Can it be said that the dead who have been miraculously restored to life had reached the end of their time of probation?
The question is of some importance, as an affirmative answer would, to a great extent, weaken the whole basis of our argument throughout this treatise, the principle of the soul’s fixation in good or evil immediately after death. A brief examination is, therefore, necessary.
First of all, the fact of certain miraculous resurrections cannot be denied. There is no question here of those legends of souls having been freed from Hell.
But the Bible gives us several examples, especially in the New Testament, of the dead being raised to life, and the divine inspiration of the Scriptures is sufficient guarantee of the truth of these records.
It is a matter of but little moment whether the persons thus raised had died in the state of grace or of mortal sin. For all the same question arises: was death the end of their state of probation, and had they entered upon the state wherein the soul is irrevocably fixed in good or evil?
The theologian must admit that these cases are exceptions to the general rule established in our first chapter. From all eternity God had foreseen and foreordained the reunion of these souls with their bodies; therefore, at the moment of death the definite sentence of judgment was not pronounced, but held over.
“These men were adults in the full exercise of reason. There are then but two alternatives; they died either in a state of grace, God’s friends, or in a state of sin, his enemies. If you choose the second alternative the argument is ended, for here we have sinners whose sentence of condemnation is suspended, so that they can re-enter the state of probation and, doing penance, arrive at justification. If you prefer the former alternative, then you must admit that their final sentence calling them to their eternal reward had not been pronounced when the voice of the worker of the miracle called them back to life. But if the verdict that beatifies can be suspended why not the sentence of condemnation? When we remember that ‘mercy exalteth itself above judgment’ (James 2:13), the more wonderful thing is not that God should bring back a sinner to the life of probation in order to save him, but rather that he should postpone the sentence that in the ordinary way should follow immediately upon death, and make the just man unchangeably fixed in his state of grace” (Terrien, La Mère des Hommes, T. II, pp. 359-360).
The further question may be asked, what was the state of these souls pending their resurrection?
Fr. Terrien continues:
“In so obscure a matter it seems most likely that these souls, during the short time of separation from their bodies, were devoid of all consciousness until restored to their former state. Hence their complete lack of knowledge as to anything that took place during the period of separation. I am quite aware that several ancient records tell us of wonderful visions concerning other-worldly things vouchsafed to certain souls. These are isolated cases of which it is not for me to judge; but in any case we cannot regard as authentic any visions which imply the exercise of organic faculties, for a disembodied soul has no other mode of cognition but that proper to spirits.” (p. 361)
Hence we may conjecture that these disembodied souls were given infused knowledge, and consequently as, upon reunion with their bodies, they would be unable to link up these infused ideas with the perceptive cognition proper to this life, they would be unable to remember what they had learned in the other world.
However these miraculous resurrections afford no serious ground for disputing the psychological law of the immutability of the soul that has really reached the state of finality.
