Dist. 20, Part 1, Art. 1, Q. 2
by St. Bonaventure
Source text: Public Domain Mark 1.0. English translation/apparatus/encoding: CC BY-NC 4.0, Wroot Press.
https://bonaventure.wrootpress.com/browse/4/d/20/q/bon-sent-IV-d20-p1-a1-q2
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### Question II. *Whether the punishment of purgatory is the greatest of temporal punishments.*

Secondly it is asked whether the punishment of purgatory is the greatest of temporal punishments. And it seems that it is.

1. Augustine, in a certain sermon: "That fire will be harder than anything one can see, or feel, or imagine as a punishment in this world."

2. Likewise, in the text he says that "it surpasses every punishment that anyone has ever suffered in this life."

3. Likewise, it seems so by reason: because the weaker someone is, the lesser the punishment with which the punishing judge ought to be content; therefore the stronger he is, the heavier the punishment exacted from him; but a separated spirit is disproportionately stronger than the whole conjoined being, or the whole man; but after this life the spirit is separated: therefore it seems that it is punished more heavily.

4. Likewise, a spirit separated from the flesh always sins more heavily than a spirit united to the flesh; but the evil of punishment is proportioned to the evil of fault, and the evil of fault is always heavier in the separated spirit: therefore by parity of reasoning so too is the evil of punishment.

5. Likewise, the punishment of suffering is greater and heavier than the punishment of compassion; but the stripped soul is punished by the punishment of suffering, the conjoined soul by the punishment of compassion: therefore etc.

6. Likewise, the more universal a punishment is, the heavier it is; but the stripped soul, when it is punished, is punished wholly and according to its whole — for since it is simple, the fire reaches the whole of it — but in the present life scarcely or never does any punishment torment the whole man: therefore that punishment is generally heavier than any temporal punishment.

**On the contrary:**
1. God renders to each according to his merit, whence the punishment corresponds proportionally to the guilt; but when someone dies, the guilt is not intensified: therefore neither ought the punishment be intensified: therefore neither ought it be greater in the future than in the present.

2. Likewise, the more passible a thing is, the more, when joined to the punisher, it suffers and is punished more heavily; but the conjoined thing is more passible than the soul taken in itself: therefore what is joined suffers more from what afflicts it. Therefore if the conjoined thing is punished in the present, in the future too the separated soul is punished: it is plain, etc.

3. Likewise, greater is the suffering in which the agent is both transmuting and casting out, than where one of these is lacking; but in purgatory the soul is punished in such a way that it is neither transmuted nor is anything cast out of it, whereas in the present life there is a casting-out from the body: therefore it seems that that punishment is heavier.

4. Likewise, the soul will be more blessed when it is glorified with the body resumed, and likewise more wretched when it is punished with the body resumed: therefore the union of the soul to the body contributes more to the increase of punishment than to its diminution: therefore, conversely, separation contributes more to diminution than to increase: therefore it seems that the separated soul is punished less heavily in purgatory than now, when it is conjoined.

> **Conclusion.** The punishment of purgatory is, in its own kind, heavier than any temporal punishment which the soul joined to the flesh now sustains.

**I respond:** It must be said that, as the Master says in the text and as many of the Saints too say, we must concede, even though no reason appears to us, that the punishment of purgatory is heavier than any temporal punishment which the soul joined to the flesh now sustains. In matters of this kind one must adhere to authority rather than to reason, for the reason that this is more above nature and reason than according to nature and reason. — Yet this is rightly to be understood so that that punishment is generally greater than this, according to that rule of the Philosopher: "If the best in one kind is better than the best in another kind, then it is also simply better than it." Likewise it is to be understood here, that the one is greater not because the least in this kind would be greater than the greatest, but because the greatest in that kind is greater than the greatest in this kind. For as blessed Gregory says, it was revealed to certain persons that certain souls were punished in shadow.

Now, with respect to what we hold, some have wished to assign a natural reason, showing that it would come from the nature of the soul that, when the stripped soul suffers, it suffers through its very self according to its whole self, and therefore a slight punishment is most grievous to it. — But this manner of speaking is not approved by Catholic reason, which believes that in hell souls are to be punished more heavily after the bodies are resumed; whence it must be believed that the just, who will be purged in the body by the fire of the conflagration on the day of judgment, will be punished more heavily — because more briefly, and therefore more intensely — than those who are now being purged.

Others have wished to assign a reason partly natural, partly supernatural. For they said that the stripped souls have their powers unhindered and have a natural desire of reaching the good for which they were created; and further, grace is in them, which inclines them the more toward that desire: and therefore, since they thirst for that good and are drawn back from it and as it were imprisoned, a slight sensible punishment together with this sorrow is the greatest for them. And to this extent they say that the punishment of purgatory is the greatest. For as spiritual delights are very intense and surpass bodily ones, so too the sorrow over the absence surpasses every bodily pain. — But surely neither does this reason lead well, if one looks closely. First indeed, because the desire of the highest Good is a desire which has necessarily joined to itself fruition and some real possession; and therefore it begets joy, whence whoever desires the highest Good more delights the more therein. For in this the desire of temporal and bodily things is unlike the desire of spiritual things, as Augustine shows in the book *On Eighty-Three Questions*. And this holds most of all when God dwells through charity in the soul. But according to that reason the punishment of limbo would be the greatest and would have been the greatest in the holy Fathers, where a holy rest is believed to have been. — Moreover, this reason contributes nothing to the matter at hand, if one examines it, for the reason that the Saints do not speak of privation, but of afflictive punishment, as of the fire or of the purgatorial flame.

Therefore it must be said that the reason for this is taken from divine justice; and this is the right reason, because that the fire acts on the soul, as will be seen below, is not a matter of nature, but of justice; and therefore that it acts more is to be attributed to divine justice. Since therefore the just God does not accept punishment insofar as it is punitive only, but insofar as there is in it the further account of right order; according to this it is to be understood that there is punishment assumed and punishment inflicted. In assumed punishment what pleases God is not only the ordering of the punishment to the fault, but the order and rectitude which is in the assuming will; in inflicted punishment what pleases is the ordering of the punishment to the fault. Since therefore the punishment of the penitent in the present is more assumed, the punishment of the dying is inflicted in purgatory, for the reason that there is no longer a time of acting, but of receiving; therefore a slight punishment in the present satisfies more, and divine justice is more content with it than with a great one in the future;

and therefore as it were disproportionately it exacts a greater one, that it may satisfy it. — An example, moreover, can be had in these material debts. For a creditor accepts a mark of gold more than ten marks of silver; and the present punishment compared to it is much more precious in the sight of God than gold is to silver in the sight of men. — Therefore the reasons proving that punishment to be heavier are to be conceded.

1. To that, then, which is objected, that the guilt is not increased; it must be said that this is true. But the guilt of punishment is better discharged by a slight assumed punishment than by a great inflicted one.

2. To that which is objected, that the more passible a thing is, the more it suffers; it must be said that this is true, other things being equal; but the divine power, whose instrument that fire is, ordains that it punish more heavily. — Or it must be said that punishment is judged greater and lesser not according to injury or suffering, but according to the perception of the suffering, insofar as perception shrinks from that punishment. And since the spirit, although it is less injured by the fire than the body, nevertheless has a livelier power of perceiving suffering and wrath, it shrinks the most, because this is against its nature, not so against the nature of the body: therefore, although it suffers less and is injured less, by natural suffering it is punished more and grieves more; and by this is plain the response to the last two.

3. For as to what is said, that what casts out and transmutes punishes more; it must be said that it is false, because the infernal fire, which burns and does not consume, punishes more heavily than that other fire which does both.

4. Similarly as to the other, that what harms more punishes more; it must be said that it is false, because it is a greater punishment to crush an arm than even to amputate it, because there sensation and continuous pain remain. So too in the soul, which never sleeps, there is always an actual perception of the harmful thing and a disagreement with it; so that both are vigorous, and neither is diminished, so far as is on the part of the spirit; and therefore the pain is intense and continuous, and thereby most grievous. But how the body acts on the spirit will be told below in its place, when treatment is made of the punishments of hell.

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