304. Heaven as a real place
304. HEAVEN AS A REAL PLACE
Is Heaven a state of mind? Is it “spiritual” in the sense of being “subjective”? Or is it as objectively real a place as Hawaii?
Whether places are appointed to receive souls after death?
Objection 1. It would seem that places are not appointed to receive souls after death. For as Boethius says: Wise men are agreed that incorporeal things are not in a place. And this agrees with the words of Augustine: We can answer without hesitation that the soul is not conveyed to corporeal places, except with a body . . . that it is not conveyed locally. Now the soul separated from the body (by death) is without a body, as Augustine also says. Therefore it is absurd to assign any places for the reception of souls. . . .
I answer that . . . after death souls . . . are as though in a place, after the manner in which incorporeal things can be in a place, according as they more or less approach to . . . God (and thus are in Heaven, Purgatory, or Hell).
Reply to Objection 1. Incorporeal things are not in place after a manner known and familiar to us, in which way we say that bodies are properly in place. But they are in place after a manner befitting spiritual substances, a manner that cannot be fully manifest to us. . . .
The separated soul receives nothing directly from corporeal places in the same way as bodies. . . . [Y]et these same souls, through knowing themselves to be appointed to such places (as Heaven, Hell, or Purgatory), gather joy or sorrow therefrom, and thus their place conduces to their punishment or reward (S69,1).
In discussing the question whether something is or is not objectively real (moral values, souls, universal truths, Platonic Ideas, God, spirits, etc.) we often assume that “objectively real” means “real out there in space, outside my epidermis”. This is implicit materialism, for the only things that can exist in space are material things. Angels, for instance, which are pure spirits without material bodies, are not “here” as we and rocks and planets are “here”: they are not limited by space. There is no finite number of angels that can dance on the head of a pin, as there is a finite number of molecules that can.
Materialists believe there is only one kind of reality: matter. Some people believe there are two kinds of reality: objective matter and subjective spirit (minds). But this too is too simple, for there is objective spirit as well as objective matter. There is God, angels, and other human souls. There is also a fourth kind of reality: subjective matter; for there is my own body as well as my own mind.
So if there is objective spiritual reality, there may be objectively real places that are not material places, at least in the same sense that earth, or Boston, are material places.
Heaven is such a real place. It is not subjective. Neither is Purgatory, even though resurrection bodies are not present yet in Purgatory. Therefore disembodied souls too can be in real places.
Our souls are in “corporeal places” now because our bodies are. After death our souls will be in other kinds of places, that are nowhere in this corporeal, spatial universe—not because their bodies are there, not because they receive their place from bodies, as they do now, but because God assigns them there, and their “there” gives them joy (Heaven), sorrow (Hell), or both (Purgatory) from their rewards or punishments.
Thus when we say that souls after death go to a “place”, the term “place” is neither univocal (only one kind of place) nor equivocal (no real place at all) but analogical. Thus St. Thomas says “after death souls . . . are as though in a place” but “in a manner befitting spiritual substances”.
And if we demand more clarity about this “manner”, St. Thomas replies that it is “a manner that cannot be fully manifest to us”. Naturally. Why would we expect an unborn baby to understand what “places” means after birth? All he knows is the womb, a single place with no edges or contrasts. We are in a similar situation; only after death will we experience it, and only then be able to understand it.