“surfeiting and drunkenness and the cares of this life,” with consequent eternal loss of the soul (Luke 21, 34). All this clearly presupposes that the moment of death is decisive, and that henceforth merit and demerit are alike impossible, and that man can no longer repent of his sins or, on the other hand, lose the grace of God. Death, then, puts a definite end to our time of probation.

· St. Paul further confirms this truth when he says that, “we must all be manifested before the judgment-seat of Christ, that everyone may receive the proper things of the body, according as he hath done, whether it be good or evil” (2 Cor. 5, 10).

According to the constant teaching of the Scriptures, our future state depends upon the sentence passed at this tribunal. But, as already seen, the judgment will be concerned only with what we have done during this life, with the deeds accomplished during the union of soul and body.

This fundamental thought throws light upon many of the Apostle’s words:

- “Behold, now is the acceptable time; behold, now is the day of salvation” (2 Cor. 6, 2);

- and again, “Therefore, while we have time, let us work good to all men” (Gal. 6, 10);

- and again, “Exhort one another every day, whilst it is called to-day, that none of you be hardened through the deceitfulness of sin” (Heb. 13).

In this last text the inspired writer barks back to the words of the ninety-fourth psalm: “Today, if you hear his voice harden not your hearts” (5, 8), and applies the word today to the whole time of man’s life on earth. His meaning then is, “exhort one another so long as God gives you the ‘day’ of this life, and before the coming of night, when it is impossible to labour for heaven, to put off the hardening arising from sin, to turn from evil to good, and to earn the reward promised to the just alone.’’

· We find the same teaching in St. John’s Gospel, 5, 25-29.

According to him the voice of the Son of God will be heard upon two different occasions.

First, during this life: “The hour cometh and now is when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God” (5. 25). The reference here is to the spiritually dead, to those dead in sin. The Son of God’s voice shall be heard by them, for their spiritual resurrection, “and they that hear shall live” (ibid.). The call comes to many who are dead, but is not heard, that is, answered by all.

The second call will come at the end of the world: “The hour cometh (but this is not the hour that now is) wherein all that are in the graves shall hear the voice of the Son of God” (5, 28). The reference, then, is to the physically dead. But to what will they be called? They will not be called to an amendment of life. There is no room here for the distinction between those who will and those who will not answer to the call. All men, rising from death, will answer the summons to judgment. “And they that have done good things,” during this mortal life, “shall come forth unto the resurrection of life; but they that have done evil, unto the resurrection of judgment” (5, 29), which will seal their condemnation.

(2) This dogma the Church’s official teaching

We have mentioned above the errors known as Origenism, which were rejected by the Church in the sixth century.

Origen himself was certainly responsible for some of them. We are bound to admit, for example, that, not only in his De Principiis, but also in several other works, the great doctor of Alexandria positively taught that it is possible for spiritual beings in the other world to be converted from evil to good. He laid it down as certain that all intellectual beings will undergo a final restoration; this conclusion be based upon the principle of freewill, which, he thought, must necessarily involve the power of choosing between moral good and evil.

This ultimate restoration is called by theologians, apocatastasis.

Origen’s error in this matter is thus described by Père Richard in the Dictionnaire de Théologie Catholique (art. Enfer).

“According to the Apostle and the Psalmist everything must ultimately be brought back to unity, and all things be subjected to Christ. As to the nature of this subjection, I think, says Origen, that it is the same subjection as we desire for ourselves, the same as that practiced by the Apostles and all the saints. Now, in the beginning, all things made up a perfect unity; then was introduced variety with sundry perfections and defections. In heaven we see the different orders of angels, while the demons have suffered an irremediable defection, irremediable, that is, as long as this world lasts, but not absolutely so, as some have understood. For may it not be possible for even the demons, since they are free, to be converted in the far-off future? Meanwhile, all things occupy their proper positions, waiting until, at various times, and some only at the end of all time, they shall be restored to their original state. . . . The basis of this apokatastasis is the subjection of all creatures to Christ” (col. 58).

It is not for us to enquire into how it was that this teaching gave no offence until the fifth century, and seems not to have attracted the attention of the Church. Then, however, it began to work harm in the Church and to affect belief in the eternity of hell. It was denounced by St. Jerome.

But It was not until the sixth century that, on the Emperor Justinian’s personal initiative, Origenism received its death-blow. The imperial theologian had drawn up an edict against the Origenist teachings, which was approved by the Council of Constantinople, presided over by the patriarch Menas (A.D. 538 or 543).. The acts of this council, which itself had no ecumenical authority, were afterwards sent to all the bishops and archimandrites, who were required to sign the anathemas against Origen and his errors. The emperor obtained likewise the approbation the patriarchs of Alexandria, Antioch and Jerusalem, and of Pope Vigilius. “And so,” writes Mgr. Duchesne, “the teachings of the illustrious Alexandrian were officially condemned, with all the civil sanctions proper to such an act” (Revue des Questions historiques, 1834, p. 390).

The ninth anathema was directed against the denial of the eternity of the pains of hell and against the possibility of an apokatastasis or final restoration of the demons and the wicked in the next world.

Death, then, puts a term, in the full sense of the word, to this life. Now and here is the time of probation, the time of struggle, and of choice between good and evil. With death begins a state of immutability either in good or in evil. Then probation stops; the choice will have been made, and the moral determination of the soul at the moment of its separation from the body will persist for ever as the changeless choice of man’s free will.

II. THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SEPARATED SOULS

Why is this choice unchangeable?

Whence comes the absolute impossibility of passing from good to evil, or from evil to good?

These questions, at first sight disconcerting, are easily solved when we consider the psychological processes proper to disembodied souls.

(1) The desire of the last end governs all other desires

The ultimate end is of itself the reason of all our desires and all our deliberate acts of willing and seeking. For, by the very fact of choosing something, some good as our final end, we look upon it as desirable above all other things, since we love, desire, seek other things only with a view to this highest good. The love, therefore, with which we regard the object chosen as our final end is of itself definitive and irrevocable. For it cannot be modified except on account of some higher good, loved and sought with a still more ardent love. But this would be a fiat contradiction, since, by the very definition of the term, the final end is the highest good and, therefore, the love of this end leaves no room for any other greater love.

(2) During this life the will is unstable with regard to its choice of the ultimate end

During this life of probation, however, we experience a mutability and instability of the will with regard not only to the means, or the immediate objects, of desire, but also as regards the final end. Our frequent weaknesses, failings and sins bear witness to this. Love of God gives place to the love of evil, that is, in reality, to self-love. Then, the heart having been touched by remorse, sorrow and repentance, the will moved, of course, and helped by grace, recovers itself turns sincerely towards God, and is converted.

The explanation of this instability of the will with regard to the final end is to be found in the conditions of our psychological life here below. While the soul is united with the body, the intelligence and will cannot act without the body’s co-operation; not, indeed, that the body provides any organ of mind or will, but because the will’s action follows that of the mind, which in its turn, is closely dependent upon sense-perception as a necessary condition.

Hence in the psychological conditions of this life we can only love our last end under the form in which it is presented by the mind, while the mind cannot form an idea of the supreme good except by the way of abstraction from sense-perception. Thus we arrive at the idea of bonum in communi, or good in general, which is the necessary motive of all our wishes and desires.

Objectively, indeed, this motive is identical with God, but this is by no means always the case, subjectively. For there is nothing more changeful and more unstable than the acts, impressions and perceptions of sense.

Therefore as long as the present psychological conditions continue, it is always possible for us to change in our estimate of the supreme good and in our choice of the final end. Since our freewill depends for its action upon the senses in the manner stated, thus participating in the instability which accompanies corporeal existence, and since it always depends upon the vague and confused idea of good in general as its ultimate motive, its field of possible variety of choice is almost boundless.

For the will to be fixed upon a determinate choice we should need, says St. Thomas (Summa contra Gentes, bk. IV, ch. 95)::

“A special disposition of our nature which would cause us to will this or that as an object invested with the character of our highest happiness and our last end.... But as long as the soul is united with the body, our dispositions in this respect are essentially changeable. Sometimes our desire of something as our last end arises from our being moved by a quickly passing passion, in which case the desire is easily suppressed.. . . At other times a habit may lead us to desire some true or false good as our end; and since it is not easy to overcome a habit, such a desire is more persistent . . . yet even so, such an habitual disposition may, in the course of our life, be overcome.”

(3) In the next life the will is fixed in its adherence to the final end

In the next life, however, things are different. As soon as the soul goes forth from the body, its action is subject to the conditions proper to the life of spiritual beings. This action is independent of the operation of the senses and proceeds by the way, not of abstraction, but of intuition. Spiritual beings do not know good in the abstract; they do not cleave to the supreme good through the medium of the transient and perishable things of earth; their choice of their last end is not made under the influence of habits or passions. But in one single act of intelligence and will, an act which at once exhausts their power of action with regard to the last end, they cleave to that good which they conceive as their last end, and cling to it without the possibility of any future change. This good is a real, concrete object, and the love which ties them to it becomes the unchangeable first principle of all their desires and of every movement of their wills. Such was the psychology of the first deliberate act by which the angels, in the beginning, chose their last end and cleaved, some to God, and some to the surpassing perfection of themselves. By this act they entered into the state of attainment, and their glory or their fall was unchangeably fixed.

It is the same with the human soul after death, and will be the same after the general resurrection when the soul, though re-united to the body, will be free from all subjection to it. In the next life the soul will be delivered from:

“all possibility of change with regard to the object holding the highest place in its affections and loved above all things else. There, the love of this object becomes the immovable pivot of the soul’s freewill, and the object itself becomes the fixed pole, drawing to itself for ever all the powers of the soul’s will. Hence the principle enunciated by St. John of Damascus, and accepted as a theological axiom: Death is for men what their first deliberate act was for the angels” (Card. Billot, La Providence de Dieu, “Etudes,” 1923, p. 402).

But, it may be asked, when the unrepentant sinner’s soul leaves his body, to what object can it cleave as to its highest good? Here again Cardinal Billot gives us the answer:

“In saying that the lost sinner’s soul, on leaving his body, remains fixed for ever in that disposition of his will in which he was at the moment of death, there can be no question of any attachment to those things which were the objects of his desires in this life; his appetite for these things, whether they be the pleasures of the flesh, or the accompaniments of riches, whether they be the objects of lust, or avarice, or human pride or of any other passion whatsoever, has gone never to return. But we refer to what was the motive and root-cause of his attachment to sin; we refer to his attachment to that object which he loved above all other things, to the love of which all the motions of his heart were subordinated, that object around which turned, as upon their pivot, all the many and various elective acts of his freewill. This object is his ego, the lost soul’s self; the ego set up as the final end of existence; the self which must be satisfied even though God and His laws and precepts be contemned; the self usurping the place of master and lord which belongs to Him alone who created us to praise, honour and serve Him; the self which, after death, is the only motive of a remorse like to that felt by the impious Antiochus when, racked by the awful disease that was killing him, he expressed regret for the monstrous excesses of his reign.

Well known are St. Augustine’s words (The City of God, bk. 14, ch. 28)::

“Two loves have built two cities, the love of self even to the contempt of God, and the love of God even to the contempt of self. The former has built the city of evil, of disorder, of confusion, the infernal Babylon; the latter the city of order and of peace, the eternal Jerusalem.” “These are the two supreme loves; they are opposed to one another as contraries, and all other loves are subordinate to them. These also are the two final ends between which we must make our choice while this life lasts. On the one side is God, holding in our hearts a higher place than our very selves, and therefore loved above all things, virtue’s last end; on the other hand is self, raised even over God’s head, the idol of our adoration, obedience and service, the final end of vice and sin. To whichever of these two ends the soul is actually attached at the moment of death, to that must it remain bound, by its own nature and of necessity, for all eternity. And since our last end governs all our actions, since all that is good or evil in the will depends upon it, the necessary result is, for some, an unchangeable fixation in evil and moral disorder, and for others an equally unchangeable stability in good and the beauty of order, with the happiness arising from the impossibility of ever falling” (loc. cit. p. 397).

III. DURATION OF THE FUTURE LIFE

This state of stability in good or evil naturally suggests that, in the next world, time does not exist, at any rate under the same form as we know it in this life. And, in fact, when a man dies, do we not say that he has begun his “eternity”?

(1) Aeviternity

The word “eternity” is not exact; it ought to be “aeviternity” (from the Latin aevum, an age or duration). Eternity, however, is partially true.

“Since eternity,” says St. Thomas (Sum. Theol., pars. I, q. 10, art. 5), “is the measure of permanent existence, it follows that the less permanent anything is, the less eternal it is. Now some things are so mutable that their very being is the subject of perpetual change, or even consists essentially in change. The measure of such beings is time. Time, therefore, is the measure of the movements of all corruptible things. Other things are less remote from permanence of existence. They are neither essentially change in themselves nor subject to change. Yet over and above this permanent foundation of their being, there may be in them, either actually or potentially, some variation. So is it... with the angels; their being is changeless, yet in the exercise of their freedom, in the use of their knowledge and affections, and in their relations to places, they are subject to change. But that existence which is measured by eternity neither changes nor is in any way the subject of change. Therefore, time connotes a “before” and an “after”; aeviternity in itself admits of neither, yet “before” and “after” may be its accidental concomitants; whereas in eternity there is neither “before” nor “after,” nor is it in any way compatible with either.”

The essential immutability of a pure spirit is a truth within the reach of human reason. Since the nature of a pure spirit is sheer perfection, unmixed with any element of imperfection, it cannot possibly undergo any substantial change. It possesses complete immutability; in its existence there can be no succession, no past or future; from the moment of its creation by God its life is a continuous present, which may rightly be called eternal. Hence St. Thomas does not hesitate to say that, “in an angel, if we consider his existence absolutely, there is no difference between the past and the future. . . . When we say of an angel that he is, or has been, or will be, we give different meanings to these expressions because we cannot conceive the existence of angels without comparing it with different parts of time” (loc. cit. ad. 3).

But, on the other hand, faith as well as reason teaches us that this essential immutability does not give us the full measure of the life of pure spirits. A pure spirit cannot know everything by a single act of his intelligence; he can receive from God successive illuminations of his mind, and be entrusted with different missions, and so forth. Confining ourselves strictly to the teachings of revelation, we know that it was possible for the angels, despite the immutability of their nature, freely to give their adhesion to God or to sin, and thus to enter into happiness or be thrown into hell. The contention between St. Michael and the angelic “prince of the kingdom of the Persians,” described by the prophet Daniel (10, 13-20), shows that the angels are capable of successive acts of the will. So likewise the Annunciation forms a special instant in the archangel Gabriel’s life. Hence, alongside the substantial immutability of spiritual beings we must acknowledge in them the coexistence of acts which, being distinct one from another, are therefore successive, though not with that continuous succession that is the characteristic note of time. For when it is a question of purely spiritual acts without any relation to material things, their succession cannot be linked together in a real continuity. Hence, theologians seeking a Latin word to express this want of continuity in a succession of indivisible instants, have called it tempus discretum, discontinuous time.

We may, then, with St. Thomas, define aeviternity, the measure of the life of discarnate spirits, as “the duration of a being which, substantially immutable, is, accidentally, subject to change.”

Here a caution is necessary. When we speak of substantial immutability in aeviternity, we do not mean that the substance only of the spirit, and not his operations, is changeless. For, after all, the nature of a being is made known by its operations, and it would be hard to conceive a nature tied down by the immutability of its being to an eternal present, while all its operations were subject to change or showed a succession of real instants. It must be understood, then, that a spiritual operation can itself be unchangeable substantially, and yet be subject to accidental variation.

(2) Applications of the idea of Aeviternity

First of all let us see how the idea of aeviternity applies to angels who are pure spirits.

According to the principles laid down by St. Thomas, it is clear that aeviternity is the measure of the actual being of angels, whether good or bad. For as we have

seen, although an angel is in his substance immutable, some of his actions may be subject to true changes. In him, therefore, we find verified the definition of aeviternity, that is, substantial immutability accompanied by accidental variability.

But the one uniform measure cannot be applied to all the operations of a pure spirit.

“Some of them,” writes the eminent Dominican theologian, Gonet, “are measured by participated eternity, others by aeviternity, others by discontinuous time, and others, again, by continuous time. The operations of angelic spirits are many. In the first and highest place comes the beatific vision; and next is the act of self-knowledge and self-love, then the act by which other things are known and loved; fourthly and lastly there is the virtually transitive action by which an angel, whether upon God’s command or of his own initiative, produces local movements in corporeal things or some other effect in the world of visible creatures” (De Angelis, disp. VI, art. 1, No. 1). We may with advantage fill in the outlines drawn by the learned Dominican.

· Firstly, then, the durational measure of the beatific vision is participated eternity. Since it consists wholly in one immutable act its duration cannot be that of time, for time means succession and change. Nor is it quite accurate to say, with Suarez, that it is an aeviternal act, for in the intuitive vision of God, with all therein included, we find absolute stability with no element of any change whatsoever. And further, since this act of intuitive vision is a transcendental act, exceeding the natural capacity of any creature, its only possible measure of duration is eternity, not, indeed, the essential eternity of God, but what is called participated eternity, consisting in an everlasting “now,” and deriving from God as an effect from its cause.

· In the second place, an angel’s self-knowledge, with its resultant self-love, is produced by a single act, in which there is no potentiality, and which, therefore, can undergo no change. An angel’s knowledge and love of himself are always actual. “Being immaterial,” says St. Thomas (Sum. Theol. I, q. 56, art. 2), “he is always the actual object of his intelligence; so by his very nature he is always in the act of knowing and loving himself.” But to this natural cognition of himself must be added other cognitions which, though of the same order, are not necessarily actual, such as the knowledge of other created beings; these an angel knows by means of infused ideas upon which he may turn the light of his mind, or not, as he will. So we see that there is here a combination of substantial immutability and accidental change, the measure of which is aeviternity.

The natural knowledge and love of God (as distinct from the beatific vision) possessed by angels follow the same laws as their self-knowledge and love. Being made in the likeness of God, the angel sees God mirrored in his own nature, and loving himself, he is irresistibly drawn to the First Cause of all good and naturally loves Him above all. Since, then, his self-knowledge and love are always actual, so also are his natural knowledge and love of God; these therefore fall under the measure of the aeviternal.

But, further, the immutability of these acts of cognition and love extends also to those acts by which a discarnate spirit is cognizant of and cleaves to his last end. This end ought always, as we have seen, to be God. But some of the angels did not choose Him. On being raised to the supernatural state a certain number of them rejected God’s gift, and elected to look for the whole reason of their perfection and happiness within themselves. This amounted to putting themselves in God’s place as their supernatural end, and the act of self-

complacent cognition dictating their choice, as well as the choice itself, belongs to that class of irrevocable actions that can only be called aeviternal.

· Thirdly, the acts by which an angel has knowledge of other creatures and loves them, inasmuch as they follow one upon another, either because he elicits them as he wills or because they are governed by the course of events, cannot be measured by aeviternity. Their measure must be some kind of time, continuous time in the case of continuous and prolonged actions, discontinuous time, made up of distinct and discontinuous instants, when it is a question, as it nearly always is, of separate actions between which there is no continuous bond.

· Finally, we come to those actions which are called virtually transitive, because they are productive of a real effect external to the angel who is the active cause. These can be looked at from two points of view. We may consider them actively, that is, as they are produced in the angel, or passively, that is, from the creature’s point of view in which the effect is produced. Considered actively, these operations, just as all other angelic actions, are measured by continuous time if they are continuous, or by discontinuous time if they consist of instants without successional continuity. But considered passively, that is, in the effects extrinsically produced, these angelic actions affect our material world, and are therefore measured by our time. I say, our time advisedly, because when speaking just now of angels’ actions being measured by a kind of time, we were referring to a species of duration which has only an analogy with time properly so-called, which is the measure of the movements of material things. St. Thomas is careful to put us on our guard, and though the reason he gives may be doubtful, the distinction must be maintained. “This kind of time (the measure of angels’ operations) is not,” he says, “the same as that time which is the measure of the motion of the heavens and of the duration of all corporeal things, the changes in which are the effect of the movement of the heavens” (Sum. Theol. I, q. 53, art. 3). The influence of the heavenly bodies upon terrestrial movement may be left out of consideration; it remains true all the same that the motion of corporeal things and the spiritual movements of angels cannot fall under one and the same measure of duration, for, as St. Thomas says, “their natures are different” (ibid. ad. 1). All this may seem abstract and difficult. It will help the reader if we give a concrete application of it. The devils in Hell have to suffer the torments of fire. Hell-fire may be called eternal, since it will have no end, but its duration is measured by the continuity of its action, and therefore falls under the category of time, properly so-called. But the sufferings of the spirits subject to the action of this fire, though ceaseless and endless, cannot be measured by the same sort of time. The duration of their sufferings is not time properly so-called, but something analogous with it.

We have so slight an understanding of the nature of angels that this teaching is necessarily obscure, yet it will help us to understand somewhat better the condition of human souls in the next life both before and after the resurrection.

Before the resurrection, men’s souls, being separated from their bodies, are, practically, pure spirits, and are, therefore, subject to the same measure of duration as the angels. Therefore, as their being is unchangeable, their existence consists in a perpetual present and is aeviternal. The beatific vision of the blessed is measured by participated eternity, their natural self-knowledge and love, and their irrevocable choice of their last end by aeviternity, and their knowledge of things external to themselves by continuous or discontinuous time, just as in the case of the angels.

The resurrection of the body will bring about no change in the duration of the lives of either the saved or the damned. Their bodies will share in the substantial immutability of their souls. Their sense perceptions will undergo no physical alteration, but will share in the permanence of their suffering or their bliss. Everything will be, as it were, spiritualised. The reunion of souls with their bodies, and the passing of souls from Purgatory into Heaven, will simply constitute two of those instants which are the accompaniments, though not the measure, of aeviternity. In short, it all comes to this: the nearer that souls and risen bodies approach, by their degree of glory, to God’s immutability, the more completely will they be encompassed by the aeviternal. Aeviternity begins at death. But as the soul comes nearer to God, so the stability of its perfection grows. So in Hell there will be, together with the essential aeviternity of life, an interminable duration of continuous instants of suffering and anguish afflicting both soul and body. In Purgatory aeviternity will be accompanied by a similar continuity of suffering, which will, however, have an end, and when this end comes the aeviternity of the holy souls will be perfected and crowned with the eternity of the beatific vision. But in all this there is involved no substantial change in the existence or in the natural operations which are measured by aeviternity; the domain of this measure of duration may be narrower or wider in the soul and in the risen body, but in all cases it constitutes a perpetual ‘‘now’’ in which those are substantially immersed who have passed into the next world.

CONCLUSION—REINCARNATION FALSE

It should be clear that the first section only of this chapter is to be accepted with the certainty of faith. The other two sections set forth merely a rational justification of the first, and their value does not exceed that of theological opinion. At the same time, the dogma that death puts an end to the life of probation is reason enough for the rejection of the false doctrine of reincarnation, so common to-day in Spiritualist circles.

This teaching is really the revival, in a slightly different form, of the Origenist heresy of the apokatastasis. It introduces some subsidiary errors, especially in so far as it holds that man is made up of three elements—a soul, an ethereal body and a physical body. At death, according to this system, the soul, keeping possession of the ethereal body, becomes a “spirit”; its dwelling-place space, its life happiness for the good, anguish and suffering for the wicked. The unhappy state of the latter is, however, transitory. The infinitely good God will not allow them to suffer for ever. He offers them the possibility of rehabilitation, the chance of making good the past, by means of reincarnation, that is to say, a new life on earth lived in a new union with a physical body.

We cannot stay to discuss the details of this strange teaching, or the arguments by which it is supported, and to show their absurdity. It is enough here to recall the leading idea of this chapter, that death is the end of life; to weigh well the full meaning of this word, end, and to remember that this is a dogma of faith, in order to conclude that the reincarnation of souls is a heresy as fully deserving of condemnation as was Origenism.

CHAPTER II

DEATH AND THE PARTICULAR JUDGMENT

I. Death, though natural to man, is nevertheless the penalty of sin:

(1) Man, historically considered, was meant to be immortal;

(2) Death, however, is natural to man philosophically considered.

II. The moment of death coincides with the hour of judgment;

(1) The dogma of the particular judgment;

(2) The hour of death: real and apparent death;

(3) Divine mercy at the hour of death.

III. Psychological explanation of the judgment:

(1) Judgment a simple illumination of the mind;

(2) The execution of the judgment and the psychology of the next life.

There is no real interval of time between death and the particular judgment. Not only is the soul judged at the very moment it leaves the body, but the best psychological foundation for an explanation of the nature of the judgment seems to be provided by the very fact of the separation of soul and body.

I. DEATH, THOUGH NATURAL TO MAN IS YET THE PENALTY OF SIN

On the subject of death the facts of experience seem to contradict Catholic dogma.

St. Paul lays down that death is the wages of sin (Rom. 6, 23), yet it is man s natural fate.

A simple distinction solves the difficulty; from the historical point of view death is the ‘penalty of sin’, but it is natural to man when his nature is looked at in the light of philosophy.

(1) Historically considered man was made to be immortal

Under this aspect man must be looked at as he came from God’s creative hands. But it is of divine and Catholic faith that God bestowed upon the first man, in his state of innocence, the privilege of immortality.

In the Old Testament we read that “God created man incorruptible” (Wisdom 2: 23), that “God made not death,” but that “by envy of the devil, death came into the world” (ibid., 1:13; 2:24); and that “from the woman came the beginning of sin, and by her we all die” (Ecclesiasticus 25:33).

St. Paul is equally explicit, when he writes; “Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into this world, and by sin death” (Rom. 5:12); and again, “By a man came death” (1 Cor. 15:21), and finally, “The body indeed is dead because of sin” (Rom. 8:10).

The gift of immortality is presupposed in God’s threat to Adam concerning the forbidden fruit; “For in what day soever thou shalt eat of it, thou shalt die the death” (Genesis 2:7), which implies that, if Adam and Eve had not eaten of this fruit they would not have died; which Eve shows that she fully understands by her answer to the tempter; “Of the fruit of the trees that are in paradise we do eat, but of the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of paradise, God hath commanded us that we should not eat, and that we should not touch it, lest perhaps we die” (Gen. 3:2-3).

Hence, when the Pelagians taught that, as death is man’s natural fate, Adam also would have died, just as all men die, even if he had not sinned, the Church anathematized this teaching as contrary to revelation.

The sixteenth Council of Carthage decreed that, “if anyone shall say that the first man, Adam, was created mortal, so that, whether he sinned or not, he would have suffered bodily death, so that his soul would have left his body, not as the penalty of sin, but of natural necessity, let him be anathema” (can. 1).

Later, the Council of Orange promulgated the same dogma of faith; “The first man, by disobeying God’s commandment in paradise, lost at once sanctity and justice in which he had been established, and by his offence and prevarication, incurred the divine anger and indignation, and at the same time, death, with which God had already threatened him” (can. 2).

The Council of Trent, finally, put the seal of its authority upon this teaching, already received by the whole Church (Sess. V, can. I).

With regard to the super-added gift of immortality bestowed by God upon man at his creation, and so to say, implanted in his nature, we must be careful not to confuse it with the immortality which is essential to spirits, whether human souls or angels.

St. Augustine (De Genesi ad Litteram, bk. VI, ch. 25) puts the distinction clearly and crisply when he says that a spirit cannot die, whereas the first man was capable of not dying; in other words, a spirit is absolutely immortal, but Adam’s immortality was conditional.

The first condition of God’s gift of immortality to man was the moral one of abstention from sin: “In what day soever thou shalt eat of it, thou shalt die the death” (Gen. 2:17).

But it is probable that other and physical conditions were also imposed, especially the eating of the fruit of the tree of life (Gen. 3:22).

It was sin then that, being a breach of the condition imposed by God, was, in fact, the cause of death’s coming among men, and death is both the consequence and the penalty of sin.

(2) Man, philosophically considered, is naturally subject to death

By the philosophical consideration of man or human nature we mean that view of him which looks simply at the constituent elements of his being, and leaves aside the question of his elevation to a higher order of things.

Now human nature is composed of an immortal soul and a perishable body which, together, form one substantial whole.

Therefore, by the very fact that the body is perishable, its substantial union with the soul must some day be broken, and each of the two elements will then go its own way.

Death, then, is natural to man.

“We call that natural which has its cause in the principles of nature. But the essential principles of nature are form and matter. The formal principle of man is his reasonable soul, which is in itself immortal, and therefore death is not natural to man if we consider his substantial form alone. But the material principle of man is his body, which, being made up of diverse elements, is, of necessity, corruptible; and so, from this point of view, death is natural to man” (St. Thomas, Sum. Theol. II-II. q. 144, art 1, ad 1).

Rightly, then, did the Church condemn the teaching of Baius, that, “the immortality of the first man was not a gratuitous gift, but his natural condition” (Prop. 78).

Notice should be taken of the precision of St. Thomas’s teaching in the passage just quoted.

If we look at the innate tendency of man’s material principle, death is seen to be natural to him.

But on the other hand, it does not accord with the exigencies of his formal principle, the immortal soul.

Hence the state of separation, while not actually contrary to the nature of the soul, is yet less natural to it.

“Other things being equal,” says St. Thomas, the “state of the soul is more perfect when in the body than when separated from it, because it is part of a whole, and every integral part of a material whole is relative to the whole. And although in a way its likeness to God is then greater, it is not so in reality. For properly speaking a thing approaches most closely to God when it possesses all things necessary to its nature as created by God, for then it most nearly images the divine perfection” (Sum. Theol. Suppl. q. 75. art. 1, ad 4).

At the same time it would not be exact to say that the state of the separate soul is unnatural or preternatural.

With greater accuracy we may word it thus: the state of separation of soul and body, while not natural to man, is yet not contrary to the nature of his spiritual and self-subsistent soul. When St. Thomas calls it a state contrary to nature (Contra Gentes, bk. 4, ch. 82; Comp. Theol. I, ch. 152), he is looking at man from the historical point of view, and considering him as God intended him to be in Eden. We must bear these distinctions in mind when we come to treat of the general resurrection at the end of the world.

II. SIMULTANEITY OF DEATH AND JUDGMENT

In the course of our exposition of this truth we shall have occasion to examine certain opinions about the manifestations of God’s mercy at the hour of death.

(1) The Dogma of the Particular Judgment

It is a dogma of faith that, as soon as a man dies, his soul is judged as to all the good and evil he has done during his life on earth.

This dogma has never been defined, but when the Church, in the exercise of her ordinary magisterium or teaching authority, declares that a truth is revealed by God, no more is needed to make it an article of faith.

The Church’s belief in the particular judgment was already explicit in St. Augustine’s time:

“Souls are judged, writes this great Doctor of the Church, as soon as they leave their bodies, even before they appear before that other tribunal where they will have again to be judged together with their reassumed bodies and whence they will pass to torments or to glory in the same flesh as they had lived on earth” (De Anima et ejus Origine, ch. 4, n. 8).

Some theologians have thought to find explicit scriptural authority for the particular judgment immediately after death.

The first of the two principal texts alleged by them is taken from the Old Testament:

“In the day of good things be not unmindful of evils; and in the day of evils be not unmindful of good things. For it is easy before God in the day of death to reward every one according to his ways” (Ecclesiasticus 11:27-28).

Unfortunately, however, verse 28, wherein lies the strength of the argument, is lacking in the original Hebrew.

The second passage is taken from the Epistle to the Hebrews, 9:27:

“It is appointed unto men once to die, and, after this, the judgment.”

Here, however, the best commentators agree that the reference is rather to the general judgment, and this interpretation is indeed suggested by the next verse, in which explicit mention is made of Christ’s second coming.

It seems then more accurate to say, with most theologians, that the existence of the particular judgment is implicitly contained in the explicit revelation of the last judgment. Jesus Christ, in his discourses, and the inspired writers put all the emphasis on the general judgment because of the dominant role that Christ himself will play in it.

So God’s judgment of man is always prophetically referred to the last day to which the manifestation of every man’s lot is attached, while the judgment of each individual is included in that of all mankind, then solemnly promulgated.

Yet there are clear indications that everyone’s account will be settled immediately after death and his fate determined before the last day. It will be enough to notice the most significant of these indications.

The parable of the rich man and Lazarus shows that the condition of both is fixed for ever; moreover the reference is formally to a condition determined before the general judgment, as is clearly to be deduced from the rich man’s words to Lazarus.

Equally significant are Christ’s words to the good thief: “This day thou shalt be with me in paradise” (Luke 23:43). The word paradise here means Limbo, where, from Christ’s descent into Hell until his Ascension, the just enjoyed the intuitive vision of God.

St. Paul is even more direct:

- “Therefore having always confidence, knowing that, while we are in the body, we are absent from the Lord... but we are confident and have a good will to be absent rather from the body, and to be present with the Lord” (2 Cor. 5:6-8);

- and again, “For God hath not appointed us unto wrath, but unto the purchasing of salvation by our Lord Jesus Christ, who died for us; that, whether we watch or sleep (that is, whether during life or after death) we may live together with him” (1 Thess. 5:9-10).

In these passages St. Paul says clearly that the just receive their heavenly reward immediately after death, without having to await the general judgment; their eternal destiny is therefore already determined.

Final confirmation of this conclusion is to be found in St. John’s consoling account of his apocalyptic visions:

“And I heard a voice from Heaven, saying to me: Write: Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord. From henceforth now, saith the Spirit, that they may rest from their labours, for their works follow them” (Apoc. 14:13 and again (20:4).

He tells how he saw seats, and the souls of them that were beheaded for the testimony of Jesus, living and reigning with Christ in the first resurrection, that is during the period preceding the general resurrection, and he adds that in these blessed and holy ones the second death, that is, Hell, hath no power. All of which is an implicit assertion that, directly after death the soul is judged and its destiny decided.

The argument from the traditional teaching of the Church, which is most explicit from the fourth century onwards, need not detain us.

But we may notice one point which shows how solid is the foundation on which the traditional belief rests. As we have said, the eschatological perspective of our Saviour’s discourses and the New Testament teaching seems to carry forward all of God’s judgments of men to the last day.

Hence, some of the Fathers, especially in the East, not perceiving the implicit references to a judgment nearer at hand, concluded that the Judge’s sentence definitely fixing every man’s destiny would not be delivered until the last day.

Yet notwithstanding this mistaken interpretation, all or nearly all of them admit that man’s eternal future is determined in some degree at death.

As we shall see when treating of Purgatory, the Eastern Fathers found a way of reconciling these two seemingly contradictory assertions; but the second of them is testimony to the solidity of the basis of tradition on which rests the dogma of the particular judgment; for this is expressly taught even by those whom we should expect to deny it. It is part of the official teaching of the Orthodox Church, as appears from Peter Moghila’s Confessio, part I, question 61.

Nor, indeed, is it easy to imagine the souls of the dead left in a state of complete uncertainty until the last judgment.

It was defined by Pope Benedict XII, in the bull Benedictius Deus, A.D. 1336, that the souls of the just are received immediately after death into Heaven, while those of sinners go at once to Hell, which, of course, presupposes an immediate determination of their state by judgment.

Hence, therefore, each individual man, as soon as this mortal life comes to an end, must appear before God’s tribunal, where his eternal destiny will be decided.

(2) The hour of death: real and apparent death

The moment of death is the moment of judgment. We assert that the soul, on its separation from the body, is not kept waiting for even the briefest period of time, before being judged; and this assertion is confirmed by the psychological explanation of the nature of the judgment.

But first of all, the question arises: do we know the actual instant of death? We know that we shall die; we do not know when. But there is still another uncertainty connected with the mystery of death.

For modern physiologists death is a process, and a distinction must be made between apparent or relative, and absolute death. In the case of sudden death, or death from an accident, it seems to be proved that this process of dying goes on, even after a man has drawn his last breath; but in the case of death from illness, we have only induction and conjecture to guide us.

The continuance of latent life, after sudden or accidental death, is estimated, sometimes, as a matter of several hours; but after death caused by illness, it is agreed that latent life will continue for only a very short time, some seconds, a few minutes perhaps, or half-an-hour at the very outside. We have made this passing mention of this matter, without going into any detailed demonstration, because it is nowadays a much debated question.

(3) God’s mercy at the hour of death

It is a common theological opinion that sinners receive a special grace for their conversion at the hour of death.

At that moment, as Suarez teaches, grace is more than ever necessary for salvation, and in things absolutely necessary for salvation, God does not fail us (De Gratia bk. IV, ch. 10).

The possibility, the probability that latent life may continue after the last breath has been drawn, shows how there is still a probable chance of salvation, either by the administration of the sacraments or otherwise, for those struck down by sudden death, even though to all appearances they may not seem to be ready to go before God.

Must we go further and admit that God’s mercy pursues the sinner even in his last agony, even unto that state of apparent death when he seems no longer to belong to this world?

Must we suppose that the Creator and Redeemer of men manifests himself to the sinner’s soul and asks him for the last time and clearly to make his choice between God and sin?

Some have thought that it may be so, some have said that it is so. We do not deny that such an appeal, occasionally and in extraordinary circumstances, may be made; but it would, in our opinion, be rash to allow that such a special grace is given to dying sinners normally and universally.

III. PSYCHOLOGICAL EXPLANATION OF THE JUDGMENT

(1) The judgment: a simple illumination of the mind

The mode of cognition proper to the disembodied soul is the intuition of ideas directly infused by God.

Separation from the body, then, is the requisite condition of this divine action upon it, and the particular judgment is nothing more than the illumination of man’s conscience.

“At the very moment when the soul leaves the body, in an instant, in the twinkling of an eye, the scroll of a man's conscience is unrolled beneath his gaze and he has actual knowledge of all the actions of his life. His mind looks upon his past life which is all lit up by a ray of light from God’s face; that is to say that, by the operation of God’s power, the soul has a clear, intellectual vision of its whole sum of merit or demerit. The divine judge then passes sentence by infusing into the soul the knowledge of the reward it has earned, or the punishment it deserves, in much the same way as the divine law-giver had impressed the moral law upon this same soul by giving to it, at the awakening of conscience, a natural knowledge of the first principles of morality” (Billot, De Novissimis, p. 52).

A purely intellectual light making known to man at the end of his probation, the action of God his Lord and Judge. An infusion of the knowledge necessary for the right understanding of the actions of his past life, and for the promulgation and, as it were, automatic realization in the soul, of the verdict of justice; in these alone judgment consists.

What, then, is to be thought of those descriptive accounts of the judgment, which picture the soul standing before God, terrified by the sight of its evil deeds, comforted by angels, tormented by devils?

Evidently they are not to be taken literally. God makes Himself known in a purely intellectual way, nor does the soul in judgment see Him “face to face.”

The soul’s torments, the discussion of its actions, the protecting angels, the reproaches of the devils, all these are merely symbolic expressions of belief in the judgment for the instruction of simple folk.

The Bible uses still stranger anthropomorphisms to describe God’s dealings with our first parents, and so it was natural for the Fathers to make use of the most striking and picturesque descriptions for the sake of hearers who, having but little education, were more easily moved by the things of sense than by intellectual reasoning.

The pictures in the catacombs representing heaven as a house or garden, with the judge seated and the soul shown as a woman standing in the attitude of prayer, paint the judgment in a manner far removed from reality. Yet they symbolize the truth.

It is the same too, with the descriptive accounts given by some writers. As symbolic representations they are perfectly legitimate; but we must be careful to take them for what they are, symbols and no more.

(2) The execution of the sentence considered psychologically

We have seen that the pivot of the disembodied soul’s whole psychological activity is its unchangeable adherence to its last end.

The judgment is no more than the ascertainment and registration of the irrevocable state of decision in which death finds the soul.

Yet it is not necessary that this immutability of the will should reach its final stage from the very first, in every case. The souls in Purgatory have to suffer some delay, during which they cleave to God unchangeably but indirectly, with mind and heart, until they are crowned with the glory of the beatific vision.

We must also appeal to Psychology for an explanation of how souls, after being judged, can go to Heaven, Purgatory or Hell.

The difficulty arises from the commonly received theological opinion that these are real places, for how can a purely spiritual substance, such as a disembodied soul, “go” to any place?

According to St. Thomas a spirit is not of itself localized. An angel by producing some effect upon a material object becomes present in the place occupied by that object. But it does not seem possible for the disembodied human soul to become localized in this way, since most probably it can act upon things external to itself only when united to the body.

Possibly we may understand this local presence of the soul in Heaven, Purgatory or Hell as a sort of local determination in the intellectual order, in so far as the knowledge of individual objects by the soul is restricted to the things contained in the place to which God’s justice has assigned it, and to the events that happen therein. In this way the place would become the soul’s own special dwelling-place.

These explanations, drawn from the pure fount of Thomist theology, show how necessary it is wholly to distrust the imagination if we would judge soundly the realities of the other world.

CHAPTER III

HELL—DOCTRINAL TRUTHS

I. Truths of divine and catholic faith:

(1) Revelation of an eternal punishment;

(2) Eternity in Hell the punishment in store for sinners who die impenitent;

(3) The two pains of Hell:

(a) Pain of loss;

(b) Pain of sense;

(4) These truths are taught by the authority of the Church.

II. Truths theologically certain:

(1) Sufferings proportional to the gravity of sins;

(2) The pains of Hell constant; their mitigation according to:

(a) St. Thomas and St. Francis de Sales;

(b) Duns Scotus;

(c) Those who admit the utility of prayers for the dead;

(d) Those who hold a progressive and indefinite diminution.

III. A truth commonly accepted; the reality of hell-fire;

(1) What is meant;

(2) Proof from:

(a) Scripture;

(b) Tradition;

(c) Teaching of theologians.

The concluding observation of the preceding chapter must guide us also in the exposition of Catholic belief regarding Hell and its eternity. To this subject we will devote three chapters.

- in the first we shall expound the truths of doctrine;

- in the second we shall give a theological explanation of them,

- and in the third we shall treat them from the point

The Last Things

LONDON AND EDINBURGH

II DEATH AND THE PARTICULAR JUDGMENT

I. DEATH PUTS AN END TO THE TIME OF PROBATION

II. THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SEPARATED SOULS

III. DURATION OF THE FUTURE LIFE

CONCLUSION—REINCARNATION FALSE

II. SIMULTANEITY OF DEATH AND JUDGMENT

III. PSYCHOLOGICAL EXPLANATION OF THE JUDGMENT