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Aquinas on the Fixity of the Will After Death

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2024

Edward Feser
Edward Feser*
Affiliation:
Pasadena City College, California, United States
*
edwardfeser@hotmail.com
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Abstract

Aquinas holds that after death, the human soul can no longer change its basic orientation either toward God or away from him. He takes this to be knowable not only from divine revelation but by purely philosophical reasoning. The heart of his position is that the basic orientation of an angelic will is fixed immediately after its creation, and that the human soul after death is relevantly like an angel. This article expounds and defends Aquinas's position, paying special attention to the action theory underlying it.

Keywords

actionangelsAquinasdeathheavenhellwill

Information

Type
Original Articles
Information
New Blackfriars , Volume 104 , Issue 1114 , November 2023 , pp. 651 - 667
Copyright
Copyright © 2023 Provincial Council of the English Province of the Order of Preachers

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References

1 This teaching is classified as theologically certain in Ott, Ludwig, Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma (Rockford, IL: TAN Books, 1974), at p. 474Google Scholar. That is to say, it is ‘a doctrine, on which the Teaching Authority of the Church has not yet finally pronounced, but whose truth is guaranteed by its intrinsic connection with the doctrine of revelation’ (pp. 9-10).

2 And only of that reasoning. I will not be addressing here those of Aquinas's arguments that presuppose divine revelation.

3 Summa Theologiae I.29.1.

4 Cf., respectively, Summa Theologiae I.50.1 and Commentary on Aristotle's Metaphysics VII.3.1326.

5 Summa Theologiae I.79.3 and I.85.1.

6 Summa Theologiae I.85.5.

7 Summa Theologiae I.55.2.

8 Summa Theologiae I.58.3-4.

9 Summa Theologiae I.19.1 and I.59.1.

10 Summa Theologiae I.82.1-2.

11 Summa Theologiae I-II.1.

12 Summa Theologiae I-II.2.

13 Lamont, John, ‘The Justice and Goodness of Hell’, Faith and Philosophy 28 (2011): 152-73.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

14 Ibid., pp. 159-60.

15 Ibid., p. 160.

16 Ibid.

17 Swinburne, Richard, Providence and the Problem of Evil (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998), pp. 141-47CrossRefGoogle Scholar. A similar account is defended in Walls, Jerry L., Hell: The Logic of Damnation (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1992)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, chapter 5.

18 Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, Book VII, Chapters 7 and 8. For a useful discussion that relates Aristotle's analysis both to Aquinas and to work in contemporary philosophy, see Flannery, Kevin L. SJ, ‘Anscombe and Aristotle on Corrupt Minds’, Christian Bioethics 14 (2008): 151-64CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

19 Lamont, ‘The Justice and Goodness of Hell’, p. 161.

20 De Malo, Question III, Article 13.

21 Ibid.

22 Shorter discussions can be found in Summa Contra Gentiles IV.95.8 and Compendium Theologiae I.184, but these essentially summarize points developed at greater length in the works referred to.

23 Commentary on the Sentences II.7.1.2.

24 That the passages from Aquinas I am discussing contain importantly different arguments for the obstinacy of demonic wills is suggested in Dowd, Joseph Suk-Hwan, ‘Aquinas on Demonic Obstinacy’, American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 89 (2015): 699-718CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Hoffman, Tobias, Free Will and the Rebel Angels in Medieval Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021), at pp. 244-49Google Scholar. It seems to me, though, that the differences concern matters of detail and emphasis rather than the basic thrust of the arguments. In any event, I am less interested here in questions of exegesis than in what I take to be the most plausible argument that can be gleaned from Aquinas's texts.

25 De Veritate, Question 24, Article 10. Quoted from St. Thomas Aquinas, Truth, Volume III, translated by Schmidt, Robert W. SJ (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1994), pp. 179-80Google Scholar.

26 Summa Theologiae I.64.2. Quoted from St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, in five volumes, translated by the Fathers of the English Dominican Province (New York: Benziger Bros., 1948), at p. 322 of vol. I.

27 De Malo, Question XVI, Article 5. Quoted from Aquinas, Thomas, On Evil, translated by Regan, Richard (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), p. 472CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

28 Summa Theologiae I.63.1.

29 Ibid.

30 Summa Theologiae I.63.2-3.

31 Cf. Compendium Theologiae I.184. As Dowd notes (p. 703), the thesis that the demons’ obstinacy derives from their incorporeality was also put forward by the church father John of Damascus.

32 Summa Theologiae I.84.3.

33 Summa Theologiae I.84.7.

34 Summa Theologiae I.85.5.

35 De Veritate, Question 19, Article 1. Quoted from St. Thomas Aquinas, Truth, Volume II, translated by McGlynn, James V. SJ (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1994), p. 390Google Scholar.

36 De Anima, Article XVIII. Quoted from St. Thomas Aquinas, The Soul, translated by Rowan, John Patrick (St. Louis: B. Herder, 1949), p. 237Google Scholar.

37 Summa Contra Gentiles, Book IV, Chapter 95. Quoted from Saint Aquinas, Thomas, Summa Contra Gentiles, Book Four: Salvation, translated by O'Neil, Charles J. (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1975), pp. 343-44CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

38 Ibid., p. 345.

39 For a brief overview of the debate, see Garrigou-Lagrange, Reginald, Life Everlasting (Rockford, IL: TAN Books, 1991Google Scholar, chapter IX.

40 Ibid., pp. 65 and 67. The analogy is inspired by Ecclesiastes 11:3.

41 Vonier, Abbot, The Human Soul (Bethesda: Zaccheus Press, 2010)Google Scholar, chapter 29.

42 Hart, David Bentley, That All Shall Be Saved (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2019), p. 46.Google Scholar