Some have pointed to Revelation 14:9-11 to support their position [regarding eternal punishment]. But that in fact supports Isaiah 66:24 as indicating that it is the means of punishment that are eternal. It is the smoke of their torment that arises for ever and ever, a reminder of the trial by torture that they have faced. ‘And they have no rest day or night’ (or more strictly ‘they are unceasing ones day and night’) is a translation that assumes what it wants to prove. Exactly the same Greek words are used in Revelation 4:8 where they cannot possibly indicate anything but continuing joy. So the real point is the comparison between the two. Both those who worship God and those who worship the Wild Beast do so continually. But clearly the worship of the Wild Beast ceases after the events in Revelation 19:20-21.
This all suggests that we must be very careful before we claim that Scripture teaches eternal conscious punishment. While the fate of the unrighteous is clearly intended to be seen as horrific, it is nowhere spelled out that it is a matter of eternal consciousness. Many would feel that ‘destruction’ must be given its obvious meaning as in the end resulting in the removal from God's fullness, when God will be all in all, of all that offends. Perhaps we should consider that the wisest course is to teach what the Scriptures positively say and leave such matters to Him.
(Of course those who believe in an ‘eternal soul’ that even God cannot destroy will already have made up their minds. They are bound by their doctrine (which is nowhere taught in Scripture). But such a concept may seem blasphemous to many. Can there really be anything that God cannot destroy? If it were so then it would seem (and I say it reverently) that God has then surely ceased to be God).
End of note.
See http://www.studylight.org/commentaries/pet/matthew-10.html
Ha!Ha! I like what he says, and says what everyone who uphold the bible over tradition feels. They are bound by doctrine. God grants immortality to those who will never betray him. So they will never be destroyed, immortal.
ReplyDeleteYeah, I was actually surprised to find these remarks on studylight, because that site is filled with commentaries/resources that continue to advocate the traditional line. Good to see a work that's even dares to question the way most churchgoers think.
ReplyDeleteI don't know who those are who say that not even God can obliterate the soul, but they are certainly not Catholics. Of course, God could annihilate any creature, but He does not do so, and there is no mention of undoing in the Scriptures.
ReplyDeleteRegarding the term "soul's immortality," we must first mention that this term can be misleading. The word death can be adequately used only in the case of humans, not the soul. For this purpose, the terms invincibility, invulnerability, or everlastingness are more apt. Using the term immortality in relation to the soul might give the false impression as if a person doesn't actually die, because the essence of a human being is the soul, which is immortal. The Catholic teaching, however, can be summarized as follows: a person who has died is dead, even though their soul lives. It would be more correct to use a different expression in the above sense, particularly considering that Thomas Aquinas himself often preferred to use the term 'incorruptibility' instead of 'immortality' in relation to the soul.
The aversion, mainly seen on the Protestant side in the new theology, that surrounds the word 'soul', can largely be traced back to the belief, based on certain readings of the Scripture, that the assumption of the separate soul excludes taking seriously the reality of death and the significance of resurrection, and builds on the unfounded belief that it can somehow "cheat" the crisis of death. Well, the examination of Thomas Aquinas' soul doctrine does not support this view, as Thomas does not interpret the immortality of the soul in the Hellenistic sense as if the fact of death would leave the integrity of the human person untouched, and as a result, it would not mean the cessation of life for the whole person in some sense.
To support this, one has to start from the concept of person in Thomas Aquinas: 'persona est rationalis naturae individua substantia', and furthermore, 'subsistens in rationali natura'. The term "individual substance" in the definition excludes that the soul could be considered a person in itself, because the soul, due to its affiliation with the body, is only 'substantia incompleta'. Similarly, the use of the term natura also leads to a similar conclusion, which Thomas uses in the sense of "species-forming difference" (differentia specifica). Accordingly, only that intelligent being can be called a person, which carries its own species, its nature, in its entirety. The soul does not fully contain the characteristic of the human species, because "the soul is part of the essence of the human species," and consequently "it cannot be called an individual substance," or a person. The human 'compositum', as a 'substantia completa', deserves the designation of a person in its entirety. Thus, death results in the cessation of the independent human person, and moreover, in such a way that the remaining separate soul, without the external intervention of God, is incapable of living a life corresponding to its nature on the one hand, and can regain its species-determined human existence only with the help of God in the resurrection. What remains of the person after death, the "extra-natural" separate soul, capable only of receiving dim knowledge, is more akin to the abstract continuity mentioned by Ratzinger, or J. Pieper – which can lay the personal foundation for the resurrection in the light of faith – rather than a kind of substantially complete, independent and active soul, as Plato imagined. Therefore, it would be reckless to conclude that Thomas Aquinas did not take seriously the devastation of death, and he promised some kind of inviolable continuation of human essence.
ReplyDeleteThose views, which fear for the integrity of Christian theology from the concept of a soul that is purely material and indestructible by God, are right. However, Thomas Aquinas did not start from such a soul definition when he claimed the indestructibility of the human soul. The intelligent soul appearing in his conception does indeed have an independent existence separate from the body, but this separation does not endanger the integrity of the human person, at least no more than the independence of the human being endangers the real ontological dependence on God in Thomistic creation theory. The soul separated from the body cannot be considered a complete being in itself in the Platonic sense, as the unity of the form-matter model applied to the human being is not violated by positing the subsistence of the intelligent soul. Nor can one speak of Platonism of the separate soul in the sense that this would relativize the seriousness of death by creating the false belief that the human essence would pass into the immortal soul without much change. We have also established that the soul remaining after death does not represent the unharmed survival of the human person, the human being actually dies in death. The separate soul, incapable of independent action, much more as an abstract personal continuity – as a germ of existence – represents the subject condition of future resurrection.