So, what are you doing after your funeral?

There is, among contemporary Thomists, a controversy over the metaphysical status of human beings after death.  Both sides agree that the human soul is the substantial form of the living human body, both sides agree that the human soul subsists after death, and both sides agree that the body is restored to the soul at the resurrection.  But what happens to the human being himself between death and resurrection?  Does a human being in some way continue to exist after death?  Or does he cease to exist until the resurrection?  Which answer do the premises that both sides agreed on support?  And which answer did Aquinas himself support?

These last two questions are related, but nevertheless importantly different.  It might be that the right answer to the question about what happens to human beings after death -- the answer that the premises all Thomists agree on actually entails -- is the answer that Aquinas himself gave.  But it might be that Thomistic premises in fact support a different answer than the one Aquinas gave.  (That happens sometimes.  Philosophers don’t always correctly understand all the implications of the premises to which they are committed.)  Or it may be that there is no clear answer to the question about what Aquinas himself thought, even if his premises actually entail one of the two possible positions.

Survivalism is the label that has come to be attached to the view that the human being in some way continues to exist after death.  It is defended by (among others) Thomist philosophers like David Oderberg and Eleonore Stump.  Corruptionism is the label that has come to be attached to the view that the human being ceases to exist after death (but comes back into existence at the resurrection).  It is defended by (among others) Thomist philosophers like Patrick Toner and Brian Davies.  Survivalists tend to attribute their view to Aquinas, and corruptionists also tend to attribute their view to Aquinas.  It is possible, though, to endorse one view while thinking that Aquinas erroneously held the other. 

In his recent American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly article “Aquinas on the Death of Christ: A New Argument for Corruptionism,” Turner Nevitt defends the claim that Aquinas was a corruptionist.  (He doesn’t address in any detail the issue of whether the corruptionist position is actually the correct metaphysical view to take; his focus is rather on Aquinas exegesis.)  Along the way he lists some of the Thomists who have defended each view.

Nevitt cites me as a corruptionist, on the basis of some remarks I make in my book Aquinas.  That is not correct.  In fact I don’t actually address the dispute between survivalism and corruptionism in the book, though I can understand why Nevitt would take what I say there to imply a corruptionist position.  In any event, on the substantive metaphysical question about what happens to the human being after death, I am definitely a survivalist.  On the exegetical question about what Aquinas himself thought, I am agnostic.  I think his premises actually imply survivalism, and that he sometimes says things that sound like an endorsement of survivalism.  But I agree that he also sometimes says other things that sound like an endorsement of corruptionism (including the passages cited by Nevitt).  In fact, I don’t think it is clear that Aquinas directly addresses in the first place exactly the question that survivalists and corruptionists are arguing about.  What he does clearly address is the related but different question about whether a human being is, even in the normal case, nothing more than his soul (which is what Platonism seems to imply).  And here his answer is negative.  A human being is not reducible to his soul.  But we survivalists agree with that, and it does not imply corruptionism.

I have a forthcoming article that addresses these issues in a systematic way, so I won’t say here everything that could be said.  Suffice it to make the following points.

First, and again, I think it is at least unclear whether Aquinas himself really addresses the question at hand, or at least that he addresses it in a way that has in view the specific sorts of concerns that motivate contemporary survivalists.  What was fundamentally at issue in Aquinas’s day was whether to think of human beings in an essentially Platonic way, as immaterial souls which are complete substances in their own right, and only contingently related to their bodies.  Aquinas definitely, and rightly, rejects the Platonic view, and when he puts heavy emphasis on the theme that the presence of the body is essential to the integrity of the human being, it is Platonism that he has in his sights.  And both survivalists and corruptionists agree in rejecting the Platonic conception of human nature.  We have to be very cautious, then, not to give the relevant texts from Aquinas an anachronistic reading. 

Second, corruptionists, in my view, in any case put too much emphasis on the exegetical question.  What ultimately matters is not what Aquinas himself actually said in this or that particular text.  Rather, what matters is whether it is corruptionism or survivalism that actually follows from the premises that Aquinas, and us later Thomists, are all committed to.  If survivalism is what actually follows from those premises (as I think it does) then that fact itself is strong evidence that Aquinas himself was actually a survivalist (since philosophers do usually and in general understand the implications of their premises, even if not in every case).  But even if he wasn’t, what ultimately matters is whether he should have been a survivalist.  To hammer on the exegetical question is to risk resting one’s case on a mere argument from authority, which (as Aquinas himself held) is the weakest sort of argument when the authority is a merely human authority.  (And no, in noting that Aquinas said that, I’m not appealing to his authority -- so spare me the cute tu quoque retort, please.)

Third, corruptionism, I think, simply makes no sense metaphysically, for reasons that should be clear from what I have said in earlier posts (e.g. here and here, though I was not directly addressing the dispute between corruptionism and survivalism in those posts).  Both corruptionists and survivalists agree (contra Platonism and Cartesianism) that a human being is one substance, not two.  Both agree that this one substance has both corporeal powers (our various animal faculties) and incorporeal powers (intellect and will).  As good Aristotelians, both agree that a substantial form only exists when informing the substance of which it is the form; there is no such thing as a substantial form floating free of any concrete individual substance.  Both sides also agree that the human soul just is the human being’s substantial form.  And both sides agree that the soul continues to exist after death.

Now, when someone who accepts all of these premises puts them together, then, I maintain, to be consistent he must be a survivalist.  There is no avoiding it.  The human soul exists after death.  But a soul is a substantial form, and a substantial form only exists when informing the substance of which it is the form.  So, the substance of which the human soul is the form must exist after death.  But that substance is a human being, where a human being is a single substance rather than two substances.  So, the human being must exist after death.

But how can a human being exist after death if the body, which is then gone, is integral to the human being?  The answer is: in something like the way a human being can continue to exist after losing his arms, legs, eyes, ears, tongue, etc. (as the unfortunate protagonist of the Dalton Trumbo novel Johnny Got His Gun does).  Arms, legs, eyes, ears, tongue, etc. are integral to us.  Any human being in his mature and normal state has them.  A human being who is missing them persists only in a highly abnormal and greatly diminished state.  But he does persist.  Similarly, a human being who has lost more than that -- namely, all of his corporeal faculties -- but still has his incorporeal faculties, persists in an even more radically diminished state.  But he does persist.  And that is how the soul persists beyond death, despite being a kind of substantial form.  It persists precisely because the substance of which it is the form persists, albeit only in a radically diminished and abnormal state.

To say instead, as corruptionists do, that the soul persists after death but that the human being does not, entails that a substantial form exists even though the substance of which it is the form is gone.  And that simply makes no sense -- certainly not given the background metaphysical premises to which Aquinas, and corruptionists themselves, are committed.

(Side note: Confusion on these issues sometimes arises because people misunderstand what it means to say, as Thomists do, that the soul is the substantial form of the body.  Since the body is, of course, corporeal by definition, they think this entails that the soul is the substantial form of a substance which is entirely corporeal, and are then mystified by the claim that the soul persists when this corporeal thing is gone.  But they thereby misunderstand the claim that the soul is the form of the body.  The claim isn’t: “The soul is the form of a substance which is entirely corporeal,” because Thomists don’t believe in the first place that human beings are entirely corporeal or bodily.  Rather, they have both corporeal and incorporeal powers.  The body is only part of the substance that is a human being, not the whole of it.  Rather, the claim is: “The soul is the substantial form of a substance which has both corporeal and incorporeal powers, and since the corporeal powers are summed up in the expression ‘the body,’ naturally the soul is the form of the body, even if the human being is more than merely the body.”)

Fourth, corruptionism makes no sense theologically either, at least not given the theological premises that both corruptionists and survivalists accept.  Both sides agree that, after death but before the resurrection, human souls are rewarded or punished, and can be prayed to.  For example, you can pray to St. Peter, who has attained his reward in heaven.  But it only makes sense to reward, punish, or pray to actual persons.  Hence St. Peter can intelligibly be rewarded and prayed to only if he exists as a person.  But what kind of person is St. Peter?  Is he an angel, or a human being?  A human being, of course.  Hence St. Peter can intelligibly be rewarded and prayed to only if he exists as a human being.  To be sure, prior to the resurrection, he does not yet have his body restored to him, and thus exists only as a radically incomplete human being.  (Fortunately, the beatific vision more than makes up for this temporary loss, so overall St. Peter is of course in a very good state.)  Still, he does exist as a human being.

Corruptionists like Nevitt respond to this problem by saying that talk about praying to or rewarding St. Peter should be interpreted as instances of synecdoche, viz. the use of an expression for a thing to refer to a part of the thing, as when we say “The U.S. government condemned the attacks,” meaning that a certain specific government official condemned the attacks.  The idea is that when we talk about praying to St. Peter, this is merely a roundabout way of talking about praying to the soul of St. Peter, which is only a part of him.  And when we talk about St. Peter being rewarded in heaven, all this means (so it is claimed) is that the soul of St. Peter is being rewarded, where his soul is, again, only a part of him. 

But this doesn’t solve the problem at all.  Suppose that, after his death, St. Peter’s left eyeball or his right lung had been kept alive artificially (perhaps for the purpose of transplantation into someone who needed an eye or a lung).  Would it make sense in that case to pray to St. Peter’s left eye?  Would it make sense to reward St. Peter’s right lung?  Obviously not.  And the reason is also obvious.  An eyeball or a lung all by itself is sub-personal.  Hence, neither one can in any way intercede for us, and neither one can in any way enjoy rewards of the sort the blessed in heaven enjoy.  And yet a separated soul can intercede for us, and can enjoy the rewards of heaven.  Hence a separated soul is a person.  A very radically diminished person, to be sure, but not a non-person.  And what kind of person?  Again, a human one.  Hence, the human being must exist after death.

(Postscript for the New Atheist reader: I am well aware, of course, that skeptics wouldn’t agree in the first place that the soul in any sense survives the death of the body, or that there even is such a thing as the soul.  But that’s not what this post is about.  So, please don’t waste your time or mine with idiotic comments to the effect that this is all superstition, that I haven’t proved that there is a soul, etc.  I have, in many other places, given arguments for the claims that the human intellect is incorporeal, that this entails that it can persist beyond the death of the body, etc. -- see e.g. this article, chapter 4 of this book, some of the posts collected here, and so forth.   What I am addressing in the above post is merely a question that arises after one is already convinced of arguments of the sort I’ve defended elsewhere.)