JOLLYBLOGGER

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.

How Christ Transforms Our Suffering

This is one of the best quotes I have seen on suffering. It's from the great Dutch theologian Geerhardus Vos. One thing I have learned through my recent ordeal is that there is a temptation to try to avoid the the issue and hope they go away, but you just can't do that - you have to face these things squarely.  God has grace for those who face their trials squarely, not those who run from them or try to pretend they aren't there.

And oh btw, I'm ripping this off from Jared Wilson at The Gospel-Driven Church, a blog I highly recommend you put in your rss reader. 

“What the Lord expects from us at such seasons is not to abandon ourselves to unreasoning sorrow, but trustingly to look sorrow in the face, to scan its features, to search for the help and hope, which, as surely as God is our Father, must be there. In such trials there can be no comfort for us so long as we stand outside weeping.

If only we will take the courage to fix our gaze deliberately upon the stern countenance of grief, and enter unafraid into the darkest recesses of our trouble, we shall find the terror gone, because the Lord has been there before us, and, coming out again, has left the place transfigured, making of it by the grace of his resurrection a house of life, the very gate of heaven.”

I Refuse to Be Bored!!

Kottke has a post titled "Ben Franklin Did Everything" which links to a post in the NY Times on Ben Franklin by Maira Kalman called "Can Do." Here's a quick excerpt:

I don't think he was ever bored. He saw a dirty street and created a sanitation department. He saw a house on fire and created a fire department. He saw sick people and founded a hospital. He started our first lending library. He saw people needing an education and founded a university.  He started the American Philosophical Society where men and women shared developments in science.   And then, by the way, he helped create and run the country.  He was a signer of both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.

I love this for the opening line - "I don't think he was ever bored."  Boredom is a decision we make, not something happens to us.  There really is no excuse for being bored.  The "bored" of the world are those who believe it is the job of others to make them happy and keep them entertained.  But as far as I am concerned "boredom" is simply laziness in all its forms and is simply driven by the decision to not pay attention. 

I am not an inventor as Franklin was and I don't think you have to be to escape boredom.  But you can be a learner.  A learner is never bored, an inquisitive person who pays attention to the world and people around him can always find something to engage his attention.

The experience of "boredom" says far more about the one claiming to be bored than about the speaker, the event or whatever the alleged cause of the boredom.