Question Four: On the Qualities of Beatitude

S. Th. I-II, q. 4, and q. 5, a. 4.

The qualities of beatitude, which necessarily follow from its very essence, are distinguished as three in the soul, namely, supreme delight or joy, impeccability, and unlosableness; besides, a perfect body seems to be required, adapted to the perfect state of the soul, which therefore must be raised by God.

36. Thesis I. Supreme delight, or ineffable joy, which supposes and includes love, necessarily follows from the essence of beatitude.

This is clear from the Council of Vienne (a. 5) and from Benedict XII: they declare that in beatitude there are the vision and fruition of God.

For by beatitude man attains perfect knowledge of the highest truth and possession of the highest goodness, and understands that nothing is better for him. Hence the will is borne toward this with all its powers in the highest degree, and therefore by loving, it rejoices in that highest good and rests in it.

And indeed he necessarily loves and rejoices, so that he cannot not love nor rejoice. Thus we speak against the Scotists. For the intellect, with the highest evidence, proposes God as the highest good, supremely lovable, and the love of Him as the embrace and fruition of infinite good; nor can it represent otherwise, because it is immune from error, so that there cannot appear even a shadow of evil or of what is unsuitable or impeding a greater good in God and the fruition of God. Indeed, the intellect cannot fail to think of this. But the will is essentially an appetite following the intellect. Hence necessarily and at every moment it necessarily loves the highest good and rejoices in its possession. - In other words, the blessed one necessarily and without interruption sees his beatitude to consist in God, namely, the necessary connection of this object, God, with his beatitude. But no one can will not to be blessed. Therefore the blessed one necessarily wills God, and loves and rejoices.

This the Scriptures declare (John XVI, 22; Mt. V, 12; Rom. VIII, 18), and by various metaphors of satiety, inebriation, and a torrent of pleasures (Ps. XXXV, 9; XVI, 15), so that every evil, pain, and sadness is taken away from the blessed (Apoc. VII, 16-17; XXI, 4), and they possess the kingdom (Apoc. XXII, 5; Mt. V, 3, 10).

Thus contemplation of the highest truth, God, is the root of all things required for happiness (Boethius, On the Consolation, book 3; St. Thomas, Contra Gentiles III, 63; Goudin, Philosophy, part 3, q. 1, a. 3, c. 3): for excellently it grants a) the sufficiency which riches promise, for God is possessed, who alone suffices, and truth is perfectly known as intellectual nature desires; b) the joy which delights promise, because contemplation of truth is the one pleasure of the mind, and greater than all pleasures by as much as it is more spiritual and purer (without mixture of sadness and solicitude); c) the celebrity which reputation promises, because it makes man distinguished before God and intellectual creatures; d) the reverence which wisdom promises, for he is supremely wise who perfectly contemplates the highest truth and is joined to God; e) security from evils and in goods, which power promises, because that highest contemplation is eternal and unlosable, and most closely joins one to God, in whom is every good and to whom no evil can approach.

37. Observation. - The delight which accompanies beatitude is caused by the fact that the appetite rests in the good possessed; nevertheless it is not principal in beatitude, but vision is more excellent than delight, both because cause is more excellent than effect, and because delight is on account of operation and not conversely. For delight consists in a certain quieting of the will; but that the will is quieted in something is only on account of the goodness of that in which it is quieted. Therefore if the will is quieted in operation, it does this on account of the goodness of the operation, and seeks delight in the operation because the operation is its good. And thus the more principal good is the very operation in which the will is quieted, rather than the quieting of the will in it.

38. Thesis II. From beatitude there also follows impeccability, or rectitude of the will.

This is of faith from Benedict XII, and is indicated by the Apostle saying that charity never falls away in the other life (I Cor. XIII, 8); hence this is called an undefiled inheritance (I Pet. I, 4). - It is proved:

1. Sin is the greatest evil; but this is excluded while possession of the highest good stands.

2. Sin supposes error or inconsideration: for the will wills nothing except under the aspect of good; therefore for sin it is required that the intellect represent some evil under the appearance of good, or fail to attend to something to which it ought to attend. From this it happens that it proposes to the will something to be willed here and now, or to be willed in this way, which was not to be willed. But error or inconsideration, as an intellectual evil, cannot be admitted in the state of the highest good. Therefore.

1. We say this because some assert that not every sin is from error, but that it can arise from mere inconsideration. The question seems to be about words: for although it does not always arise from speculative error or from explicit practical error, nevertheless there always seems to be supposed and implicitly included an erroneous practical judgment, namely, that it is good to act so inconsiderately without due consideration.

3. If the blessed could sin, they could lose glory and beatitude, although these cannot be taken away from them, as will be said in the following thesis.

This impeccability arises from within, as the Thomists explain against Scotus:

a) From the contemplation of God. Man necessarily wills the ultimate end or beatitude in the abstract, and cannot will anything except in order to the ultimate end or happiness. But the blessed one unceasingly and necessarily and always sees that God is the highest good and perfect beatitude. Therefore he cannot will anything except what is in order to God. But sin is something not ordered to God. Therefore the blessed one cannot sin (I, q. 62, a. 8 and ad 3; I-II, q. 4, a. 4).

Or also: the intellect, contemplating God, clearly sees that God and His will are the highest and every good, necessarily to be loved; and therefore that nothing outside God is good if it is against Him or is not ordered to Him. Whence sin, which is against the will of God, cannot appear good to it. But man cannot will anything except under the aspect of good. Therefore the blessed one cannot will sin.

1. "To whomsoever what he has suffices, he does not seek something else outside it. But whoever is blessed, that in which true beatitude consists suffices him; otherwise his desire would not be fulfilled. Therefore whoever is blessed seeks nothing else which does not pertain to that in which true beatitude consists. But no one has a perverse will except through this, that he wills something which is repugnant to that in which true beatitude consists. Therefore the will of no blessed one can be changed into evil." C. Gent. IV, 92.

b) From the love of the blessed. By beatific love man is converted by a continuous act and without interruption to God as ultimate end. But through sin man is turned away from God, the ultimate end, or at least deflects from Him. But actual aversion and defection from God cannot stand at the same time with the actual conversion and adherence which excludes it. Therefore beatific love by a continuous act excludes sin (Contra Gentiles IV, 92).

2. "It cannot be at the same time that he is turned away from the end and enjoys the end." Ibid.

39. Thesis III. Beatitude is unlosable and eternal (q. 5, a. 4; Contra Gentiles III, 62).

Faith teaches this, as is clear from the Creeds, and from the Fourth Lateran Council, chapter 1, and from Benedict XII, and the Scriptures clearly indicate it in many places (Mt. XXV, 46; VI, 20; John X, 28; I Thess. IV, 17; II Cor. IV, 17; Apoc. III, 12); hence beatitude is called an unfading and incorruptible inheritance (I Pet. I, 4), and an incorrupt crown (I Cor. IX, 25). And indeed:

Beatitude must exclude every evil, which it will not do unless it is perpetual. For the blessed one either would know that his state is not perpetual, and then he would be affected by the greatest evil of sadness and pain; or he would not know, and then either he would err by persuading himself that it is perpetual, and this would be the most grave evil of error; or he would doubt and greatly fear lest he be deprived of so great a good, and this fear of losing it is also an evil. Therefore beatitude necessarily must be perpetual.

But it is so from within, as the Thomists hold against Scotus:

1. From the nature of beatitude in common. Perfect beatitude, from its nature (and therefore from within), answers to the natural desire of man which it must quiet. But man, because he will always exist and naturally desires to retain the good and to obtain security of retaining it, desires beatitude not limited by time but circumscribed by no limits. Therefore beatitude, in order to answer to that desire, from its nature must be perpetual.

2. From the nature of supernatural beatitude. There is given no cause by which the beatific vision can be lost. Therefore of itself it is unlosable. For it cannot cease:

a) on the part of the subject seeing; because, clearly seeing God to be the highest good, he cannot for that reason will to cease from that vision, since he perceives no evil or inconvenience in it, just as neither can he will not to be blessed;

b) on the part of a created cause; because the immediate vision of God is above every created cause, which therefore cannot act upon it nor take it away or impede it;

c) on the part of the object, God; because God always bears Himself in the same way and is not removed from us except insofar as we are removed from Him. For the subtraction of beatitude is a punishment, whence it cannot be inflicted by God as just judge except on account of fault; but fault cannot be in the blessed one, since he is impeccable.

Specifically, the light of glory, as being a habit in itself permanent and permanently given by God, cannot cease: a) neither through corruption of itself, since it is a simple quality; b) nor through corruption of the subject, since that is wholly immaterial, wherefore the light is received incorruptibly according to the condition of the recipient and of the giver; c) nor through a contrary disposition, which would be nothing but sin, by which one would voluntarily turn himself away from God; but sin is impossible, because he who sees God necessarily loves Him.

40. Thesis IV. The body is in no way required for the very essence of beatitude, even physical essence; nevertheless it is required for the integrity and perfection, or for the well-being, of it.

The first part is of faith from Benedict XII and from the Council of Florence, and is clear from the Apostle, II Cor. V, 6-8: While we are in the body we are away from the Lord: for we walk by faith, and not by sight. But we are confident, and have the will to be away from the body and to be present with the Lord. - It is proved:

a) For supernatural beatitude: the intellect, for its operation, does not need the body except on account of sensible images in which it intuits intelligible truth. But God cannot be seen through sensible images. Hence perfect beatitude, which is in the vision of God, does not depend upon the body. And therefore without the body the soul can simply be blessed as to substance.

b) For beatitude in common: the soul is blessed not insofar as it is the form of the body, but according as, being intellectual, it transcends all bodily organs and exercises spiritual operations which from their nature are independent of the body. Therefore, as to the essence of beatitude, it does not need the body (a. 5, ad 1).

The second part, namely, that the body is required for the perfection in every way, or the well-being, of beatitude, in the same way as beauty of body or quickness of genius pertain to the perfection of man although not to his essence, is held by St. Thomas after St. Augustine; Scotus, Suarez, and many more recent authors contradict him.

1. Scotus, in IV, dist. 43, q. 2, and Suarez, in I-II, disp. 15, sect. 2, n. 7, and in III, disp. 44, sect. 7, attack St. Thomas in their usual way; many more recent authors follow them, such as Mierts, De Resurrectione corporum, and De Bie, Philosophia Moralis I, p. 527 sq. Several, such as Ferrariensis, Billot, and Terrien, follow St. Thomas, yet deny that his arguments are strictly demonstrative. The necessity of the resurrection is defended by Athenagoras (second century), De Resurrectione mortuorum, XVIII-XIX; Freppel, Les Apologistes chretiens au IIe siecle; Costa Rosetti, Philosophia Moralis, p. 41 sq.; Mercier, Psychologie, 7th ed., n. 291; Reindstaedler, Elementa Philosophiae.

"For since," says the holy Doctor, a. 5, "operation depends on the nature of the thing, the more perfect the soul will be in its nature, the more perfectly it will have its proper operation in which happiness consists." But the soul with the body is more perfect in its nature, which it has complete. Therefore it is more perfect in its operation and beatitude, which it has complete, insofar as it also extends itself to the body so that the body participates in it in its own mode.

"The soul desires so to enjoy God that the enjoyment itself may also be derived to the body by overflow, as is possible; and therefore, as long as it enjoys God without the body, its appetite so rests in Him that nevertheless it would still will its body to reach to participation in Him" (ad 4). "The desire of the separated soul wholly rests on the part of the appetible, because it has that which suffices for its appetite" (God); "but it does not wholly rest on the part of the one desiring, because it does not possess that good according to every mode in which it would will to possess it. And therefore, when the body is resumed, beatitude increases, not intensively but extensively" (ad 5).

2. There St. Thomas tacitly retracted what he wrote when younger in the Commentary on the Sentences, and what is reported in Supplement, q. 93, a. 1: "the separated soul naturally desires conjunction with the body and on account of this appetite... its operation by which it is borne into God is less intense."

But the body must be perfect: "For since it is natural to the soul to be united to the body, it cannot be that the perfection of the soul exclude its natural perfection; and therefore... for beatitude perfect in every way, there is required a perfect disposition of the body," both "antecedently," lest the body weigh down the soul and thus in some way turn it away from the beatific vision, and "consequently, because from the beatitude of the soul there is an overflow to the body, so that it too may obtain its own perfection" (a. 6).

41. The resurrection of the body is necessary and is demanded by nature itself, whence, says St. Thomas, evident reason favors it (Contra Gentiles IV, 79). - It is proved:

1. Certain men have attempted to turn the master to another sense. Ferrariensis interprets evident reason as probable; Billot and Terrien understand evident reason by way of persuading, but not of demonstrating. But no one calls a probable or persuasive reason evident.

1. From the very nature and immortality of the soul. The immortal soul is naturally united to the body because according to its essence it is the form of the body (Council of Vienne), and therefore it naturally knows only with the concurrence of imagination, and indeed not pure intelligibles but intelligibles in sense. Therefore it is contrary to the nature of the soul to be without the body, as is clear from the fact that our soul vehemently recoils from death. But nothing which is contrary to nature can be perpetual, at least in those who attain the end. Therefore the soul will not perpetually be without the body. But it remains perpetually because it is immortal. Therefore it must be joined again to the body.

2. Ferrariensis responds that that which is contrary to nature is perpetual if there does not remain in nature a natural active principle for removing it. But this is not to the point, because it is against the wise providence of the author of nature to destine something to a perpetual state contrary to nature. Whence God, as author of nature, owes it to Himself to remove such a state, and is bound to restore the body to the blessed, just as He also must infuse ideas into the separated soul so that it may be able to exercise the act of intellection. Likewise it does not stand in the way that, according to nature, the soul desires to be united to a corruptible body, from which separation from the body necessarily follows, as Suarez objects. For the soul is ordered to the body as such, which first is corruptible according to the nature of matter on account of which the soul is created, but in the resurrection is incorruptible because it is produced on account of the incorruptible soul to whose nature it must be conformed.

2. From the end of man, or the natural desire for happiness. There is in us a natural desire for complete happiness. But happiness is the ultimate perfection not of the soul alone, but of the whole man. But the soul separated from the body is in some way imperfect, as every part existing outside the whole is imperfect: for the soul naturally is part of human nature. Furthermore, it cannot have the complete beatitude of man. Therefore man cannot attain complete happiness unless the soul is again united to the body.

1. Let it not be said with Ferrariensis that it is an inefficacious desire or a mere velleity, because the soul knows that it cannot be united to the body on account of the defect of a natural active principle which is capable of effecting this; or with Suarez, that it is a conditioned desire, because man does not desire to attain his happiness otherwise than while he exists, whence for the body he desires temporal beatitude in this life, eternal beatitude for the soul alone. - Response: the desire is absolute and most efficacious because it is from the soul's innate appetite by which it wills to be with the body, because the soul is essentially a part, and from the very essence of the soul it is that it be a form and be destined for union with the body. But an innate appetite, because it is from the inclination of nature, and consequently implanted by the very Creator of nature, cannot be in vain, because it would be against infinite wisdom to give to something an inclination never to be satiated.

3. From fitting retribution. "By divine Providence punishment is owed to sinners and reward to those acting well. In this life men composed of soul and body sin or act rightly. Therefore reward or punishment is owed to men both according to soul and according to body. But it is manifest that in this life they cannot attain the reward of ultimate happiness... often also sins are not punished in this life. Therefore it is necessary to posit a renewed conjunction of soul to body, so that man may be rewarded and punished in body and soul."

Namely, the body is the partner and instrument of the soul, not merely passive and external, which would not participate morality, since it is a part of the human composite, but truly animated and a participant in its works, whether good or evil. For operation is not of the soul alone but of the whole composite; the soul does not act, nor the body, but the man himself as such according to soul and according to body does good and evil. But to the one operating the wage of the work is owed. Therefore reward or punishment is owed to men, both according to soul and according to body. And therefore the conjunction of soul to body will be repeated, so that man may receive reward and be punished in body and in soul.

The last argument is valid also for sinners, but is one of fittingness alone, because the works of the body per se are not good or evil, but only from communication with the will. But the two former arguments seem compelling to us, at least for the resurrection of the just; for as regards the impious, perhaps it could be said that God punishes them by the privation of their body. And although per se they are valid for natural beatitude, they also prove for supernatural beatitude or the beatific vision, because the supernatural order does not destroy the natural order but perfects it.

But the adversaries object to them that the soul has a twofold mode of being, equally perfect, and a twofold mode of operating; indeed that it has a more perfect natural knowledge of God when it is separated from the body, whence it prefers separation. - We deny this: for then it is not understood why the soul so vehemently seeks to be with the body and recoils from separation; nor is it understood why the soul, even in this life, cannot know without dependence upon the body. For if the body contributed nothing to the perfection of the human intellect, union with it would be against the nature of the soul. Likewise the mode of understanding of the separated soul, although absolutely and in itself more perfect, nevertheless is not more perfect relatively to the soul, but less perfect for it, because it is not proportioned to its imperfection. Cf. I, q. 84, a. 7; q. 89, a. 1.

42. Observations.

1. The fact of the resurrection is not a mystery properly so called, since reason sees its possibility and even its necessity; but the mode in which the resurrection is made, in a glorious body, is a mystery which reason is able neither to discover nor to understand. Concerning this see dogmatic theology in the treatise on the Last Things.

2. St. Thomas notes, in articles 7 and 8, that external goods, which serve for the support and propagation of animal life, are in no way required for beatitude. For the beatific vision will be either in the soul without the body, or in the soul united to a body not animal and corruptible, but incorruptible and spiritualized, as befits heavenly life. Nevertheless the society of friends is required, not of necessity for the essence of beatitude, because man has the whole fullness of his perfection in God, but for the perfection in every way or well-being of beatitude, because man is a social being, and therefore it is fitting that the blessed see one another and rejoice concerning their society.