¹ Available online at http://www.papalencyclicals.net/Ben12/B12bdeus.html.

² The Resurrection of the Body in Western Christianity, 200–1336 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1995), pp. 279–317Google Scholar.

³ See In IV Sent. d. 49 q. 1, a. 4, qa. 1. Translated by Kwasniewski, Peter A., Bolin, Thomas O.S.B., and Bolin, Joseph in On Love and Charity: Readings from the “Commentary on the Sentences of Peter Lombard” (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press), pp. 377–381Google Scholar. Henceforth, material from this sub-question will be referenced by page number only.

⁴ See In IV Sent. d. 49, q. 1, a. 1, qa. 2–3 (pp. 340–347 in the English translation).

⁵ Bynum, The Resurrection of the Body, pp. 286–287.

⁶ See Commentary, pp. 378–380.

⁷ Adding my second eye can improve my overall vision by providing stereoscopic perspective, thus allowing for more accurate judgments of distance and proportion. By contrast, Aquinas holds that adding a body does not improve the soul's overall act of understanding at all. For this reason, I speak of the addition of my second eye as not affecting the fact that I simply see the mountain with my first eye.

⁸ In particular, Aquinas holds that disembodied human souls have knowledge, not on the basis of information provided by the sense organs or through innate concepts, but rather through concepts supplied by God. God provides a disembodied soul with determinable concepts—e.g., extended—and the power of grasping them to such a degree that the soul perfectly understands every determinant concept virtually contained in the determinable—e.g., human body with such-and-such dimensions that has decomposed by time t₁ (=my body that has now decomposed). See STh I-I, q. 89, a. 1. For more discussion of Aquinas's account of how disembodied human souls have knowledge see Dillard, Peter S., The Truth about Mary: A Theological and Philosophical Evaluation of the Proposed Fifth Marian Dogma (Eugene: Wipf & Stock, 2009), pp. 52–54Google Scholar.

⁹ Might an overwhelming vision of God after death yet before the general resurrection simply “blind” the soul to its condition vis-à-vis its body? Only if the soul's acts of understanding, including its understanding of its own condition vis-à-vis its body, essentially depend upon the presence of a functioning body is it plausible to suppose that a disembodied soul would suffer beatific “blinding.” Yet Aquinas denies that the soul's understanding essentially depends on bodily functioning.

¹⁰ See Commentary, p. 379.

¹¹ Ibid., pp. 379–380.

¹² In IV Sent. d. 49, q. 1, a. 1, qa. 4 (349 in the English translation), emphasis added.

¹³ Bynum, The Resurrection of the Body, p. 252.

¹⁴ See STh I-II, q. 4, a. 5.

¹⁵ See ibid., ad. 5.

¹⁶ See ibid., ad. 4.

¹⁷ See STh I-II, q. 40, a. 1.

¹⁸ See STh II-II, q. 17, a. 3.

¹⁹ I do not mean to suggest that Bynum attributes this exact account to all three of these writers, but only that she attributes to them a common conception of the nature of beatitude which strongly suggests the account I shall describe.

²⁰ Dante, The Divine Comedy, III. Paradiso, Part 2. Trans. Singleton, Charles S. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991)Google Scholar, canto 33, lines 97–99 and 139–145 (cited in Bynum, The Resurrection of the Body, p. 304).

²¹ Bynum, The Resurrection of the Body, p. 305.

²² Marguerite of Oignt, Speculum, chapter 2, paragraphs 16–17. Quoted by Bynum in The Resurrection of the Body, p. 335.

²³ Mechtild of Magdeburg, Das fliessende Licht, book 5, chapter 25. Quoted by Bynum in The Resurrection of the Body, p. 339.

²⁴ For any blessed human being, might there be a point beyond which she is incapable of loving God any more than she already does even though God is intrinsically capable of being loved more? Or could God bestow upon her a greater and greater capacity for loving Him with no upper bound? I shall not explore this issue here, for as I will explain below there is a more pressing question about the dynamic conception of beatitude that needs to be addressed before this and other subsidiary questions are taken up.

²⁵ For example, the iterative account requires that blessed persons in eternity inhabit some kind of time, since they undergo real changes and such changes take place in time. Does that conflict with the timelessness of eternity? It might be countered that although, strictly speaking, only God is in eternity, there are independent reasons to hold that blessed persons inhabit some kind of time. One of the traditional “dowries” of the glorified body is agility, or the body's ability to move instantaneously wherever the soul desires. Even instantaneous movement requires some kind of time (such as the “aeveternity” Aquinas postulates to explain the angels’ instantaneous movement). It might be argued that whatever kind of time is required for the agility of glorified bodies is adequate for the progression of yearning in blessed persons.

²⁶ In STh I, q. 12, a. 11, Aquinas argues that we cannot naturally see God in this life; however, God can and has miraculously bestowed a vision of His essence upon some, such as Moses (see ibid., ad 2.) My point below is the dynamic of beatitude has the unacceptable consequence that we can and many of us do non-miraculously attain the beatific vision in this life.

²⁷ Commenting on a passage from Marguerite of Oint's Speculum, Bynum observes that Marguerite “speaks of seeing God's face when our souls leave our bodies. She does thus sometimes use the category of ‘separated soul,’ and she seems aware that it would be dangerous to claim visio Dei in this life” (The Resurrection of the Body, p. 336, footnote 68). Unfortunately, Marguerite seems unaware that this very claim is a consequence of the dynamic conception of beatitude to which she is drawn.

²⁸ Charity is a supernaturally infused virtue, but it is not something miraculous in the sense of being a perceptible effect that surpasses the powers of human nature and that is produced by God. If it is insisted that the pilgrim still has faith and that iterative beatitude only begins when this faith ceases after death, it then becomes apparent that what really makes for beatitude is not an act of yearning, as the dynamic conception has it, but an act of seeing, as Aquinas claims.

²⁹ STh I-II, q. 81, a. 1. For its lucidity, I have used Timothy McDermott's translation of this passage in his Summa Theologiae: A Concise Translation (Notre Dame: Ave Maria Press, 1989), p. 264Google Scholar.

³⁰ In passing I mention the issue—tangential to our concerns in this essay—of how punitive liability for Original Sin is legitimately imputed to Adam's descendants. Supposing that there was a first human who became aware of God only to disobey Him, how do this person's descendants become liable to punishment for that sin if the first sinner is not substantially present in his descendants the way I am substantially present in the parts of my body? I believe that we must understand human nature not merely as a shared essence but as something like a shared tool, one person's misuse of which may prevent us all from attaining a common goal. An initial analogy is that of a team member who misuses his athletic nature by taking steroids, resulting in disqualification of the entire team from winning the pennant even though the other members are not personally responsible for his infraction. I hope to return to this issue in future work.

³¹ Desiring that one has X and desiring that one will have X are no less different than desiring that it is sunny right now and desiring that it will be sunny tomorrow.

³² In terms of our thought experiment, while already enjoying my reward I would also desire and be absolutely certain that the magnate will eventually cause me to grow new fingers. My fulfilled desire toward my new fingers is ipso facto a desire of mine toward them, and thus incompatible with my being indifferent toward them. My firmly knowing that my desire is already fulfilled would be an attitude of confident expectation.