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 thehistorical 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 determinedbefore 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 animplicit 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 uncertaintyconnected 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 Gratiabk. 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.
