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Objection 1: It would seem that places are not appointed to receive
souls after death. For as Boethius says (De Hebdom.): "Wise
men are agreed that incorporeal things are not in a place," and this
agrees with the words of Augustine (Gen. ad lit. xii, 32):
"We can answer without hesitation that the soul is not conveyed to
corporeal places, except with a body, or that it is not conveyed
locally." Now the soul separated from the body is without a body, as
Augustine also says (Gen. ad lit. xii, 32). Therefore it is
absurd to assign any places for the reception of souls.
Objection 2: Further, whatever has a definite place has more in
common with that place than with any other. Now separated souls, like
certain other spiritual substances, are indifferent to all places; for
it cannot be said that they agree with certain bodies, and differ from
others, since they are utterly removed from all corporeal conditions.
Therefore places should not be assigned for their reception.
Objection 3: Further, nothing is assigned to separated souls after
death, except what conduces to their punishment or to their reward.
But a corporeal place cannot conduce to their punishment or reward,
since they receive nothing from bodies. Therefore definite places
should not be assigned to receive them.
On the contrary, The empyrean heaven is a corporeal place, and yet
as soon as it was made it was filled with the holy angels, as Bede
[Hexaem. i, ad Gn. 1:2] says. Since then angels even as
separated souls are incorporeal, it would seem that some place should
also be assigned to receive separated souls.
Further, this appears from Gregory's statement (Dial. iv) that
souls after death are conveyed to various corporeal places, as in the
case of Paschasius whom Germanus, Bishop of Capua, found at the
baths, and of the soul of King Theodoric, which he asserts to have
been conveyed to hell. Therefore after death souls have certain places
for their reception.
I answer that, Although spiritual substances do not depend on a body
in respect of their being, nevertheless the corporeal world is governed
by God by means of the spiritual world, as asserted by Augustine
(De Trin. iii, 4) and Gregory (Dial. iv, 6). Hence it is
that there is a certain fittingness by way of congruity of spiritual
substances to corporeal substances, in that the more noble bodies are
adapted to the more noble substances: wherefore also the philosophers
held that the order of separate substances is according to the order of
movables. And though after death souls have no bodies assigned to them
whereof they be the forms or determinate motors, nevertheless certain
corporeal places are appointed to them by way of congruity in reference
to their degree of nobility (wherein they are as though in a place,
after the manner in which incorporeal things can be in a place),
according as they more or less approach to the first substance (to
which the highest place it fittingly assigned), namely God, whose
throne the Scriptures proclaim heaven to be (Ps. 102:19,
Is. 66:1). Wherefore we hold that those souls that have a
perfect share of the Godhead are in heaven, and that those souls that
are deprived of that share are assigned to a contrary place.
Reply to Objection 1: Incorporeal things are not in place after a
manner known and familiar to us, in which way we say that bodies are
properly in place; but they are in place after a manner befitting
spiritual substances, a manner that cannot be fully manifest to us.
Reply to Objection 2: Things have something in common with or a
likeness to one another in two ways. First, by sharing a same
quality: thus hot things have something in common, and incorporeal
things can have nothing in common with corporeal things in this way.
Secondly, by a kind of proportionateness, by reason of which the
Scriptures apply the corporeal world to the spiritual metaphorically.
Thus the Scriptures speak of God as the sun, because He is the
principle of spiritual life, as the sun is of corporeal life. In this
way certain souls have more in common with certain places: for
instance, souls that are spiritually enlightened, with luminous
bodies, and souls that are plunged in darkness by sin, with dark
places.
Reply to Objection 3: The separated soul receives nothing directly
from corporeal places in the same way as bodies which are maintained by
their respective places: yet these same souls, through knowing
themselves to be appointed to such places, gather joy or sorrow
therefrom; and thus their place conduces to their punishment or
reward.
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