340. Can Hell make Heaven happy?
340. CAN HELL MAKE HEAVEN HAPPY?
The reasoning above (#339) is clear, but the conclusion is still murky. How can the blessed in Heaven rejoice when they see the sufferings of the damned, even if that suffering is necessary and just? They can rejoice in the justice, but not in the sufferings. But the justice is an abstraction, while the sufferings are concrete. Will abstractions be more real than concrete things to the blessed? The previous answer said that we cannot imagine this state (because we cannot experience it here); can we at least explain it a little more?
Whether the blessed rejoice in the punishment of the wicked?
I answer that A thing may be a matter of rejoicing in two ways. First, directly (and concretely), when one rejoices in a thing as such; and thus the saints will not rejoice in the punishment of the wicked. Secondly, indirectly (and abstractly), by reason of something annexed to it; and in this way the saints will rejoice in the punishment of the wicked by considering therein the order of divine justice. . . .
Objection 1. It would seem that the blessed do not rejoice in the punishment of the wicked. For rejoicing in another’s evil pertains to hatred. But there will be no hatred in the blessed. . . .
Reply to Objection 1. To rejoice in another’s evil as such (concretely) belongs to hatred, but not to rejoice in another’s evil by reason of something (abstractly) annexed to it. Thus a person sometimes rejoices in his own (physical) evil as when we rejoice in our own afflictions as helping us to merit life: My brethren, count it all joy when you shall fall into divers trials (Jas 1:2).
Objection 2. Further, the blessed in heaven will be in the highest degree conformed to God. Now God does not rejoice in our afflictions. Therefore neither will the blessed rejoice in the afflictions of the damned.
Reply to Objection 2. Although God rejoices not in punishments as such (concretely), He rejoices in them as being ordered to His justice (abstractly).
Objection 3. It is most reprehensible in a wayfarer to take pleasure in the pains of others, and most praiseworthy to grieve for them. Therefore the blessed nowise rejoice in the punishments of the damned.
Reply to Objection 3. It is not the same with a wayfarer (on earth) as with a comprehensor (in Heaven), because in a wayfarer . . . such passions are praiseworthy, as indicating the good dispositions of the mind, as in the cases of shame, pity, and the repentance for evil; whereas in a comprehensor there can be no passion but such as follows the judgment of reason (S94,3).
This is an extension of the previous point. St. Thomas here uses the same key distinction as he used in the previous excerpt. Like God, we will be able to separate in fact what we can only separate in thought now: when we see or know the sufferings of the damned, we will be able to separate the cause for our actively rejoicing (that God’s justice is done) from the cause for our passive sorrow (pity at the sufferings of the damned). We will be able to free the first from the second. We cannot do that here.
In Heaven, our active rejoicing in justice, like our active charity and goodwill to all, even the damned, will not cease. But our passive pity and vulnerability and suffering will.
When St. Thomas says that in Heaven all passions will follow the judgment of reason, he is not saying that in Heaven all are Stoics. “Reason” to him means not merely, or even primarily, the teeth—clenching “stiff upper lip” by which passions are fought and overcome, but the joyful vision of God’s beauty, the “Beatific Vision”. “Reason” means essentially “mental seeing or knowing”. What our reason can know only by abstraction here, we will actually see concretely there. Here, we can only “see” the meaning of justice by an act of intellectual abstraction (from just acts or laws or persons); there, we will see it (with our minds) as concretely and fully as we here see colors.
If St. Thomas’ answer still does not convince you, what is the alternative? That Hell holds Heaven’s happiness hostage forever?