18.3 Resurrection, the Life to Come, and the End of the World (SCG 4,79–97)
18.3 Resurrection, the Life to Come, and the End of the World (SCG 4,79–97)
With his treatment of the sacraments concluded, Aquinas is almost done with what he has to say in the SCG. For, he thinks, if we recognize what the sacraments are about, we have arrived at some grasp of what the Incarnation achieved: human freedom from sin and union with God. Since Aquinas regularly takes the created order to be geared to human salvation (looking forward in the SCG; see SCG 4,97), his discussion of sacraments, intimately tied as it is to his discussion of the Incarnation, amounts to a rounding off of his account of the end of the created order.
Yet Aquinas clearly thinks that there is still more of substance to discuss before bringing the SCG to a close, and he makes the necessary transition early in SCG 4,79. He writes:
We have shown above that we have been freed by Christ from what we incurred by the sin of the first man; and, when the first man sinned, not only was the sin itself passed on to us, but also death. … It is, then, the effect of the death of Christ in regard to the remission of sin which we achieve in the sacraments. … But the effect of the resurrection of Christ in regard to our liberation from death we shall achieve at the end of the world, when we shall rise by the power of Christ. … It is, then, a necessary tenet of faith to believe that there will be a resurrection from the dead.95
Aquinas is in no doubt that the resurrection from the dead is clearly taught by Scripture. He refers, in particular, to Job 19:25–27, John 5:25–28, and 1 Corinthians 15:12–18. So he thinks that the realization of the end of the created order will involve the resurrection from the dead of all human beings, which he takes to be an event future to his writing the SCG and future to anyone reading it.96 Hence SCG 4,79–90 is exclusively devoted to human resurrection. In SCG 4,90–95, Aquinas turns to a consideration of human souls immediately following death. Then he concludes the SCG by talking about how we, and the world as a whole, shall be after what he refers to as the Last Judgment, by which he means how all people stand in relation to God come their resurrection.
18.3.1 The Main Line of Thought in SCG 4,79–97
SCG 4,79–97 includes things that you may find very puzzling. You might, for example, find it hard to fathom what Aquinas is saying in SCG 4,81 when he discusses cannibalism. You might also feel perplexed by the degree to which Aquinas draws on the idea that planets are moved by souls of some kind.97 But the basic drift of SCG 4,79–97, in which Aquinas draws heavily on scriptural texts when it comes to his speculations, seems clear enough, and the major points in these chapters, whether cogent or not, can be briefly summarized as follows.98
1. The bodies of human beings will rise from the dead and will be immortal. This is evident from Scripture.99
2. Apart from the testimony of Scripture, a reason for believing in human resurrection lies in the fact that, after death, a person’s soul survives without animating a human body (see SCG 2,79). But the soul of someone who has died needs to be rejoined to the person’s body. That is because the soul of a human being is incomplete if it is not animating a human body—meaning that it is “contrary to the nature of the soul to be without the body.” But what is contrary to nature “cannot be perpetual.”100
3. People tend naturally to happiness. Yet they cannot be fully happy without being bodily, for “the soul is naturally a part of human nature,” and perfect human happiness cannot be achieved if the souls of people who have died are not reunited to their bodies.101
4. People deserve either reward or punishment for how they have chosen to act. But acting people are composed of soul and body. After death, therefore, people need to be rewarded or punished as things having both soul and body, which calls for the resurrection of the body.102
5. A number of arguments might be cited to the effect that there is an absurdity in belief in the resurrection of the body. According to these arguments:
a. What is destroyed or corrupted in nature does not come back into existence numerically the same as before. But death brings about corruption in one who has died. So it seems impossible for a person who has died to return to life numerically the same.103
b. Since having an essence involves having essential properties or principles, something losing an essential property or principle ceases to exist. Now when something is annihilated it cannot become numerically the same thing as it was before. Yet death seems to annihilate many of a person’s essential properties or principles.104
c. Continuity is required for identity over time. But death deprives us of existence, which suggests that we cannot live after death as the things that we are before death.105
d. If our bodies return to life, then they should be restored with everything that belonged to them, which seems unseemly since it entails the resurrection of a huge and unseemly amount of waste matter.106
e. Some people eat nothing but human flesh, and these people, nourished by human flesh, themselves have children. So the same flesh can be in different people. But it cannot rise again in several human beings, which it would have to if the resurrection gave us back what we had before death.107
f. What is common to individuals in a species is natural to that species. But resurrection is not natural to human beings since no natural agent can raise all people from the dead.108
g. If we are delivered from sin and death by Christ, then, surely, only those redeemed by Christ should be raised from the dead. So not all human beings will be raised from the dead.109
6. In reply to these arguments, it should be said that when God created human beings he made them able to control and direct their bodies so as to avoid bodily corruption; he made them to be able to share in the perpetual life of the human soul. Human bodies were not created so as to corrupt, though human bodies are naturally corruptible unless grace renders them incorruptible. Human bodies fell victim to physical corruption as a result of sin. Considered from this point of view, however, death is accidental to human beings, not something they have to endure of absolute necessity just by being human. This accident, however, was taken away by Christ so that “by the divine power which gave the body incorruption the body may once again be restored from death to life.”110 Again, although nature cannot restore a corrupt body to life, God’s power can do this. “Since the divine power remains the same even when things are corrupted, it can restore the corrupted to integrity.”111
Also, no essential properties or principles of human beings become absolutely nothing after we have died. The form of our bodies (our souls) survives physical death, as does the matter of our bodies considered as having dimensions. “Therefore, by conjunction to a soul numerically the same, the human being will be restored to matter numerically the same.”112
Furthermore, one can think of what is bodily as having the substantial form of a body. But the substantial form of a human being is the human soul as informing a body with dimensions. Also, the rational soul is above matter and there is continuity of soul that can be reunited to matter.
In addition, we should note that there is bodily continuity through life in spite of material difference. “People are not numerically different at different ages, although not everything which is in them materially in one state is also there in another. In this way, then, this is not a requirement of people’s arising with numerical identity: that they should assume again whatever has been in them during the whole time of their lives; but they need to assume from that matter only what suffices to complete the quantity due, and that especially must be resumed which was more perfectly consistent with the form and species of humanity.”113
As for the argument against resurrection alluding to cannibalism, we need to remember that for someone to be raised from the dead, there is no need for everything that was ever materially in that person to be raised when that person is raised. So human flesh consumed by Fred, say, can rise without being part of Fred, and Fred can rise with whatever he physically acquired from eating what was not human. And if Fred eats nothing but human flesh, he can rise again with what he received at birth. When it comes to human resurrection, we should think that “if something was materially present in many people, it will rise in someone to whose perfection it belonged most intimately.”114
7. People raised from the dead will never die again.115 This is taught by Scripture and the Christian tradition. It is also to be inferred from the fact that without resurrection to immortality there would, for example, given points 2 and 3 above, need to be an endless cycle of human deaths and human resurrections, which does not seem to fit with the idea that God creates things for an end rather than an ever recurring series of ends.116
8. People raised from the dead will have no use for food and sex. They will not need food since eating food is necessary for human survival, while resurrected people are immortal and have no need to digest what we have to do in order to survive. And they will not need to engage in sexual activity since that is intended by God so that children should be born in order to continue the human species, while no children shall be born come the resurrection of all human beings, at which human history comes to an end.117 Sexual intercourse is geared to human life prior to the resurrection of all human beings. It is not needed and will not take place following the resurrection of all human beings (see Matthew 22:30).
9. Our resurrected bodies will be real human bodies of flesh and blood. They will be numerically identical with our present bodies, and they will also be like the resurrected body of Christ as described in the New Testament.118
10. Although our resurrected bodies will be human, they will, by God’s power, have a different disposition (dispositio) from the bodies we have now. For they will be incorruptible, as is the human soul. Our resurrected bodies will also be perfectly subject to our souls.119
11. Both good and bad people will be raised from the dead, and their bodies will be equally incorruptible, though not everyone will enjoy the beatific vision. However, the resurrected bodies of those enjoying the vision of God will share in the glory of the souls which enjoy it. The resurrected bodies of the blessed will be effortlessly directed to what the souls of the blessed will for them. So they will have agility and power. They will also be free from any suffering.120
12. “Since the bodies of the risen will achieve the characteristics of heavenly bodies, they, too, will have a place in the heavens, or, rather, ‘above all the heavens,’ so as to be at once with Christ, whose power will lead them to this glory.”121
13. The resurrected bodies of people will display sexual difference and will be male or female, even though the risen will have no use for sexual organs. The resurrection of people restores deficiencies of nature, so it reestablishes people in what they are physically; it restores “the integrity of the body.” And “all must rise in the age of Christ, which is that of youth, by reason of the perfection of nature which is found in that age alone. For the age of boyhood has not yet achieved the perfection of nature through increase; and by decrease old age has already withdrawn from that perfection.”122
14. The resurrected bodies of those who die as unrepentant sinners will be largely like those of the blessed. But the damned will be encumbered by carnal desire, and their bodies will not be subject to their will as shall the bodies of the blessed. Also, the bodies of the damned will undergo endless suffering and will be separated from the bodies of the blessed.123
15. Before their resurrection, the souls of the damned suffer, but not physically. Christ tells us that they suffer from fire (Matthew 25:41), but this teaching should be interpreted as meaning that the souls of the damned know that they are subject to something lower than them. Also, of course, the damned can suffer from general remorse and frustration.124
16. Our souls are rewarded or punished by God as soon as we die. Then, they either enjoy the vision of God forever, or they eternally lack it. The fate of our resurrected bodies depends on the state of our will at death. However, there can be people destined for heaven who die without being perfectly conformed to God. The souls of such people endure a period of purification (purgatory) prior to the beatific vision, as Scripture teaches.125
17. After death, our souls are fixed when it comes to willing. The souls destined to enjoy the beatific vision are fixed on God. The souls of the damned are not. “Souls immediately after their separation from the body become unchangeable in will, with the result that the will of people cannot further be changed, neither from good to evil, nor from evil to good.”126
18. The resurrection from the dead will come at one time. Some will be raised to glory, others to punishment. This is what the Last Judgment amounts to, and it is Christ who will be the judge since his life and death lead people to eternal life, as John 5:27 says. Nonetheless, Christ will be assisted in his act of judgment by his apostles, as we gather from Matthew 19:28.
19. Following the Last Judgement, all generation and corruption in the universe will cease. For generation and corruption on earth exist with a view to the final end of all people, as St. Paul says.127 Generation and corruption on earth is caused by the movements of heavenly bodies. So after the Last Judgment, the heavenly bodies will cease to move, though they will continue to exist. However, naturally perishable things, such as plants and animals, will pass away, as 1 Corinthians 7:31 teaches. Such perishable things will be consumed by fire, as 2 Peter 3:7 says. However, the material world will inherit a kind of glory because of the glory of that for which it exists: the human being.
So, says Aquinas, at the end of time, there will be a great transformation in created things. And it is on this note that the SCG ends.