Question Two
Whether separated souls speak with one another
It is asked whether separated souls speak with one another, and how.
To this it is answered that speech is twofold, namely exterior and interior.
The first occurs by some sensible sign—for example, by voice or by a gesture with some member of the body, the tongue or a finger. Because these generally will not exist in separated souls until the day of judgment, exterior corporeal speech cannot exist in them until that time.
I said “generally” on account of Christ, the Virgin Mother, and John the Evangelist, who, already glorified in body and soul, are said to be in glory.
Interior speech, however—that is, mental speech, which is the manifestation of the interior word, namely a concept of the mind, through the command of the will—exists in souls.
For separated souls, wherever they are, can order their concepts through the command of the will so that they may make them known to another soul or to several souls. In the same manner in which a teacher, when he wills, orders his concepts in his mind so that he may afterward manifest them to his disciples by his voice, so the soul orders toward another the concepts which it retains in the mind and manifests them to that other through the command of the will.
After the day of judgment, however, souls and saints will speak vocally: through the vehicle of the interior word directed to hearing, namely by voice; and also through a vehicle directed to sight, by gesture. The saints will do so, namely, in praising God, and the damned, among other things, in cursing and blaspheming.
These things are from Thomas in Book IV of the Sentences, distinction 44.