THE RESURRECTION OF THE FLESH
AND
THE GENERAL JUDGMENT
I. The general resurrection of all men.
(1) Resurrection natural yet miraculous;
(2) How it will come about;
(3) It endows the body with an inward principle of incorruptibility.
II. The glorious resurrection of the elect.
Qualities of glorified bodies: impassibility, subtlety, agility, clarity.
III. The general judgment.
(1) Dogma.
(2) Theology;
(3) Inquiry and retribution.
The resurrection of the flesh is a dogma of faith explicitly set forth in the various Creeds of the Church.
The Sacred Scriptures, especially St. Paul’s epistles, speak of it so often that it would be quite superfluous to expound the scriptural argument in proof of it (cf. St. John 5:28; 6:39, 40, 44, 55; St. Mark 12:26; Rom. 6:5; 2 Cor. 5; Phil 3; 9; 1 Thess. 4:15; 1 Tim. 2:16; Hebr. 11:35, etc.)
From among the many pronouncements of the Church bearing upon the resurrection it will suffice to quote the dogmatic declaration issued by the IV Council of the Lateran:
“He (Christ) will come at the end of the world to judge the living and the dead, and to render to all, whether elect or reprobate, according to their works; and all will rise with their own bodies which they have borne in this life, to be rewarded according to their works, whether good or evil, the bad to go into eternal punishment with the devil, the good to receive everlasting glory with Christ.” (Dz 429)
Leaving aside certain subsidiary questions relative to the “living and the dead” who are to be judged by Christ, we shall consider:
(1) The dogma of the general resurrection of all men;
(2) That of the glorious resurrection reserved to the elect;
(3) That of the General Judgment.
I. THE GENERAL RESURRECTION OF ALL
The dogma of the general resurrection may be stated very briefly.
At the last day all men will rise again, and will rise with the same bodies as they had in this life.
The soul will not be joined to a body taken haphazard, but will be rejoined to the body which had been its companion in this life. It is only right that it should be so, for since the body had its part in most of the actions to be submitted to God’s judgment, it ought likewise to share in their reward or punishment.
All this is so simple that we need not delay over it.
But there are three points, not so clear, to which we may turn our attention.
Theologians, following St. Thomas, show:
- Firstly, how the resurrection, though a miracle wrought at God’s pleasure, is yet in accordance with nature.
- Secondly, the human mind seeks to understand how the resurrection takes place, and Thomist philosophy is asked to give a reasonable explanation.
- Thirdly, according to theologians, the body after the resurrection possesses an inward principle of incorruptibility.
(1) Since the resurrection is miraculous, how can it be said to be natural?
When speaking of death we said that the separation of the two elements that go to the making of man does not respond to the exigencies of the formal element, his immortal soul.
The state of separation, though not contrary to the soul’s nature (since this is capable of self-existence), is yet less natural to it than union with the body.
So the union of soul and body being natural, their re-union would seem to be natural; the soul, being made for the body, would seem to yearn to be rejoined by its life-companion.
It would appear as if St. Thomas tries to prove the resurrection with arguments of this kind (Cont. Gentes, IV, 79).
But, as has often been shown, such arguments are not meant to be demonstrative but persuasive only.
When St. Thomas says that the future resurrection of the body is supported by the evidence of reason (evidens ratio suffragatur), he is speaking merely of persuasive evidence.
Certainly if we consider the effect of the resurrection, namely, the reconstitution of man in his whole being, it may be called natural.
But as the cause of this reconstitution is not natural, man cannot be said to have any claim to it. The only natural efficient cause of man is human generation, and every other way of bringing him into existence is miraculous.
So, for example, the union of Christ’s body and soul, considered as an effect, was natural, but considered in its cause it was miraculous, since the conception of Christ in his virgin Mother’s womb was a miracle.
Similarly in the case of Adam and Eve, a natural effect was produced by a non-natural cause, for they were not begotten, but created.
So, at the end of the world, nature will be unable to provide any active principle capable of re-uniting soul to body. It may be granted that the soul has a claim upon the body, but only if this be rightly understood.
It cannot be admitted that the soul has any positive tendency of any sort towards rebuilding the body. If the body is restored to the soul, the soul will naturally actuate it and revitalize it as its own, but the body must first be given back to it. And the body, reduced to dust, dispersed and lost, perhaps, in the thousands of transformations undergone by the elements once composing it, can have in itself no natural tendency towards being again actuated and vitalized by the soul.
Therefore, there is necessary the intervention of some external cause, more potent than the forces of nature, more potent even than the angels, for it is beyond their power to invest matter with the dispositions needful for human life.
In a word, God’s intervention is necessary, and although, in speaking of the general resurrection of all men we cannot strictly call his intervention supernatural(for this term implies a relation to eternal life), it must be described as miraculous.
The miraculous character of the resurrection has never been explicitly defined, but it is a theological conclusion to be accepted as true, because of the unanimous agreement of theologians. To deny it would be temerarious.
(2) How the resurrection is effected
The dogmatic assertion that “the dead will rise again with the same bodies as they had in this life,” is rather apt to astonish the mind; especially when it is pointed out that the question is one of numerical identity.
At once a multitude of questions arise that, together or singly, seem to overwhelm our reason.
How can such a resurrection be possible, seeing that throughout his life a man’s body is ceaselessly changing and its elements subject to continuous transformations? And when we think of what happens to the body after death, the difficulties grow quickly. What of those bodies that are eaten by cannibals, or those devoured by animals that afterwards serve as food for men? The difficulty is equally great as regards bodies committed to the earth in burial; they suffer decomposition and their elements are taken up into various forms of vegetable life, of which some are used as food, and so forth. In such an endless course of changes what becomes of the particles that made up any human body, and how can they possibly be brought together again at the last day?
In such a question as this reason alone must guide us; the imagination cannot but lead us astray. And, indeed, if we seek an answer from any philosophy but that of St. Thomas, we shall, in all probability, seek in vain.
According to the Scholastic philosophy two elements only go to make up any individual man: the soul, called the form, and the body called the matter. The soul is the principle that gives to the matter its being as a living, sensitive and intelligent substance, and invests it with continuous self-identity, despite the flux and change of its component elements. St. Thomas was fully aware of the difficulties arising from the continual displacement of the atoms or particles of the body, but maintains that, in spite thereof, the form preserves the permanent identity of the whole.
With his usual precise brevity he declares that “secundum materiam partes ftuunt et reftuunt,” but numerical identity depends upon the form not upon the matter;“non semper sunt eadem partes secundum materiam sed solum secundum speciem” (De spiritualibus creaturis, art. 3).
Hence material identity of the body’s particles, impossible to maintain, is not needed to explain the resurrection. We can fully safeguard the dogma, and expound it indeed clearly, by simply upholding the formal identity of the whole man. And, as we have seen, according to the Thomistic philosophy, which looks upon the soul as the substantial form of the human body, formal identity persists despite all the changes and variations affecting the material elements of the body. If the soul is the only form of the whole man, at one and the same time, intellectual, sensitive, vegetative and corporal; if, in other words, it is from the soul that the body draws the whole of its being, as man, as animal, as living, as substance, as thing, then at the resurrection the soul will give back to the body identically the same endowments as it had bestowed on it from the first. On this hypothesis we need not worry about what happens to the particles of matter when the body decomposes.
Whatever material elements God may use and submit to the sovereignty of the soul, this matter will become the same body that the soul possessed in this life, and hence, as Cardinal Billot puts it:
“God could cause a dead man to arise, without giving him a single atom of the matter which had belonged to his body before death” (De Novissimis, p. 136).
What matters it, therefore, if it please God that the infant shall arise as a grown man or the old man as still in the flower of youth! Such speculations as these, in which theologians indulge, are quite secondary, and even altogether without any bearing on the dogma of the resurrection, expounded according to St. Thomas’s philosophy.
Objection: It may be objected that this explanation tends to destroy the worship we give to relics and the value of the reverence we pay to the bodies of the dead. But the objection will not hold water.
Answer: Such worship and reverence are purely relative and, in reality, are directed to the persons whom the relics and bodies bring to our remembrance. And though the Church has forbidden cremation, this is not because the resurrection would be thereby hindered. Still the burial of the dead has in it a certain power of symbolism well calculated to sustain faith in the future resurrection.
(3) The risen body will be endowed with an inward principle of incorruptibility
To be able not to die is one thing, to be unable to die is another.
Adam, in the state of innocence, was immortal in the former sense; the latter kind of immortality is proper to spiritual substances (angels and souls); but it will also belong to men’s bodies after the resurrection.
As far as the elect are concerned, this is explicitly stated in the gospel according to St. Luke (20:34-36):
“The children of this world marry and are given in marriage; but they that shall be accounted worthy of that world and of the resurrection from the dead shall neither be married nor take wives. Neither can they die any more; for they are equal to the angels, and are the children of God, being the children of the resurrection.”
It must be granted, too, that the risen bodies of the damned also have in them a principle of incorruptibility, for they also rise again for eternity. But their immortality will be their punishment, implying none of those qualities that make for happiness; and since the Scriptures always speak of immortality as a blessing it is only natural that St. Luke should mention the incorruptibility of the blessed alone.
A consequence of the immortality of risen bodies, whether in Heaven, Hell or Limbo, will be the cessation of all nutritive and generative functions. The organs that now perform these functions will remain, for the body will be restored in its integrity, but they will occasion no suffering and no movements of concupiscence or sensuality. The soul will rule the body instead of serving it.
II. THE RESURRECTION UNTO GLORY
The bodies of the blessed in Heaven will be endowed with certain qualities, which the damned in Hell will lack, namely impassibility, subtlety, agility and brightness.
1. Impassibility means that the glorified body will be beyond the reach of all injury and corruption. (cf. S.T. Suppl. Q.82)
The inward principle of incorruptibility will be common to them and the lost, but impassibility adds to this the absence of all pain and affliction.
It is to this quality that St. Paul’s words are generally applied: “It (the body) is sown in corruption, it shall rise in incorruption” (1 Cor. 15:42).
2. Subtlety is not, as some theologians have thought, a sort of spiritualization of the body, investing bodies with the power of mutual penetration. (cf. S.T. Suppl.Q.83)
It means rather that the body will be wholly under the dominion of the soul, which will, as it were, irradiate it and refine all its pleasures and sensations, so that, though material, it will depend to the slightest possible extent upon the conditions of matter: “It is sown a natural body, it shall rise a spiritual body” (ibid. 5:44).
3. Owing to the gift of agility the body will be able unresistingly to obey the soul’s commands. (cf. S.T. Suppl. Q.84)
“It is sown in weakness, it shall rise in power” (ibid.) Through this gift the whole material world will be at the disposition of the blessed, for whom the universe was made. The immense spaces of the world will be under the rule of the saints who will shine in the infinite vaults of heaven as the stars above us. But however great may be the speed at which the glorified bodies of the blessed move through space, it will still be measured by time, real time even though infinitesimally short.
4. Lastly the glory of the soul, irradiating the body, will invest it with brightness, making it shine as did Christ’s body on the mount of Transfiguration. (cf. S.T.Suppl. Q.85)
“It is sown in dishonour, it shall rise in glory” (ibid.).
But after all, what can we say of the future state of glory, we who, as long as we are here, are still subject to the whims of this body of flesh? Better far is it to attempt no detailed description of what is beyond our ken and to wait for the happy experience of heavenly glory that, we hope, is in store for us.
III. THE GENERAL JUDGMENT
(1) The Dogma
There are few things upon which the Scriptures lay greater emphasis.
1. Jesus Christ has told us clearly that, at the end of the world, he will judge all men; he will not be simply a witness before God’s judgment-seat, but will, himself as Judge, pass sentence (Mark 13:34-37; Matt. 13:37-42; 16:48-51; Luke 12:36-38; 45-48; 21:34-36, but specially Matt. 7:22-23; 16:27; 24:30-31).
The awe-inspiring scene of the last judgment, described by St. Matthew 25:31-46, is well known:
“And when the Son of Man shall come in his majesty, and all the angels with him, then shall he sit upon the seat of his majesty; and all nations shall be gathered together before him, and he shall separate them one from another, as the shepherd separateth the sheep from the goats; and he shall set the sheep on his right hand, but the goats on his left. Then shall the king say to them that shall be on his right hand: Come ye, blessed of my Father, possess you the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world . . . Then he shall say to them also that shall be on his left hand: Depart from me, you cursed, into everlasting fire which was prepared for the devil and his angels . . . And these shall go into everlasting punishment; but the just into life everlasting.”
2. The epistles of St. Paul are equally explicit.
Their teaching on the last judgment is simply the development of the gospel teaching, that Jesus is the “judge of the living and the dead” (Acts 10:42; 2 Tim. 4:1).
In St. Paul, as in the gospels, “the judgment is so closely bound up with the parousia (that is, with Christ’s second coming) that it is impossible to separate these two scenes, and the Church joins them together in one and the same article of the creed” (Prat, La théologie de St. Paul, II, p. 152).
St. Paul’s favourite term for the general judgment is “the day of the Lord,” the day, that is, when the glory of Jesus will be manifested and his kingdom set up in triumph (2 Thess, 1:10; 1 Cor. 15:25). The object of the judgment will be to do justice, its effect the final establishment of the moral order.
“Everyone of us shall have to render account for himself” (Rom. 14:52); all will have to make known all the actions of his life, good or evil (2 Cor., 5:10); a piercing light will reveal our most hidden deeds (Rom. 2:6); and even the secret movements of our hearts (1 Cor. 4:5). A sentence corresponding with the outcome of thisrigorous examination will follow. God will render to every man according to his works (Rom. 2; 6; 2 Cor. 11:15; 2 Tim. 4:14; 1 Cor. 3:8), and just as God is not ‘a respecter of persons’ in distributing his gifts (Acts 10:34), so he will not be in apportioning retribution (Rom. 2, Col. 3:25); the evil that has been done will not be forgotten (ibid.), but the good will also be remembered (Eph. 6:8) So that everyone will receive according to his works,” (J. Rivière, art. Jugement in Dict. de théol. catholique, vol. VIII, col. 1758).
Lastly, St. Paul teaches that the judgment will be truly universal. All men, Greeks as well as Jews, will come before God’s tribunal and, in a sense, the angels themselves (Rom. 14:10; 2:12-16; 1 Cor. 6:3).
3. The other books of the New Testament, though full of the thought of the last judgment, contain hardly any fresh elements.
True, the Apocalypse is pre-eminently the eschatological book, but its interpretation is difficult, though the last judgment is clearly proclaimed.
Fr. Rivière again says:
“This final judgment is mentioned for the first time, when the four and twenty ancients, prostrate before God, do homage to his power and kingdom; ‘And thy wrath is come, and the time of the dead that they should be judged, and that thou shouldest render reward to thy servants the prophets, and the saints, and to them that fear thy name, little and great, and shouldest destroy them that have corrupted the earth”’ (11:58)
The book ends with a picture of the scene itself. . . The mysterious reign of a thousand years is over, Satan and his allies are consumed by fire from Heaven. Then, behold, sitting upon his great white throne, him before whose face heaven and earth take flight. All the dead, great and small, rise again to come before the throne, and the books are opened to see what judgment shall be given. The sentence is at once put into execution: those whose names are written in the book of life go into the heavenly Jerusalem; the others, along with Hell and death, are cast into the pool of fire” (20:7-15; 21:1-5, art. cit. col. 1763).
(2) Theology of the Judgment
The theologian has to study all the various elements and aspects of a dogma taught by Scripture and the Church, and carefully to distinguish the certain from the merely probable, so that the truth may be the more clearly seen.
With regard to the general judgment, two points are to be accepted with the certainty of faith: the fact of the judgment and the person of the judge, Jesus Christ, who will come in glory: iterum venturus est cum gloria judicare vivos et mortuos.
1. The Fact.
Theology provides us with arguments which prove the reasonableness of the dogma, and of which it will suffice to give the outlines as drawn by Father Rivière:
“The general judgment is necessary because it is the realization of the moral order that God had originally intended to reign in the world, but that the disorders resulting from sin had done so much to disturb. If the balance is restored for individuals by the particular judgment, it seems only right that the general situation should also be restored by a general judgment. Ideal justice, postulated by the Christian idea of God, cannot come to its full development before the end of time. Up till then all sorts of obstacles impede its course and prevent us from realizing our individual responsibilities.”
As St. Thomas well expresses it:
“Although death puts an end to man’s temporal life, if this be considered in itself, yet in a sense it still depends upon the future.”
And he then goes on to analyse minutely and carefully the various forms of this “dependence” wherein is verified the wonderfully complex repercussion of man’s actions upon human affairs. He instances a man’s reputation, which but seldom corresponds with his actual deserts; the family which often falls away from the high standard set by the father; the results of men’s deeds, endlessly continued through history, so that we are still suffering from the heresy of Arius and benefiting from the Apostles’ faith; the body, in one instance receiving honourable burial, in another suffering abandonment or neglect.
“All these are the objects of our activity; some soon pass away, others last a long time, but before God they constitute a perpetual reality, awaiting his final verdict.” (Art. quoted, col. 1815).
We may mention another argument in justification of the general judgment, namely, the glorification of God, of Christ and the saints.
2. The Person.
As regards the person of the Judge, it is of faith that Christ himself will judge the living and the dead. But whereas he came first into the world in suffering and lowliness, his second coming will be in glory. In theory one might conceive him exercising his judicial authority without leaving Heaven, but in order that his triumph over death may be complete, it is but fitting that he should be seen once again in this world as its judge.
So far we have set down what is certain, but as regards other matters, such as the circumstances of the judgment, its place and time, the signs that are to announce it, the vesture of Christ’s glory, the separation of just and unjust on right and left, and so forth, there can be no certainty, for we are in the realm of symbolism and conjecture.
St. Thomas interprets very broadly the scriptural texts referring to these matters, and in this we cannot do better than imitate him. The judgment, he says, will take place mentally, so that discussion and accusation are to be understood in the manner explained in Chapter II.
(3) Inquiry and Retribution
St. Thomas distinguishes two aspects of the judgment:
- The inquiry or discussion of each man’s merits and demerits;
- And the retribution, wherein he is rewarded or punished.
Men must either be let into Heaven or kept out. At the judgment sentence will be passed upon all, a sentence of salvation or damnation. And to avoid all misunderstanding it must be understood that the sentence of condemnation is passed upon all who are shut out from Heaven, even though, escaping Hell, they be relegated to Limbo.
As for the “inquiry,” those alone will have to undergo it whose lives are a mixture of good and evil necessitating the discussion of their merits and demerits. But this discussion will not, of course, raise any doubt or question about anything.
St. Thomas says:
“The discussion of the merits of the blessed will not destroy the certainty of happiness in the hearts of those who are to be judged, but will make it evident to all that in them good has triumphed over evil, and will thus vindicate God’s justice.” (Suppl. q. 89, art. 6, ad. 2).
Similarly:
“although those who die in mortal sin are certainly damned, yet, since they have some good works mingled with their sins, the discussion of their merits is necessary for the manifestation of divine justice, and to show that they are justly shut out from the city of the saints” (ibid., art. 7, ad. 1).
We may make some concrete applications of this principle.
1. Firstly infants who have died before coming to the use of reason will not have to undergo the judgment of inquiry. They will, of course, be present at the judgment, but the sentence passed upon them will relate solely to their eternal destiny, and thus will belong to the judgment of retribution.
St. Thomas, it is true, says that “children who die before the age of reason will also appear before God’s tribunal, not to be judged, but in order to see the judge’s glory” (ibid., art. 5, ad. 3), but there is no doubt that St. Thomas includes these children among those who will have to undergo the judgment of retribution.
Thus in his Commentarium in II Epist. ad Corinth, c.v. lectio 1, he says:
“Infants will not be judged concerning the things they have themselves done in this life, but concerning the things they have done through others, as, for example, whether, through others, they were Christians or infidels, baptised or unbaptised; or again, it might be said that they will be condemned on account of the sin committed by our first father.”
2. Secondly, St. Thomas seems to exclude adult infidels from the judgment of discussion; they “will be condemned as enemies who are exterminated without any discussion of their merits” (art. 7).
Similarly with the adult blessed whose deeds present no admixture of good and evil: “there will be no discussion of their merits, they will be saved without being judged” (art. 6).
Hence the only ones to undergo judgment will be those among the faithful whose lives have been sinful or imperfect. In the case of all others the judgment will be one of retribution only.
3. Thirdly, this teaching which, at first sight, might seem foreign to the ordinary doctrine of the Church, is the common teaching of the mediaeval doctors, and represents that of many of the Latin Fathers.
A too literal interpretation of St. John 3:8, “He that doth not believe is already judged,” and of Psalm 1:5, “The wicked shall not rise again in judgment,” led these Fathers to set up two classes of the damned, the faithful who are to be judged and the unbelievers whose judgment has already taken place.
And since what is true of the lost must apply also to the saved, they divided the latter also into two classes:
- The first, of those whose deeds will have to be investigated and submitted to judgment;
- The second containing those whose sanctity is so manifest as to admit of no discussion.
St. Gregory, whose influence upon the eschatology of the Latin church was decisive, thus sums up the common teaching of his time:
“Some are judged and perish, others are not judged, yet perish likewise; some are judged and reign in glory, others are not judged, but share in the same glory”(Moralia, b. 26, ch. 27, no. 5).
It is to be noted, however, that this teaching of the Fathers has a wholly moral significance. Undoubtedly, they interpret the psalmist’s words too narrowly, but, from the moral point of view, it is profoundly true that the wicked, unbelievers especially, will be incapable of facing God’s judgment; they have already delivered, and without any mitigation being possible, their own sentence of condemnation; judgment has already been held upon them: jam judicatus est.
And, on the other hand, the just who have always been loyal to Jesus, who have always lived the perfect life of faith, are already saved in advance, and no doubt can be entertained of their admission into Heaven. Such is the moral signification of the distinction established by the Fathers and echoed by the Scholastics in the phrases “judgment of inquiry” and “judgment of retribution.” But apart from this, it is still true that every man will be judged and will have to answer for his works.
As Suarez (whose treatment of the whole question of the judgment is masterly) well says, why postulate a discussion of the merits and demerits of believers, and deny it in the case of unbelievers? The sins that are the cause of their damnation must be made manifest, as well as those of believers. St. Paul’s words, “for 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) are true of all without exception. On the other hand where can be found the just man who is without sin? Apart from the specially privileged case mentioned by the council of Trent (De justificatione, can. 23), who is there who can flatter himself that he has avoided all venial sin during life and that, therefore, he has built upon the foundation of faith an edifice of gold, silver and precious stones alone, without any admixture of wood, straw and stubble? St. Thomas, it is true, holds to be exempt from the judgment of inquiry certain of the blessed who, by a very perfect life given wholly to spiritual things, have been made worthy to sit by the side of Jesus Christ and to have a part in the giving of the judgment sentence. These are the Apostles to whom it was said: “You shall sit upon twelve seats judging the twelve tribes of Israel” (Matt. 19:28). These are also those who have despised worldly things in order to seek the only true goods of the spirit, and especially the poor in spirit, who have been promised the kingdom of Heaven (Matt. 5:3).
Such is St. Thomas’s opinion in the Supplementum q. 89, art. and 2. But it is clear that, if the inquiry means only an examination and weighing of men’s works, good and bad, then all those saints who have ever committed a venial sin will have to submit to the judgment of enquiry. But the investigation will be but slight compared with that to be undergone by those who have committed mortal sins and great crimes. (Suarez In. III. St. Thomae. disp. 57, sect. 5-7).
The judgment of the saints being, therefore, of but little importance, may be considered as non-existent.
4. Fourthly, the qualified way in which St. Thomas speaks of the judgment of infants, shows that it can be called a retributive judgment only analogically. For Heaven is not given to baptised infants as a reward, but as their inheritance; and similarly, the withholding of the beatific vision from unbaptised infants has not a really penal or afflictive character. Rather is it the consequence due to fallen nature, just as celestial happiness is the result due to the state of restored nature. Hence St. Thomas hesitates to speak of infants being judged and says that they will appear before the judgment-seat in order to behold the judge in glory. We have now to show how there is nothing of a penal nature in the denial of the beatific vision to infants who die unbaptised and to others who must be classed with them.
