"If the vision of God is the fulfillment of the soul, and the soul the life of the body, then by implication death cannot be Man's end. Moreover, the body really ought not to die. A philosopher would have to conclude that, though the body does die, the soul lives forever and that this is not a natural condition, because the perpetual division of the dead body and the immortally living soul would be like a violent condition. In us, the body and the soul go together. According to Aristotle, anti-natural or violent conditions cannot exist forever. Therefore, the ancient philosophers were brought by these considerations to a box canyon."
" (Adam and Eve did not have the necessity of dying before the Fall.) St. Thomas says about them, "Seneca and the other philosophers considered human nature according to those principles that belong to it (human nature) only from the principles of nature. They did not know about the state of the first condition of original innocence, which is held only by faith. Therefore, they only spoke about death as a natural defect, although this natural defect for us is a punishment in some way.
"Man, in fact was originally created correctly. He had communion and intimacy with God. He had no sin, and therefore he did not suffer from the necessity of dying. In other words, a condition of unity and integrity in the human character was only as permanent as the state of grace. God subjected Man to a beautiful union of love in which God's grace and life permeated all of the powers of Man and gave Man the gift of being able to control his own body. This power was lost when sin entered the world. Sin, which is death of the soul leads to the necessity of the death of the body."
" For inflicting on an unrepentant evildoer a punishment proportionate to his offense is a good thing, and the damned are precisely those who forever keep doing evil and refuse to repent, and thus merit perpetual punishment. Hence God, in his goodness, inflicts that punishment. " (boldface italics added)
"And that is the essence of punishment: restoring the teleological relationship, ordained by nature, between evil behavior on the one hand and the unpleasantness or pain that is its proper accident on the other. Punishing evil is thus like healing a wound, restoring a damaged painting, or fixing a leak. It is a matter of repairing things, putting things back in order, making them how they are supposed to be. And given the essentialist and teleological metaphysics that underlies the Thomistic natural law conception of morality, that cannot fail to be a good thing."
"Suppose further, however, that this person perpetually refuses to stop willing to do X. Then the unpleasantness he ought to be made to feel must also be perpetual. But that is the situation of the person whose will is, upon death, fixed on evil, as described in my previous post on the subject of hell. Since such a person perpetually wills evil, God ensures that he perpetually suffers the pain or unpleasantness that ought to be associated with that evil. If, for example, this person perpetually wills X and willing X ought to be associated with shame and contempt, God ensures that the person perpetually suffers shame and contempt."
"There is also the related liberal tendency to see punishment as in any case essentially a means of preserving social order, and perhaps also as a kind of therapy by which criminals can be made to reform, rather than as a way of making sure people get their just deserts in some metaphysical sense. Retribution, that is to say, tends to drop out of the liberal account of punishment in favor of a focus on protection, deterrence, and rehabilitation alone. Unsurprisingly, then, everlasting punishment seems pointless, given what the liberal regards as the point of punishment. For why punish if there is no hope of rehabilitation nor any need to protect others or deter anyone?"
"Traditional natural law theory... holds that securing retributive justice is not only a legitimate purpose of punishment, but is the primary purpose of punishment."
"And that is the essence of punishment: restoring the teleological relationship, ordained by nature, between evil behavior on the one hand and the unpleasantness or pain that is its proper accident on the other. Punishing evil is thus like healing a wound, restoring a damaged painting, or fixing a leak. It is a matter of repairing things, putting things back in order, making them how they are supposed to be. And given the essentialist and teleological metaphysics that underlies the Thomistic natural law conception of morality, that cannot fail to be a good thing."
"Suppose further, however, that this person perpetually refuses to stop willing to do X. Then the unpleasantness he ought to be made to feel must also be perpetual. But that is the situation of the person whose will is, upon death, fixed on evil, as described in my previous post on the subject of hell. Since such a person perpetually wills evil, God ensures that he perpetually suffers the pain or unpleasantness that ought to be associated with that evil. If, for example, this person perpetually wills X and willing X ought to be associated with shame and contempt, God ensures that the person perpetually suffers shame and contempt."
"There is also the related liberal tendency to see punishment as in any case essentially a means of preserving social order, and perhaps also as a kind of therapy by which criminals can be made to reform, rather than as a way of making sure people get their just deserts in some metaphysical sense. Retribution, that is to say, tends to drop out of the liberal account of punishment in favor of a focus on protection, deterrence, and rehabilitation alone. Unsurprisingly, then, everlasting punishment seems pointless, given what the liberal regards as the point of punishment. For why punish if there is no hope of rehabilitation nor any need to protect others or deter anyone?"
"Traditional natural law theory... holds that securing retributive justice is not only a legitimate purpose of punishment, but is the primary purpose of punishment."
https://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2023/09/aquinas-on-wills-fixity-after-death.html
https://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2016/11/can-schadenfreude-be-virtuous.html
https://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2016/11/can-schadenfreude-be-virtuous.html
"Wherefore in order that the happiness of the saints may be more delightful to them and that they may render more copious thanks to God for it, they are allowed to see perfectly the sufferings of the damned." - TAQ
Excuse me, what??
A comment: "As Aquinas points out, schadenfreude in itself is a form of (illicit) hatred, i.e., a sin." The rejoicing will be in the justice of God.
Excuse me, what??
A comment: "As Aquinas points out, schadenfreude in itself is a form of (illicit) hatred, i.e., a sin." The rejoicing will be in the justice of God.
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