Question Four
On the vision of the damned before and after the judgment
It is asked whether the souls of the damned see God, the angels, the blessed, and their glory before and after the judgment.
To this it is answered as follows: until the day of judgment, the souls of the damned will see the souls of the blessed and their glory universally and not particularly. For they will see them in great and inestimable glory, but not in equal measure. This sight is by way of argumentation and cognition rather than vision.
It is as when poor persons outside the house of those feasting think about their delights, but do not know particularly what they eat.
They do not rejoice in a sight of this kind but are saddened, both on account of envy of another’s happiness and on account of the absence of their own beatitude which they themselves lost. Concerning them Wisdom 5 says: “Seeing, they shall be troubled,” and so forth.
After the judgment, however, their thought will be so deflected toward their own punishments that they will not be able to think about the glory of the saints.
These things are from the Master of the Sentences at the end of Book IV, distinction 50.
Saint Thomas, however, says that after the day of judgment the damned will be deprived altogether of the sight of the blessed.
Nevertheless, their punishment will not be diminished by this, but will be increased, because they will possess the memory of the glory of the blessed which they saw at the judgment or before the judgment, and this will be a torment to them.
But they will be afflicted still further in this: they will see that they are judged unworthy even to see the glory which the saints merited to possess.
These things are from Thomas in the place cited above.