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It comes to mind that those who support the limbo of the infants of St. Thomas Aquinas need to wrestle with a key question; it is a question that it would seem the Angelic doctor did not consider.

We must remember there are two judgments: the immediate particular judgement, and the general judgement.

The particular judgement is what we experience immediately upon death. The general judgement is what we experience bodily and at the end of this world with the coming of Christ.

It seems that the Angelic doctor's teaching on limbo takes seriously only one of these judgments: the particular judgement. That is, the intermediate state of the dead before the Resurrection. In the intermediate state of the dead, the damned do experience various degrees, and perhaps KINDS of suffering. However, in the general judgement, ALL the damned share one common suffering, one common KIND of torment, the lake of Fire.

Apocalypse 20: 11-15

11" And I saw a great white throne, and one sitting upon it, from whose face the earth and heaven fled away, and there was no place found for them. 12 And I saw the dead, great and small, standing in the presence of the throne, and the books were opened; and another book was opened, which is the book of life; and the dead were judged by those things which were written in the books, according to their works. 13 And the sea gave up the dead that were in it, and death and hell gave up their dead that were in them; and they were judged every one according to their works. 14 And hell and death were cast into the pool of fire. This is the second death. 15 And whosoever was not found written in the book of life, was cast into the pool of fire."

This is apparent because death itself and Hades, that is, the abode of the dead which is the intermediate state of the dead and the damned, are cast into the lake of fire along with Satan and all those who are already damned.

So we must ask a serious question:

If the souls of the unbaptized infants are forever deprived of the vision of God (Everyone agrees with this), and if Limbo is itself a part of Hell (anyone who has read the Angelic doctor will agree with this) then it is INEVITABLE that those ressurected souls who were once infants who are brought before the general judgement, CANNOT IN ANY WAY escape the common fate of Satan and his angels and all the rest of the damned. Why? Because their names are NOT WRITTEN IN THE BOOK OF LIFE:

That is, they MUST be subject to the eternal and sensible punishment of the lake of fire.

This brings up another point: It would be unjust for God to trade a lighter suffering for infants for a greater one when they have done nothing more to merit a greater suffering.

However, since it is inevitable the infants will be sensibly tormented in fire at the END of the world, it does NOT stand to reason that they deserve to be in anything less NOW. Otherwise, where is the justice of God?

Why would soul of the unbaptized infant get such a rude awakening?

But if LIMBO is in itself debatable (and it is, since there are two other perfectly orthodox explanations) then IT must bow to any inconsistencies in the reasons given for its existence. The primary reason Limbo must be done away with is because it implicitly DENIES the truth of scripture: That ALL the damned are tormented together in fire with the Devil at the end of the world.

NOW we begin to see what St. Augustine was so furious over: It is plain and manifest to all that the damned will be sensibly tormented forever with the Devil. It is also plain that infants are damned, since limbo is a part of Hell. Those in Hell are not written in the book of life.

Now, to grant them natural happiness is to turn away the justice of God: for it makes him out to be a monster who allows the souls of unbaptized infants a gentle ignorance (ignorance is bliss) for a time (until the world's end) only to awaken them to the horror of their condition in the general Resurrection!

This is not justice, and is against the Fathers, the dogmatic teaching of the Church, and scripture. Perhaps now we can understand why the African synod of Carthage condemned any such blessedness and declared that the souls of the unbaptized infants run to the left with the devil. Incidentally, this synod was promulgated by two Popes and two ecuмenical councils.

Remember the Final day.

Hi Greg. Thanks for your patience. I should note that I don't maintain either that your position is condemned, only that my own about no pain other than deprivation of the beatific vision is more amenable to reason and the whole Faith in general, while the topic is open to theological discussion and hasn't been closed by the Magisterium. However, as a matter of fact, what you say of the Angelic Doctor is not strictly accurate. I'll quote some more passages from him that should suffice as a reply to all you have said, respectively.

Original sin is the sin of nature, as stated above. But nature is equally in all. Therefore original sin is too.

There are two things in original sin: one is the privation of original justice; the other is the relation of this privation to the sin of our first parent, from whom it is transmitted to man through his corrupt origin. As to the first, original sin has no degrees, since the gift of original justice is taken away entirely; and privations that remove something entirely, such as death and darkness, cannot be more or less, as stated above. In like manner, neither is this possible, as to the second: since all are related equally to the first principle of our corrupt origin, from which principle original sin takes the nature of guilt; for relations cannot be more or less.

Of all sins original sin is the least, because it is the least voluntary; for it is voluntary not by the will of the person, but only by the will of the origin of our nature.

The limbo of the Fathers and the limbo of children, without any doubt, differ as to the quality of punishment or reward. For children have no hope of the blessed life, as the Fathers in limbo had, in whom, moreover, shone forth the light of faith and grace. But as regards their situation, there is reason to believe that the place of both is the same; except that the limbo of the Fathers is placed higher than the limbo of children, just as we have stated in reference to limbo and hell

The bodies of children will be impassible, not through their being unable in themselves to suffer, but through the lack of an external agent to act upon them: because, after the resurrection, no body will act on another, least of all so as to induce corruption by the action of nature, but there will only be action to the effect of punishing them by order of the divine justice. Wherefore those bodies to which pain of sense is not due by divine justice will not suffer punishment. On the other hand, the bodies of the saints will be impassible, because they will lack the capability of suffering; hence impassibility in them will be a gift, but not in children.

Accordingly, it must be observed that if one is guided by right reason one does not grieve through being deprived of what is beyond one's power to obtain, but only through lack of that which, in some way, one is capable of obtaining. Thus no wise man grieves for being unable to fly like a bird, or for that he is not a king or an emperor, since these things are not due to him; whereas he would grieve if he lacked that to which he had some kind of claim.

So there you have it, which I think more or less addresses most of your posts. Tell me if I've left something out.