Chapter 184 — That the aforesaid things belong also to other spiritual substances

In his intellectual nature man resembles the angels, who are capable of sin, as is man. We spoke of this above. Hence all that has been set forth about the punishment or glory of souls should be understood also of the glory of good angels and the punishment of bad angels. Men and angels exhibit only one point of difference in this regard: the wills of human souls receive confirmation in good or obstinacy in evil when they are separated from their bodies, as was said above; whereas angels were immediately made blessed or eternally wretched as soon as, with a deliberate will, they fixed either upon God or some created good as their end. The variability found in human souls can be accounted for not only by freedom of will, but also by changeableness of body; but in the angels such variability comes from the freedom of will alone. And so angels achieve unchangeability at the very first choice they make; but souls are not rendered immutable until they leave their bodies.

To express the reward of the good, we say in the Creed: I believe . . . in life eternal. This life is to be understood as eternal not only because of its duration, but even more on account of the enjoyment of eternity. But because in this connection there are proposed for our belief many other truths that concern the punishments of the damned and the final state of the world, the Creed of the Fathers sums up all these things where it says: the life of the world to come. For the world to come encompasses all such things.

Original justice and the fall