Question Nine
Whether the particular judgment is conducted by Christ or by an angel
It is asked whether the particular judgment of the soul departing from the body is conducted by Christ corporeally, or by the guardian angels of souls.
To this it is answered that the judgment in which the soul is judged to punishment or joy after death is twofold. The first is particular, so called for four reasons.
First, because it is not universally of all. Second, because it is not of whole human beings, but only of their parts. Third, because in it the soul is judged with respect to the merits or demerits which are within it, or of which it according to itself was the cause or origin. Fourth, because it is not then condemned to the whole punishment of hell which the human being merited, but to a lesser punishment than it will have after the general judgment. Hence even the demons, as Augustine appears to maintain, do not now have punishments as great as they will have after the judgment.
And with regard to this particular judgment, certain persons say that Christ corporeally, according to his humanity, presides over each soul immediately as it departs, according to Acts 10: “He it is who was appointed judge of the living and the dead.” And John 5: “The Father has given all judgment to the Son.”
But it does not seem readily credible that Christ should corporeally descend from heaven as often as any human being dies throughout the whole world. For if it were so, then he would descend innumerable times to innumerable places of the lower world in every hour - indeed, in every particle of an hour - because innumerable human beings die within the same small interval throughout the whole world, especially when a pestilence similarly rages in diverse and most distant regions, as often happens.
For this reason it would also seem to follow that Christ would descend corporeally and circumscriptively many times simultaneously and at once to diverse places of the lower world. For it can indeed happen that the same numerical instant is the first instant of the non-being of a thousand human beings dying simultaneously in diverse places.
For this reason it appears more probable that Christ does not descend corporeally to the particular judgment of each soul, but is truthfully said to judge them through angels whom he sends to the dying, so that they may carry out the judgment with the proceedings and sentences entrusted to them by Christ, the principal judge, who alone fully knows the qualities of those to be judged.
The angel, therefore, according to the doctors, who is deputed to each soul and frequently or always stands by it, who knows the life, merits, and demerits of the person whom he guarded, and knows by virtue of his office when, how, and where the human being entrusted to him has died, is given by Christ and constituted judge of the soul which is to be separated from the body. He gathers it once separated and does not permit it to wander errantly here and there after death, but conducts it either to the joys of paradise, to the punishments of purgatory, or to those of hell.
In the common and universal judgment, however, Christ, descending corporeally from heaven, will preside as judge and will himself judge all judicially, because, as has been said, he it is who was appointed judge of the living and the dead - namely, in the common and universal judgment. These things are from Henry of Hesse, On Genesis.