Aquinas on Body and Soul, as it Pertains to Life, Death, the Intermediate State and Eternity

How's that for a post title?

A few years ago at a youth camp Terry Thomas from Geneva College opened my eyes to what eternity really is and how it is not all clouds and harps, but is a new heavens and a new earth, and he opened my eyes to the value of this life in relation to the next life. 

Since then I have read many, first Al Wolters, on this subject, and recently, N. T. Wright has spoken often of it.  Wright says that the big deal is not life after death, but life after life after death.  In other words, he correctly points out that most of our views of heaven and eternity correspond to the intermediate state - that which happens when we die on this earth and our souls are separated from our bodies.  Wright, as well as others correctly point out that this is only a temporary thing and the big deal in the Bible is that eternity will be an embodied state, and this has all kinds of implications for life on this earth and the here and now.

Fair enough and true enough, but what are we to make of what happens to us after we die?  Sometimes it seems as if going to heaven when we die, i.e. the intermediate state, is no big deal, nothing to get excited about.  But such a view leaves little comfort for those who are facing death in the here and now.  I think it is Wright, please correct me if you know if I happen to be wrong, who has said that the intermediate state is akin to a bus stop - not a final destination.  I don't know about you but that's not all that exciting.

The question itself revolves around a fundamental dispute between orthodox Christianity and other beliefs akin to and including gnosticism, that downplay the role of the body and matter.  In the latter views the highest goods come from transcending bodily experience.  But orthodox Christianity affirms that we are saved through the life, sufferings and death of an embodied Savior.  And eternity will be an embodied existence.  If this is so, the intermediate state we enter after we die where our souls are separated from our bodies would seem to be a less than ideal state.

I found help on this matter today from a source I don't usually go to - Thomas Aquinas.  Those of you who know my Van Tillian leanings can feel free to question my presuppositionalism for reading Aquinas.  But I am currently reading Neuhaus's book As I Lay Dying and he references Aquinas on these matters and Aquinas is quite helpful.  While I would quibble with his remarks that locate happiness in the intellect, his words in "Part 1 of the Second Part, Question 4, Article 5" of the Summa Theologica, are helpful: 

For the soul desires to enjoy God in such a way that the enjoyment also may overflow into the body, as far as possible. And therefore, as long as it enjoys God, without the fellowship of the body, its appetite is at rest in that which it has, in such a way, that it would still wish the body to attain to its share.

Reply to Objection 5. The desire of the separated soul is entirely at rest, as regards the thing desired; since, to wit, it has that which suffices its appetite. But it is not wholly at rest, as regards the desirer, since it does not possess that good in every way that it would wish to possess it. Consequently, after the body has been resumed, Happiness increases not in intensity, but in extent.

In other words, the soul in heaven has no deficiency of joy, but the soul longs to share it's joy with the body when the two are reunited in the resurrection.

Hence, when we die, we really do go to paradise, and to die truly is gain, and our joy is unspeakable even as we await the resurrection, the redemption of our bodies.

Comments

[Jeremy Pierce]

The way I like to explain this to my students is that what exists of you has the fullest extent of happiness in the intermediate state but that there's more of you with greater capacities in the resurrected state, and so the fullest extent of your happiness is the resurrected state has a fullness of a different sort to it. It's not mathematically greater but there's more of you and more ways to appreciate it fully.

[Headless Unicorn Guy]

Well, Aquinas is considered the most brilliant thinker of the entire Middle Ages.

My writing partner (a burned-out country preacher) preached it this way: In the Intermediate State, your soul is in the presence of God, but it's only your Soul. Without your Body (original ver 1.0 or Resurrected ver 2.0) you're still incomplete. People were meant to have bodies; maybe we were to be the interface between the Seen and Unseen.

[Lisa Hoffman]

Very well written and gives a person a lot to think about. Hope your trip to Florida was a good one.....Lisa

[Jeri Tanner]

Hi David,

I'm so happy to have this hope. It seems too good to be true, but it is true. Randy Alcorn's book "Heaven" is great if you haven't read it.

[idaho dui lawyer]

You can't put any better -- "Happiness increases not in intensity, but in extent."