Question Ten
Why the soul alone suffers in Purgatory, although the whole human being commits sins
It is asked why the soul alone suffers purgatorial punishments for sins committed here by the whole human being, while the body discharges none of the punishments after the resurrection.
To this it is answered as follows. Unless the whole human being suffers purgatorial punishments in this life—namely, acts of contrition and penitential afflictions, by which the human being is purged from mortal fault and partly from the punishment to be discharged in the future, and sometimes from all of it—unless, I say, such punishments of the whole human being have preceded, the soul will be purged after death by infernal punishments.
Scripture intimates this allegorically, according to the doctors, in Genesis 3, where it is said that after the fall of the human being a flame was placed between the human being and Paradise. This allegorically intimates that after the fall of the human race no one can arrive at the heavenly Paradise unless he passes through fire.
This is either the fire of tribulation to be sustained in the present life, or the fire of purgation after death, if one has not sufficiently discharged in this life the punishments which one merited by sinning here.
Or, as Thomas says in Book IV, distinction 47, question 6, article 3, the good who will be alive on the day of judgment and in whom something to be purged will be found are purged by both fires: namely, the fire of tribulation and that of Purgatory. Such persons will be purged suddenly by fire.
First, by the fire of tribulation: namely, the terrors and persecutions preceding the judgment.
Second, by the fire of Purgatory, whose place will then be taken by the fire of the conflagration. With respect to its natural power, this fire will act similarly upon the good and the wicked who are found alive, reducing the bodies of both to ashes. Insofar as it acts as an instrument of divine justice, however, it will act upon different persons in different ways with respect to the perception of punishment.
For by the action of the fire the wicked will be reduced to ashes and tormented. The good in whom nothing is to be purged will be reduced to ashes but will feel no pain at all from the fire, just as the youths in the furnace did not, Daniel 3.
The good in whom something to be purged will be found will likewise be reduced to ashes, but they will feel more or less torment of pain from that fire according to the diversity of their merits.
And because these good persons, not yet fully purged, will sustain this punishment voluntarily while still alive, they will be purged more quickly than if they had sustained it in Purgatory. For a punishment voluntarily assumed in this life purges much more and more quickly than a punishment inflicted after death. This is evident in the brief punishment of the martyrs: if anything to be purged is found in them at the time of death, it is immediately removed by the sickle of suffering, as Augustine says.
From this it follows that the words of the Apostle in 1 Corinthians 3, “If anyone’s work burns, he shall suffer loss; but he himself shall be saved, yet so as through fire,” could be understood of the fire of tribulation applied to us in this life, or of the purgatorial fire ordained after this life, or of both fires to be sustained on the day of judgment by the good who must then be purged.
From these things it follows that there are three Purgatories.
The first is in this world, in which human beings are purged by the fire of tribulation.
The second is beneath the earth, in which the souls of human beings who died in charity are purged when they were not sufficiently purged in the first Purgatory.
And the third will be above the earth with respect to the good who must be purged on the day of judgment.
These things are from Thomas in the place cited above and Henry upon Genesis.