Question Eight
Whether the fire of hell is corporeal, similitudinary, or imaginary
It is asked whether the fire of hell is corporeal, similitudinary, or imaginary.
To this it is answered thus: Avicenna, in Book IX of his Metaphysics, denying the burning of bodies after the judgment because he does not admit the resurrection of the flesh, and seeing that a spirit cannot naturally suffer from corporeal fire, said for this reason that the fire of hell was not corporeal but imaginary. Thus the souls of the wicked after death are said to be burned by fire because they imagine that they are being tormented, apprehending fire under the aspect of something unsuitable.
And there he gives the example of a dreamer who, from the phantasmal apprehension of something unsuitable in sleep, is sometimes tormented more than he would have been by the presence of the same thing while awake. But this is false and erroneous, because imagination is a certain power that uses a corporeal organ. Hence it cannot be that such imaginings occur in a soul separated from the body as they do in the soul of one who dreams.
Therefore he said that if that fire is not imaginary, it is certainly similitudinary. In this way souls are understood to burn in fire and to be afflicted spiritually by stenches, just as they are said to be gladdened - namely, to laugh or to be refreshed - things that are not understood to occur in any corporeal thing, but in the spirit alone.
And if someone should say, “Why, then, are the spiritual delights and punishments of the blessed and of the wicked demonstrated and depicted corporeally?” Avicenna answers that spiritual sadness and delight are very little known, and human beings are moved better toward love or fear by corporeal things than by spiritual things.
But since this too is false, it must therefore be said that the fire of hell is a true corporeal fire and of the same species as that which we see. This is proved by reason and by authority.
First, by reason, thus: nothing corporeal can fittingly be applied to a body as punishment except something corporeal. But the punishment of the damned will not be only the punishment of loss and the privation of the divine vision, which corresponds to the aversion that existed in mortal sin; there will also be corporeal punishment of sense, which corresponds to conversion toward a changeable good. Corporeal punishment, however, is inflicted through bodies. Therefore the fire is corporeal.
Second, this is also proved by the authority of the Philosopher in Book I of the Topics, who says that every water is the same in species as every other water. Therefore, by the same reasoning, every fire is the same in species as every other fire.
Third, it is proved by the authority of Gregory in Book IV of the Dialogues and of Augustine, who say that the souls of the damned are afflicted by corporeal fire.
These things are from Thomas on the Sentences, distinction 44.
Others nevertheless say, as Scotus recounts in Book IV, that a certain supernatural disposition is given to spirits and souls because of the demerit of sin, and through it they are subjected to a corporeal agent so that they can suffer from it. Scotus, however, disproves this, and rightly.