HistoricalChristian.Faith

Thomas Aquinas on the Intermediate State

Dates: c. 1274 · Wikipedia
Summary: Thomas Aquinas (c. 1225–1274), the Dominican master whose Summa Theologiae became the architecture of Western scholastic theology, gives the medieval West its fully mapped account of the soul between death and resurrection. The separated soul does not sleep: it is at once assigned an abode answering to its state. Aquinas distinguishes five — the heaven of the blessed, the hell of the damned, purgatory (where the saved are cleansed), the limbo of the Fathers (limbus patrum, the Old-Testament "Abraham's bosom," now emptied), and the limbo of children. On this map the perfectly cleansed righteous enter the vision of God immediately; those still owing satisfaction for sin pass through purgatory first; and the holy Fathers who died before Christ waited in the limbus patrum until Christ's descent into hell set them free. (The doctrine that the purified righteous see God at once, rather than waiting for the resurrection, was fixed for the Roman church by Pope Benedict XII's constitution Benedictus Deus, 1336.)

Claims & evidence

Souls with venial debts are cleansed in purgatory before their reward

those who die in grace with venial sins an abode is assigned where they are punished ere they receive their reward, which abode is purgatory

— Summa Theologiae, Supplement, Appendix I ("On Purgatory"), newadvent.org. Aquinas defines purgatory as the place "where souls are detained from receiving their reward at once on account of the sins they have committed." It is not a third destiny but a temporary station on the way to heaven: the soul is saved, but its remaining debt of temporal punishment is discharged before it enters the vision of God.

The perfectly righteous enjoy the beatific vision at once

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

— Summa Theologiae, Supplement, Appendix I, newadvent.org. For Aquinas the abodes order souls by state rather than by mere geography: a soul fully cleansed has nothing to detain it, so it is admitted at once to glory. The medieval West thus resolves the long-open question "do the righteous see God now, or wait for the resurrection?" in favour of an immediate vision for the perfected — the position later made binding by Benedict XII's Benedictus Deus (1336).

The holy Fathers were detained in hell until Christ's descent

the holy Fathers were detained in hell for the reason, that, owing to our first parent's sin, the approach to the life of glory was not opened.

— Summa Theologiae III, q. 52, a. 5, newadvent.org. The Old-Testament righteous, free of personal guilt but barred from the vision of God by the inherited debt of original sin, waited in the upper part of hell — the limbus patrum, the "Abraham's bosom" of Luke 16. Aquinas notes that Christ's soul "descended only into that part of hell wherein the just were detained" (III, q. 52, a. 2).

Christ's descent set the holy Fathers free

when Christ descended into hell He delivered the holy Fathers from thence.

— Summa Theologiae III, q. 52, a. 5, newadvent.org. By the power of his Passion, Christ "delivered the saints from the penalty whereby they were excluded from the life of glory, so as to be unable to see God in His Essence." On this account the limbus patrum is a closed chapter: it was emptied at the descent, so since Christ no one waits there — the fully-cleansed go straight to God, and those needing satisfaction to purgatory.

Notes

• Aquinas's scheme distinguishes five abodes for souls after death: the heaven of the blessed; the hell of the damned; purgatory (temporary cleansing of the saved); the limbo of the Fathers (limbus patrum), now emptied by Christ; and the limbo of children (the unbaptised who die in original sin only, kept from the vision of God but spared sensible punishment — Supplement, Appendix I/II). This is the high-medieval systematisation of the intermediate state that the Reformers will later contest.
• The limbus patrum is, for Aquinas, a feature of the past: it explains where the Old-Testament saints waited and what Christ's "descent into hell" accomplished. It is precisely this compartment that Calvin would dismiss as a "fable," and the wider compartmental geography (Abraham's bosom as a third place, limbo, purgatory) that the Westminster Confession would deny outright.
• On the immediate vision of God for the perfected righteous, Aquinas anticipates the dogmatic settlement of Benedictus Deus (Benedict XII, 1336), which defined that purified souls "see the divine essence" before the resurrection of the body.