Summa Theologiae I, Q.89, Articles 5-8: The Separated Soul's Knowledge of Distant Things and the Living

Orientation #

He opens on the tail of a saint’s saying about praising God “face to face” versus “behind a veil” (start of tape, unresolved), then says “the next four articles” are for this time: articles 5–8 of Question 89. At the end: “So now you know all about the separated soul… until you get to that state.” The previous class covered articles 1–4 of the same question (how the separated soul understands, and its knowledge of angels, natural things and singulars).

The class, in order #

1. Article 5 objections: does the habit of science remain? (“Science is what destroyed”) #

Reads the four objections and sed contra of q. 89 a. 5.

1. Paul (1 Corinthians): “science is destroyed.” Aside: “the Apostle” is an antonomasia for Paul, as “the Philosopher” is for Aristotle; Peter and Paul together are “the apostles.”
2. Some less good people (“like Berquist”) flower in science, better ones lack it; if habits remain, the less good would be more potent in the next life — unfitting.
3. Separated souls know by the inflow of divine light; if acquired science also remained, two forms of one kind would be in one subject. He interjects: “would it be in fact the same kind of science? I don’t think so.”
4. Categories (the “predicaments”): habit is a quality “difficultly moved”; yet sickness corrupts science, and death is the greatest change of all. Sed contra: Jerome (epistle to Paulinus [ed.: ASR “Apollina”]): “we learn on earth the science which remains with us in heaven.”

2. Article 5 body: habit partly in the senses, partly in the understanding (“place of forms”) #

Point: the habit as it is in the understanding remains; as disposed in the inner senses it does not.

1. Avicenna (footnote) placed the habit of science in the inner senses only (imagination, cogitative, memory); then the body destroyed, the whole habit would perish.
2. But science is in the understanding, “the place of forms” (De Anima III), so the habit is partly in the inner senses and partly in the understanding.
3. Reason from the acts: habits are like the acts that acquire them (Ethics II); our acts of understanding here are by turning to images in the inner senses; so a facility is acquired both in the possible understanding and in the lower powers. As the act is chiefly and formally in the understanding and materially/dispositively in the lower powers, so the habit.
   • Example: “my habit of geometry is primarily in my reason,” but picturing triangles and circles in imagination “cooperates” — a disposition for science; it is the reason that understands what a triangle is.
4. Two ways a form is corrupted (On Length and Shortness of Life): as such, by its contrary (hot by cold); by accident, when its subject is corrupted. The understanding is incorruptible (shown above), so no corruption by the subject; and “to an understandable intention nothing is contrary” — “the same knowledge of opposites”: my thought of sickness does not corrupt my thought of health, “it actually helps.”
5. Qualification: this holds especially of simple understanding (what a thing is); in composing, dividing and reasoning, false is contrary to true, so science can be corrupted by a false argument. Aristotle’s two ways of corruption as such: forgetfulness (memory), deception (false argument). Neither has place in the separated soul. He adds: forms are received in the understanding far more stably than anything in the body; if bodily habits are somewhat stable, habits in the mind will be permanent — “but you won’t understand by turning to images.”

3. Article 5 replies (“not about science as regards the very habit”) #

• Ad 1: Paul speaks of the act of knowing, not the habit; proof, “now I know in part.”
• Ad 2: as one less good may be taller in body, so may have a habit of science the better lacks — “of no moment” beside the other prerogatives. Examples: the theologian vs. Mother Teresa; the Pharisee vs. the widow’s mite. She will see God more clearly, and God is “all in all.”
• Ad 3: “Thomas solves like we did” — not two sciences of the same kind: one from turning to images, one flowing directly from God.
• Ad 4: the argument concerns the science on the side of the sense powers, which is lost; not what is in the understanding. Bridge: the next article asks whether the act is the same kind as here.

4. Article 6 objections: does the act remain? (“neither what recalls nor what loves”) #

1. De Anima I: with the body corrupted the soul neither recalls nor loves; to consider what one knew before is to recall.
2. The understandable forms are no more potent in the separated soul; here we can use them only by turning to phantasms — “when I want to understand what a triangle is… I have to form an image.” “That’s an interesting objection.”
3. Ethics II: habits render acts like those that acquired them. Aristotle’s paradox: we become just by doing just things — how, if doing just things means we are already just? Answer: before the habit there is struggle and special attention; after, stability and ease. Example: learning piano by playing piano; the practice rooms in his building, a nice piece full of mistakes and repetitions — “that’s where we acquire a habit.” So science acquired by turning to images can cause only such acts, impossible for the separated soul. Sed contra: Luke 16, the rich man in hell told “recordare” — remember you received good things in this life.

5. Article 6 body and replies: same object, different way (“the form of the act, and the other is the way”) #

Distinction: form of the act (from the object, by the form that is a likeness of it) vs. mode of the act (from the power of the agent). Example: that one sees a stone comes from the stone’s form in the eye; that one sees it sharply comes from the seeing power. Since the forms remain (a. 5) but the soul’s state differs, the separated soul understands the same things, “but not in the same way” — not by turning to images but in a way suitable to it.

• Ad 1: Aristotle speaks of recalling as memory in the sensing power, tied to the singular; not memory as in the understanding, the retaining of forms.
• Ad 2: the diverse way comes from the diverse state of the soul, not diverse power of the forms. Example: walking faster in air than water — same muscles, different medium. In the body the soul’s existence is communicated to the body and its operation naturally turns to it; separated, it turns to the immaterial world — “quite a shock… we turn upwards.”
• Ad 3 (returned to after he noticed he skipped it): the acts are alike in species, not always in mode; doing just things but not justly, i.e. pleasantly, causes political justice; with the habit one does the same things pleasantly and free of mistakes (piano again). Asides: purgatory as getting used to it — “like correcting exams,” attention riveted to something beneath your dignity (his father: it doesn’t get easier); demons punished by bodies not by sense pain but by attention bound to what is below them, having refused subjection to what is above; Irving’s story of being bored in an English inn; the worst of hell is boredom (mind not applied to higher things) and loneliness (lack of the friendship that is charity), not sense pain.

6. Article 7: does local distance impede? (“saw Abraham at distance”) #

Objections: (1) Augustine, De cura pro mortuis: the souls of the dead are where they cannot know what happens here, yet know some of it. (2) Augustine, De divinatione daemonum: demons announce things by swiftness of motion, which would help nothing unless distance impeded; the soul is inferior to demons. (3) Distance in time impedes (they don’t know the future), so distance in place should too. Sed contra: Luke 16, the rich man raising his eyes saw Abraham afar off. Aside: today is the Annunciation, read only in Luke; also the feast of the Incarnation, “nine months before Christmas”; the German professor’s brother-in-law: the first baby can come any time, after that it takes nine months. Body: if the separated soul knew singulars by abstracting from sensibles, distance would impede (sensibles acting on the soul, or soul on them, requires a determined distance). But that is impossible: separation of forms from sensibles is by the senses, which remain in root but not in act. The soul knows singulars by the inflow of divine light, “which equally has itself to what is near and what is distant” — “so watch out for me, right? I’m gone.”

• Ad 1: Augustine does not make distance the cause of ignorance; another cause, “as will be said below.”
• Ad 2: Augustine speaks according to the opinion that demons have bodies naturally united, hence sense powers; he recites it rather than asserts it (see City of God XXI). Augustine is not as clear as Dionysius that angels have no body; Thomas is very clear.
• Ad 3: future things are not beings in act, so not knowable in themselves — as a thing is deficient in being, so in knowability; distant things are beings in act. Example: people in Iraq, Rome, Paris exist as much as we do; “my great grandchildren don’t actually exist at all yet.”

7. Article 8 objections and body: natural knowledge of things done here (“separated from the association with the living”) #

Objections: (1) the rich man cares for his five brothers (Luke 16:28); no care without knowledge. (2) The dead appear to the living, asleep or awake, and admonish them — Samuel to Saul (1 Kings 28). (3) They know what is done among themselves; if not among us, distance would be impeding, denied above. Sed contra: Job 14 — he does not know whether his sons are noble or ignoble. Body: by natural knowledge (the topic now) the dead do not know what is done here. Reason from before: the separated soul knows singulars as determined to them — by the vestige (“footprint”) of preceding knowledge, by affection, or by divine ordering. But by divine ordering and their way of being they are separated from the association of the living and joined to that of the spiritual substances, the angels (“whom I would be worshipping as if they were God”). Gregory the Great, Moralia XII: the dead do not know how the living are disposed; as bodily and bodiless things differ in kind, so in knowledge. Augustine, De cura pro mortuis: the dead do not mix among the living. Student: so a soul in purgatory won’t know we pray for it? — “He’s talking about natural knowledge here”; read the whole body. On the blessed, Gregory and Augustine differ: Gregory — those who see the splendor of God cannot be thought ignorant of what is outside (“what does the soul that sees God not know?”); Augustine — even the saints don’t know what the living or their own sons do (gloss on Isaiah 63, “Abraham did not know us”; he was not visited by his mother; the Lord’s promise to Josiah, 4 Kings, not to see the coming evils). But Augustine speaks doubting (“take what has been said as one wishes”), Gregory asserting (“in no way should it be believed”). Thomas follows Gregory: the saints seeing God know all present things done here, being equal to the angels, whom Augustine grants know these. Joined most perfectly to divine justice, they are neither saddened nor involved except as divine justice requires — “contrary to their blessedness to be saddened by the mess down here.” He notes Thomas does not speak explicitly of purgatory here.

8. Article 8 replies (“even if they are ignorant of their status”) #

• Ad 1: the dead can care for the living while ignorant of their state, as we care for the dead by praying without knowing their state. Fr. Steiner to his mother: “I’ll never stop praying for him”; excess prayers are passed on by God to others. But they can know the doings of the living, not by themselves, but through souls who come to them, through angels or demons (“no one trusts those guys”), or by the Spirit of God revealing — all applicable to souls in purgatory (a newly arrived soul tells them; a mass said for them).
• Ad 2: apparitions happen either by special divine dispensation, to be counted among miracles, or by the working of good or bad angels, the dead themselves ignorant — as the living unknowingly appear to others in dreams (Augustine). Aside: people who dreamt of a stranger and met them the next day. Samuel appeared by divine revelation (Ecclesiasticus 46: asleep, he made known to the king the end of his life; cf. saints told “this time next year you’ll die”), or the apparition was procured by demons — if Ecclesiasticus’s authority is not undermined by its absence from the Hebrew canon; “pretty well established now,” called Sirach.
• Ad 3: such ignorance is not from distance but from the said cause. Summary in his words: what is left in my understanding is universal — knowing what a man is tells me nothing of what this man is doing; that needs senses, which I won’t have; so it will be an angel, or God revealing, “some more supernatural knowledge.” Naturally I’ll be turned to the immaterial world; until then “I’ll be still clinging to this body.”

9. Closing question: remembering our past life (“is that how we’ll remember”) #

Student: will we remember our past life only by God infusing it, since we lack senses? Answer: to some extent you know your own habits — the singular immaterial things in you, your reason and will; but that you went to a ball game on such a day, “maybe not”; God could infuse it. Asides: Alzheimer’s — showing Reagan his inauguration; imagining being shown his own wedding pictures; Charlie in the package store not recognizing Dick after twenty years together; husbands and wives not knowing each other. Tape ends mid-sentence.

His words #

• antonomasia; using a common name for one individual: “the Apostle” for Paul, “the Philosopher” for Aristotle
• science; habit of knowledge (scientia) [ed.: science]
• possible understanding; the intellect as receiving forms [ed.: possible intellect]
• understandable forms; species intelligibiles [ed.: intelligible species]
• turning towards images / phantasms; conversio ad phantasmata
• inward senses; imagination, cogitative power, memory
• predicaments; his name for Aristotle’s Categories
• understandable intention; “to an understandable intention nothing is contrary”
• form of the act vs. way/mode of the act; from object vs. from power of the agent
• footprint / vestige; trace of preceding knowledge determining the soul to a singular
• association of the living / of the spiritual substances; the company the separated soul belongs to
• recordare; “remember” (Luke 16)
• omnia in omnibus; “God is all in all” (garbled “omni and omnibus”)

Texts #

Read in class

• Thomas, Summa Theologiae I, q. 89, aa. 5–8, in full with objections and replies Mentioned
• 1 Corinthians (“science is destroyed”; “now I know in part”) (13, inferred)
• Jerome, epistle (to Paulinus, inferred)
• Aristotle, Categories (habit a quality difficultly moved); De Anima III (understanding as place of forms); De Anima I (soul neither recalls nor loves); Nicomachean Ethics II (habits like acts); On Length and Shortness of Life (two ways of corruption)
• Avicenna (footnote: habit in the sense powers)
• Luke 16 (rich man: recordare; saw Abraham; five brothers, v. 28)
• Augustine, De cura pro mortuis gerenda; De divinatione daemonum; City of God XXI
• Dionysius (angels bodiless)
• Job 14; 1 Kings 28 (Samuel and Saul); Ecclesiasticus 46; Isaiah 63 with gloss; 4 Kings (Josiah)
• Gregory the Great, Moralia XII
• Washington Irving, short story (bored in an English inn)

His questions #

• Would infused science and acquired science be two forms of the same kind? No — one is by turning to images, the other flows directly from God.
• Does my thought of sickness corrupt my thought of health? No; it helps it — same knowledge of opposites.
• How can we become just by doing just things, if that means we are already just? Before the habit there is struggle and attention; after, ease and stability (piano).
• If the forms are no more potent, how can the separated soul understand by them? The difference is in the state of the soul, not the forms — walking in air vs. water.
• Are people in Paris more knowable to me than my great-grandchildren? Yes; they are beings in act, the future is not.
• Does a soul in purgatory know we pray for it? Not by natural knowledge; but through arriving souls, angels, demons or God’s revelation it can.
• Do the blessed know what is done here? Following Gregory over a doubting Augustine: yes, seeing God, though not saddened.
• Will we remember our past life after death? Our own habits, reason and will, yes; particular events like a ball game, maybe not, unless God infuses it.