Pints With Aquinas - 119: Can the blessed in Heaven or the damned in Hell change their mind?

Episode Date: August 14, 2018

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Welcome to Pints with Aquinas. My name's Matt Fred. Your name is... how would I know that? You know, why would you even ask me? Today on Pints with Aquinas, we're going to talk to Aquinas, since that's who we have in Pints, about the immutability of the will of the souls in heaven, hell, and purgatory. By immutability, I mean the unchangeableness. That is to say, can those in heaven choose to be in hell? Can those in hell repent? And so forth. Enjoy the show! Welcome back to Pints with Aquinas. This is the show where you and I pull up a barstool next to the angelic doctor to discuss theology and philosophy. Hope you're having a great day. It's morning time here.

I'm sitting down having a drink of coffee. I'm drinking Guadalupe Roastery coffee. If you're not familiar with these guys, they're awesome. And look, one of the reasons you should be interested in Guadalupe Roastery is that they send me free coffee. All right, come on. guadalupe roastery is that they send me free coffee all right come on they like pines of the so much they send me free coffee they're a great catholic group they really care about the farmers that they work with the producers great coffee they roast it they sell it so if you're looking for very good quality coffee uh and uh you know you want to support a awesome

catholic apostolate go to guadalupe roasterastery.com. So, yeah, no alcohol today because it's not cool to drink alcohol in the morning. All right? It's just not cool. So, stop it. All right? Stop it. Let's talk about the souls in heaven and in hell and in purgatory and whether they can change their mind. Aquinas is going to say no. So, let me just kind of give you the basic line of his. Okay? This is from chapter 92, book four in the Summa Contra Gentiles. He says, souls immediately after their separation from the body become unchangeable in will with the result that the will of man cannot further be changed, neither from good to evil, nor from evil to good. This is a question a lot of people have been asking me.

You know, can those in heaven sin and therefore be damned? Can those in hell repent and therefore be saved? Can those in purgatory say, you know what, I don't actually want God and go to hell? These are the sorts of things we're going to be talking about today. And we're going to be reading a significant chunk of Aquinas' text. So, get your thinking cap on. and we're going to be reading a significant chunk of Aquinas' text. So, get your thinking cap on. So, let's first talk about the unchangeable will in the good. All right. So, the blessed in heaven, why is it that they can't sin? Why is it they cannot choose to reject God? Aquinas says, as long as the soul can be changed from good to evil or evil to good, it's in a state of struggle and warfare. For it must solicitude, resist evil, lest it be conquered by evil, or it must try to be freed from it. Immediately after the soul is separated from the

body, it will not be in a state of warfare or struggle, but in a state of receiving reward or punishment, because it has lawfully or unlawfully striven, to quote 2 Timothy 2.5. For it was shown that reward or punishment follows immediately. This is something Aquinas argues for elsewhere. No longer then is the soul able to be changed in its willing, whether from good to evil or evil to good. Alrighty, let's have a look here. The rational creature naturally desires to be happy. Hence, it cannot wish not to be happy. Did you know that? Did you know that you can't wish not to be happy? Not possible. And you might say, well, I can think of a good example of when someone wishes not to be happy. What about the person who commits suicide? Even there, Aquinas says, he addresses this explicitly elsewhere,

the person who commits suicide longs for his good. That is to say, he longs for an end to his suffering. And so he is desiring to be happy, right? Happiness is what motivates us to do anything that we're doing. The reason you're listening to this podcast is you think it's a good. If you didn't think it was a good, you wouldn't do it. The reason you may have committed a sexual sin last week is because in the moment, you had this wrong-headed idea that it would be good for you and would therefore make you happy. Of course,

it didn't, but your emotions sort of got in the way or your ignorance. Okay. Now, speaking of this rational creature, its will, the will of the rational creature can be deflected from him in whom its true beatitude consists, says Aquinas. in which there is the true beatitude is not grasped essentially as beatitude, but something else is. And towards this, the disordered will is deflected as though to an end. For example, take the man who puts his end in bodily pleasures. He thinks they're the greatest good, they're the greatest good. And this is essential to His beatitude. But those who are already happy grasp that in which there truly is beatitude, essentially as beatitude and as ultimate end. Otherwise, there would be therein no quiet of the appetite and in consequence, they would not be happy. Therefore, all those who are happy cannot turn their wills away from him in whom their true happiness is. Therefore, they can have no perversity of the will. I love it. All right. So, think about it. Like while on this earth, you and I might have the wrong belief that pleasures, sensual pleasures can make us happy, that power can make us happy,

that possessions can make us happy. Now, of course, you know this as well as I know this. Whenever you attain that sensual good, whenever you attain that book, that record, that new car, that new boat, that vacation, all right, that you're still not happy. There's still a disquiet in the soul, all right? Power, you know, even if you become the president of the United States of America, you then discover that that won't make you happy either. So, we can not realize that God is our beatitude and seek after lesser goods, but our soul will always be in a state of restlessness. always be in a state of restlessness. But to the one who has found God, right, in the beatific vision, he now knows that the good, the joy he has been seeking all his life, here it is. And so, since you cannot do anything, since you would never do anything to make you unhappy, it follows that those in the

beatific vision would never do anything other than be in the presence of God, since God is the fulfillment of all our desires. So, I think right there is a really good argument as to see why man would never seek anything other than God when he is in the presence of God. Because to be in the presence of God is our happiness, and man never does anything to make himself unhappy. Does that make sense? I love that. That reminds me of an anecdote told by Peter Kreeft. You know, sometimes you'll hear people say, will we be able to have sex in heaven? And what they don't realize, like that sort of betrays this false understanding that our greatest good is in sensual pleasures.

You're essentially asking, yeah, yeah, yeah, heaven, God, angels, all that stuff. But will I be able to have sex? In other words, okay, sure, I'm sure it'll be good to be in heaven, but can I still do the thing that brings me the greatest happiness, namely sex? But that's to totally misunderstand the point. sex. But that's to totally misunderstand the point. Ask, and this is Crave's line, he says, asking, you know, can we have sex in heaven is like a child first learning about sex saying, okay, but when I do have sex one day with my husband or wife, will I be able to eat candy? And you say to your child, believe me, sweetheart, like when you're having sex,

candy is not going to be something you're thinking about, right? Because what you're doing is something much more pleasurable. And similarly, before the presence of God, sex is not going to be something we're seeking since it'll be a lesser good. All right. So, that's a good argument, I think. That convinces me this is why the blessed in heaven can never turn from God. What else does Aquinas say? He says then too, when what one has suffices him, he seeks nothing beyond it. But whoever is happy has what suffices him in the true beatitude. Otherwise, his desire would not be fulfilled. Therefore, whoever is happy seeks nothing which does not belong to that in which true beatitude consists, but no one has a perverse will unless he wills something repugnant to him in whom true beatitude consists. Therefore, there is no one of the blessed whose will can be changed to evil. Aquinas says there's more.

Sin cannot take place in the will without some sort of ignorance in the intellect, for we will nothing but the good, whether true or apparent. For this reason, Proverbs says, they err who work evil. And in the ethics, the philosopher says, every evil man is ignorant. But the soul, which is truly happy, cannot be in ignorance at all, since in God it sees everything which belongs to its perfection. Therefore, there is no way for it to have a bad will, especially since that vision of God is always actual. Our intellect, again, can be in error about some conclusion before a resolution into the first principle is made. Once the resolution into the principle is made, one has knowledge of the conclusions in which there can be no falsity. But what the principle of demonstration is in speculative matters, so the end is in matters

of appetite. Therefore, as long as we do not achieve the ultimate end, our will can be perverted, but not after it arrives at the enjoyment of the ultimate end, which is desirable in itself, just as the first principles of demonstration are known in themselves. So, we might be mistaken about in what our true beatitude consists, but if we reach that beatitude, we will no longer be mistaken as to where happiness lies. Aquinas says, loves him the most. But this is an essential of love. The wills of those who love each other are in conformity. Therefore, the wills of the blessed are most in conformity with God, and this makes rightness of will, since the divine will is the first rule of all wills. Therefore, the wills of those who see God cannot be rendered perverse. Once more, Aquinas says, so long as a thing is by nature

changeable to another, it does not have its ultimate end. Therefore, if the blessed soul can still be changed from good to evil, it's not yet in its ultimate end. And this is against the essentials of beatitude. It is clear then that the souls which immediately after death are beatified become immutable in their wills. All right, very good. Now, in chapter 93, he addresses the immutability of the wills of the wicked and why it is that they will not repent. He says, in the same way also the souls which immediately after death are made miserable in punishment become unchangeable in their wills. For we showed in Book 3 that mortal sin deserves everlasting punishment,

but there would be no everlasting punishment of the souls of the damned if they were able to change their will for a better will. It would be unjust indeed if from the moment of their having a better will. It would be unjust, indeed, if from the moment of their having a good will, their punishment would be everlasting. Therefore, the will of the damned soul cannot be changed to good. Now, if you want to learn more about what Aquinas says about hell and why it is that mortal sin deserves everlasting punishment, go check out the interview I did with Father Chris Prochaszko on hell. If you go to pintswithaquinas.com and just do a keyword search on hell, you can listen to it there. Aquinas says that there's

more though, right? The very disorder of the will is a kind of punishment and one of extreme affliction. The reason? So far as one has a disordered will, he is displeased by whatever is done rightly. And the damned souls will be displeased because God's will is fulfilled in all those who by sinning have sided against him. Therefore, their disordered will shall never be taken away from them. The change of a will, furthermore, from sin to good takes place only by the grace of God. from sin to good takes place only by the grace of God. Right now, this might not be something that seems immediately obvious, and it would take a whole other episode to maybe explain this, and we're not going to do it in today's episode. But just see if you can take that for the moment on authority from Aquinas and the church, that the change of a will from sin to good takes

place only by the grace of God. Okay. That this isn't something that we can do by our own powers, as it were. Okay. If we change our will from something bad to something good, this is because of the grace of God. Okay. Right. Understand that. Now hear this. But just as the souls of the good are admitted to a perfect sharing in the divine goodness, so the souls of the damned are entirely excluded from grace. Therefore, they will not be able to change their will for the better. All right. to the good they have set before themselves in this life, namely to God. Therefore, the souls of the wicked will cleave unchangeably to the end which they themselves have chosen. Therefore, as the will of the good will not be able to become evil, so the wills of the evil will not be able

to become good. This should really sober us up that there is a possibility for you to spend eternity in hell, unending misery, you and me, that this is a real possibility for us, that we could flee the only thing, if we can use that term for God, which would make us happy, the only chance we had at happiness, gone forever. And that we will now live in unending sorrow. And that this sorrow will not be cut short by death. That suicide isn't an option, that we have to endure misery for all of eternity, and not because of God, but because of us. If we go to heaven, we have no one to thank but God. If we go to hell, we have no one to blame but ourselves. C.S. Lewis has so many insightful

things to say about hell. In The Great Divorce, he says, there are only two kinds of people in the end. Those who say to God, thy will be done, and those to whom God says in the end, thy will be done. All right. He said this of hell, Lewis. He says, and this is true of me, and this is probably true of you, there is no doctrine which I would more willingly remove from Christianity than this, if it lay in my power, but as a full support of scripture, especially of our Lord's own words, it has always been held by Christendom, and it has the support of reason.

It has always been held by Christendom and it has the support of reason. C.S. Lewis's friend, Dorothy Sayers, also put it well. She said, there seems to be a kind of conspiracy to forget or to conceal where the doctrine of hell comes from. Right? I think that's such a good point. If you listen to my interview with Father Thomas Joseph White, we talked about how we can sort of philosophically try to convince ourselves as to why hell isn't eternal or hell doesn't exist or that all will be saved. But we have to remember, of course, that we're Christians and that divine revelation ought to trump what we consider convincing philosophical arguments. And so, Dorothy Sayers continues, she says, the doctrine of hell is not medieval priestcraft for frightening people into giving money to the church. It is Christ's deliberate judgment on sin. We cannot repudiate

hell without altogether repudiating Christ. And as Father Thomas Joseph White pointed out in our podcast, if you're in hell, it's your fault. If you're in heaven, it's God's doing. All right? So, you and I will not be forced into hell against our will no one who ends up in hell will be surprised in the great divorce lewis says all that are in hell choose it without that self-choice there could be no hell no soul that seriously and constantly desires joy will ever miss it those who seek find find. To those who knock, it is opened. One final quote from Lewis here and the problem of pain. He says, but God will look to every soul like its first love because he is its first love. Your place in heaven will seem to be made for you

and you alone because you were made for it. Made for it stitch by stitch as the glove is made for a hand. It is from this point of view that we can understand hell in its aspect of privation. All your life, an unattainable ecstasy has hovered just beyond the grasp of your consciousness. The day is coming when you will wait to find beyond all hope that you have attained it or else that it was within your reach and you've lost it forever. Let me just say that one more time because it is a powerful line. He says, from all your life, an unattainable ecstasy has hovered just beyond the grasp of your consciousness. The day is coming when you will wake to find beyond all hope that you have attained it or else that it was within your reach and you have lost it forever.

Sobering stuff. Okay, let's see what C.S. Lewis has to say, not C.S. Lewis, Aquinas, has to say about purgatory. You know, shortly after my conversion, I thought that it was possible to go to purgatory and then to slide into hell. Maybe there's some listeners who are also under that impression. Well, the good news is if you go to purgatory, there is only one exit and that's heaven. So, why is it that the souls in purgatory can't change their mind? This is just a short paragraph. He says, There are some souls, however, which do not attain beatitude immediately after separation, and for all that are not damned. Such are those who carry with them something subject to purging, as was said. Therefore, one ought to show that not even souls of this kind after separation of body are able to change in their wills.

Now, the blessed and the damned souls have an unchangeable will by reason of the end to which they adhered, as what was said makes clear. But the souls which carry with them something subject to purging do not differ in end from the blessed souls, for they depart in charity by which we cleave to God as to an end. Those very souls then will have an unchangeable will. Let's just talk about purgatory for a second here. We've covered this topic in a previous podcast, but I know since that time we have garnered a lot more evangelical listeners. I know this because they email me all the time. So, hey, evangelical listeners, shout out. I love you. So glad that you're here. You know, sometimes we can get hung up on terminology and someone might say, well, do you believe in purgatory? And you say, no, I don't believe in purgatory. That's a bloody Catholic thing, you know. But sometimes it's

important that, you know, the term isn't the important thing. It's the concept. It's what the term expresses that's the important thing. So, that's why when I talk to evangelical friends who want to deny purgatory, I'm like, okay, well, fine, let's just forget that word for a second. Let's just talk about the concepts. You know, so, here I think is a pretty good argument for purgatory and it's based in scripture, all right? The first premise would be that there are people who will be saved who at the end of their life are either sinning or who are attached to sin. Okay. Let me say that again. There are people who will be saved, who at the end of their life will still be sinning or who will be attached to sin. But the second premise, in heaven, well, nothing unclean

shall enter heaven, right? So, in heaven, there will be no sinning, nor will there be attachment to sin. All right? Well, then how is it that people who will be saved, who were sinning and who were attached to sin at the end of their lives are now neither sinning nor are attached to sin? How does that happen? If you've spent your whole life struggling with an addiction to pornography, right, you have an attachment to that sin. In heaven, it's not as if you will have an attachment to that sin, but, you know, darn it, you can't actually look at porn because you're in heaven now and there's no opportunity. No, even if the opportunity were available, you wouldn't want it. So, what changed? What changed? Something had to change. Something sort of between those two points, if you will,

had to happen so that you're no longer attached to sin. Those wounds, you might say, that sin has inflicted will not be present. So, what happens? Well, that's basically what, you know, we mean by purgatory. Now, does purgatory take temporal duration or not? I think that's open for speculation and so did Pope Benedict. In his work, Spe Salve, I'm looking here, let's see, I'm looking here, paragraph 46, eh? You know, he begins by quoting Corinthians, where he's talking about our good works being burnt up. Why don't I just read directly from Benedict? He says, we know from experience that neither case is normal in human life, about people being utterly pure. For the great majority of people, we may suppose there remains in the depths of their being an

ultimate interior openness to truth, to love, to God. In the concrete choices of life, however, it's covered over by ever new compromises with evil. Much filth covers purity, but the thirst for purity remains, and it still constantly re-emerges from all that is base and remains present in the soul. What happens to such individuals when they appear before the judge? Will all the impurity they have amassed through life suddenly cease to matter? And it sounds like that's what you would have to say if you don't leave space for purgatory, right? That it doesn't really matter at that point. Benedict says, what else might occur? St. Paul, in his first letter to the Corinthians,

gives us an idea of the differing impact of god's judgment according to each person's particular circumstances he does this using images which in some way try to express the invisible without it being possible for us to conceptualize these images simply because we can neither see into the world beyond death nor do we have any experience of it pa Paul begins by saying that Christian life is built upon a common foundation, Jesus Christ. This foundation endures. If we have stood firm on this foundation and built our life upon it, we know that it cannot be taken away from us even in death. Then Paul continues, and this is a direct quote from 1 Corinthians 3. Paul says,

Now, if anyone builds on the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw, each man's work will become manifest for the day will disclose it. When Paul says day there, that's capital D, that's referring to the judgment day, right? Judgment of God, because it will be revealed with fire and the fire will test what sort of work each one has done. If the work which any man has built on the foundation survives, he will receive a reward. If any man's work is burned up, he will suffer loss, though he himself will be saved, but only as through fire. Interesting text, isn't it? So, we have at the judgment day, some who will suffer loss and be saved. What does that mean?

some who will suffer loss and be saved. What does that mean? Suffer loss and be saved? Benedict continues, in this text, it is in any case evident that our salvation can take different forms, that some of what is built may be burned down, that in order to be saved, we personally have to pass through fire so as to become fully open to receive God and able to take our place at the table of the eternal marriage feast. Paragraph 47, Benedict says, some recent theologians are of the opinion that the fire which both burns and saves is none other than Christ himself, the judge, the savior, right? The encounter with him is the decisive act of judgment. Before his gaze, all falsehood melts away. The encounter with him as it burns us, transforms and frees us, allowing us to become truly ourselves. All that we build during our lives can prove to be mere

straw, pure bluster, and it collapses. Yet in the pain of this encounter, when the impurity and sickness of our lives becomes evident to us, there lies salvation. His gaze, the touch of his heart heals us through an undeniably painful transformation as through fire, but it is a blessed pain. And this is how the saints have spoken of purgatory, whether they imagined it taking temporal duration or in an instant, as Benedict seems to lean towards, he talked about this when he was Joseph Ratzinger, that this pain is a blessed pain, right? In which the holy power of his love sears through us like a flame, enabling us to become totally ourselves and thus totally of God. Benedict says, in this way, the interrelation between justice and grace also becomes clear. The way we live our lives is not immaterial, but our defilement does not stain us forever

if we have at least continued to reach out towards Christ, towards truth and towards love. Indeed, it has already been burned away through Christ's passion. truth and towards love. Indeed, it has already been burned away through Christ's passion. At the moment of judgment, we experience and we absorb the overwhelming power of his love over all the evil in the world and in ourselves. Oh my gosh, I just want to read forever. Are you guys aware of how incredible Pope Benedict was and is? If you haven't read Pope Benedict, you got to stop listening to me and start reading Pope Benedict. Be sure to check out his encyclical on hope, Spe Salve. Be sure to check that out. That's what I'm quoting there. Okay, so we've talked about heaven, hell, and purgatory. We've spoken about why the blessed cannot change their mind. We've talked about why the damned will not repent.

We've spoken a little bit about a case for purgatory and why those who are being purged, are being transformed, right, have as their end God and cannot change their mind, as it were, and be damned. Much more could be said, no doubt. In fact, what I'll do is share with you a dissertation that a Dominican wrote on this very topic. This is by Father Lawrence Liu. The name of his dissertation is called, Why Can We Not Repent After We Die? And it is 110 pages. 110 pages, but it's beautifully written. And for those of you who have, you know, who are very eager to understand this, I'll put a link in the show notes at pineswithaquinas.com so you can learn more. All right. Thank you so much for tuning in the show notes at pintswithaquinas.com so you can learn more. All right. Thank you so much for tuning in to Pints with Aquinas week after week.

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