, as is seen in the violent motion of a stone upward, which terminates in a violent stillness. There is also a certain kind of motion whose principle and terminus is nature, as is clear in the downward motion of a stone. There is also a kind of motion whose terminus is nature, but not its principle; but sometimes it is something above nature, as is seen in the illumination of the blind; for sight is natural, but the principle of illumination is above nature. Sometimes, though, it is something else, as is seen in the speeding up of flowers or crops by artificial means. But it cannot be that the principle is nature but the terminus is not, for natural principles are ordained to determinate effects, and beyond those they cannot extend.

Therefore, the activity or movement that relates to nature in the first way can in no way be called natural, but it is either miraculous, if it has its principle above nature, or violent, if it is from just any other principle. And an activity or movement related to nature in the second way, is simply natural. But the activity that is related to nature in the third way cannot be called natural simply, but only in a certain respect, namely, inasmuch as it leads to something that is according to nature; but it is either called miraculous, or artificial, or violent. For ‘natural’ is properly said of what is according to nature, but ‘according to nature’ is said of what has a nature and follows nature, as is clear from the Physics 2.¹ Therefore, simply speaking a motion cannot be called natural unless its principle is nature.

Now the principle of the resurrection cannot be nature, although the resurrection terminates in the life of nature. For nature is the principle of movement in what it exists in, whether an active principle, as is seen in the movement of heavy things and light things, and in the natural changes of animals; or a passive principle, as is seen in the generation of simple bodies. But the passive principle of natural generation is the passive natural potency, which always has some active potency corresponding to it in nature, as the Metaphysics 9 says.¹ Nor does it make any difference as to this, whether the active principle corresponds to the passive principle in nature with regard to the last perfection or form, or with regard to the disposition that is necessary to the final form, as it is in the generation of a man according to the teaching of the faith; or even of all other things according to the opinion of Plato and Avicenna. But there is no active principle of resurrection in nature, either with regard to the union of soul to body, or with regard to the disposition that is necessary for this union, for such a disposition cannot be infused by nature except in a determinate manner by way of generation from seed. Therefore, even if a certain passive potency is posited on the part of the body, or even a certain inclination to union with the soul, it is not enough for the account of natural movement. Therefore, resurrection, simply speaking, is miraculous, not natural, except in a certain respect, as is clear from what has been said.

However, a univocal agent cause produces an effect in the likeness of its own form, and so it is not only an efficient cause, but an exemplar cause of this effect. Now this happens in two ways. For sometimes the form itself, through which a likeness of agent to effect is found, is directly the principle of the action by which that effect is produced, like heat in a heating fire. But sometimes the very form wherein the likeness resides is not first and essentially the principle of that action by which the effect is produced, but the principles of that form are. If a white man generates a white man, the very whiteness of the one generating is not the principle of active generation; and yet the whiteness of the one generating is said to be the cause of whiteness in the one generated, for the principles of whiteness in the one generating are the generative principles causing whiteness in the one generated. And Christ’s resurrection is the cause of our resurrection in this way, for what causes Christ’s resurrection, which is the univocal efficient cause of our resurrection, acts for our resurrection, namely, the power of Christ’s very divinity, which is common to him and the Father. Therefore, it says, he who raised Jesus Christ from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies (Rom 8:11).

But Christ’s resurrection itself, by the divine power joined to it, is like an instrumental cause of our resurrection; for divine operations were accomplished by means of Christ’s flesh as their tool, as it were, as Damascene in Book 3¹ cites the example of the physical touch by which he cleansed the leper (Matt 8:3).

To the second question, it should be said that a cause must be joined to its effect in some way, for the mover and the moved, the doer and the thing done are together, as is proved in the Physics 7.¹ But Christ rising is the univocal cause of our resurrection, as was said above, which is why it is fitting that in the general resurrection of bodies the risen Christ works by a certain physical sign given, which sign indeed, as some people say, will literally be the voice of Christ commanding the resurrection, as he commanded the sea and the storm stopped (Matt 8:23–27).

But some say that this sign will be nothing other than the very appearance of the Son of God in the world, of which it is said, as the lightning comes from the east and shines as far as the west, so will be the coming of the Son of man (Matt 24:27). And they are supported by Gregory’s authority, who says that the trumpet sounding is nothing other than the revelation to the world of the Son as judge.¹ And according to this the very appearance of the Son of God is called his voice, for all nature will obey him like one who commands when he appears for the restoration of human bodies; which is why he is said to come in command in 1 Thessalonians 4:16. And thus his appearance, inasmuch as it has the force of a certain command, is called his voice; and whatever may be this voice, sometimes it is called a noise like a herald summoning to the judgment; but sometimes it is called the sound of a trumpet, either because of its clarity, as it says in the text, or because of its resemblance to the use of the trumpet that was in the Old Testament; for the trumpet brought all together for the council, summoned to battle, and called to feasts. Now those who rise are brought together to the council of judgment, to the battle where creation will join with him to fight against the madmen (Wis 5:20), to the feast of eternal solemnity.

To the third question, it should be said that Augustine says in On the Trinity 3¹ that just as coarser and inferior bodies are ruled by more subtle and powerful ones in a certain order, so bodies are entirely ruled by God through the rational spirit of life; and Gregory also touches on this in his Dialogues 4.² Therefore, in all things that are done by God physically, God uses the ministry of the angels. But in the resurrection there is something pertaining to the changing of bodies, namely, their assembly from the dust, and their preparation for the restoration of the human body; and so in the resurrection God uses the ministry of the angels for this. But just as the soul was created directly by God, so too it will be directly reunited to the body without any work of the angels. Likewise, he will also cause the glory of the body without the angels’ ministry, just as he also glorifies the soul directly. And this ministry of the angels is called the voice according to one exposition, which is referred to in the text.

To the second question, it should be said that as Augustine says in his book the Eighty-Three Questions, Question 58,¹ it is uncertain how many generations are counted in the last age of the human race which begins from the coming of the Lord until the end of the world; just as old age, which is the last age of man, does not have a determinate time according to the measure of the others, since sometimes it alone takes as much time as all the rest of the ages together. Now the reason for this is that a determinate number of future time cannot be known unless either by revelation or by natural reason. But the time that will lapse before the resurrection cannot be counted by natural reason, for the resurrection will be simultaneous with the end of the movement of the heavens, as was said. But the number of all things that are foreseen by natural reason at a determinate time is taken from this movement. Now the end of the movement of the heavens cannot be known from itself, for since it is circular, it is according to its nature to be able to endure forever. Therefore, the time that there will be until the resurrection cannot be calculated by natural reason. Likewise, neither can it be had by revelation, so that everyone will always be ready and eager to meet Christ, and for this reason he answered even the apostles who asked about this, it is not yours to know times or seasons that the Father has fixed by his own authority (Acts 1:7), in which, as Augustine says in the City of God, Book 18,² he puts an end to everyone’s calculations about this matter and commands them to be still, for what he did not wish to indicate to the apostles who asked, he will not reveal to others. Therefore, all those who have wanted to calculate the time discussed are found to be speaking falsely where this is concerned. For some people, as Augustine said in the same place, have said that four hundred years can be completed from the Lord’s ascension to the second coming; others, five hundred; others, a thousand; and that all of these claims are false is obvious. And it will be similarly obvious regarding the claims of all those who still do not cease to calculate.

To the third question, it should be said that in the resurrection, something will be done by the ministry of the angels, and something by divine power directly, as was said. Therefore, what will happen by the ministry of the angels will not be in an instant if ‘instant’ means an indivisible moment of time; however, it will be in an instant if ‘instant’ is taken for an imperceptible time. Now whatever will be done by divine power directly will be all at once, namely, at the end of the time in which the angels’ work will be completed: for a superior power brings an inferior one to perfection.

To the fourth question, it should be said that the specific hour of time when the resurrection will happen cannot be known for certain, as is clear from the text. Nevertheless, it is said by some, with sufficient probability, that the resurrection will be in the twilight time when the sun hangs in the east and the moon in the west; for the sun and moon are believed to have been created in this disposition, and thus their full circuit would be thoroughly completed by their return to the same point. This is why it is said of Christ that he rose at this hour.

To the second question, it should be said that by the same arguments that showed that all would rise from death, it can also be shown that all will rise from ashes in the general resurrection, unless the contrary is granted to certain people by a privilege of special grace, as is the case with an earlier resurrection. Now as Scripture foretells the resurrection, so also does it foretell the reforming of bodies (cf. Phil 3:21). And therefore just as all must die in order for all to be able to rise truly, so too the bodies of all must be dissolved in order to be able to be reformed; for just as death was inflicted as man’s punishment by divine justice, so too was the dissolving of the body, as is clear from Genesis 3:19: you are dust, and to dust you shall return.¹ Likewise also, the order of nature requires that not only the union of soul and body but also the commingling of the elements should be dissolved; just as also vinegar cannot be returned to the quality of wine except by its previous resolution into the preliminary matter. For the very mixture of elements is caused and preserved by the motion of the heavens, and all mixed things will be resolved into the pure elements when this stops.

To the third question, it should be said that there are three opinions about this. For some people say that the human body is never resolved into its elements; and so some force added to the elements always remains in the ashes, which gives a natural inclination to the same soul. But this position is indirectly contrary to the authority of Augustine, and to the senses, and to reason: for it is possible for all things composed out of contraries to be resolved into what they were composed from. And therefore other people say that those parts of the elements into which the human body is resolved retain more light by the fact that they were once joined to a human soul, and from this they have a certain inclination to that soul. But this again seems silly: for the parts of the elements are of one nature, and they have equal participation in light and darkness. And therefore one must say otherwise, that in those ashes there is no natural inclination to the resurrection, but only by the order of divine providence, which established that those ashes would be joined again to this soul; and by this it is fitting that those parts of the elements are united again, and not others.

And thus the answer to the first objection is clear.

To the second question, it should be said that in the last general judgment divine justice must appear plainly to all, which is now hidden in most things. Now a sentence that condemns or rewards cannot be just except according to the merits or demerits brought forth. And therefore just as a judge and a judge’s assessor must know the merits of the case in order to hand down a just sentence, so too in order for a just sentence to be given, the merits must be made known to all those who learn the sentence. Therefore, since just as each person’s reward or damnation will be known by him, so too it will be made known to all others, it is necessary that everyone bring to memory his own merits and demerits, and so too those of others will be exposed to his awareness. And this is the more probable and common opinion, although the Master says the contrary in the text, namely, that sins that are effaced through penance will not be made evident to others in the judgment. But from this it follows that neither will the penance completed for those sins be recognized, which would detract much from the glory of the saints and the praise of God, who so mercifully freed his saints.

To the third question, it should be said that there are two opinions about this. For some people say that a person will see all merits or demerits together, both his own and those of others, in an instant, which indeed can easily be believed of the blessed, for they shall see all things in one, and so it is not unfitting if they see many things together. But in the damned, whose intellect is not elevated so that it can see God and all other things in him, it is more difficult. And therefore others say that the wicked will see all their own sins together in their genus; and this suffices for that accusation or absolution that must occur in the judgment; but they will not see all things going down into particulars. But this also does not seem to agree with Augustine’s statements in the City of God, Book 20,¹ where he says that all things will be enumerated in a glimpse of the mind. But what is known in its genus is not enumerated. Therefore, a middle path can be chosen, that they will consider individual sins, not, however, in an instant, but in a very short time, with the help of divine power. And this is what Augustine says in the same place, that marvels will be enumerated with speed. Nor is this impossible, for in any small amount of time there are infinite instants in potency.

And by this the answer to either side is clear.

“The Lord himself shall come down from heaven with command, and the voice of an archangel, and the trumpet of God.”¹ The same thing can be signified by these three, so that the voice is called command as to power, for the bodies of the dead obey it; the voice of the archangel, that is, Christ, who is the prince of the angels, as to the dignity of the one uttering it; the trumpet as to its clarity. Or the command refers to the principal cause, namely, divine power, which all things obey; the voice of the archangel to the ministry of the angels; but the trumpet to the operation of the man Christ, for these three things will be at work in the resurrection.

And so it may not unreasonably be thought that those sins which have been concealed and blotted out here through penance will there be concealed from others.¹ To support the Master it can be said that the sins of the just will not be made known as sins but as forgiven, for this is how they will be brought before everyone’s consideration. Therefore, there will be no shame from this, but glory. However, they are said to be concealed inasmuch as God does not see them to punish them, as the Gloss says about Psalm 32 (31):1: blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven.

But Jerome, writing to Marcella, seems to attest to the contrary.¹ Some people say that Jerome did not say this as his own assertion, but only to report the opinion of a certain Greek.

For some philosophers held that souls separated from bodies are united again to those bodies. But they were wrong in this in two respects. First, as to the manner of union, for some held that a separated soul would be naturally rejoined to a body by way of generation. Second, as to the body to which it would be joined, for they held that the second union would not be to the same body that had been laid aside in death, but to another. Sometimes it would be joined to one of the same species, but sometimes to a different one, when the soul dwelling in the body had led a beastly life outside the order of reason, so that after death it would pass from the body of a man into the body of another animal, to whose manners it had conformed itself while alive; as into a dog’s body because of sensuality, and a lion’s body because of violence and plunder, and so on with the others. But it would pass into a body of the same species when the soul, living well in its body, and having enjoyed some happiness after death, began to wish to return to its body after a certain number of centuries; and so it would be rejoined to a human body. But this opinion comes from two false roots; the first of which is that the soul is not united to a body essentially as a form to matter, but only accidentally, as a motor to what it moves, or a person to his clothing. And therefore they could hold that a soul pre-existed before being infused into a generated body by natural generation; and again, that it would be united to different bodies. The second is that they held that the intellect only differed from the senses accidentally, so that namely a man would be said to have understanding above the other animals because in him the sensitive power flourished more extensively because of the best composition of the body. For this reason they could hold that the soul of man would pass into the body of a brute animal, especially once the human soul had been bent to beastly effects. But these two roots are destroyed by the Philosopher in his book On the Soul;¹ and once the roots are destroyed, the falsity of the position mentioned is obvious.

And in the same way the errors of certain heretics, who fell into the position described, are also destroyed. However, some held that the soul would be joined anew to heavenly bodies, or even to subtle bodies in the manner of a wind, as Gregory tells of a certain bishop of Constantinople, explaining that statement: in my flesh I shall see God my savior (Job 19:26). And these heretics’ errors can be destroyed by the fact that they harm the truth of the resurrection which Sacred Scripture professes. For it cannot be called a resurrection unless a soul returns to the same body, for a resurrection is a rising again; but what rises must be the same as what falls. Therefore, resurrection has more to do with the body that falls after death than with the soul that lives after death. And so, if it is not the same body that the soul takes up, it will not be called resurrection, but rather the assumption of a new body.

To the second question, it should be said that the necessity of holding that there is a resurrection comes from the fact that a man should obtain the last end for the sake of which the man was made, which cannot happen in this life, nor in the life of a separated soul, as was said above. Otherwise a man would be created to no purpose, if he could not attain to the end he was made for. And because it is necessary that the same thing in number attain to the end for which it was made, lest it seem to have been made in vain, it is necessary that the same man in number rise. And this does indeed happen since the same soul is joined to the same body in number, as is clear from what has been said. For otherwise it would not be a resurrection, properly speaking, unless the same man were restored. Therefore, to hold that it is not the same one in number who rises is a heresy, detracting from the truth of Scripture, which foretells a resurrection.

Or it could be said that the forms of other things that are generated and corrupted do not subsist in themselves, so that after the corruption of the composite, they are able to endure, as is the case with the rational soul, which retains the being that it acquired while in the body, even after the body, and the body is brought back into participation in this being through resurrection, since the being of the body is not one thing and the being of the soul in the body another. Otherwise, the union of soul and body would be accidental, and thus no interruption occurs in the substantial being of a man, so that he would be unable to return the same in number because of the interruption of his being, as happens in other corrupted things, whose being is completely interrupted, with no form remaining, but the matter remaining under some other being. But nevertheless a man is also not repeated the same in number by natural generation, for the body of a man generated is not made from all the matter of the one generating. Therefore the body is diverse in number, and consequently, so is the soul, and the whole man.

For some people say that the form of the whole and the form of the part are the same thing according to reality: the form of the part according as it perfects matter, but the form of the whole according as by it the whole notion of the species results. And on this opinion, humanity according to reality is nothing other than the rational soul; and thus, when the rational soul is taken up again the same in number, the humanity will be the same in number, and also remain after death, although not under the account of humanity, for the composite does not attain the account of the species from the soul.

The other opinion is Avicenna’s, which seems truer, for the form of the whole is not the form of a part alone, nor is any other form aside from the form of the part, but it is the whole resulting from the composition of form and matter, including both in itself. And this form of the whole is called the essence or ‘whatness.’ Therefore, since in the resurrection the body will be the same one in number, and the rational soul will be the same in number, it will of necessity be the same humanity. Now, the first argument proving that the humanity will be different proceeded as if the humanity were some other form on top of form and matter, which is false. But the second argument also cannot disprove the identity of the humanity, for a joining together signifies action or passion, which, although it is different, cannot prevent the humanity from being the same, for the action and passion from which the humanity existed are not of the essence of humanity. Therefore, their diversity does not bring about a diversity of humanity. For it is clear that generation and resurrection are not the same movement in number, nor, however, is the sameness of the person rising prevented on this account. Similarly, the sameness of the humanity is not impeded, if the union were taken for the relation itself; for that relation is not of the essence of humanity, but concomitant with it, by the fact that humanity is not from those forms that are composition and order, as it says in the Physics 2,¹ like the forms of artificial things; which is why the form of a house is not the same in number when it exists in a composite different in number.

To the third question, it should be said that in this question it is a different thing to consider what can be done without damage to sameness, and what is done so that fittingness is preserved.

Therefore, as to the first it should be known that in a man the diverse parts of the whole can be taken in two ways. In one way, as the different parts of something homogeneous, like different parts of flesh, or different parts of bone; in another way, different parts of different species of a heterogeneous whole. Therefore, if it were said that parts of matter will return to another part of the same species, this only causes variety in the position of the parts, but a changed position of the parts does not change the species in homogeneous wholes. And so if the matter of one part returned to a different part, no damage would be done to the identity of the whole. And this is also how it is in the example given in the text: for a statue does not return the same in number according to form, but according to matter, according to which is a kind of substance. Now this is how a statue is homogeneous, although not according to artificial form. But if it were said that the matter of one part returns to another part of another species, then of necessity not only would the position of parts be changed, but also their identity. However this is how it would be if the whole matter, or something that was of the truth of human nature in one part were transferred to another, but not if anything that was superfluous in one part were transferred to another part. But if the identity of the parts were taken away, the identity of the whole is taken away, if we are speaking of essential parts; but not if we are speaking of accidental parts, like hair and nails, which is what Augustine seems to be speaking of. And so it is clear what kind of transfer of matter from one part to another takes away the sameness from the whole, and what kind does not.

But speaking according to fittingness, it is more probable that even the same positioning of parts will be preserved in the resurrection, especially as to the essential parts and organs, although perhaps not as to accidental parts, like nails and hair.

If it be said that not all the flesh that is eaten belongs to the truth of human nature, and so some of it can rise in the first person, and some in the second, then against this: what is drawn from parents seems most of all to be of the truth of human nature. But if someone who only ate human flesh should generate a son, it is necessary that what the son draws from his parent would be the flesh of other men that his father had eaten, for semen is from an excess of food, as the Philosopher proves in his book On the Generation of Animals.¹ Therefore, what belongs to the truth of human nature in that child also belonged to the truth of human nature in other men, whose flesh the father ate.

If it be said that what belonged to the truth of human nature in the flesh of the people who had been eaten did not pass into the semen, but that what belonged to the truth of human nature did not exist there, then against that: let it be held that someone is fed only with embryos, in whom there seems to be nothing that does not pertain to the truth of nature: for all that is in them is drawn from their parents. Therefore, if an excess of food is converted into semen, it is necessary that what belonged to the truth of human nature in those embryos, who also pertain to the resurrection, after they have received a rational soul, belongs to the truth of human nature also in the child who is generated out of such seed. And thus, since the same thing cannot rise again in two people, not everything that belonged to the truth of human nature in anyone would be able to rise in him.

To the second question, it should be said that a soul is related to an animated body as an art is related to the artifact produced by it, and to its parts as an art to its own instruments, and this is why an animate body is said to be organic. Now an art uses certain instruments for accomplishing the work intended, and these instruments come from the first intention of the art. It also uses other instruments for preserving the chief instruments, and these come from the second intention of the art, as the military art uses a sword for warfare, and a sheath for preserving the sword. In the same way, among the parts of an animate body, some are ordered to accomplishing the activities of the soul, like the heart, liver, hands, and feet; while others are for the preservation of other parts; just as leaves are for covering fruits, so also hair and nails in a human are for the protection of other parts. So they are of the second perfection of the human body, although not of the first. Therefore, because a man will rise in every perfection of his own nature, it is necessary that hair and nails rise in him.

To the third question, it should be said that whatever pertains to the integrity of human nature in the risen will all rise in them for the reason given. Therefore, it is necessary that the bodily fluids in a man that pertain to his integrity will rise again. Now there are three kinds of fluid in a human being.

For one kind of fluid exists in moving away from the perfection of this individual, either because it is on the way to corruption, and it is discarded by nature, like urine, sweat, pus, and the like; or because it is ordered by nature to the conservation of the species in another individual, whether by the act of generation, like semen, or by the act of nourishment, like milk. And no fluid like these will rise again, due to the fact that they do not belong to the perfection of the individual who rises.

The second kind of fluid is what has not yet reached the last perfection that nature works in the individual, but is ordered to it by nature; and there are two such fluids. For there is one that has a certain determinate form, according as it is contained among the parts of the body, like blood, and the other three humours, which nature has ordered to the members that are generated by them, but nevertheless they have certain determinate forms, just as the other parts of the body do; and therefore they shall rise with the other parts. But some fluids are in the process of passing from one form to another, namely, from the form of the fluid into the form of the member. And fluids like this will not rise again, for after the resurrection individual parts of the body will be established in their forms, and one will not pass over into another. And therefore those fluids will not rise that are in the very act of passing from one form into another. But those fluids can be taken in two different states, either according as they exist in the principle of change; and thus it is called dew, namely, that fluid that is in the apertures of small blood-vessels; or according as it is in the process of change, and already begins to be whitened, and then it is called cambium. But in neither state shall it rise.

The third category of fluids is what has already attained to the last perfection that nature intends in the body of an individual, which is already whitened and incorporated with members. And this is called adhesive, and since it belongs to the substance of the members, it will rise again, just as the other members rise.

To the fourth question, it should be said that as each thing is related to being, so it is related to truth, as it says in the Metaphysics 2.¹ For that thing is true that is such that it is seen by the knower according to act. And because of this Avicenna says that the truth of each thing is the property of its being that is firmly established for it.² And according to this something is said to belong to the truth of human nature because it properly pertains to the being of human nature; and this is what partakes of the form of human nature, just that is called true gold that has the true form of gold, from which the proper being of gold exists. Therefore, to manifest what belongs to the truth of human nature, one should know that there are three opinions about this.

For some people have held that nothing new ever arises pertaining to the truth of human nature, but whatever pertains to the truth of human nature existed whole in the very institution of human nature concerning its truth. And this is multiplied through itself so that from it semen can be shed by the one generating, from which a child is generated, in which also that part that is shed is multiplied, and it attains its full quantity by increasing from then on. And this is how the whole human race is multiplied. Therefore, according to this opinion, whatever is generated from food, although it seems to have the appearance of flesh or blood, nevertheless does not pertain to the truth of human nature.

But others have said that something new is added to the truth of human nature by a natural transformation of food into the human body, when the truth of human nature is considered in its species, to whose preservation the act of the generative power is ordered. Now, if the truth of human nature were considered in the individual, to whose conservation and perfection the act of the nutritive power is ordered, nothing is added by nourishment that belongs to the truth of human nature of this individual primarily, but only secondarily. For they hold that the truth of human nature first and principally consists in the root moisture, namely, what is generated from semen out of which the first constitution of a human body exists; but what is converted from food into true flesh and blood does not belong to the truth of human nature of that individual principally, but secondarily. But it can pertain principally to the truth of human nature of another individual who is generated from the semen of that man. For they hold semen to be an excess of food, either with the admixture of something that belongs primarily to the truth of human nature in the one who generates, as some people say, or without any admixture, as others say; and so what is nutritional moisture in one, becomes root moisture in another.

The third opinion is that something new begins to principally belong to the truth of human nature even in a given individual, because there is no such distinction in the human body that any designated material part should necessarily remain through the whole life, but any given designated part is indifferent to remaining, because it remains always as regards what belongs to the species in it, but it can flow out and as regards what belongs to matter in it. And thus nutritional moisture is not distinguished from root moisture on the part of the principle, so that what is generated from seed is called ‘root,’ while what is generated from food is called ‘nutritional,’ but rather it is distinguished by its terminus, so that it is called ‘root’ if it attains the terminus of generation by the generative act or even by the nutritive power, but it is called ‘nutritional’ when it does not yet attain to this terminus but is still in the way of nourishment. And these three opinions were fully treated and investigated in Book II, Distinction 30, Question 2, Article 1. And therefore they do not have to be repeated here, except as they pertain to the matter at hand.

Therefore, it should be known that according to these opinions, one should answer this question in different ways.

For the first opinion, through the way of multiplication that the Master holds, can include the perfection of human nature both as to the number of individuals and as to the due quantity of each individual, without it being generated from food, which indeed is only added for resisting the consumption that could be brought about by the action of natural heat, as lead is added to silver so that it will not be consumed by liquefaction. Therefore, since in the resurrection human nature must be restored in its perfection, nor will natural heat then act for the consumption of natural moisture, there will be no necessity that anything rise again in a person that is generated from food. But only that will rise which belonged to the truth of the human nature of the individual, and by diminishment and multiplication it arrives at the aforesaid perfection in number and quantity.

But the second opinion, since it holds that what is generated from food is needed for the perfection of individual quantity and for the multiplication that happens through generation, must necessarily hold that something that the food is converted into will rise; not all of it, but only as much as is needed for the perfect reconstitution of human nature in all its individuals. Therefore, this opinion holds that the whole that existed in the substance of semen will rise in that man who is generated from that semen, for this belongs principally to the truth of human nature in him. But concerning what comes afterward through nourishment, as much will rise in him as is necessary for the perfection of his quantity, and not all; for this does only pertains to the truth of human nature to the extent that nature needs it for the perfection of quantity. But since this nutritive moisture flows out and in, it will be restored in this order, that what was of the substance of a man’s body will be wholly restored, and what comes second and third and so on as much as is necessary for the quantity to be reconstituted, for two reasons. First, because it was introduced over and above what came so that what had first been lost might be restored, and therefore it does not pertain so principally to the truth of human nature as does what came before it. Second, because the addition of foreign moisture to the first root moisture causes the whole mixture to participate in the truth of the species not as perfectly as the first moisture participated, as the example of the Philosopher shows in On Generation and Corruption 1,¹ that water mixed with wine continually weakens the virtue of the wine, so that in the end it renders it watery. Therefore, just as although the second water is assumed into the species of the wine, nevertheless, it does not partake so perfectly of the species of the wine as the first that was assumed into the wine, so too the food that is converted into flesh second does not so perfectly attain to the species of flesh as what was converted first. And therefore it is clear that this opinion holds that all that belongs to the truth of human nature principally shall rise, but not all that belongs to the truth of human nature secondarily.

But the third opinion differs from the second in one respect, and agrees with it in another. It differs indeed in holding that all that is under the form of flesh and bone pertains to the truth of human nature by the same reason, for it does not distinguish any designated material thing enduring in a man the entire length of his life, which would pertain to the truth of human nature first and essentially, from something that comes and goes, which would only pertain to the truth of human nature because of the perfection of quantity, not because of the first being of the species, as the second opinion was saying. But it holds that all parts that are not begotten in addition outside the intention of nature pertain to the truth of human nature as to what they possess of the species, for that is how they remain, but not as to what they have of matter, for in that regard they come and go indifferently; so that we think of what it happens among the parts of one man as being like what happens in the whole multitude of a city, for individuals are removed from the multitude by death, and others come to take their place. Therefore, the parts of a multitude come and go materially, but formally they remain, for others are substituted in the same offices and orders from which the first ones were taken away. This is why the republic is said to remain one in number. And likewise also when certain parts pass away and others are restored in the same shape and position, all the parts come and go according to matter, but remain according to species; nevertheless, the man still remains one in number.

But the third opinion agrees with the second, for it holds that the parts arriving second do not so perfectly attain the truth of the species as those that came first. And therefore the same thing that the second opinion believes will rise again in a man, the third opinion also believes, but not entirely for the same reason. For it considers that all that was generated from semen will rise again, not because it pertains to the truth of human nature for any other reason than what comes afterward, but because it participates more perfectly in the virtue of the species, which is the order the second opinion held in those things that came afterward from food. In this too this opinion agrees with the other, that is, the second one.

But according to the second and third opinions, each part will rise in that person in whom it most closely approached the perfect participation of the virtue of the species; and if it approached it equally in both, it will rise in that one in whom it was first, for in him it first had an order to the resurrection from being joined to the rational soul of that man. And therefore if there were any excess in meat that was eaten, which did not pertain to the truth of human nature in the first, it could rise in the second. Otherwise, what pertained to the resurrection in the first will rise in him, and not in the second; but in the second, in its place will be taken either something of that which was converted from other food into the flesh of the second, or, if he had never been fed on any food but human flesh, divine power would supply from elsewhere as much as was needed for the perfection of quantity, as it supplies in those who die before maturity. Nor is any damage done by this to the identity in number, as neither would it be damaged by the fact that parts come and go according to matter.

To the fifth question, it should be said that what exists materially in a human does not have an order to the resurrection except according as it pertains to the truth of human nature, for according to this it has an order to the rational soul. Now all that is in a human being materially does pertain to the truth of human nature as to what it has from the species, but not all the matter considered in its totality, for all the matter that was in a human from the beginning of his life until the end would exceed the due quantity of the species, as the third opinion says, which seems to me the most probable one among them. And therefore all that is in a human being will rise, considered in the totality of the species, for it is looked at according to quantity, shape, position, and order of parts. But all will not rise again, considered in the totality of matter.

Now the second and first opinion do not make use of this distinction, but they distinguish among the parts, both of which have species or matter. However, these two opinions agree in saying that what is generated from semen will all rise again, even considered in the totality of matter. But they differ in that the first opinion claims that nothing shall rise again that is generated from food, while the second opinion claims that some of it will rise, but not all, as is clear from what has been said.

To the second question, it should be said that in the resurrection human nature will be restored not only the same in species, but also the same in number.¹ And so in the resurrection we look not only for what belongs to the nature of the species, but also what belongs to the nature of the individual. Now the nature of the species has a certain quantity that admits of neither excess nor defect without error. Nevertheless this quantity has certain degrees of latitude, and is not to be taken according to one specific measure. Now each individual in the human species achieves within the boundaries of that latitude a certain degree of quantity that belongs to the nature of the individual; and it is brought to this at full growth, if there was not error in the work of nature by which something was added or subtracted from the aforementioned quantity; and its measure is taken according to the proportion of extending heat and extensible fluid, which is not of the same strength in everyone. And therefore not everyone will rise in the same quantity, but everyone will rise in the quantity he would have had at full growth, if nature had not erred or failed; but what is excessive or deficient in a person will be trimmed or supplied by divine power.

To the third question, it should be said that just as when the nature of the individual is considered, different sizes are proper to different people, so when the nature of the individual is considered, different sexes are proper to different people. And this diversity also befits the perfection of the species, whose different degrees are filled by the diversity of sex or size. And therefore just as people will rise again in diverse statures, so too, in diverse sexes. And although there is a difference between the sexes, nevertheless there will be no embarrassment in the mutual sight, for there will be no sexual desire inciting people to base acts, which is the cause of this embarrassment.

To the fourth question, it should be said that the resurrection will not be necessary to man on account of his first perfection, which consists in the integrity of those things that have to do with nature, for a human being can attain these in the state of the present life through the action of natural causes. But the necessity of the resurrection is for obtaining final perfection, which consists in attaining the final end, as was said in the previous distinction. And so those natural activities that are ordered to the first perfection of human nature, whether causing it or preserving it, will not exist in the resurrection; and among these are the actions of animal life in man, and the actions of nature in the elements, and the movement of the heavens. And therefore all these things will cease in the resurrection. And since eating and drinking and sleeping and procreating pertain to animal life, since they are ordered to the first perfection of nature, they will not exist in the resurrection.

For some people attribute it to the condition of the elements, which will be related otherwise in the body than they are related now. For they say that the elements will remain there according to substance, but the active and passive qualities will be removed from the elements. But this does not seem to be true; for active and passive qualities belong to the perfection of the elements. Therefore, if they were restored without these, the elements in the bodies of the risen would be of lesser perfection than they are now. And furthermore, since those qualities are proper accidents of the elements, caused by their form and matter, it seems extremely absurd that when this cause remained, its effect would be taken away.

And so others say that the qualities will remain, but they will not have their proper actions, for divine power will work to the conservation of the human body. But this also does not seem able to stand, for the action of active and passive qualities is required for a mixture; and according to the predominance of one thing or another, the things mixed become differently composed. We must hold that this happens in the case of the risen body, for there will be flesh and blood there, and parts like this, to which one single composition does not apply. And furthermore, according to this, impassibility cannot be considered a gift in them, for it would not include any disposition in the impassible substance, but only the prevention of passivity from the outside, namely, from divine power, which could also work the same thing for a human body in the state of this life.

And therefore, others say that in the body itself there will be something prohibiting passion in glorified bodies, namely, the nature of the fifth body, which they believe comes into the composition of the human body to reconcile the elements into some kind of harmony, by which they can be the due matter of a rational soul; but nevertheless in the state of this life, because of the domination of elementary nature, the human body is acted upon in the likeness of the other elements. But in the resurrection the nature of the fifth body will dominate, and so the human body will be rendered impassible in the likeness of heavenly bodies. But this cannot stand: for the fifth body does not come materially into the composition of a human, as was shown in Book II, Distinction 17, Question 3, Article 1. And furthermore, it is impossible to say that any natural power, such as is the power of a heavenly body, would transfer the human body to a property of glory, such as is the impassibility of the glorified body, since the Apostle attributes the alteration of the human body to Christ’s power, for as is the man of heaven, so are those who are of heaven (1 Cor 15:48); and who will change our lowly body to be like his glorious body, by the power which enables him even to subject all things to himself (Phil 3:21). And furthermore, the heavenly nature cannot dominate in this way in the human body such that the elementary nature does not remain, to which passibility belongs from its essential principles.

And so it should rather be said that every passion happens by the victory of whatever is acting over what is acted upon; otherwise, it would not draw it to its own boundaries. Now it is impossible that anything dominate over what is acted upon except inasmuch as the domination of its own form is weakened over the matter of what is acted upon, speaking about the passion that surrounds matter, which we are now speaking about. For the matter cannot be subject to one of two contraries without removing the dominance of the other over it, or at least lessening it. But the human body, and whatever is in it, will be perfectly subject to the rational soul, just as also it will be perfectly subject to God. And therefore in the glorified body there will not be able to be any change against that disposition by which it is perfected by the soul. And this is why that body will be impassible.

To the second question, it should be said that impassibility can be considered in two ways: either in itself, or in its cause. If it were considered in itself, since it conveys only privation or negation, it would not admit of more and less, but it would be equal in all the blessed. However, if it were considered according to its cause, then it would be greater in one person than in another. Now, its cause is the soul’s governance over the body, which governance indeed is caused by its serving God immoveably. Therefore, in someone who more perfectly enjoys [God], there is a greater cause of impassibility.

To the third question, it should be said that everyone holds that there will be some sensation in the bodies of the blessed; otherwise, the bodily life of the saints after the resurrection would resemble sleep more than waking, which does not befit its perfection, by the fact that in sleep the sensate body is not in its highest act of life, which is why sleep is called half of a life in the Ethics 1.¹ But as to how sensation will happen, different people have different opinions.

For some say that since glorified bodies will be impassible, and because of this they will not be able to receive a foreign impression, and much less than heavenly bodies, the act of sensation will not take place through the reception of a certain species from sensible things, but rather through a sending outward. But this cannot be the case, for in the resurrection the nature of the species will remain the same in man and in all his parts. But it is the nature of the senses to be passive powers, as the Philosopher proves in On the Soul 2.¹ Therefore, if in the resurrection the saints sensed by sending outward, and not by receiving, the senses would not be passive powers in them, and so they would not be of the same species with the senses that now exist, but they would be some other powers given to them; for just as matter never becomes form, so passive powers never become active.

And so others say that the act of sensation will happen not indeed by receiving from external sensible things, but by an overflow from higher powers, so that as higher powers receive from lower ones now, so conversely, lower ones will receive from higher ones then. But that movement of receiving does not cause true sensation, for every passive power according to the account of its own species is directed to some specific active thing; for a power, as such, has an order to whatever it is said in regard to. Therefore, since the proper active thing in an external sense is a thing existing outside the soul, and its intention does not exist in the imagination and reason, if a sense organ is not moved by something outside it, but by the imagination or other higher powers, it will not truly sense. Therefore, we do not say that madmen and other mentally handicapped people, in whom because of the victory of the imaginative power a flow like this happens of the species into the sense organs, are truly sensing, but that it seems to them that they sense.

And therefore it should be said with others that sensation in glorified bodies will happen through reception from things that are outside the soul. But it should be known that sense organs are changed by things that are outside the soul in two ways. In one way, by natural alteration, namely, when the organ is disposed by the same natural quality by which the thing outside the soul that acts on it is disposed; as when the hand becomes hot and scorched by the touch of something hot, or fragrant by contact with something fragrant. In the other way, by a spiritual change, when a sensible quality is received in the instrument according to spiritual being, that is, the species or the intention of the quality, not the quality itself; as the pupil receives the species of whiteness and yet it itself is not made white. Therefore, the first kind of receiving does not cause sensation, speaking per se, because sense is susceptive of species in matter apart from matter, that is, apart from the material being that they had outside the soul, as it says in On the Soul 2.¹ And this receiving alters the nature of the receiver, for a quality is received in this manner according to its own material being. Therefore, this kind of receiving will not happen in glorified bodies, but the second kind will, which causes the act of sensation per se, and does not alter the nature of the receiver.

To the fourth question, it should be said that concerning this there are two opinions.

For some people say that in glorified bodies all the powers of the senses will exist, but there will only be two acts of sensation, namely, vision and touch; nor will this be from a lack of sense powers, but from a lack of medium and object; nor, however, will they be in vain, for they will exist for the integrity of human nature and to display the wisdom of the Creator. But this does not seem to be true, for what is the medium in those senses is also the medium in others. For in sight the medium is air, which also is the medium in hearing and smell, as is clear from On the Soul 2.¹ Likewise, taste also has its medium joined to it, like touch, too, since taste is a kind of touch, as it says in the same book.² Scent will also be there, which is the object of the sense of smell, since the Church sings that the sweetest odor will be the bodies of the saints. There will also be vocal praise in heaven; which is why Augustine says³ about Psalm 149:6: let the high praises of God be in their throats, that hearts and tongues shall not cease to praise God. And the same thing is also maintained by the Gloss on that text: resounding well in cymbals.⁴

And therefore, according to certain people, it should be said that even the sensations of smell and hearing will exist there actually; but there will be no act of the sensation of taste such that it will be changed by any food or drink consumed, as is clear from what has been said; unless perhaps it were said that there will be an act of the sensation of tough via the alteration of the tongue from a certain moisture adjoining it.

Proof of the middle: let there be two bodies in the same place, of which one is called A and the other B. Therefore, either the dimensions of A will be the same as the dimensions of the place, or different. If different, there will be therefore some separated dimensions, which cannot be held, for the dimensions that are within the borders of the place are not in any subject, unless they are in the body located there. But if they are the same, then by the same reasoning the dimensions of B will be the same with the dimensions of the place. But any things that are the same as a third are the same as each other. Therefore, the dimensions of A and B are the same. But the dimensions of two bodies cannot be the same dimensions, just as neither can they be the same white. Therefore A and B are one body, and they were two: therefore, they are one and two at the same time.

Proof of the middle: it is a conclusion of geometry that two circles only touch in one point.¹ But if two circular bodies were in the same place, the two circles outlined in them would touch each other entirely. Likewise also, it is against the definition of a line that there be more than one straight line within two points;² which would happen if two bodies were in the same place, because within two designated points on different surfaces of the place there would be two straight lines of the two bodies located there.

Proof of the middle: let there be two bodies in the same place, of which one is greater than the other according to any dimension: the smaller body will be enclosed in the larger body, and the place of the larger body will be its shared place; but it will not have its own place, for there will not be any designated actual surface of the body that contains it, which is the definition of place. Therefore it will not have its own proper place.

For some heretics, as Augustine tells,¹ attributed subtlety to it according to the mode by which spiritual substances are called subtle, saying that in the resurrection the body will be turned into spirit; and for this reason the Apostle calls the bodies of the risen ‘spiritual’ (1 Cor 15). But this cannot stand. First, because a body cannot pass over into spirit, since they do not share in matter, which Boethius shows in his book On the Two Natures.² Second, because if this were possible, once a body had changed into a spirit, a man, who is constituted of body and soul, could not rise. Third, because if the Apostle understood it in this way, then just as he called the body ‘spiritual’, by the same reasoning he would call ‘animal’ the body that is changed into a soul, which is clearly false.

This is why some heretics have said that the body will remain in the resurrection, but it will have subtlety after the manner of rarefaction, so that human bodies will be like air or wind in the resurrection, as Gregory tells in Morals 14.¹ But this also cannot stand, for as is clear from the last chapter of Luke, after his resurrection the Lord had a palpable body, which particularly must be believed to be subtle. And furthermore, the human body will rise with flesh and bones, just like the body of the Lord, as it says in Luke 24:39: a spirit does not have flesh and bones, as you see that I have; and it says in Job 19:26: in my flesh will I see God my savior. But the nature of flesh and bones does not allow the rarity described. And so another mode of subtlety must be assigned to glorified bodies, so that they are called subtle because of the most complete perfection of the body.

But some people attribute this completeness to glorified bodies by reason of a fifth essence that will predominate in them then: which cannot be. First, because nothing of the fifth essence can come into the composition of the human body, as was shown in Book II, distinction 17, question 2, article 1. Second, because if it were granted that it would come into the composition of the human body, it could not be understood to dominate more than it does now over the elementary nature, unless in such a way that it would exist in human bodies more according to the quantity of heavenly nature; and then human bodies would not be of the same stature, unless perhaps elementary matter were diminished in a man, which is opposed to the integrity of those who will rise; or in such a way that the nature of the element would assume properties of heavenly nature by its dominion in the body, and then a natural power would be the cause of the properties of glory, which is absurd.

And so others say that the completion discussed, from which human bodies are called subtle, will arise from the governance of the glorified soul, which is the form of the body, over it, by reason of which the glorified body is called ‘spiritual’, as something entirely subject to the spirit. Now the first subjection by which the body is subject to the soul is for partaking in specific being, as it is subject to it like matter to form; and then it is subject to it for other works of the soul, inasmuch as the soul is the mover. And so the first account of spirituality in the body is from subtlety, and then from agility and the other properties of the glorified body; and for this reason in spirituality, the Apostle touched upon the gift of subtlety, as the Master explains. It is also for this reason that Gregory says in the Morals 14 that the glorified body is called subtle by the effect of spiritual power.¹

And by this the solutions to the objections, which proceed concerning the subtlety that exists through rarefaction, are clear.

To the second question, it should be said that one cannot maintain that a glorified body could be with another body in the same place by reason of its subtlety, unless what now prohibits it from being together with another body in the same place were taken away from it through subtlety.

Now, some people say that it is prevented from this in its own state by reason of its corpulence, by which it is made to fill a place, which corpulence indeed is taken away from it by the gift of subtlety. But this cannot stand for two reasons.

First, because the corpulence that the gift of subtlety removes is something pertaining to a defect, like any disordering of matter not perfectly underlying its form: for everything in the body that pertains to the integrity of the body will rise on the part of the form just as on the part of matter. But that a body fills its place occurs through what belongs to the integrity of its nature, and not from any defect of nature. For since full is opposed to empty, the only thing that does not fill its place is the kind of thing that, being situated in a place, nevertheless leaves the place empty. Now a vacuum is defined in the Physics 4¹ as a place not filled with a sensible body. But a body is called sensible from matter and form and natural accidents, all of which pertain to the integrity of its nature. It is also clear that the glorified body will be sensible also according to touch, as is seen in the body of the Lord (Luke 24); for it will lack neither matter nor form, nor natural accidents according to heat and cold and such. This is why it is clear that a glorified body, notwithstanding the gift of subtlety, will fill its place. For it would seem insane to say that the place where a glorified body was, was empty.

The second of their reasons mentioned does not work, for to impede the coexistence of the body in the same place is more than to fill the place. For if we consider the dimensions to be separated without matter, those dimensions do not fill the place; and therefore some of those who believe there is a vacuum have said that the vacuum is the place in which dimensions exist like this without any sensible body. And yet those dimensions are prevented from existing together with a body in the same place, as is evident from the Philosopher in the Physics 4,¹ where he holds as unfitting that a mathematical body, which is nothing other than separated dimensions, exists together with a natural sensible body. Therefore, given that the subtlety of the glorified body would remove from it what allows it to fill its place, it would still not follow that because of this it could exist with another body in the same place; for removing what is less does not remove what is more.

Therefore, it seems that what impedes our body now from existing together with another body in the same place in no way could be removed from it by the gift of subtlety. For nothing can prevent any body situated in a place from existing together with another body in the same place, except that in it which requires a different place. For nothing is an impediment to sameness but what is a cause of diversity. Now, no quality of a body requires this distinction of place, for no being in a place is due to a body by reason of its quality. Therefore, if it is removed from a sensible body that it be hot or cold, or heavy or light, the necessity of this distinction remains in it nevertheless, as is shown by the Philosopher in the Physics 4,¹ and is also plain in itself. Likewise, the matter cannot bring in the necessity for this distinction, since being in a place does not belong to matter except by means of dimensive quantity. Likewise too, form contains no being situated except by reason of the matter having situation.

Therefore, it remains that the necessity of distinction between the places of two bodies is caused by the nature of dimensive quantity, to which being situated belongs per se; for it falls within its definition that dimensive quantity is a quantity having place. And from this it is the case that when all other things are removed that exist in a thing, the necessity of such a distinction is found in dimensive quantity alone. Now, if we take a separated line, it is necessary that when there are two lines, or two parts of one line, they are distinct in place; otherwise a line added to a line would not become greater, which is against a common concept of the mind.¹ And it is similar with surfaces and mathematical bodies. And since being situated is due to matter inasmuch as it stands under dimensions, it is this that the necessity for matter to be situated is derived from; just as it is not possible for there to be two lines or two parts of a line unless they are distinct according to situation, so it is just as impossible for there to be two matters or two parts of matter, unless there is a distinction of place. And since the distinction of matter is the principle of the distinction of individuals, this is the reason for what Boethius says in his book On the Trinity: that in no way can we shape one place with two bodies;² so that a distinction of individuals requires at least this difference in accidents. Now, subtlety does not remove dimension from the glorified body, and so in no way does it remove from it the necessity for distinction from another body in place. And so the glorified body will not be able to exist together with another body by reason of its subtlety, but it will be able to exist together with another body by the operation of divine power, just as also Peter’s body did not have the ability to cure the sick from the addition of any property instilled in it, but this was done by divine power for the building up of the faith; in the same way, divine power will make the glorified body capable of existing together with another body for the perfection of glory.

To the third question, it should be said that, as is clear from what has been said, it is necessary that two bodies be in two places, for diversity of matter requires distinction in being placed. And so we see that when two bodies come together into one, the distinct being of both of them is destroyed, and one indistinct being is acquired by both together, as is seen in mixtures. Therefore, it cannot be that two bodies remain two and nevertheless exist together, unless each one preserves the distinct being that it had before, according as each was an undivided being in itself and divided from other things. However, this distinct being depends on the essential principles of the thing as on its proximate causes, but on God as first cause; as was said above in Distinction 12, Question 1, Article 1, Quaestiuncula 3, reply to the third objection, the being of an accident depends on its subject as proximate cause, but on God as first cause. And since the first cause can preserve a thing in being when secondary causes cease, as is clear from the first proposition in the Book of Causes,¹ for this reason it can happen by divine power and by it alone that an accident exist without a subject, as is seen in the sacrament of the altar. And likewise by divine power, and by it alone, it can happen that a body remain distinct from another body, although its matter is not distinct from the matter of another body in place; and this is how it can happen miraculously that two bodies exist in the same place.

But on the supposition that subjects are distinct without a distinction of placement by a divine miracle, as was said, lines which do not stand apart in place are understood as different because of the diversity of subject; and similarly, different points, and in the same way two lines designated in two bodies that are in the same place are drawn from different points to different points, so that we do not take the designated point as being in a place but as in the located body itself, for a line is not said to be drawn except from the point that is its terminus. And likewise too two circles designated in two spherical bodies existing in the same place are two, not because of diversity of location (otherwise they could touch each other along their whole length), but they are two by the diversity of subjects; and because of this, while entirely touching each other, they still remain two, just as a designated circle in a spherical located body touches, along its whole length, another designated circle in the body constituting its place.

To the fourth question, it should be said that the properties of a glorified body exclude its being with another glorified body in the same place, just as neither may it exist together with a non-glorified body. But it can happen by divine power that two glorified bodies exist together, or two non-glorified bodies, as also a glorified body and a non-glorified one. But nevertheless it is not fitting that a glorified body exist together with another glorified body, both because due order, which requires distinction, will be preserved in them, and because one glorified body will not be placed upon another. And thus two bodies will never exist together.

And the second objection should be answered likewise.

To the fifth question, it should be said that the body is only related to its place by means of its proper dimensions, according to which a body in a place is circumscribed by contact with the place it is located in. Therefore, for a certain body to be in a smaller place than its own quantity can only happen by the body’s proper quantity being made less than itself in some way, which indeed can only be taken in two ways.

In one way by a change in quantity in the same matter, so that, namely, the matter that formerly exists in great quantity afterward exists in small quantity; and this is what some have posited about glorified bodies, saying that their quantity is subject to their command, such that when they wish they can possess great quantity, and when they wish, small quantity. But this cannot be, for no motion that happens according to anything intrinsic to a thing can exist without some passion affecting its substance. And therefore in incorruptible bodies, namely, heavenly bodies, there is only local motion, which is not according to anything intrinsic. Therefore, it is clear that change of quantity in the matter would be opposed to the impassibility of the glorious body and to its incorruptibility. And furthermore, it would follow that the glorified body would sometimes be rarer and sometimes denser, for since nothing of its own matter can be divided from it, sometimes the same matter would be under small dimensions, and sometimes under great ones; and thus it would become rare and dense, which cannot be.

The other way this can be understood is that the quantity of the glorified body be made less than itself by varying its placement, so that namely the parts of the glorified body would collapse into each other, and then it would return to whatever small quantity; and some people have held this, saying that by reason of its subtlety the glorified body will be able to exist together with another non-glorified body in the same place. And likewise one part can exist within another to the degree that the whole glorified body could enter by the tiniest hole in one body. And this is how they explain that Christ’s body left the virginal womb and entered by locked doors to his disciples. But this cannot be, both because the glorified body will not be able to exist together with another body by reason of its subtlety, and because even if it could, it still would not be able to exist together with a glorified body, as many say; and because it would be opposed to the right disposition of the human body, which requires a determinate placement and separation of its parts. Therefore, this cannot ever be done by a miracle. And therefore it should be said that the glorified body will always be in a place equal to it.

To the sixth question, it should be said that every palpable body is tangible, but not vice versa. For every body is tangible that has qualities by which the sense of touch is of a nature to be changed. Therefore, air and fire, and all things like them, are tangible bodies. But to be palpable further adds that it resists the one touching; and so air, which in no way resists what passes through it, but is the easiest thing to divide, is indeed tangible but not palpable. Therefore, in this way it is clear that palpable is said of a body from two things: namely, from qualities of tangibility and from a resistance to what touches it, so that it cannot be passed through; for heat and cold and the like are tangible qualities, which are only found in heavy and light bodies that have contrariety to each other, and they are corruptible as a consequence. This is why heavenly bodies, which are incorruptible according to nature, are indeed sensible to sight, but not tangible, and thus neither are they palpable; and this is what Gregory says, that it is necessary for everything that is palpable to be corrupted.

Therefore, the glorified body will have qualities by its nature that naturally affect touch, but nevertheless because the body is entirely subject to the spirit, it is in its power to affect touch or not to affect it according to these qualities. Likewise too, according to the nature of the subject it happens that it resists any other body passing through, so that it could not exist with it at the same time in the same place. But it can happen miraculously at its command by divine power that it exist with another body in the same place, and then it would not resist something passing through. Therefore, according to its own nature the glorified body is palpable, but by supernatural virtue it can have that it not be palpable by a non-glorified body when it does not wish to be. And thus Gregory says that the Lord offered his flesh to be handled which he had taken through locked doors, so that after the resurrection he might show surely that his body was both of the same nature and of another glorified nature.

To the second question, it should be said that it is necessary to hold that glorified bodies will sometimes move, for even Christ’s very body moved in the Ascension. And likewise the bodies of the saints that will rise from the earth will ascend to the fiery heaven. But even after they climb to the skies, it seems true that sometimes they will move at the pleasure of their will, so that exercising in action what they have in power, they will show how admirable is the divine wisdom, and so that their sight will also be refreshed with the beauty of different created things in whom God’s wisdom shines forth most powerfully, for sensation can only be of present things, although glorified bodies will be able to perceive from farther away than non-glorified ones, as was said above. Nor, however, will their movement detract from any of their beatitude, which consists in the vision of God, whom they will have present to them everywhere, as Gregory says the angels do,¹ because within God they will run wherever they are sent.

To the third question, it should be said that concerning this there are many opinions.

For some people say that the glorified body passes from one place to another without passing through a medium, just as the will is transferred from one place to another without passing through a medium, and this is why a glorified body’s movement can be in an instant, like the will’s. But this cannot stand: for a glorified body will never attain the nobility of a spiritual nature, just as it will never stop being a body. And furthermore, when the will is said to be moved from one place to another, it is not transferred essentially from place to place, for it is contained in neither of these places essentially, but is directed to one place after it was directed by intention to another; and hence it is said to be moved toward a place.

And so others say that a glorified body possesses the property of its own nature by which it is a body, that it pass through a medium, and such that it moves in time. But by virtue of its glory, which possesses a certain infinity above the power of nature, it is able to not pass through a medium, and thus to move in an instant. But this cannot be: for it implies a contradiction in itself, which is evident in this way. Let there be a certain body that is moved from A to B, and let the body moved be Z. It is evident that as long as Z is entirely at A, it is not moving; likewise neither when it is entirely at B, for then it has been moved. Therefore, if it is moving at some time, it is necessary that it be neither entirely at A, nor entirely at B. Therefore, when it is moving, either it is nowhere, or it is partly at A and partly at B, or entirely in some other middle place, let us call it C, or it is partly at C and partly at A or at B. But it cannot be held that it is nowhere, for then there would be a certain dimensive quantity that did not have a place, which is impossible. Nor can it be held that it is partly at A and partly at B, and not in the middle in any way, for since B is a place distant from A, it would follow, with a middle lying between, the part of Z that is in B would not be continuous with the part that is in A. Therefore, it remains that the whole is either in C, or part is in it and part in another place, which is considered a middle between C and A, let us call it D, and so on with the others. Therefore, it is necessary that Z does not reach from A to B without first being in all the middle places; unless it were said that it reaches from A to B and is never moved, which implies a contradiction, for the very succession of places is local motion. The same account applies to any change that has two contrary terms, of which either one is something positive. However, it is different with those changes that have only one positive term while the other is pure privation, for between affirmation and negation or privation there is no determinate distance. This is why what is in negation can be closer to or farther from affirmation, and vice versa, by reason of something that causes one of them or disposes to it; and thus even while what is moving is entirely under negation, it is changing to affirmation, and vice versa. Therefore in them too changing precedes being changed, as is proved in the Physics 6.¹ Nor is it the same with the movement of the angels, for being in a place is said equivocally of a body and an angel, as was said in Book I, Distinction 37, Question 3, Article 1. And so it is clear that in no way can any body reach from one place to another unless it passes through everything in between.

And therefore others grant this; but they still say that the glorified body moves in an instant. But from this it follows that a glorified body is in the same instant in two or more places, namely, in the end terminus, and in all the places in between; which cannot be. But for this they say that although it is the same instant according to reality, nevertheless it differs in reason, like the point at which different lines terminate. But this does not suffice, for an instant measures what is in an instant according to reality, not according to what is considered; therefore, a different consideration of an instant does not make an instant able to measure those things that are not together in time, just as neither could a different consideration of a point make places that are distant in placement be contained under one point.

And therefore others say more probably that the glorified body is moved in time, but imperceptibly because of its quickness, and that nevertheless one glorified body can cross the same space in less time than another, for time is infinitely divisible, no matter how small an amount is taken.

But this argument, as the Commentator says in the same place, proceeds from a false imagination, in which a person imagines that the slowness that is caused by the resistance of a medium is some part of motion added to the natural motion, which has a quantity according to the proportion of the one moving to the moved object, as one line is added to a line, by reason of which it happens in lines that there does not remain the same proportion of the whole to the whole as there was of the lines added to each other. And so too there would not be the same proportion of whole sensible motion to whole sensible motion as there is of the slowings happening from the resisting mediums. This indeed is a false imagination, for every part of the motion has as much speed as the motion, but no part of a line has as much dimensive quantity as the whole line. For this reason the slowness or speed added to a motion applies to every part of it, which is not the case with lines, and so the slowness added to a motion does not make another part of the motion, as happened with lines, that what was added is a part of the whole line.

And therefore to understand the Philosopher’s proof, as the Commentator explains in the same place, it should be known that the whole must be taken as one, namely, the resistance of the mobile object to the moving force, and the resistance of the medium through which it is moved, and of anything else that resists, so that the amount of slowness of the whole motion is taken according to the proportion of the moving force to the moving object resisting in any way, either of itself, or from some other extrinsic factor. For a moving object must always resist the mover in some way, since the mover and the moved, the agent and the patient, as such, are contraries. Now sometimes the moving object is found to resist the mover of itself, either because it has a force inclining it to the contrary, as is seen in violent motions; or at least because it has a place contrary to the place that is intended by the mover, which is the kind of resistance even found between heavenly bodies and their movers. But sometimes the moving object resists the force of the mover only from some other factor, and not of themselves, as is seen in the natural motion of heavy things and light things; for by their very forms they incline to this kind of movement, for the form is the impression of the one generating, which is the per se mover of heavy and light things. Now on the part of the matter no resistance is found, whether from a force inclining to a contrary movement or to a contrary place, for place is only due to matter insofar as, consisting under dimensions, it is perfected by natural form. Therefore, there can only be resistance on the part of the medium, which resistance indeed is connatural to their movement. But sometimes there is resistance from both, as is seen in the movement of animals.

Therefore, when there is no resistance in the movement except on the part of the thing moved, as happens in heavenly bodies, then the time of the motion is measured according to the proportion of mover to moved object, and in these cases the argument of the Philosopher does not proceed, for even with the medium entirely removed, their motion still remains in time. But in those motions in which there is resistance on the part of the medium alone, the measure of time is taken according to the impediment that exists from the medium alone. Therefore, if the medium were entirely removed, no impediment will remain; and thus it will either be moved in an instant, or it will be moved in equal time according to empty and full space, for given that it is moved in time through a vacuum, that time will be related in a certain proportion to the time in which it is moved through a vacuum.

Now, it is possible to imagine a different body in the same proportion, more subtle than the body with which the space was filled, which, if a different space were equally filled by it, would be moved in as short a time through a full space as the first body moved through a vacuum, for the more is added to the subtlety of a medium, the more is taken away from the amount of time, and the more subtle it is, the less it resists. But in other motions in which there is resistance from the moved object itself and from the medium, the amount of time should be taken according to the proportion of the moving power to the resistance of the moving object and medium together. Therefore, given that the medium is entirely removed or does not impede, it does not follow that the motion will be in an instant, but that the time of the motion will be measured from the resistance of the moving object alone. Nor will it be unfitting, if it is moved through something empty and something full in the same time, when some very subtle body is imagined, for the greater the determinate subtlety of the medium is, the less it is bound to cause slowness in a movement. Therefore, so much subtlety can be imagined that it will be bound to cause less slowness than does the resistance of the moving object; and then the resistance of the medium will add no slowness to the movement.

Therefore, it is clear that although the medium does not resist glorified bodies according as they are able to be with another body in the same place, nevertheless their motion will not be in an instant, for the moving body itself resists the moving force by the fact that it has a determinate placement, as has been said about the heavenly bodies.

To the second question, it should be said that some people have said that the clarity of the glorified body cannot be seen by a non-glorified eye, except perhaps by a miracle. But this cannot be, unless clarity were being said equivocally, for light, according to what it is, is bound to move vision, and vision, according to what it is, is bound to receive light, just as the true is related to the intellect and the good to the affections. Therefore, if there were some vision that could not perceive any light at all, either the vision would be so named equivocally, or the light would be; which cannot be said in the case at hand, for then saying that glorified bodies will shine would mean nothing to us, just as someone who says there is a dog in the sky¹ makes nothing known to someone who only knows the dog that is an animal. And therefore it should be said that the clarity of the glorified body can naturally be seen by a non-glorified eye.

To the third question, it should be said that the visible is seen according as it acts on vision. Now, from the fact that something acts or does not act on something extrinsic, there is no change in it, which is why without change to any property that belongs to the perfection of the glorified body, it can happen that it is seen or not seen. Therefore, it will be in the power of the glorified soul that its body be seen or not seen, just as also every other action of the body will be in the power of the soul, otherwise the glorified body would not be an instrument perfectly obedient to its principal agent.

But among modern teachers there are two opinions about this. For some say that deformities and defects like this will remain in the bodies of the damned, for these teachers are considering their damnation, by which they are consigned to the highest misery, from which no discomfort should be taken away. But this does not seem to be reasonably said, for in the restoration of the risen body the perfection of nature is sought more than the condition that it had before. Therefore, also those who die before reaching complete maturity will rise in the stature of a youthful age, as was said above. Therefore, those who had any natural defects in their body or deformities arising from them would also be restored in the resurrection without those defects or deformities, unless the due reward of sin prevented it. And so, if someone with defects or deformities rises, this will be part of his punishment; however, the manner of his punishment is according to the measure of fault. Yet it may happen that a certain damned sinner, subject to minor sins, has deformities or defects that someone else who would be damned for more serious sins did not have. Therefore, if the one who had deformities in this life rose with them, but the other person, who should be more gravely punished but did not have them in this life, rose without them, the manner of punishment would not correspond to the amount of fault, but rather a person would seem to be punished for punishments that he suffered in this world, which is absurd.

And therefore other people say more reasonably that the author who composed nature will restore the nature of the body integrally in the resurrection. Therefore, whatever defect or ugliness was in the body either from the corruption or weakness of nature or the principles of natural things, will be entirely removed in the resurrection, like fever, eye infection, and the like. But the defects that happen naturally in the human body from natural principles, like heaviness, passibility, and the like, will exist in the bodies of the damned, while the glory of the resurrection excludes these defects from the bodies of the elect.

To the second question, it should be said that since in every motion there must be some principle of movement, a given movement or change can be removed from a moving object in two ways. One way by the fact that it lacks its principle of movement; in another way by the fact that the principle of movement is impeded. Now corruption is a kind of change; therefore, there are two ways it can happen that a body that has corruptibility from the condition of its own principles, is rendered incorruptible.

In one way, when the principle moving it to corruption is entirely taken away; and in this way the bodies of the damned will be incorruptible. For since the sky is the first agent of alteration by its own local motion, and all other secondary agents act in virtue of it, and as though moved by it, it is necessary that once the movement of the heavens ceases, there will be no agent that can change a body away from its own natural property by any alteration. And therefore after the resurrection, when the movement of the heavens ceases, no quality will be sufficient that the human body may be changed from its own natural quality. Now corruption is one terminus of alteration, just as generation is; and so the bodies of the damned could not be corrupted; and this serves divine justice that while they live forever, they should be punished forever, which divine justice requires, as will be said below; just as now the corruptibility of bodies serves divine providence, through which, from certain things being corrupted, others are generated.

In another way it happens from the fact that the principle of corruption is impeded, and this is the way the body of Adam was incorruptible [before the Fall], for the contrary qualities existing in a man’s body were restrained by the grace of innocence from being able to work to the dissolution of the body. And much more will they be restrained in glorified bodies, which will be entirely subject to the spirit; and thus, after the general resurrection in the bodies of the blessed, these two ways of incorruptibility will be united.

To the third question, it should be said that the principal reason why the bodies of the damned are not consumed by fire will be divine justice, for their bodies are consigned to perpetual punishment. But the natural disposition on the part of the suffering body and on the part of those acting also serves divine justice, for since suffering is a kind of receiving, there are two modes of being passive, according as something can be received in two ways. For a given form can be received by some other materially according to natural being, as heat is received in the air from fire; and according to this mode of reception there is one mode of passivity, which is called the passion of nature. In the other way something is received in another spiritually by the mode of a certain intention, as the likeness of white is received in the air and in the pupil. And this reception resembles that reception by which the soul receives the likenesses of things; therefore, according to this mode of reception there is another mode of passion, which is called the passion of the soul. Therefore, since after the resurrection, when the movement of the heavens has ceased, no body will be able to be altered from its natural quality, as was said, no body will be able to suffer by the passion of nature. Therefore, as to this mode of passion the bodies of the damned will be impassible, just as they will be incorruptible. But once the motion of the heavens ceases, the passion that is by the mode of the soul will still remain, for air will also be illuminated by the sun, and will convey to sight the differences of colors. Therefore, in this way of passion the bodies of the damned will be passible. And since the senses are perfected in this kind of passion, therefore the sense of pain will exist in the bodies of the damned without change to their natural disposition. But the glorified bodies, even if they receive something and are somehow passive in sensing, nevertheless they will not be passible, for they will receive nothing as afflictive or wounding, as the bodies of the damned will receive those things on account of which they are said to be passible.

For some philosophers, like Avicenna, not believing in the resurrection, believed there was punishment after death for the soul alone; and because it seemed unfitting to them that the soul, since it is incorporeal, should be punished by a corporeal fire, they denied that there was a physical fire in which the wicked would be punished, desiring that whatever is said about the future punishment of souls through corporeal things after death be said metaphorically. For just as the enjoyment and pleasure of good souls will not exist in any physical thing, but only a spiritual delight in the obtainment of their end, so too the affliction of the wicked would be only spiritual; namely, in the fact that they would grieve that they are separated from the end, which they naturally desire. Therefore, just as all the things that are said about the pleasure of souls after death that seem to pertain to physical pleasure, like that they will be refreshed, that they will laugh, and so forth, so too any of those things said about affliction that seems to sound like physical punishment should be understood as a similitude, like that they will burn in the fire, or be afflicted by the stench, and other things like this. For spiritual pleasure and sorrow, since they are unknown to the multitude, must be made known figuratively through physical pleasures and sorrows, so that people will be moved more to desire or fear. But since in the punishment of the damned there will not only be the pain of loss, which corresponds to the turning away that happened in their sin, but there will also be the pain of the senses, which corresponds to what they turned toward, therefore, the manner of punishment described above is not enough. And so even Avicenna himself added another manner of punishment, saying that the souls of the wicked after death will be punished not through their bodies, but through the likenesses of their bodies, as in dreams, because of these likenesses existing in the imagination, it seems to a person that he is tortured by different pains. And Augustine also seems to posit this manner of punishment in his Commentary on Genesis 12,¹ as is apparent in the same place.

But this seems to be said inappropriately. For the imagination is a certain power that uses a physical organ; therefore, it cannot be that imaginative visions happen in a soul separated from a body, as they do in the soul of someone sleeping. Hence even Avicenna, to avoid this inappropriateness, said that souls separated from bodies used as their organ a certain part of a heavenly body, which the human body must be like for the perfection of the rational soul, which is like the movers of a heavenly body; in this following in some way the opinion of the ancient philosophers, who held that souls returned to similar stars. But this is completely absurd according to the teaching of the Philosopher, for the soul uses a particular physical organ as an art uses particular tools. Therefore, it cannot pass from one body into another body, which Pythagoras held, as it says in On the Soul 1.¹

Now the way that Augustine’s statement should be answered will be said below. But whatever may be said about the fire that torments separated souls, nevertheless, concerning the fire in which the bodies of the damned will be tormented after the resurrection, one must say that it is corporeal; for only corporeal things can be appropriately adapted for punishing for the body. Therefore, Gregory in the Dialogues 4¹ proves that the fire of hell is physical from the fact that the reprobate will be driven into it after the resurrection. Augustine, too, in the text, clearly confesses that fire in which bodies will be tormented to be bodily; and this is what the present question is about. But how the souls of the damned will be punished by that physical fire will be said below in Distinction 50, Question 2, Article 3.

To the second question, it should be said that because fire has the greatest power in acting among all the elements, it has other bodies for its matter, as it says in Meteorology 2.¹ Therefore, fire is also found in two ways: namely, in its proper matter, as it exists in its own sphere; or in foreign matter, whether that be earthly, as in the case of charcoal, or airy, as is seen in flames. Now whichever way fire is found, it is always the same in species as regards the nature of fire. However, there can be diversity in species as to the bodies that are the matter of fire; for example, flames and glowing coals differ in species, and likewise a wood fire and smelted iron. Nor does it make a difference in this regard whether they were lit by violence, as appears in the case of iron, or from a natural intrinsic principle, as happens with sulfur. Therefore, as to what it possesses of the nature of fire, it is manifest that the fire of hell is of the same species with the fire that we have. But whether that fire exists in its own matter, or in some foreign matter, and if in foreign matter, what material that might be, is unknown to us; and accordingly it can be a different species from the fire that we have, considered materially. Nevertheless, it does have certain different properties from our fire, like the fact that it does not need to be kindled, nor is it fed with wood. But those differences do not show a difference in species as regards what pertains to the nature of fire.

To the third question, it should be said that as Augustine says, and as is found in the text, in what part of the world hell exists, I judge that no one knows, unless someone to whom the divine Spirit has revealed it. Therefore too Gregory answers this question in the Dialogues 4,¹ I do not dare to rashly define this thing. For in fact many have believed that hell was in some part of the lands, while others deemed it to be under the earth. And he shows that the second opinion is more probable in two ways. First, by reason of the name itself, as he says: if we call it the “Inferno,” the lower place, on this account, that it lies inferiorly, then what earth is to the sky, hell should be to the earth. Second, however, from what is said in Revelation 5:3: And no one in heaven or on earth or under the earth was able to open the scroll, so by the fact that it says in heaven, it refers to the angels; by saying, on earth, it refers to men living in the body; by saying, under the earth, it refers to souls dwelling in hell. Augustine, too, in his On the Literal Meaning of Genesis 12,² seems to give two reasons why it would be fitting for hell to be under the earth. One is that because the souls of the deceased sinned by love of the flesh, there is applied to them what is customarily applied to dead flesh itself, namely, that it be hidden away under the earth. The other is that just as there is heaviness in bodies, so there is sadness in spirits; and merriment is like lightness; therefore, just as according to the body, if they held the order of their weight, all the heavier ones would be lower, so too according to the spirit, all the sadder ones are lower: and so just as the appropriate place for the joy of the elect is the empyreal heaven, so the fitting place for the sadness of the damned is the lowest part of the earth. Nor should it disturb us that Augustine says in the same place that hell is said to be or believed to be under the earth, for in his book of Retractions,³ he retracts this, saying: it seems that I should have said that hell is under the earth, rather than give reasons why it is said to be or believed to be under the earth.

However, some philosophers held that the place of hell will be under the terrestrial orb, yet above the surface of the earth, on a part opposite from us. And Isidore¹ seemed to have thought so when he said that the sun and moon will stay in the order in which they were created, so that the wicked, sunk in their torments, may not profit from their light; which would be no reason, if hell were said to be within the earth. Nevertheless, how these words could be explained will be made clear below at Distinction 48. But Pythagoras located the place of punishments in the sphere of fire, which he says is in the middle of the whole world, as is clear from the Philosopher in On the Heavens 2.² But it fits more with those things that are said in Scripture that it be said to be under the earth.

For some people, believing that all the powers exist in the soul in the way that color is in a body, say that the soul takes all its powers with it when it is separated from the body. For if anything were lacking from it, the soul would have to be transformed according to the natural properties which cannot be varied while the subject remains. But the belief described is false. For since a power is that according to which we are said to be capable of acting or being acted upon, but it belongs to the same thing to act and to be able to act, it is necessary that the power belong to the same thing as the subject that is is acting or being acted upon. This is why the Philosopher says, at the beginning of On Sleep and Wakefulness,¹ that what a power belongs to, the action belongs to. However, we see manifestly that certain activities, whose principles are the powers of the soul, do not belong to the soul, properly speaking, but to the composite, for they are not fulfilled without the mediation of the body, like seeing, hearing, and so on. Therefore, it is necessary that those powers belong to the composite as subject, but to the soul as inflowing principle, as the form is principle of the properties of the composite. But certain activities are exercised by the soul without physical organs, like understanding, considering, and willing. Therefore, since these actions are proper to the soul, the powers that are the principles of these will not only belong to the soul as principle but as subject. Therefore, since while its proper subject remains, its proper passions must also remain, and be corrupted when it corrupts, those powers that do not use a bodily organ in their acts must remain in the separated soul; but those that do use one must be corrupted when the body corrupts; and all the powers that belong to the sensible and vegetable soul are like this.

And because of this some people make a distinction between sensible powers of the soul, for they say that there are two kinds: some that are the acts of organs which overflow from the soul into the body, and these are corrupted with the body; others originate these and are in the soul, since through these originating acts the soul makes the body sense by seeing and hearing and the like. And these originating powers remain in the separated soul. But this does not seem to be said fittingly. For the soul, by its own essence, not by means of any other powers, is the origin of those powers that are the acts of the organs, just as any form, by the very fact that it informs its matter by its very essence, is the origin of the properties that naturally occur in the composite. For if it were necessary to hold that in the soul there were other powers by means of which the powers that perfect the organs overflowed from the essence of the soul, by the same reasoning it would be necessary to posit other powers, by means of which those middle powers would flow from the essence of the soul, and so on infinitely; for if it stops anywhere, it is better that it stop in the first.

This is why others say that the sensitive powers and others like them do not remain in the separated soul except in a certain respect, namely, as in the root, by that mode in which things that come from a principle exist in their principles. For in the separated soul there remains the efficacy of influencing again powers of this kind if it were united to the body. Nor is it necessary that this efficacy be something superadded to the very essence of the soul, as was said. And this opinion seems more reasonable.

To the second question, it should be said that some people distinguish two kinds of acts of the sensitive powers: some are external, which it exercises through the body, and these do not remain in the separated soul; but some are internal, which the soul exercises through itself, and these will exist in the separated soul. But this position seems to come down from the opinion of Plato, who held that the soul was joined to the body as a certain perfect substance, depending on the body for nothing, but only as the motor of something moveable, which is clear from the theory of reincarnation that he held. Now because according to him nothing moved unless it was moved, and lest this should lead to an infinite regression, he said that the first mover moves himself, and he held that the soul was the mover of itself. And according to this were the two kinds of movement of the soul: one in which it was moved by itself, another in which the body was moved by it. And in this way the soul had the act that is seeing, first in itself, according as it moved itself, and second in the physical organ, according as it moved the body. But the Philosopher destroyed this position in On the Soul 1,¹ showing that the soul does not move itself, and that in no way is it moved according to those activities that are seeing, sensing, and the like, but that those activities are only movements of the composite. Therefore, it is necessary to say that the acts of the sensitive powers remain in no way in the separated soul, unless perhaps in their remote root.

To the third question, it should be said that supposing, from what has been said, that the fire of hell is not said metaphorically, nor is it imaginary fire, but true corporeal fire, it must be said that the soul suffers punishment from corporeal fire, since the Lord says that a fire has been prepared for the devil and his angels (Matt 25:41), who are incorporeal, like the soul is. But there are many ways to explain how it can suffer.

For some have said that the very fact of seeing the fire is the soul’s suffering by fire; which is why Gregory says in the Dialogues 4, the soul suffers the fire by the very fact that it sees it.¹ But that does not seem sufficient, for by the fact that any sight is seen, there is a perfection of the one seeing. Therefore, it cannot pass into someone’s punishment to the extent it is seen, but sometimes it is punitive or saddening incidentally, namely inasmuch as it is apprehended as harmful. Therefore, it is necessary that besides the fact that the soul sees that fire, there is a certain relation of the soul to it, according to which the fire hurts the soul.

Therefore others have said that although corporeal fire cannot burn the soul, nevertheless the soul apprehends it as harmful to it; and for such apprehension it is affected by fear and sorrow, so that what Psalm 14 (13):5 says is fulfilled: they trembled with fear, where there was no fear. For example, Gregory says in the Dialogues 4 that because the soul beholds itself being burned, it is burned.¹ But this again does not seem to be sufficient, for according to this the suffering of the soul from fire would not be according to the truth of reality, but according to appearance alone. For, although a true passion of sadness or sorrow could exist from some false imagination, as Augustine says in On the Literal Meaning of Genesis 12,² nevertheless, it cannot be said that according to that passion it is truly acted upon by a thing, but by a likeness of the thing that it conceives. And again, this way of suffering would depart more from real suffering than the suffering that is brought about by imaginary visions, since the latter is said to exist through true images of things, which the soul carries with itself; but the former happens by false conceptions that the soul concocts by mistake. And again it is not probable that separated souls or demons, which have influence by the subtlety of their cunning, would think corporeal fire could harm them, if they were in no way weighted down by it.

This is why others say that it is necessary to hold that the soul also suffers from corporeal fire in reality. Therefore Gregory too says in the Dialogues 4: we can gather from the Gospel sayings that the soul suffers fire not only by seeing, but also by experience.¹ But they hold that this happens in this way. For they say that that corporeal fire can be considered in two ways. In one way, according as it is a certain corporeal thing, and in this way it is not able to act on the soul; in another way, according as it is the instrument of divine justice exacting vengeance, for the order of divine justice requires that the soul that subjected itself to corporeal things in sinning should also be subject to them in punishment. However, an instrument does not only act by its own power, but also by the power of the principal agent, as was said above in Distinction 1, Question 1, Article 4. And so it is not unfitting if that fire, when it acts in the force of a spiritual agent, should act on the spirit of man or demon, in the way that the sacraments also were said to,² when they sanctify the soul. But that too does not seem sufficient: for every instrument in what it works instrumentally has a proper action connatural to it, and not only the action by which it acts in the power of the principal agent, but rather by exercising the first action it is necessary that it effect this second one, as water while washing the body in baptism sanctifies the soul, and a saw cutting wood brings about the form of a house. Therefore, it is necessary to give fire a certain action in the soul that is connatural to it for it to be the instrument of divine justice exacting vengeance.

And so it should be said that a corporeal thing cannot naturally act on the spirit, nor harm nor oppress it, unless according as it is united to a body in some way, for thus we find that a perishable body weighs down the soul (Wis 9:15). But the spirit is united to the body in two ways. In one way, as the form of matter, so that one thing is made out of them simply; and in this way the spirit is united to the body and gives life to the body, and it is weighted down in some way by the body; but the spirit of a man or demon is not united with corporeal fire in this way. In the other way, as the mover that moves something moveable, or as something placed in a place, in the way that incorporeal things are in a place; and according to this, created incorporeal spirits are delimited by place, so that those existing in one place are not in another. But although a corporeal thing by its own nature is able to delimit an incorporeal spirit by place, nevertheless it is not by its nature able to detain an incorporeal spirit in a definite place, so that it is so bound to that place that it cannot turn to other things, since spirit does not so naturally exist in a place that it is subjected to place. But this is superadded to corporeal fire, as it is an instrument of divine justice exacting vengeance, that it so detains the spirit and in this way becomes penal, holding it back from carrying out what it wills, so that namely it cannot operate where it wills, and as it wills; and this is the way that Gregory suggests in the Dialogues 4.¹ For, explaining how the soul suffers in experiencing fire, he says this: when the truth presents the rich sinner as condemned to fire, what wise man would deny that the souls of the reprobate are bound by flames? And Julian also said this, as the Master says: if the incorporeal soul of a living man is held in a body, why would it not also be held by corporeal fire after death? Augustine, too, says in the City of God 21² that just as the soul is joined to the body in the condition of a human as what gives life to it, although the former is spiritual and the latter physical, and by that union it conceives a deep love for the body, in the same way it is tied to fire, as receiving punishment from it; and it conceives a horror from this conjunction.

Therefore all the ways mentioned must be collected into one, so that it is perfectly seen how the soul suffers from physical fire; so that namely we may say that fire according to its own nature is able to be united with an incorporeal spirit, as something located in a place is united with the place. But inasmuch as it is an instrument of divine justice, it is able to retain it as bound in some way. And that fire is truly harmful to the spirit in this, and that is how the soul, seeing the fire as something harmful to it, is tormented by fire; and so Gregory in the Dialogues 4 touches on all these things in order, as is clear from his statements.

Whether all will rise again in the same age and size.¹ This is to be understood not as to the measure of the body, but as to the perfection of the body.

The age of Christ . . . was thirty-two years and three months.¹ This is to be understood according to that opinion that holds that Christ was baptized in the beginning of his thirtieth year, not having completed it. But according to the opinion of Chrysostom, who held that Christ, when he was baptized, was thirty years old, and had begun his thirty-first, it is necessary to say that Christ lived thirty-three years and three months; for he preached for three years and about three months.

”But it is not right to say that at the resurrection a body will acquire a largeness of body which it did not have here.”¹ But this seems contrary: dwarfs and giants will rise in the size that they had here. And it should be said that this is to be understood of the size that they had here or that they would have had if nature had not failed by excess or defect.

“But into whatever dust and ashes it may be resolved.”¹ It should be known that these resolutions that are referred to in the text are distributed in this way: first it takes the things into which the human body is resolved last; and so as to the large and earthly parts he includes dust and ashes; so that it is said to be resolved into dust, inasmuch as it is dried out by the freezing of moisture from the action of coldness; but in ashes, inasmuch as it is dried out by the extraction of moisture from the action of heat. But as to the fine and airy parts, he puts breath and breezes; so that breath is referred to the moist vapors, which evaporate from the human body, while breeze refers to the dry fumes that are the matter of the wind, which is properly called breeze. And next he places those things into which it is first resolved. But these things are either sensible or insensible. If insensible, then he refers to the elements in the fact that he says: “into whatever substance of other bodies”;² and the elements in the fact that he says: “into the elements themselves.”³ But if they are sensible, then he touches on other animals and men in saying: “into whatever food and flesh of beasts or even of men it may have been transformed;” ⁴so that food pertains to what is in the way of transformation of the human body into the substance mentioned; but what he calls flesh pertains to the end of the transformation described.

“It returns in a moment of time to that soul which first animated it, and caused it to become human, and to grow and live.”¹ First should be explained not only as what is first in time, but what is most principal, as is clear from what has been said. Otherwise, it would be necessary to say that the rib from which the woman is formed would rise again in Adam, whose soul was brought to life first; whereas it will rise in Eve, for it was more principal in her, so that namely it pertains to the perfection of the individual, not only to the perfection of the species, as it did in Adam.

“And so the bodies of the saints will rise again without any defect,”¹ etc. Those things that are listed here differ in this way, that vice pertains to the intemperance of the humors, or the indisposition of the lower parts, while deformity pertains to the disposition of the external parts; but corruption, to the diminution, as if bodies should rise without a certain member; while burden pertains to the indisposition of the organs with respect to the motive power; but difficulty pertains to the weakening of the power itself.

“And will torment the bodies of the damned, whether men or devils.”¹ Augustine says this according to the opinion that holds that demons have bodies naturally united to them.

“Whoever refuses to profess that the soul can have a likeness to the body and to all bodily members, may deny that it is the soul which he sees in dreams as it moves about, or sits,”¹ etc. This is not to be understood as though the separated soul has the likeness of a body and its members in reality, as Apollinarius suggested, but only by the mode of apprehension, whether intellective or even imaginary, as some people wish.

“The souls of the reprobate . . . do not feel nothing.”¹ This can be explained so that ‘feel’ is not taken for the act of the external senses, but for the act of the intellect, according to which the intellect sometimes is is called a ‘sense’.

“It may be very carefully asked and disputed by learned men when a human person begins to live in the womb.”¹ Concerning this certain things were said in Book III, Distinction 3, where the conception of the Lord’s body was discussed.

“Far be it from us to think that one man with two sets of limbs shall rise again, and not two distinct men, as would have happened, if twins had been born.”¹ Augustine did not say this, because by the fact that it had two times the principal members, like two heads and two hearts, it was clear that there were two souls in it, and so there were two men, but united through an error of nature.

To the second question, it should be said that just as there is heaviness or lightness in bodies by which they are borne to their own place, which is the end of their movement, so too there is merit or demerit in souls, by which souls attain their reward or punishment, which are the ends of their actions. This is why just as a body is borne immediately to its place by its heaviness or lightness unless it is prevented, so too a soul, as soon as the bond of the flesh is dissolved by which it is detained in the state of a wayfairer, obtains its reward or punishment unless something impedes it, as sometimes the reward’s obtainment is impeded by venial sin, which must be purged beforehand, with the consequence that the reward is delayed. And since the place is assigned to souls according to its fittingness with the reward or punishment, immediately when the soul is released from the body it is either sunk into hell or taken up into heaven, unless it is prevented by some guilt that delays it such that the soul must be purged first. And the authorities of canonical Scripture manifestly attest to this truth, along with the writings of the holy fathers. Therefore, the contrary is to be held as heresy, as is clear from the Dialogues 4,¹ and in the book On Ecclesiastical Dogmas.²

To the third question, it should be said that there are two ways someone could be understood to have left heaven or hell. In one way, such that he simply goes out from there, so that his place is no longer heaven or hell. And in this way no one definitively consigned to heaven or hell can leave them, as will be said in the following distinction, Question 2, Article 3. In the other way it can be understood such that someone goes out for a time, and in this one must distinguish between what befits them according to the law of nature, and what befits them according to the order of divine justice, for Augustine says in his book On the Care to be Given to the Dead: the limits of human things are one way, the signs of divine powers are another; the first which exist naturally, the second which are done miraculously.¹

Therefore, according to the natural course, separated souls consigned to proper places of reception are completely segregated from dwelling with the living. For according to the course of nature humans living in mortal flesh are not directly joined to separated substances, since all knowledge arises from the senses; nor would it befit them to leave their places of reception for the sake of anything other than being among the living. But according to the disposition of divine providence sometimes separated souls are displayed in the sight of men outside their places of reception, as Augustine tells in the book mentioned about Felix the Martyr, who appeared visibly to the citizens of Nola when they would have been attacked by the barbarians. And it can also be believed that sometimes this happens to the damned, that they are permitted to appear to the living to instruct and terrify men, or even to beg suffrages for those who are in purgatory, as is clear from many things that are related in the Dialogues 4.

But there is this difference between saints and the damned: the saints can appear to the living when they wish, but the damned cannot. For just as the saints while living in the flesh receive through the gift of gratuitous grace the power to accomplish signs and healings, which does not happen except miraculously by divine power (and which signs indeed cannot be accomplished by others lacking this gift); so too it is not unfitting that by virtue of glory some power be given to the souls of the saints by which they can miraculously appear to the living when they wish, which others could not do unless permitted on occasion.

To the second question, it should be said that the resting places of souls after death can be distinguished in two ways: either according to how they are situated or according to the quality of the places, namely, as in certain places souls receive punishments or rewards. Therefore, if the limbo of the patriarchs and hell were considered according to this quality, then there is no doubt that they are distinct, both because there is sensible suffering in hell, which did not exist in the limbo of the patriarchs; and also because in hell there is eternal suffering, but in the limbo of the patriarchs holy men were detained only temporarily. But if they were considered as to the situating of the place, then it is probable that hell and limbo are the same place, or joined to one another somehow, such that some higher part of hell is called the limbo of the patriarchs. For those dwelling in hell are doomed to diverse punishments according to the diversity of their guilt, and so according as the damned were entangled in worse sins they occupy a darker and deeper place in hell. This is why the holy patriarchs, in whom the account of guilt was very slight, held the place that was highest and least dark of all.

And by this the solution to the second objection is evident.

To the third question, it should be said that the limbo of the patriarchs and the limbo of children undoubtedly differ according to the quality of the reward or the punishment, for children do not have the hope of the blessed life that the patriarchs had, in whom the light of faith and grace shone too. But as to the situation, it is believed probably that they were both in the same place, except that the rest of the blessed was still in a higher place than the children’s limbo, just as was said about limbo and hell.

Therefore, it should be said that in no way can the work of one person have efficacy for obtaining a state for another by the way of merit, namely in such a way that someone else should merit eternal life by those things that I do, for final glory is rendered according to the measure of the one receiving it. Moreover, each person is disposed by his own acts, and not those of another; and I mean the disposition of worthiness for the reward. But by the way of prayer one person’s work can also have efficacy for obtaining the state for another, while he is still on the earthly pilgrimage; just as one person begs the first grace for another. For since obtaining something through prayer is according to God’s generosity, it can be extended to whatever things are ordered under divine power. But as to what results from or is accessory to that state, one person’s work can be valid for another not only by the way of prayer, but also by the way of merit.

This can happen in two ways. Either because of sharing in the root of the work, which in meritorious works is charity; and then all those who are united in charity draw a certain benefit from each other’s works, although each according to his own state, because in heaven, each person will rejoice in the good deeds of each other; and this is why the communion of saints is held as an article of faith. In another way, by the intention of the one doing the work, who does certain works especially so that they will benefit certain people; and this is why these works are effective in some way for those for whom they are done, as conferred on them by the person who does them. And this is how these deeds can avail them for making complete satisfaction or something like that, which does not change their state.

To the second question, it should be said that charity, which is the bond uniting the members of the Church, does not only extend to the living, but also to the dead who die in charity, for charity does not end with the life of the body: charity never perishes (1 Cor 13:8). In the same way, too, the dead live in the memory of living men; and so the intention of the living can be directed toward them. And this is how the suffrages of the living can benefit the dead in two ways, just as they benefit the living: both because of the union of charity, and because of the intention directed toward them. However, the suffrages of the living should not be believed to be so strong that they could change the state of the deceased from misery to happiness or vice versa. But they are strong enough for the diminishment of punishment or something like that, which does not change the state of the dead.

To the third question, it should be said that in the suffrages that are made by the wicked, two things can be considered. First, the work itself that is done, like the sacrifice of the altar: and since our sacraments have efficacy on their own apart from the work of the one doing them, which efficacy they fulfill equally no matter who performs them, in this respect suffrages offered by wicked men do benefit the dead. In another way, as to the work of the person doing it, and then a distinction must be made. For the action of a sinner offering suffrages can be considered in one way as it belongs to him; and then it cannot be meritorious either for him or for another.

In another way, it can be considered as belonging to the other, which happens in two ways. In one way, inasmuch as a sinner offering suffrages bears the person of the whole Church, like the priest when he says the funeral rites for the dead in the church. And since someone in whose name or place something is done, is the one understood to do it, as is clear from Dionysius in On the Celestial Hierarchy, Chapter 13,¹ this is why the suffrages of such a priest, although he is a sinner, benefit the dead.

In another way, when he acts as the instrument of another. For the work of a minister belongs more to the principal agent. Therefore, although the one who acts as the instrument of another is not in the state of meriting, neverthless his action can be meritorious by reason of the principal agent, as if a servant in a state of sin does some work of mercy by the command of his master, who has charity. Therefore, if someone who dies in charity should command that suffrages be made for him, or someone else having charity should command it, those prayers would benefit the dead, even if those people by whom they are done remain in sin. However, they would be worth more if they were in charity, for then those works would be meritorious on both accounts.

But because the arguments given in opposition seem to conclude that it makes no difference whether someone obtains the intercession of the good or the wicked, we must therefore also answer them.

To the fourth question, it should be said that the work of a suffrage that is done for another can be considered in two ways. In one way as it is expiative of punishment in the manner of a kind of recompense, which is expected in satisfaction; and in this way a work of suffrage, which is regarded as though it belonged to the one for whom it is done, so absolves him from the debt of punishment that it does not absolve the one doing it from the debt of his own punishment; for in such recompense the equality of justice is considered. However, that work of satisfaction can be so adjusted to the guilt of one person that it is not equal to another. For the guilt of two sinners requires more satisfaction than the guilt of one. In another way, it can be considered as it is meritorious of eternal life, which it is to the extent that it proceeds from charity as its root; and in this respect it is not only beneficial to the one for whom it is done, but even more to the one who does it.

And through this the solutions to the objections are clear. For the first arguments concerned the work of intercessory prayer as it is a work of satisfaction, but the others as it is meritorious.

Whom they benefit

For some have said that there must be a twofold distinction made here. In one way, as to time, saying that after the day of judgment no one in hell will be helped by any suffrage, but before the day of judgment, some are helped by the suffrages of the Church. In the other way, they made a distinction between persons detained in hell, among whom they said there were some who were extremely bad, namely, those who had died without the faith and sacraments of the Church; and the suffrages of the Church cannot help those who were not of the Church, whether by merit or by number. But others are not extremely bad, namely, those who were of the number of the Church and had faith, and were instructed in the sacraments, and did certain works that were generically good; and for these the suffrages of the Church should be beneficial. But a certain disturbing doubt occurred to them, namely, that since the punishment of hell is finite according to intensity, although it exists infinitely in duration, it seemed to follow from this that this punishment could be taken away by multiplying suffrages, which is the error of Origen. And then they tried to avoid this unsuitable conclusion in several ways. For Praepositinus said that the suffrages for the damned can be multiplied so much that they are rendered completely exempt from punishment, although not simply speaking, as Origen held, but for a time, namely, until the day of judgment. For then their souls joined to their bodies would be once again forced into the sufferings of hell without hope. But that opinion seems opposed to divine providence, which leaves nothing disordered in things. But guilt cannot be ordered except by punishment; therefore it cannot be that the punishment is taken away unless the fault is first expiated. And so since fault remains continuously in the damned, their punishment will in no way be cut short.

And so the followers of Gilbert of Poitiers found another way, by saying that the reduction of punishment through suffrages proceeds like the division of lines, which, although they are finite, nevertheless can be infinitely divided, and never consumed by the division, provided that subtraction happens not according to the same quantity, but according to the same proportion, just as if first a quarter of the whole is removed, and second a quarter of that quarter, and again a quarter of that quarter, and so on infinitely. And likewise they say that some part of the punishment is diminished by the first intercessory prayer, and by the second some part of the remainder according to the same proportion. But this way is found defective for many reasons. First, because an infinite division, which is applicable to continuous quantity, does not seem able to be transferred to spiritual quantity. Second, because there is no reason why the second act of intercession should diminish the punishment less than the first, if it is of equal value. Third, because the punishment cannot be diminished unless the fault is also diminished, as neither can it be taken away unless the fault is taken away. Fourth, because in the division of a line one arrives finally at something that is not sensible, for a sensible body is not infinitely divisible. And thus it would follow that after many acts of intercession, the punishment remaining would not be sensed because of its smallness, and so there would be no punishment.

And therefore others have found another way. For Remi of Auxerre said that intercessory works benefit the damned not in fact by diminishing or cutting short their punishments, but by strengthening them in their suffering, as if a man should carry a heavy burden, and water were poured over his face. For in this way he would be strengthened to carry it better, although his burden would be made no lighter. But this again cannot be the case: for as Gregory says, a person is burdened more or less with eternal fire according as his guilt merits. And this is the reason some people are tortured more and some less by the same fire, which is why, since the guilt of someone damned remains unchanged, it cannot be that he bear a lighter punishment. Nevertheless, the opinion described is also presumptuous, inasmuch as it is contrary to the statements of the saints; and flimsy, being supported by no authority; and irrational as well: both because the damned in hell are outside the bond of charity, according to which the works of the living are extended to the dead, and because those receiving final retribution for their merits have reached the end of wayfaring, like the saints who are in heaven.

For what still remains of punishment or glory for the body does not confer on them the nature of a wayfarer, since glory is essentially rooted in the soul, just as is also the misery of the damned. And so their punishment cannot be diminished, just as neither can the glory of the saints be increased, with respect to the essence of the reward. But nevertheless there is a way suggested by some to benefit the damned, which could be sustained in a certain way: if it were said that intercessory acts like this do not benefit them in diminishing or cutting short their punishment, or in diminishing the sensation of the punishment, but by taking away some matter of sorrow, which could be the case for them, if they regarded themselves as so outcast that the living had no care for them; which matter of sorrow is taken away from them, when suffrages are offered for them. But that too cannot be the case according to the common rule: for, as Augustine says in his book On the Care to be Taken for the Dead:¹ the spirits of the dead are there where they do not see whatever they do or whatever happens in this life of men (which is particularly true of the damned); and so they do not know when suffrages are done for them, unless outside the common rule this remedy is divinely granted to some of the damned; which is an entirely uncertain claim. And so it is safer to say simply speaking that suffrages do not benefit the damned, nor does the Church intend to pray for them, as is apparent from the authorities cited.

Or it could be said according to some people that Trajan’s soul was not simply absolved from liability to eternal punishment, but his punishment was suspended for a time, namely, until the day of judgment. However, it is not necessary that this be done commonly through suffrages, for there are some things that happen by the common rule of things, and others that are granted individually to a few by a privilege, just as the limits of of human things are one thing and the signs of divine strength another, as Augustine says in his book On the Care to be Taken of the Dead.

To the second question, it should be said that the punishment of purgatory is for the completion of the satisfaction that was not fully completed in the body. And this is why, as is clear from what has been said and what was said above in Distinction 20, since the works of one person can help make satisfaction for another, either living or dead, there is no doubt that suffrages offered by the living benefit those dwelling in purgatory.

To the third question, it should be said that unbaptized children are detained in limbo only because they lack the state of grace. This is why, since the status of the dead cannot be changed by the works of the living, especially as to meriting the essential reward or punishment, the suffrages of the living cannot benefit children consigned to limbo.

To the fourth question, it should be said that by their very notion suffrages convey a certain assistance, which does not apply to someone who is not suffering from a defect, for being helped only applies to someone inasmuch as he is needy. Therefore, since the saints who are in heaven are free from all need, saturated by the abundance of the house of God, being helped by intercessory acts does not apply to them.

Which suffrages are beneficial

To the second question, it should be said that indulgences can benefit someone in two ways: in one way, principally; in the other way, secondarily. Principally, it benefits someone who receives an indulgence, namely, the one who does what the indulgence is given for, like whoever visits the entrance of a certain holy place. For this reason, since the dead cannot do any of those things for which indulgences are given, indulgences cannot benefit them directly. However, secondarily and indirectly, they benefit the person for whom someone does whatever is the reason for the indulgence, which, as was said in Distinction 10, Question 1, Article 5, Quaestiuncula 3, response to the second objection, sometimes can happen, although sometimes it cannot, according to the different forms of indulgences.

For if the form of the indulgence is thus: whoever does this or that will have an indulgence of so much, then the one who does it cannot transfer the fruit of the indulgence to another person, for it does not belong to him to apply to something else the Church’s intention, by which shared suffrages are communicated, which is how indulgences gain their force. However, if the indulgence is done under this form: whoever does this or that, he and his father or anyone related to him who is detained in purgatory will have an indulgence of so much, then this kind of indulgence would benefit not only the living person but also the deceased. For there is no reason that the Church could transfer its common merits, which indulgences depend on, to the living but not to the dead. However, it does not follow that the one in charge of the Church can free souls from purgatory at his own will, for in order for an indulgence to have value, a fitting reason for granting indulgences is required, as was said above in Distinction 20.

To the third question, it should be said that burial was devised for the sake of both the living and the dead. For the sake of the living, lest their eyes be offended by the disgrace of corpses, and their bodies be infected by the stink. And this has to do with the body, but it benefits the living spiritually as well, inasmuch as faith in the resurrection is bolstered by it. But it benefits the dead in that those who see their tombs keep the deceased in memory, so that they may pray for them. This is why tombstones take their name from memory. For a tombstone is called a ‘monument,’ because it reminds the mind, as Augustine¹ says in his book On the Care to be Taken for the Dead. However, it was an error of the pagans that burial benefitted the dead such that their souls would receive rest, for they did not believe the soul could receive rest before the body was given a burial, which is in every way ridiculous and absurd. But that burial in a consecrated place benefits the deceased is not at all by the work itself performed, but rather from the work of the person doing it, namely, when either the deceased person himself or someone else arranges for his body to be entombed in a sacred place, he commits him to the protection of a certain saint, by whose prayers he is believed to be helped, and also to the protection of those who serve in the sacred place, who pray often and particularly for those buried near them.

But those things that are displayed for the decoration of tombs do benefit the living as a source of comfort for the living. But they can benefit the dead too; not indeed in themselves, but incidentally; namely, inasmuch as by things like this men are inspired to compassion and consequently to prayer; or inasmuch as from the costs of the burial either the poor gain the proceeds or the church is adorned; for this is how burial is counted among other modes of almsgiving in Wisdom 4.

How much good they do

For some people, like Praepositinus, have said that suffrages done for one certain person do more good not to the one for whom they are done, but to those who are more worthy; and he gave the example of a candle that is lit for a rich person, which does not benefit less the others who are with the rich man, and perhaps benefits them more, if they have clearer eyes. And also the example of reading, which does not benefit the one for whom it is read more than the others who hear it along with him, but perhaps it benefits the others more, if they are more apt for understanding. And if it were objected to these people that according to this the Church’s ordinances, which establish prayers specifically for certain people, would be in vain, they would say that the Church does this to excite the devotion of the faithful, who are quicker to do specific suffrages than general ones, and they also pray more fervently for their own loved ones than for strangers. Others have said the contrary, that suffrages do more for those for whom they are done.

However, both opinions contain truth in a certain respect. For the value of the suffrages can be thought about from two sides. For they have value in one way from the virtue of charity, which makes all good things common; and according to this it is true that they are worth more for the one who is more filled with charity, even if they are not especially done for him. And this is how the value of the suffrages counts as more according to a certain interior consolation, as one person who has charity enjoys the good deeds of another after death, as to the diminishment of punishment; for after death there is no place for acquiring or increasing grace, for which others’ works avail us in life by the virtue of charity. In another way intercessory deeds have value from the fact that by one person’s intention they are applied to another person. And this is how the satisfaction of one person is counted for another, and in this way there is no doubt that they are worth more for the person for whom they are done; on the contrary, in this way they benefit him alone. For satisfaction is properly directed to the remission of punishment. Therefore, as to the remission of punishment a suffrage works particularly for the one for whom it is done; and according to this the second opinion contains more truth than the first.

To the second question, it should be said that if the value of the acts of intercession were considered according as they derive worth from the virtue of charity uniting the members of the Church, then the suffrages done for many benefit each individual as much as if they had been done for one person alone; for charity is not reduced if its effect is divided among many, but rather it is increased; and similarly too joy becomes greater when it is shared by more people, as Augustine¹ says in his Confessions 8. And this is how many people in purgatory do not rejoice less than one over one good deed. However, if the value of the suffrages were considered as they are certain acts of satisfaction transferred to the dead by the doer’s intention, then a suffrage that is done for someone individually is worth more for that person than what is done for him and many others in general. For the effect of a suffrage is divided by divine justice among those for whom the acts are done. Therefore, it is clear that this question depends on the first; and from this it is also clear why it was instituted that specific acts of intercession be done in the Church.

To the third question, it should be said that the answer to this also depends on the answer to the first question. For if suffrages done specifically for one person benefit everyone indifferently, then all suffrages are common. And then someone for whom they were not specifically done will be aided as much as the one for whom they are done, if he is equally worthy. However, if suffrages done for one person do not benefit everyone indifferently, but benefit most those for whom they were done, then there is no doubt that common suffrages and specific ones are worth more together than common ones alone. And thus the Master touches on two opinions in the text. One says that common and specific suffrages equally benefit the rich man, and common ones alone benefit a poor man; for although one may be helped by more things than the other, nevertheless he is not helped more. However, he refers to the other opinion when he says that the person for whom the specific suffrages are done obtains faster forgiveness, but not fuller forgiveness: for either person will finally be freed from all punishment.

Therefore, since the souls of the saints do not comprehend the divine essence, it does not follow that they know all things that can be known through the divine essence. For this reason too the lower angels are taught by the higher ones about certain things, although all of them see the divine essence. But it is necessary that any member of the blessed see in the divine essence as much of other matters as the perfection of beatitude requires, so that a man has whatever he wishes, nor does he wish for anything inordinate, as we say below in Distinction 49, Question 2, Article 5. However, anyone with a right will wills that he know those things that pertain to him; therefore, since no rectitude is lacking from the saints, they will to know those things that pertain to them. And therefore it is necessary that they know those things in the Word. Now, it pertains to their glory that they provide assistance for salvation to those in need; for this is how they are made cooperators with God, than whom there is nothing more divine, as Dionysius¹ says in the Celestial Hierarchy, Chapter 3. Therefore, it is evident that the saints have the knowledge of those things that are required for this. And so it is clear that in the Word they know the wishes and prayers of people who appeal to their aid.

“But when the resurrection has taken place, the joy of the good will be greater.”¹ This is to be understood materially, for they shall rejoice over more things, but not formally, for they shall not rejoice more, as has been said. But concerning this more will be said in Distinction 49.

“Indeed, for those who left their bodies without that faith which works by love, and without the sacraments of that faith, their friends offer these offices of piety in vain.”¹ According to this, it seems that the suffrages of the Church do not benefit the catechumens who die in the faith of the Church, while yet they are in the state of salvation, as is clear from what was said above in Distinction 4. And it should be said that although they had not received the sacraments of the Church in act, they did however receive them in desire, which is counted for the deed, since the ability is lacking to them.

Those things which the Church offers for the dead are of help: for those who are moderately evil.¹ These words are explained in different ways by different people. For those who say the Church’s suffrages benefit those dwelling in hell say that some are moderately good and others moderately bad. For they say that the extremely wicked are those who died without the Church’s faith and sacraments; and these they say no suffrages benefit. But the moderately bad are those who died with the Church’s faith and sacraments, but in mortal sin. And according to them, suffrages do benefit these people to the mitigation of their penalty, but not to its full cancellation. But they call the extremely good those who died without sin, and went straight to heaven, who do not need suffrages; but the moderately good, those who carry with them something to be burned, and who are detained in purgatory. And they say that suffrages benefit them to the point of complete absolution. But those who say that suffrages do not benefit those who are in hell, say that the moderately good and moderately bad are the same. For they call all those who are in hell extremely bad, but those in heaven extremely good, while those who are in purgatory they call moderately good, inasmuch as they fell short of the perfection of goodness, but also the moderately bad, inasmuch as they fell short of complete wickedness, which is mortal sin. Now suffrages sometimes benefit them to the mitigation of punishment, and sometimes to complete absolution, according to the different amounts of what needs to be burned and of suffrages. And this explanation is more fitting.

“It is wrong to pray in the Church for a martyr.”¹ This seems against what was said above, that the prayers for the extremely good are acts of thanksgiving. And it should be said that the above authority is speaking about when it is uncertain to us whether the ones prayed for are the extremely good. But Augustine is speaking here about when it is certain who are the extremely good; for then whoever prays for them represents in some way that they need it, and thus he does them injury.

I adjudge that he, passing as if through a fire.¹ Here two helps are offered, one of which will assist as a means of satisfaction those who are found living at the end of the world, namely, the fire by which the face of the earth will be purified. For it could be that the intensity of the punishment would make up for whatever is lacking from the shortness of the time; and particularly since it is probable that they will have little to be burned, inasmuch as they were purified by the terror of the judge coming, through the signs previously shown forth. However, the other is by the force of charity, namely, the merits and intercessions of the saints, which speak on their behalf in virtue of charity.

“Or by seeking what he ought to do.”¹ That consulting is nothing other than their turning to God, so that they receive illumination from him concerning what must be done.

Whether justice should be attributed to God

Now this can happen in two ways. In one way, according as an equality is established between the giver and receiver, so that namely the one receiving accepts as much from the giver as he should accept. And this is what commutative justice consists in, namely, that which sets a mean in buying and selling, and in all transactions. In another way, according as an equality is established between two recipients, which happens by the fact that both receive equally for their merits; and this is what distributive justice consists in.

In the first, therefore, namely in commutative justice, an equality of quantity is required, so that a person receives as much as he has given according to value. And therefore between those in whom there cannot be an equality of quantity, there cannot properly be commutative justice. This is the case between people when one of them cannot compensate anything equivalent to the benefits he has received from the other; as a son cannot pay anything back equivalent to the benefits of his father, from whom he has received being and nurturing and teaching. And therefore no matter how much he might restore to his father in services, there would not be perfect equality. Therefore, neither is the account of commutative justice properly preserved; but nevertheless some measure of justice can be preserved, inasmuch as a son renders to his father according to his own measure as the father gave according to his measure, so that in place of equal quantity an equality of proportion is taken. But distributive justice does not require equality of quantity, but only of proportion. For it is not necessary that the one who distributes distribute equally to all, but proportionally to each according to his own measure.

Therefore, this is the way that the account of distributive justice can properly be applied to God, namely, inasmuch as he preserves the equality of proportion in sharing his goods, giving to each proportionally according to the measure of each. This is why Dionysius¹ says in Chapter 8 of the Divine Names that justice is praised in God inasmuch as he distributes to all according to their dignity. But commutative justice, by which equality is established between God as giver and a creation as receiver, cannot belong to God in its proper meaning, for the benefits of God always exceed the merits of a creation. But nevertheless some equality of proportion is preserved between God as giver and the created thing as receiver, namely, inasmuch as he relates to his own superabundance as the created thing relates to that which befits it according to its own smallness. And in this way a certain mode of commutative justice is also found in God with respect to nature, as it is found between father and son.

And accordingly two modes of divine justice are assigned. One, inasmuch as God renders according to merits: for this pertains to distributive justice, to which it belongs to distribute all things proportionally according to their own dignity. The other mode, according as he does what is becoming to his own goodness; as he is also said to be just in that he spares sinners, because it is becoming to him. However, this pertains to the mode of commutative justice, not indeed preserved according to an equality of quantity, as is required in commutative justice properly so called, but preserved according to an equality of proportion, for namely, God is related to what he does superabundantly, as the created being is to that in which he is lacking. And according to this, to superabound in benefits is called just in him, inasmuch as it is proportionate and becoming to him. Commenting on 2 Corinthians 3:18, we are all . . . being changed into his likeness from one degree of glory to another, for this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit, the old Gloss of Ambrosiaster says, so that he might display such glory to be given which befits the sublimity of the giver.¹

To the second question, it should be said that justice presupposes the notion of goodness in God. For goodness in God implies the notion of the end, in which lies the fullest perfection. Now, the end moves the agent to act; therefore, the goodness of God also moves him in a certain way to his activity, not indeed such that he acquires goodness, but such that he communicates his goodness to others. For as was said in Book II, Distinction 1, Question 1, Article 1, God does not act because of an appetite for an end, but because of the love of the end, willing to communicate his own goodness as much as is possible and befitting according to his providence. And therefore just as the end is the first principle in every undertaking, so divine goodness is the first principle of all communication by which God bestows perfections on creation. But justice determines a certain way of communicating those things, namely, inasmuch as it preserves a certain equality of sharing. And so it is clear that goodness and justice differ in account in two ways. First, because goodness pertains to the very perfection of the divine nature, according to which it has the character of an end; but justice pertains to the act itself of communication. Second, because although goodness is related to communication as its principle, it nevertheless relates to communication in general, not determining any specific manner of communication; but justice determines in it a specific manner, namely, equality. And Boethius¹ refers to these two differences in his book On the Hebdomads, saying that good regards essence, but justice regards action; and again that good is general, and justice specific.

To the third question, it should be said that every equality established by a certain act requires some rule according to which the equalization happens. Therefore, since justice consists in acting to establish equality in giving and receiving, it is necessary that every justice have a some rule according to which this equalization happens. Now the rules of justice are reasons established in the mind, according to which a just man establishes equality. And thus when his actions agree with these reasons, he is said to preserve justice; however, when they disagree, he is said to act unjustly. And since the account of truth consists in the conformity of things to the intellect, therefore the name of truth is transferred to signifying the conformity of the works of justice to the ideas of justice; and it is this truth that we call the truth of justice. And according to this, justice itself is the same as truth; but nevertheless justice is said according to an equality established outwardly, while truth is said according to a conformity of an outward equality to the thoughts that are in the mind; and according to this, truth and justice in God are taken as the same in understanding.

To the second question, it should be said that a work of justice can be omitted in two ways. In one way, such that it is done against justice; in the other way, so that it is done above and beyond justice. For since justice is said by the relation to another, it happens against the order when what is due to someone or a condition that he requires is taken away from him. However, if something more is bestowed on him, it is not against justice, but above and beyond justice; for even if something is not owed to a certain thing, nevertheless its privation is not owed to it. This is why if something is presented to it that is not owed to it, nothing is done against the order of justice, as is evident in someone who shares his goods generously with another. But, as the Philosopher¹ says in the Ethics 5, the lesser evil is reckoned a good in comparison with the greater evil. This is why just as without prejudice to justice someone can bestow his own goods on someone else more than he is due, so too without prejudice to justice he can impose less of a penalty for sins committed against him than was due. But just as someone cannot without injury bestow more of another’s goods on someone than he was due, so he cannot impose less penalty for a sin committed against someone else. And thus a judge cannot without prejudice to justice diminish due penalties for sins committed against God or the state, except perhaps to the extent that he sees it would be to the state’s benefit.

Now God is the giver of all goods, and every sinner sins against him. This is why he can bestow more goods than are due to someone, and impose fewer evils, or even completely relax a punishment. And in this he would not act against justice, but above and beyond justice. But if he bestowed on someone less of his goods than the person was due, or if he punished someone more than he had sinned, this would be against the order of justice. Nor could God do this, speaking of his ordinary power, just as he could not make it so that his work, according as it participates in being, did not imitate him. For something is due to a thing according to the exigencies of its condition, by the very fact that without this it cannot imitate the divine exemplar according to its own proper character.

To the third question, it should be said that punishment by its very nature always includes something harmful. But something is harmful from the fact that it takes some good away. Now among a person’s goods there are some that are good for him per se, which are the goods of a person as a human being, but some are goods according to his order to those goods, like temporal goods. Therefore, these are goods to the extent that they assist a person to those spiritual goods. But if they impede him, then they are not goods for him but evils. This is also why the Philosopher¹ says in the Ethics 7 that good fortune should be judged according to its relation to virtue, as it assists or impedes it.

Therefore, to suffer loss in spiritual goods is always bad; but to suffer loss in temporal goods is indeed sometimes good, but sometimes bad. It is bad according as it impedes one from the exercise of virtue and the obtainment of spiritual goods; but it is good according as it helps virtue or the obtainment of spiritual good, just as physical exercise is useful to acquiring physical strength. And because, as was said, punishment means harming, therefore loss in spiritual goods is always a punishment, whereas loss in temporal goods is sometimes not a punishment but a medicine working toward salvation; just as the bitterness of a drink is not a punishment, but a remedy for physical health. But nevertheless, because our nature is such that it must arrive at the perfection of spiritual good by the loss of temporal ones, from the fault of sin it comes that all nature has been damaged: nor will such medicine be any longer useful when the wound of sin is perfectly cured, since man will have attained the final end of his spiritual perfection.

This is why it should be said that punishment, properly speaking, is never given except for a fault; but nevertheless what happens to be penal, namely, the loss of temporal goods while in the wayfaring state, sometimes is imposed on a man without previous fault in his person, although not without the previous fault in the nature. But after this life when spiritual progress has ended, a person will sustain no loss, even in physical things, without fault. For then he will wipe away every tear from their eyes (Rev 21:4). But in spiritual goods a person will endure no loss, whether in this life or in the future life, without personal fault.

To the fourth question, it should be said that since action is the middle between an agent and an effect, it can be modified from either side. Therefore, when it is asked whether God acts more justly with one person than with another, if this referred to the action as issuing from the agent, since his own justice, by which he acts justly with everyone, is one and invariable, he does not act more justly with one person than with another. However, if it referred to the action as terminating in the effect, then it also cannot be said that he acts more justly with one person than with another, because any work is called just by the fact that it is brought into proportional equality. However, equality, whether of quantity or of proportion, has the same account in the least things as in great things; for there is the same proportion between two and one as between twenty and ten, and the same equality that exists between one and one exists between hundred and hundred. And therefore one work cannot be more just than another, as long as both are just; for the same justice is preserved when bad things are rendered for evil, and good things for good, whether they are small or large. But nevertheless, because in us it is not required for virtue that we always attain the mean, but it suffices sometimes to be near the mean because of the difficulty of finding the mean, as it says in the Ethics 2,¹ this is why among us one person is said to act more justly than another, according as he approaches the mean more or less, while neither person actually attains it. But God himself, to whom is known the measure of every thing, always reaches the mean indivisibly in his operation, and thus in no way does he act more justly with one person than with another.

So, too, according to divine justice, by sin someone makes himself deserving of being entirely separated from the fellowship of the city of God. This happens by every sin in which a person sins against charity, which is the bond uniting that city. And therefore for mortal sin, which is the contrary of charity, a person is eternally excluded from the society of the saints and eternal punishment is imposed, for, as Augustine says in the book mentioned above, just as the punishment of the first death removes men from this mortal city, so does the punishment of the second death remove men from the immortal city.¹ However, the fact that the punishment that the earthly city inflicts is not considered perpetual, is incidental, inasmuch as man does not remain perpetually, or inasmuch as even that city perishes eventually. Therefore, if a person lived eternally, the punishments of exile and slavery, which are imposed by human law, would endure in him perpetually. But those who sin in such a way that they do not deserve to be completely separated from the fellowship of the holy city, such as who sin venially, will have a shorter or longer punishment the more or less they are purifiable, according as the sins inhered more or less in them; which is enacted in the punishments of this world and of purgatory according to divine justice.

Other reasons are also found given by the saints why people may be justly punished with an eternal punishment for a temporal sin. One is that they sinned against an eternal good when they held eternal life in contempt. And this is what Augustine¹ says in the book mentioned: he who destroyed in himself a good which might have been eternal himself became worthy of an eternal evil. Another reason is that man sinned in his own eternity,² which is why Gregory³ says in the Dialogues 4 that it pertains to the great justice of the one judging that they are never without suffering who never wished to be without sin.

And if it be objected that some people who sin mortally propose to change their lives for the better sometime, and so in keeping with this they do not deserve eternal punishment, as it seems; then it should be said, according to some people, that Gregory is speaking about the will that is manifest by their work. For anyone who falls into mortal sin by his own will places himself in a state from which he cannot be snatched unless divinely assisted. This is why by the very fact that he wishes to sin, he consequently wishes to remain in sin perpetually. For man is a spirit that goes, that is, into sin, and does not return by himself (cf. Ps 78:39). For example, if someone threw himself into the mud, which he could not get out of unless he were helped, it could be said that he wished to remain there eternally no matter how much he thought something else.¹

Or it can be said, and this is better, that by the very fact that someone sinned mortally, he established his final end in creation; and because all life is ordered toward the end of life, therefore by the fact that he orders his whole life to that sin, he would also wish to remain perpetually in sin, if he were able to do so unpunished. And this is what Gregory says, commenting on Job 41:32: one would think the deep to be hoary; he says in the Morals 34: this is why the wicked fell short of the end: they have clearly willed to live without the end, so that without the end they would be able to remain in wickedness; for they seek rather to sin than to live.¹ And another reason can be assigned why there is an eternal punishment for mortal sin, namely because by it is a sin against God, who is infinite; and so, since there cannot be a punishment infinite in intensity, since a created thing is not capable of any infinite quality, it is necessary that it be at least of infinite duration. There is also a fourth reason for the same things: that guilt remains eternally, since guilt cannot be forgiven without grace, which a man cannot acquire after death; and punishment should not cease as long as guilt remains.

To the second question, it should be said that the accounts of mercy and goodness differ in three things. First, in the fact that mercy has to do with the starting terminus, but goodness more with the end terminus. For the person on whom God bestows his benefits goes from being deficient to being perfect. Therefore, goodness has to do with the communication of perfection, for the good is diffusive of its own being; but mercy has to do with the removal of a defect. Second, in the fact that mercy, properly speaking, pertains to the divine providence by which he communicates good things only to rational creatures; for it regards misery, which, since it is contrary to happiness, can only belong to rational creatures, to whom it pertains to be happy. But goodness regards divine providence with respect to anything. Third, in the fact that mercy conveys a certain likening of the one providing to the one he provides for, inasmuch as the provider considers the other’s misery as though it were his own. And therefore mercy can only exist in an intellectual nature, which has a grasp of another’s misery. But goodness has an order to communicating simply, and so goodness can belong to any created being that has communicable perfection. A fourth difference can also be assigned: mercy precludes being owed from the one provided for, for what is owed to someone is not said to be given out of mercy. But goodness does not exclude the notion of being owed from the one to whom something is given; and that is why goodness is common to the bestowal of justice and to mercy.

To the third question, it should be said that every divine work proceeds from power, wisdom, and goodness; but nevertheless some works are appropriated to power, or to wisdom, or to goodness, according as what pertains to one of those attributes appears in them more marvelously. Now power simply conveys account of the principle producing something, while it belongs to wisdom to order (which is why to wisdom pertains the manner of producing a thing by which something is brought into being in an ordered way), and lastly, goodness, which has the account of the end, has to do with the motive for producing. Thus, in the work of creation, in which what chiefly appears admirable is the fact that a thing is produced in being, divine power is most manifest; while in the work of governance, in which things are disposed in order, the very order of things itself appears admirable, and so it is attributed to wisdom. But the work of re-creation seems admirable from its very motivation, for he saved us, not because of deeds done by us in righteousness, but in virtue of his own goodness (Tit 3:5).¹ This is why it is especially attributed to his goodness. And because something is said to be done mercifully from the fact that something is given not owing to a debt but out of the goodness of the giver, thus the work of mercy, precisely as such, is appropriated to goodness.

And the fourth objection about knowledge should be answered similarly; for knowledge is prerequisite for the will to drive off misery, which completes the account of mercy.

Or it could be said, and better, that this is an equality of proportionality and not of equality; and it is to be looked for not according to the relation of punishment to fault, but according to the proportion of two sinners to two punishments, namely, such that whoever sinned more is punished more, and according as one surpasses in sin, so in punishment; and this is also how are to be understood all the authorities that seem to show an equality between fault and penalty.

To the second question, it should be said that God’s operation is like a middle between God, the one operating, and the work itself that he has performed. Now every middle partakes in some way of both extremes, and so in God’s operation it is necessary for something to be found on the part of God himself working and on the part of the work performed, in which the operation is terminated. On the part of the one operating, it is required that there be a superabundance in the conferral of goods and the diminishment of evils, since God himself is the most excellent worker, as was said, and in this divine mercy consists. But on the part of what is done, what is required is a reception proportional to the receiver; and in this the account of justice consists. Therefore, it is necessary that in every divine operation something of mercy and something of justice is found; nor is justice opposed to mercy, for mercy is not praiseworthy unless it is according to right reason, which is the rule of justice, or according to the order of wisdom in divine things. Nor is mercy opposed to justice, since the bestowal of something above what is due of goods, or less than what is due of evils, is not against justice, but above and beyond it, as is clear from what has been said. And so neither does the immensity of mercy exclude justice from divine work, nor does the immensity of justice exclude mercy.

The second reason can be that in temporal matters one man belongs to another, as a son is in a certain way his father’s thing; and so sometimes a son is temporally punished for the sin of his father, and a slave for the sin of his master. But as to the good of the soul, each one bears his own person: behold, all souls are mine; the soul of the father as well as the soul of the son is mine: the soul that sins shall die (Ezek 18:4). Third, there is the reason that Gregory¹ assigns, that sometimes a person is a participant in the guilt of another, as when by the guilt of the subjects, those responsible for them are sometimes allowed to fall into sin; and so it is no surprise if those who are subject are punished for the sins of those who have charge of them, as at the end of 2 Samuel,² the people are punished for David’s sins. So it is not contrary to divine justice that sometimes one person be punished for the sins of another. Nevertheless, human judgements should not be patterned on this example, such that one person is punished for another, as Augustine says. For a man cannot know what benefit may arise from temporal punishment, which God knows infallibly.

To the third question, it should be said that what is formal in each thing is most excellent in it, for matter is completed by form. However, in any action what exists on the side of the agent is formal, as it were; but what is on the part of the patient or receiver is like the matter. Now it was said above that mercy in every divine work results from the side of God himself, who is superabundant in good, but justice, from the side of the receiver, who receives according to his own proportion; and therefore, in any divine work mercy stands above justice as the formal above the material; and this is what is said in Psalm 145 (144):9: his mercies are above all his works.

And the third objection should be answered in the same way.

To the second question, it should be said that, as Augustine says in the City of God 21,¹ some people avoided Origen’s error because they held that the demons were punished perpetually, but all men would be freed from punishment at some time, even unbelievers. But this position is entirely irrational. For just as the demons are obstinate in wickedness, and thus are to be punished perpetually, so are the souls of men who die without charity; since what the fall was to the angels, death is to men, as Damascene says.²

To the third question, it should be said that there were some people, as Augustine¹ says in the book mentioned, who did not promise all men absolution from eternal punishment, but only Christians; and in this they also differed from each other.

For some said that whoever had received the sacraments of the faith would be immune to eternal punishment. But this is contrary to truth, for some people receive the sacraments of the faith and do not have faith, without which it is impossible to please him (Heb 11:6).

And so others said that only those would be immune from eternal punishment who had received the sacraments of faith and who held to the Catholic faith. But a difficulty with this view is that sometimes certain people hold to the Catholic faith and afterward they fall away from it, so they are not less deserving of punishment, but more so; for it would have been better for them never to have known the way of righteousness than after knowing it to turn back from the holy commandment delivered to them (2 Pet 2:21). It is also plain that the founders of heresies, who contrive new heresies departing from the Catholic faith, sin more than those who have followed some heresy from the beginning.

And so others said that only those are immune to eternal punishment who persevered in the Catholic faith at the end, no matter how much they are involved in other offenses. But this is manifestly contrary to Scripture: for it says, faith without works is dead (Jas 2:20), and not every one who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ shall enter the kingdom of heaven (Matt 7:21); and in many other places Scripture threatens sinners with eternal punishments. Therefore, not all those who remain in the faith at the end will be immune to eternal punishment, unless they are found to be forgiven of their crimes at the end.

To the fourth question, it should be said that as Augustine¹ says in the book mentioned, some people affirmed that not all who hold to the Catholic faith would be freed from eternal punishment, but only those who persisted in works of mercy, although they were also subject to other offenses. But this cannot stand, for without charity there cannot be anything acceptable to God, nor anything leading to eternal life. Now, it does happen that people persist in works of mercy who do not have charity; and then it will not benefit them at all toward meriting eternal life or toward immunity from eternal punishment, as is evident from 1 Corinthians 13:3. And this appears particularly absurd among thieves, who steal many things but still donate some of them mercifully. And therefore it should be said that for anyone who dies with mortal sin, neither faith nor works of mercy will free them from eternal punishment, no matter how much time passes.

“There can be no other torments that we know of to compare the punishment of the damned to.”¹ Augustine² says that the punishment of children is extremely slight, although they are kept out of the kingdom. And it should be said that this statement should be understood as concerning those who lack the divine vision, and have the remorse of conscience, because they are deprived of these things by their own fault.

How incomprehensible are his judgments!¹ But to the contrary, in Psalm 119 (118):13 it says: with my lips I declare all the judgments of your mouth. And it should be said that God’s commands are called judgments in the psalms; but the Apostle calls God’s plan of action his judgments.

But the variety of senses and effects in creatures is designated,¹ inasmuch as from the different conceptions we receive from created things, we attribute different notions to God, so that diversity is not in God according to his being, but there is a diversity according to reason alone; and this is called the variety of the senses; or, according to what are connoted, the variety of effects. And this was already said in Book I, Distinction 2, Question 1, Article 2, reply to the fifth objection.

Now, two operations are distinguished in God. One by which he first produces a thing in being, instituting its nature and distinguishing those things that pertain to its completion: and this is the work God is said to have rested from in Genesis 2:2. His other operation that whereby he carries out the governance of creation, which is what John 5:17 speaks of: my father is working still, and I am working. Accordingly, two kinds of judgment are distinguished in him, but in the reverse order.

One is the judgment that corresponds to the work of governance, which cannot exist without judgment, and by this judgment indeed each one is judged individually for his own works not only according as befits him, but according as befits the governance of the universe. This is why the rewarding of one person is delayed for the benefit of others, as it says in Hebrews 11, and the sufferings of one person result in progress for another. This is why it is necessary that there be some universal judgment corresponding oppositely to the first production of things in being, so that namely, just as at that time all things proceeded immediately from God, so too on the last day a final completion will be given to the world, with each person receiving finally what is due to him in himself.

Therefore, in that judgment we will see clearly the divine justice regarding all the things now hidden because sometimes things concerning one man are arranged to the benefit of others in a way other than his obvious works seem to require. Therefore, on that day there will also be a universal separation of the good from the wicked, for in the end it will not happen that the wicked benefit by the good or the good by the evil. And it is for the sake of this benefit that the good are found intermingled with the wicked in the meantime, while the state of this life is directed by divine providence.

To the second question, it should be said that whatever may be true about this question, it cannot be defined for certain. Nevertheless, it can be most probably guessed that the whole judgment, both as to the presentation of the case and the accusation of the wicked and the commendation of the good, and as to the sentencing of each, will be accomplished mentally. For if the deeds of individuals were vocally recounted, an inestimably huge amount of time would be needed for this, as Augustine¹ also says in the City of God 20, if the book from whose writing all will be judged, as it says in Revelation 20:12, were conceived physically, who would be competent to guess its size and length? Or how much time would it take for the book to be read, in which the entire lives of all had been written? But no less time is required for telling orally the deeds of individuals than is required for reading them, if they were written in a material book. Therefore, it is probable that the things that are spoken of in Matthew 25, should be understood to be accomplished not vocally, but mentally.

To the third question, it should be said that God is the cause of things through his knowledge. Now, he communicates both of these to created things when on the one hand he confers on things the power of acting upon other things of which they are the causes, and when on the other hand he also grants some creatures the knowledge of things. But in each case, he reserves something to himself, for he works some things in which no created being cooperates; and likewise he knows some things that are known to no mere created being.

Moreover, nothing else should be greater than those works that are subject to divine power alone, in which no creature cooperates with him; and the end of the world, when the day of judgment will happen, is this kind of work. For just as the world took the beginning of its existence from God immediately, so also no created cause will bring about the end of the world. Therefore, the knowledge of the end of the world is fittingly reserved to God alone. And the Lord himself seems to give this reason when he says: it is not for you to know times or seasons which the Father has fixed by his own power (Acts 1:7), as though he were saying that they had been reserved to his power alone.

But that does not seem to suffice for fulfilling the Lord’s promise, in which it is said, you shall sit . . . judging the twelve tribes, for it seems to add judgment over and above confession. And so there is a fourth mode of judging, which befits perfect men, inasmuch as the decrees of divine justice by which men shall be judged, are contained in them; just as if the book in which the law is contained were said to judge, and thus in Daniel 7:10: the court sat in judgment, and the books were opened.¹ And this is the mode by which Richard of St. Victor explains this judging, so that he says that those who attend to divine contemplation, who read daily from the book of wisdom, as though they shall copy into the chapters of their hearts whatever transparent realizations of truth they grasp; and further, but what are the hearts of those who judge in all truth by divine power taught, unless decrees of the canons?²

But because judging implies an action that proceeds into another, a person is properly speaking said to judge who imposes a sentence on another by speaking. But this happens in two ways. In one way, from his own authority, and this properly belongs to that person who has dominion and power over the others, to whose control those who are judged are subject, and it belongs to him to impose justice on them. And in this way to judge belongs to God alone. In another way to judge is to make the sentence handed down by another’s authority known to others, which is to announce the sentence delivered. And this is the way that perfect men shall judge, for they shall lead others into the awareness of divine justice, so that they may know what is justly owed to them for their merits, so that the very revelation of justice may be called judgment. This is why Richard of St. Victor says, the judges to open before those to be judged the books of their own decrees, it is to admit to the inspection of their own hearts what they have seen of any of their inferiors, and to reveal its meaning in those things that pertain to the judgment.¹

And the same should be said to the second objection.

To the second question, it should be said that judicial power is especially owed to poverty for three reasons. First, by reason of congruity: for voluntary poverty belongs to those who cling to Christ alone, having rejected everything that is of the world. And therefore there is not anything that turns their judgment away from justice, and so they are rendered adept at judging, as loving the truth of justice above all things. Second, by way of merit, exaltation for merit corresponds to humility. But among all the things that make a man despised in this world, poverty is chief, which is also why the excellence of judicial power is promised to the poor, so that then whoever humbles himself for Christ’s sake shall be exalted. Third, because poverty disposes one to the manner of judging mentioned above. For as is clear from what has been said, the reason any of the saints will be said to judge is that he will have a heart instructed in all divine truth, which he will be able to manifest to others. But while on the path to perfection, the first thing that must be relinquished are external riches, for they are the last acquired. Now what is last in generation is first in destruction, and so it is that among the beatitudes, by which progress is made toward perfection, poverty is set forth first. And thus power to judge corresponds to poverty, inasmuch as it is the first disposition to this power. And so it is that this power is not promised to every poor person, even voluntary ones, but only to those who, leaving everything behind, follow Christ according to perfection of life.

To the third question, it should be said that the judge’s counselors should be like the judge or analogous to him. Now judgment is attributed to the Son, for he shall appear according to his human nature before all, the good as well as the wicked, although the whole Trinity will judge by authority. And therefore it is also fitting that the judge’s counselors should have human nature, in which they can be seen by all the good and the wicked. And thus it does not befit angels to judge, although the angels could also be said to judge in a certain way, namely by approving the sentence.

To the fourth question, it should be said that concerning this two opinions are mentioned by the Master in the text, and both seem to fit with God’s justice. For by the fact that a man sins, he is justly subjected to the demons, but the demons unjustly have charge of him. Therefore the opinion that holds that in the future after the day of judgment demons will not have charge over men in punishment regards the order of divine justice on the part of the demons who punish. But the contrary opinion regards the order of divine justice on the part of the men who are punished.

Now, we cannot know with certainty which one of these is more true. However, I consider as more true that just as the order will be preserved in those who are saved such that certain people will be illuminated and perfected by certain others, because the orders of the heavenly hierarchy will be perpetual; so too there will be an order in punishments, so that men shall be punished by demons, lest the divine order by which he has established angels as intermediaries between divine and human nature should be entirely destroyed. And therefore just as divine illuminations are conveyed to men by the good angels, so too the demons are the executors of divine justice in the wicked. Nor in this would there be any diminishment of the demons’ punishments, for in the fact that they torment others, they themselves shall be tormented. For the company of the miserable there will not diminish misery, but increase it.

To the second question, it should be said that there are two things that pertain to the judgment: namely, the weighing of merits, and the awarding of recompense. Therefore as to the reception of recompense, all will be judged, even the good, in that each person will receive from the divine sentence the reward that corresponds to his merit. But there will only be a weighing of merits where there is some mixture of good merits with bad deeds. Now those who build on a foundation of faith with gold and silver and precious stones, completely persevere in the service of God; since they have no significant admixture of bad deeds to be repaid, there is no place for a weighing of their merits, just as those who have completely relinquished the things of the world think with anxious care only on what is of God; and thus they will be saved, but they will not be judged. But those who build on a foundation of faith with wood, hay, and stubble,¹ namely, those who still love worldly things and are caught up in earthly dealings, yet they place nothing above Christ, but strive to expiate their sins with almsgiving, do have some admixture of bad with their good merits; and thus the presenting of merits will take place among them; and they will be judged for this, and yet they will be saved.

However, the arguments to the contrary proceed from an idea of judgment as the recompense of rewards.

To the third question, it should be said that the judgment that is the recompense of punishment for sins applies to all the wicked; but the judgment that is the weighing of sins only applies to believers, for among unbelievers there is no foundation of faith, and when that is absent, all subsequent works will lack perfect rightness of intention. Therefore there is not any mixture of good merits with their bad deeds which would require weighing. But the faithful in whom there remains a foundation of faith, at least have a praiseworthy act of faith which, although it is not meritorious without charity, nevertheless in itself is ordered toward merit. And thus among them there is a role for the weighing of merits. Therefore believers, who were at least citizens of the city of God in number, will be judged as citizens, in whom no sentencing to death will be handed down without pleading their merits. But unbelievers will be condemned as enemies, who, among men, are usually executed without listening to their merits.

The arguments to the contrary proceed from the notion of judgment as retribution.

To the fourth question, it should be said that the judgment as weighing of merits will in no way take place among the good angels or the bad angels, for among the good no evil can be found, nor can any good pertaining to judgment be found among the bad angels. But if we were speaking about the judgment as retribution, then two kinds of retribution must be distinguished. One corresponds to the proper merits of the angels; and this one happened to both kinds of angels at the beginning, when some were raised to beatitude while others were cast into wretchedness.

The other retribution corresponds to the good merits or the bad demerits procured by the angels, and this retribution will happen at the future judgment, for the good angels will have deeper joy at the salvation of those whom they have influenced to merit, and the wicked angels will be further tormented for having multiplied the destruction of the wicked, who were incited to evil deeds by them. Therefore, in a direct sense, there will be no judgment of the angels, whether as judges or as those to be judged, but only a judgment of men; but indirectly judgment has to do with angels in a certain respect, inasmuch as they were intermingled with the acts of men.

And the third objection should be answered in the same way.

To the second question, it should be said that that purification of the world, as has been said, will remove the imperfection of the world left behind by sin, and the impurity of commingling, and it will dispose the world for the perfection of glory. And thus it will be most appropriately accomplished by fire in three respects. First, because since fire is the most noble of the elements, it has natural properties more like the properties of glory, as is most evident in the case of light. Second, because fire does not admit as much mixture of anything foreign as the other elements, because of the efficacy of its active power. Third, because the sphere of fire is remote from our habitation, nor is fire’s use so common to us as earth and water and air, so that it is not infected as much; and besides this it has the greatest efficacy for purifying and dividing by refining.

To the third question, it should be said that we find three opinions about this.

For some people say that the element fire which is in its own sphere will descend for the purification of the world. And they claim that it will descend by multiplication: for fire expands in all directions when it is placed near anything combustible; and this shall especially happen then, when the power of fire will be raised above all the other elements. But against this seems to be that that fire will not only descend but is also held to rise by the saints, as is clear from 2 Peter 3, where it seems that the fire of judgment shall rise as much as the water of the flood. This makes it seem that the fire will be in the intermediate place of generation.

And because of this others say that that fire will be generated around the earth by a convergence of rays from the heavenly bodies, as we see are brought together in a burning mirror; but on that day there will be arched clouds in place of mirrors, toward which the rays will reflect. But neither does this seem fitting, for since the effect of the heavenly bodies follows their determinate positions and appearances, if the fire were generated by the power of heavenly bodies, the time of that purification would be known to those who examine the movements of the stars; which is opposed to Scripture.

And therefore others say, following Augustine, that just as the flood occurred by an inundation of earthly waters, so shall the form of this world perish in a conflagration of earthly fires, as it says in the City of God 20.¹ But this conflagration is nothing other than the convergence of all the higher and lower causes that have the power of igniting by their own nature; and indeed this convergence will be done not in the natural course of things but by divine power; and from all those causes brought together the fire will be generated that will incinerate the face of this world.

However, if these opinions were rightly considered, they are found to be different in the cause of that generating, and not in its species. For fire generated by the sun or by a lower heat-source is of the same species as fire that is in its own sphere, except to the extent that foreign material is mixed with it, which will certainly have to happen on that day, for fire cannot purify anything except according as its material is made into something else in some way. Therefore it must simply be granted that that fire will be of the same species with ours.

To the second question, it should be said that concerning this question there are many opinions.

For some people say that all the elements will remain as to their matter, but all will be changed as to their imperfection; but two of them, air and earth, will retain their proper substantial form, while in two, fire and water, their substantial form will not remain but they will be changed into the form of the heaven. And in this way three elements, namely, fire, air, and water, will be called the heaven, although air will retain the same substantial form that it has now, for it is also called ‘heaven’ now. This is also why in Revelation 21:1, mention is only made of heaven and earth: he says, I saw a new heaven and a new earth. But this opinion is completely absurd, for it is opposed both to philosophy, according to which it cannot be held that lower corporeal things are in potency to the form of heaven, since they neither have any common matter nor contrariety to each other; as well as to theology, for according to this position the perfection of the universe will not be preserved with the integrity of its parts, if two elements are taken away. Therefore by saying heaven, a fifth corporeal thing is understood; but all the elements are understood by earth, as it says in Psalm 148:7: praise the Lord from the earth; and afterward it says: fire and hail, snow and frost (Ps 148:8).

And so others say that all the elements will remain according to their substance, but active and passive qualities will be removed from them, as they also hold that in a mixed body the elements will be saved according to their own substantial forms without having their proper qualities, since they are reduced to a middle thing, and the middle belongs to neither of the extremes. And this seems to agree with what Augustine says in the City of God 20:¹ by this universal conflagration the qualities of the corruptible elements which suited our corruptible bodies shall utterly perish, and our substance shall receive such qualities as shall, by a wonderful transmutation, harmonize with our immortal bodies. But since the proper qualities of the elements are the effects of substantial forms, it does not seem probable that those qualities could be changed while the substantial forms remain, except by a violent action for a time; as we see in the case of hot water that by the force of its own species, it returns to the coldness that it had lost through the action of the fire, while the species of water remains. And furthermore those very elemental qualities are also of the elements’ second perfection, like their proper passions. Nor is it probable that in that final consummation anything of natural perfection would be removed from the elements.

And therefore it should be said that the elements shall remain as to their substance and proper qualities, but they will be purified, as was said above, from the infection that they contracted from men’s sins, and from the impurity that occurs in them from mutual action and being acted upon: for once the movement of the first moving thing has stopped, mutual action and being acted upon could not exist in lower elements; and this is what Augustine calls the qualities of corruptible elements, namely, their unnatural dispositions, according to which they tend toward corruption.

To the third question, it should be said that some people say that that fire will rise to the highest point of the space that holds the four elements, so that the elements are completely purified both from the infection of sin, which even the highest parts of the elements are infected with, as is clear from the smoke of idolatry that defiles the highest places; and also from corruption, for elements are corruptible throughout all their parts. But that opinion is opposed to the authority of holy Scripture, for in 2 Peter 3:7 it says that those heavens that had been purified by water were stored up for fire; and Augustine says in the City of God 20,¹ that the world that perished in the flood is reserved for fire. However it is evident that the water of the flood did not ascend to the highest point of the elements’ space, but only to fifteen cubits above the height of the mountains; and furthermore, it is known for certain that neither vapors rising from the earth nor any kind of smoke can pass through the entire sphere of fire so that it would reach its top; and so the infection of sin does not reach to the space mentioned. Nor can the elements be purified from their corruptibility by removing anything that could be consumed by fire; but fire could consume the impurities of the elements that arise from admixture. However, these impurities exist especially around the earth up to the middle layer of air, which is why the fire of the final conflagration will purify the elements up to that space; for even the waters of the flood ascended that high, which can be probably deduced from the height of the mountains which it had surpassed by a determinate measure.

To the second question, it should be said that in preceding the judgment, the fire of the final conflagration will act as an instrument of divine justice; and again, it will act by the natural power of fire. Therefore, as much as it pertains to its natural power, it will act the same among the good and the bad who are found living, and it will resolve the bodies of both into ashes; but inasmuch as it acts as an instrument of divine justice, it will act differently on different people as to the sense of punishment. For the wicked will be tormented by the action of the fire, but the good in whom nothing is found to be purified will feel no pain from the fire, just as the boys in the fiery furnace also did not feel anything (Daniel 3:50); although their bodies will not be kept intact as the boys’ bodies were preserved; and this will be possible by divine power, that they suffer the disintegration of their bodies without the pain of torment. But the good in whom there is found something to be purified shall feel more or less of the pain of torment from that fire based on the difference in their merits. But as to the action that the fire will have after the judgment, it will act only on the damned, for all the good will have impassible bodies.

To the third question, it should be said that the whole purification and renewal of the world will be ordered to the purification and renewal of man, and therefore it is necessary that the purification and renewal of the world correspond to the purification and renewal of the human race. Now there will be a certain purification of the human race when the wicked are separated from the good, which is why it says in Luke 3:17: his winnowing fork is in his hand, to clear his threshing floor,, and to gather the wheat, that is, the elect, into his granary; but the chaff, that is, the condemned, he will burn with unquenchable fire. Therefore the purification of the world will take place such that whatever is base and ugly will be cast into hell with the condemned; but whatever is beautiful and noble will be kept in the heights for the glory of the elect. And the fire of the conflagration will be like this as well, as Basil says¹ commenting on Psalm 29 (28):7: the voice of the Lord flashes forth flames of fire: for as to the burning heat, and with regard to whatever is found to be coarse, it will descend to hell for the punishment of the damned; but whatever is fine and bright there will remain above for the glory of the elect.

“The ones who at least preserved their faith in him in words will at least hear the judge’s words.”¹ These words are not to be taken as spoken words but mental words, as was said above.

And heaven and earth shall perish: “not according to substance but according to form.”¹ Here ‘form’ means the corruptibility of the elements, and other things that have to do with their dishonor.

Through the ministry of the angels, with the aid of God’s power, the evil ones shall be sent into the fiery furnace.¹ This is to be understood of the good angels as to the command, but of the bad angels as to execution.

To the second question, it should be said that if we are speaking of the sun and moon as regards the very moment of Christ’s coming, then it is not credible that they would be darkened by the privation of their light. For the whole world will be renewed when Christ comes and the saints arise, as has been said. If, however, we are speaking of them with reference to a time shortly before the judgment, then it will be possible for the sun, the moon, and the other luminaries of heaven to be darkened by the privation of their light, either at different times or at the same time, with divine power doing this to terrify men.

To the third question it should be said that we speak of virtues among the angels in two ways, as is clear from Dionysius.¹ For sometimes the name ‘virtues’ is appropriated to a single order, which according to Dionysius is the middle order of the middle hierarchy and according to Gregory is the highest of the lowest hierarchy. In the other way, ‘virtues’ is taken generally for all the heavenly spirits. And it can be taken in both ways in the case in question. For in the text it is explained as being taken in the second way, namely for all the angels, and then they are said to be moved on account of wonder at the newness that will be in the world, as it says in the text. ‘Virtues’ can also be explained as being the proper name of an order, and then this order is said to be moved more than the others by reason of the effect. For, according to Gregory, we attribute to this order the working of miracles, which will occur most of all around that time. Or else because this order, since it pertains to the middle hierarchy according to Dionysius, does not have a limited power. Hence its ministry must concern universal causes. This is why the proper task of the virtues seems to be moving the heavenly bodies, which are the cause of what goes on in lower nature. And this, too, is reflected in their name, since they are called the ‘virtues of heaven.’ Therefore they will be moved at that time because they will cease from their effect, no longer moving the heavenly bodies, just as the angels who are deputed for the guardianship of men will no longer devote themselves to the task of guardianship.

To the fourth question, it should be said that not much can be known with certitude about how that judgment will take place and how men will gather together for judgment, though it can be gathered with some probability from the Scriptures that he will descend around the place of the Mount of Olives, as he also ascended from that place, to show that the one who descends and the one who ascended are the same.