Lecture 18: Souls after Death
Spirit, but the Son died. For three days the eternal Son of God, who is God,
is united to a dead man. Hence it is true to say that for three days God was a
dead man. Since death means separation of soul and body, the immortal Son
of God was united both to Jesus’s corpse in the tomb and to his separated
soul in the place of the dead.“The harrowing of hell” means Jesus’s soul descended to the underworld to
rescue all who believed in him. Christian tradition understood “the bosom of
Abraham” to be a place in the underworld for those who believed in Christ
before his resurrection. This place of blessedness, called “the limbo of the
fathers” was not heaven and did not include the beati¿ c vision. According to
Ephesians, Jesus descended into this hell to “bring
captivity captive,” which is to say, he brought the
souls there into heaven. Thus arose the traditional
picture of Christ opening the gates of heaven when
he ascended; for no one entered heaven until after
he won redemption on the cross.The concept of resurrected bodies was elaborated
to harmonize with the belief that their ultimate
destiny was heaven. A key text was Jesus saying
that after the resurrection no one gets married, for
they are like the angels in heaven. They are like the
angels because, having eternal life, they cannot die anymore. Jesus says they
become like the angels in heaven, neither marrying nor given in marriage.
Angels are a different kind of creature from humans, having no mothers or
fathers, no birth, and no experience of death.Medieval theologians in the West associated four qualities with glori¿ ed
bodies after the resurrection. As Paul said, they possess impassibility, which
is to say, they are no longer capable of suffering any kind of harm. They
possess clarity, which is to say they radiate a glorious light. They also
possess subtlety, which means they can penetrate another body like ¿ re or
air. Finally, they possess agility, which means they can move to whatever
place they wish to be, nearly instantaneously.The concept of
resurrected bodies
was elaborated to
harmonize with
the belief that their
ultimate destiny
was heaven.