Objection 1: It would seem that places are not appointed to receive souls after death. For as Boethius says (Hebdonads): wise men are agreed that incorporeal things are not in a place, and this agrees with the words of Augustine (On the Literal Meaning of Genesis 12.32): we can answer without hesitation that the soul is not conveyed to corporeal places except with a body, or that it is not conveyed locally. Now the soul separated from the body is without a body, as Augustine says in the same place (On the Literal Meaning of Genesis 12.32). Therefore, it is absurd to assign any places for the reception of souls.

Obj. 2: Further, whatever has a definite place has more in common with that place than with any other. Now separated souls, like certain other spiritual substances, are indifferent to all places; for it cannot be said that they agree with certain bodies, and differ from others, since they are utterly removed from all corporeal conditions. Therefore, places should not be assigned for their reception.

Obj. 3: Further, nothing is assigned to separated souls after death except what conduces to their punishment or to their reward. But a corporeal place cannot conduce to their punishment or reward, since they receive nothing from bodies. Therefore, definite places should not be assigned to receive them.

On the contrary, The empyrean heaven is a corporeal place, and yet as soon as it was made it was filled with the holy angels, as Bede says (Hexaemeron). Since, then, angels, even as separated souls, are incorporeal, it would seem that some place should also be assigned to receive separated souls.

Further, This appears from Gregory’s statement (Dialogues 4) that souls after death are conveyed to various corporeal places, as in the case of Paschasius whom Germanus, Bishop of Capua, found at the baths, and of the soul of King Theodoric, which he asserts to have been conveyed to hell. Therefore, after death souls have certain places for their reception.

I answer that, Although spiritual substances do not depend on a body in respect of their being, nevertheless the corporeal world is governed by God by means of the spiritual world, as asserted by Augustine (On the Trinity 3.4) and Gregory (Dialogues 4.6). Hence it is that there is a certain fittingness by way of congruity of spiritual substances to corporeal substances, in that the more noble bodies are adapted to the more noble substances: wherefore also the philosophers held that the order of separate substances is according to the order of movables. And though after death souls have no bodies assigned to them of which they are the forms or determinate motors, nevertheless certain corporeal places are appointed to them by way of congruity in reference to their degree of nobility (in which they are as though in a place, after the manner in which incorporeal things can be in a place), according as they more or less approach to the first substance (to which the highest place it fittingly assigned), namely God, whose throne the Scriptures proclaim heaven to be. (Cf. Ps 102:19; Isa 66:1) Wherefore we hold that those souls that have a perfect share of divinity are in heaven, and that those souls that are deprived of that share are assigned to a contrary place.

Reply Obj. 1: Incorporeal things are not in place after a manner known and familiar to us, in which way we say that bodies are properly in place; but they are in place after a manner befitting spiritual substances, a manner that cannot be fully manifest to us.

Reply Obj. 2: Things have something in common with or a likeness to one another in two ways. First, by sharing a same quality: thus hot things have something in common. Incorporeal things can have nothing in common with corporeal things in this way. Second, by a kind of proportionateness, by reason of which the Scriptures apply the corporeal world to the spiritual metaphorically. Thus the Scriptures speak of God as the sun, because he is the principle of spiritual life, as the sun is of corporeal life. In this way certain souls have more in common with certain places: for instance, souls that are spiritually enlightened, with luminous bodies, and souls that are plunged in darkness by sin, with dark places.

Reply Obj. 3: The separated soul receives nothing directly from corporeal places in the same way as bodies which are maintained by their respective places: yet these same souls, through knowing themselves to be appointed to such places, gather joy or sorrow therefrom; and thus their place conduces to their punishment or reward.