Article 24

In the twenty-fourth article, the question is raised whether hell is in the center or around the center of the earth.

It seems to me nothing ought to be rashly asserted about this especially since Augustine maintained that no one knows where it is. For I do not think that it is in the center of the earth because that is the place to which heavy things are naturally brought. Nor does it seem fitting to say the intention of nature is frustrated, which would follow if heavy things were to not reach the center. And again, if the earth were naturally hollowed out around the center, one would not be able to find a natural cause to explain how the whole weight of the earth is held back from arriving at the center. Now if it is said that this is done by a miraculous divine power, no reason would justify this miracle. Moreover, the preparation of hell, according to a marginal note on Isaiah 30:33 (the valley of hell was prepared from yesterday), was from the beginning of the world. Now in regard to the first arrangement of things, one ought not to consider what God could do but rather what arises from the nature of things (as Augustine says in the second book of On the Literal Interpretation of Genesis). (In S.Th., I, q. 67 a. 4 ad 3, Thomas summarizes Augustine as saying, "in regard to the first arrangement of things, a miracle is not sought, but what is in accordance with nature." The reference is to book 2, chapter 1, which reads, "Nunc enim quemadmodum Deus instituerit naturas rerum, secundum Scripturas ejus nos convenit quaerere; non quid in eis vel ex eis ad miraculum potentiae suae velit operari.") Now Christ is not said to have descended to the lowest parts of the earth but to the lower parts, and what is related to us suffices for the truth of this regardless of how exactly those parts are lower.