St. Thomas Aquinas

Commentary on the Sentences

Book II, Distinction 33, Question 2, Article 2


https://aquinas.cc/la/en/~Sent.II.D33.Q2.A2



Article 2.  Whether unbaptized children feel spiritual affliction in their soul?


Obj. 1: To the second we proceed as follows. It seems that unbaptized children feel spiritual affliction in their soul. For, just as Chrysostom says, in the damned, the fact that they will lack the vision of God will be a more serious punishment than the fact that they will be burned by the fire below. But children will lack the vision of God. Therefore they will feel spiritual affliction from this.

Obj. 2: Furthermore, lacking what one wants to have cannot exist without affliction. But children would want to possess the vision of God. Otherwise their will would actually be perverse. Therefore since they lack it, it seems that they feel affliction from that fact.

Obj. 3: If it is said that they are not afflicted, since they know they are not being deprived by their own fault, then on the contrary: immunity from fault does not lessen the pain of punishment, but increases it. For if someone is disinherited or mutilated for what is not his own fault, he does not on this account suffer less pain. Therefore even though children will be deprived of such a great good for what is not their own fault, their pain is not thereby taken away.

Obj. 4: Furthermore, unbaptized children are to Adam's merits as baptized children are to Christ's merits. But from Christ's merit baptized children obtain the reward of eternal life. Therefore unbaptized children also undergo pain from the fact of being deprived of eternal life through Adam's demerit.

Obj. 5: Furthermore, one cannot be absent from something he loves without pain. But the children will have natural knowledge of God and for the same reason will naturally love him. Therefore, since they are separated from him forever, it seems that they cannot suffer this without pain.

On the contrary, if unbaptized children had internal pain after death, they will experience pain either from fault or punishment. If it is from fault, then since they cannot be further cleansed from this fault, the pain will lead to despair. But this kind of pain is the worm of conscience in the damned. Therefore the children will have the worm of conscience, and in this case their punishment would not be the most mild, as it says in the text. Alternatively, if they experienced pain from punishment, then since their punishment is justly from God, their will would be opposed to divine justice, and in this case it would actually be deformed, which we are not granting here. Therefore they will feel no internal pain.

Furthermore, right reason cannot bear someone's being distressed over what he did not have in himself the ability to avoid. For this reason Seneca proves that distress does not befall the wise person. But in the children there is right reason that is not obscured by any actual sin. Therefore they will not be troubled by the fact that they undergo a punishment that they had no way of avoiding.

I answer that concerning this there are three opinions. Some say that the children will undergo no pain, since in them reason will be so darkened that they will not know that they have lost what they have lost. This does not seem probable, such that the soul freed from the burden of the body should not know at least what could be investigated by reason, and even much more.

Thus others say that in them there is complete knowledge of what falls under natural knowledge and that they know God and that they are deprived of seeing him and that from this they will feel some pain. Yet, their pain will be mitigated inasmuch as they incurred the fault for which they were damned not by their own will. This, too, does not seem probable, since this kind of pain concerning the loss of such a great good cannot be a small one, particularly without hope of recovering it. Hence their punishment would not be the mildest. Furthermore, for entirely the same reason that they will not be punished by sensible pain inflicted externally, they will also not feel internal pain because the pain of punishment does not respond to pleasure in a fault. Hence with pleasure removed from original sin, all pain is excluded from its punishment.

And thus others say that they will have complete knowledge of what falls under natural knowledge and will know they have been deprived of eternal life as well as the reason why they have been excluded from it and that, nevertheless, they will not be afflicted by this in any way. But one should look into how this can be the case.

Therefore it should be known that if one has right reason, he is not afflicted by the fact that he lacks what goes beyond his own proportion. Instead, he is only afflicted by lacking that to which he was in some way proportioned. So, too, no wise person is afflicted by the fact that he cannot fly like a bird or because he is not king or emperor. But he would be afflicted if he were deprived of what he had some aptitude to possess in some way.

Therefore I say that every man possessing the use of free choice is proportioned to obtain eternal life because he can prepare himself for grace, through which he will merit eternal life. And thus if they fall short of this, it will be a very great pain for them, since they are losing what could have been theirs. But the children were never proportioned to possessing eternal life, since it was not due them from the principles of nature, seeing as it exceeds every faculty of nature, nor could they have had acts of their own whereby to obtain a good this great. And thus they will experience no pain at all from lacking the vision of God. In fact, they will instead rejoice in the fact that they will participate much in God's goodness and natural perfections. And it cannot be said that they were proportioned to obtain eternal life, even if not through their own action but through the action of others concerning them. For they were able to be baptized by others, just as many children in the same condition were baptized and have obtained eternal life. For it belongs to super-surpassing grace that someone should be rewarded without an act of his own. Hence lacking this kind of grace no more causes sadness in unbaptized children who die than the fact that many graces given to others in similar condition are not given does in the wise.

Reply Obj. 1: In those damned for actual sin, who had the use of free choice, there was an aptitude for obtaining eternal life, whereas there is not in the children, as was said. And thus the notion of both cases is not similar.

Reply Obj. 2: Although the will is for what is possible and what is impossible, as it says in Ethics 3, the ordered and complete will is only for that to which one has in some way been ordered. And if they fall short in this will, human beings experience pain, but not if they fall short of the will for what is impossible, which should really be called a "velleity" rather than a will. For one is not willing the thing simply, but would will it if it were possible.

Reply Obj. 3: Everyone is ordered to possess his own patrimony or the limbs of his own body. And thus it is no wonder if someone experiences pain at losing them, whether he is deprived of them by his own fault or someone else's. Hence it is clear that the argument does not proceed from a similar case.

Reply Obj. 4: The gift of Christ surpasses Adam's sin, as it says in Romans 5:12–21. Hence unbaptized children need not have as much evil as baptized children have good.

Reply Obj. 5: Even though unbaptized children are separated from God as far as the joining with him that occurs through glory goes, they are not totally separated from him. In fact, they are joined to him through participation in natural goods. And thus they will also be able to rejoice in him with natural knowledge and love.