Chapter 89 — The quality of the bodies in the resurrection as regards the damned

From these things, we now can rationally consider what will be the condition of the bodies of the damned in the resurrection.

For those bodies will needs be proportionate to the souls of those about to be condemned. Now the souls of the wicked have a good nature, since it was created by God; but their will is disordered, and turned away from its proper end. Therefore, their bodies will be restored to integrity in whatever belongs to their nature, since they will rise again of a perfect age, without any diminution of members, and without any defect or corruption occasioned by the erring or weakness of nature. Hence the Apostle says: The dead will be raised imperishable (1 Cor 15:52), which evidently refers to all, both good and wicked, as the context shows.

Since, however, their souls will be turned away from God and deprived of their proper end as to the will, their bodies will not be spiritual, and altogether subject to the spirit, but will be carnal in their affections.

Nor will their bodies be agile, as obeying the soul without difficulty, but will be heavy and unwieldy. In a way, they will be insupportable to their souls, even as their souls will be averted from God by disobedience.

They will also remain passible as now, or even more so; yet while being afflicted by sensible things, they will not be corrupted, even as their souls will be tormented by the utterly frustrated desire for happiness.

Moreover, their bodies will be impervious to light, and darksome, even as their souls will be strangers to the light of divine knowledge. Therefore, the Apostle says: We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed (1 Cor 15:51), because the good alone will be changed unto glory, but the bodies of the wicked will rise again without glory.

Someone might deem it impossible for the bodies of the wicked to be passible without being also corruptible, since excess of passion causes loss of substance. (Aristotle, Topics, ch. 6.) Thus if a body remains long in the fire, it is at length consumed, and if pain be too intense, the soul quits the body. But all this postulates the changeableness of matter from one form to another. Now, after the resurrection, the human body both of the good and the wicked will not be changeable from one form to another, since in both cases it will be completely perfected in its natural being by the soul. Therefore, it will no longer be possible for this form to be removed from this body and for another form to take its place, because the divine power will completely subject the body to the soul. Hence the potency of prime matter to all forms will remain in the human body, restrained, as it were, by the power of the soul from the possibility of being actuated by another form.

Since, however, the bodies of the damned will not be wholly subject to their souls in respect of certain conditions, they will suffer pain from the antagonism of sensible objects: they will suffer from the material fire inasmuch as the quality of fire, by reason of its predominance, counteracts the equilibrium of the humors and the harmony connatural to the senses, although it cannot destroy them altogether. And yet this pain will be unable to separate the soul from the body, because the body is under the necessity of remaining forever under the same form.

Moreover, just as the bodies of the blessed will be raised above the heavenly bodies through being renewed unto glory, so in due proportion the bodies of the damned will be consigned to the nether regions, a place of darkness and torment. Hence it is said: Let death come upon them; let them go down to hell alive (Ps 55:15[54:16]); and: The devil who had deceived them was thrown into the lake of fire and brimstone where the beast and the false prophet were, and they will be tormented day and night forever and ever (Rev 20:10).