Dist. 45, Art. 1, Q. 1
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/45/q/bon-sent-IV-d45-a1-q1
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### Article I. *On the abodes of souls that have been stripped [of the body].*

### Question I. *On the abodes of souls before the coming of Christ.*

Concerning the first the procedure is thus; and that before Christ's coming they had descended to hell is shown:

1. *First*, from the Old Testament. Thus said the patriarch Jacob, Genesis forty-two: *You will bring down my grey hairs with sorrow to the nether world*; and Genesis thirty-seven: *I shall go down to my son, mourning, into hell*: therefore etc.

2. Likewise, Job seventeen: *In the darkness I have made my bed, hell is my house*; and it is agreed that he was just: therefore etc.

3. Likewise, this same thing is shown also through the New Testament: because it is said in the Creed: « He descended into hell »; and it is agreed that this was for nothing other than the deliverance of the just: therefore the just were descending.

4. Likewise, Acts two: *Whom God raised up, having loosed the sorrows of hell*: therefore all the others were being detained in hell.

5. Likewise, the debt of original sin had not yet been paid, therefore neither was man snatched from the power of the devil: therefore however just he might be, the devil could drag him downward.

**On the contrary:**

1. Hell is the place due to the wicked and the unjust; but before the coming of Christ many died good and just: therefore those were not descending into hell.

2. Likewise, each and every soul must be placed according to the requirement of its merits: therefore, since holy men before the coming of Christ stood far apart from the impious as regards merit, therefore also as regards place.

3. Likewise, « in hell there is no redemption »: therefore if the just descended to hell, it seems that they were never freed from there; which is manifestly false.

4. Likewise, as is clear from Luke sixteen, a great chasm was fixed between Lazarus and the rich man, so that they could not pass across to one another: therefore it seems that they were in places far apart.

5. Likewise, Augustine, in the twelfth [book] *On Genesis according to the Letter*: « We see that mention of the nether world is not made in the rest of the poor man, but in the punishment of the rich man ». And again the same: « I have not yet found, and I still seek, nor has it occurred to me, that Scripture has anywhere set the nether world in a good sense: but the bosom of Abraham is to be taken in no way except in a good sense »: therefore if the holy Fathers are carried into the bosom of Abraham, as the Lord himself testifies concerning Lazarus, it is clear etc.

### Conclusion

> **Conclusion.** "Hell" is said both of the lowest place, with the punishment of sense and of loss, and of the lower place with the punishment of loss alone, namely limbo, which is either the limbo of infants or the limbo of the Fathers, that is, the bosom of Abraham.

**I respond:** It must be said that hell is called a place of punishments, and a place which is lower both by reason of its state, which is base, and by reason of its situation. Hell can therefore be named from its highest point; and then "hell" is called the place in which there is the greatest punishment, and the lowest place; and this belongs to none but the damned, who are punished with the punishment of sense and are cast down below without hope. Again it can be called the lower place, in which someone is punished with the punishment of loss; and this is called limbo. And into this the holy Fathers descended before Christ's coming, and unbaptized infants descend now.

But it must be noted that the Fathers were in the upper part, and the infants in the lower part. And the reason for this is that the latter have the lack of the vision without expectation; the former had it with expectation, and therefore, because they were in the upper part and were awaiting the vision of God, they were said to be not merely in limbo, but in the bosom of Abraham. That place, then, was called hell, both because it was lower and because in some way it was a place of misery; limbo, because it was a punishment of lack; but the bosom of Abraham, because there was an expectation of glory. — And so "hell" sounds only toward evil, in whatever way it be taken; but "the bosom of Abraham" toward good, and this because there is rest there, either through the privation of evil or through the conferral of every good; and thus it is a place of glory.

**To the arguments:**

And through this distinction the answer to both sides is clear. For the reasons for the first side proceed concerning hell taken broadly and according to situation; but the reasons for the opposite, concerning hell taken properly and according to punishment, as is clear to one who runs through them one by one.