C. About the Sufficiency of Intentional Change Alone

133. Third I say that it seems more probable to posit that there is only an intentional effect after the judgment, for although both effects could then be posited (from the first article [nn.125-126]), yet the real effect would not cause any pain without the intentional effect; nor even would it do so along with the intentional effect, but only the intentional effect would cause pain. Since therefore “a plurality is not to be posited without necessity” [Aristotle, Physics 1.4.188a17-18], and since suffering by fire is only posited there because the damned are afflicted by fire, it suffices to posit the intentional effect alone, such that the positing of the other seems superfluous, for it would do nothing for the goal.

134. Again, it is fitting to posit in the damned as few miracles as possible, since it is not likely that God would want then to multiply miracles in them beyond what seems required for their just punishment. But it seems that by positing a real action and along with this (as necessary) an intentional one, one has to posit more miracles in them than by positing only an intentional action;     therefore etc     .

Proof of the minor: although any way at all requires one to posit that the damned are not then corrupted by an intrinsic cause - and this either by a miraculous divine conservation or by a non-miraculous but just conservation (because corresponding to the final state in which they now are) - yet, if a real action be posited, some extrinsic corruptive cause is present there, and it seems a miracle if it do not corrupt, since a cause that can induce something incompossible with something else can corrupt that something else. But the fire can induce a heat altogether incompossible with the quality, required for life, of a mixed body. If therefore the fire not induce heat to the upmost and yet it does act really, it is a miracle (as there was in the case of the furnace, where the fire did not have all the action that it could by its own nature have had [Daniel 3.49-50; Ord. I d.8 n.306]). If again it do induce heat to that degree, it is a miracle for that degree to stand compatible with life.

135. If you say that one must in the same way on the other side posit a miracle for the body not to be corrupted extrinsically, for the excessive intentional effect naturally causes excessive pain, and excessive pain kills (as is plain from Antiochus in 1 Maccabees 6.13); nay, even extreme fear, where the point seems less clear, is sometimes a cause of death - I reply that no pain is simply repugnant to a mixed quality that is simply required for life.

136. The point is sufficiently clear, because an intention causative of pain does seem more repugnant; yet it is not repugnant, as neither is one contrary in real being repugnant to another in intentional being.

137. The point is also plain from Augustine City of God 21.3 n.2, “The bodies will not be able to die just because they will be able to suffer;” and he adds, “Why are bodies able to inflict pain on souls but are not able to inflict death, unless it is the case that causing death is not a necessary consequence of causing pain? Pain, then, is not a necessary proof of future death.”

And his reason, stated a little later, rests on this: “It is a feature of soul to be in pain, not of body, even when the cause of the soul’s being in pain is from the body. If then an argument for death were taken from pain, to the soul, to which pain more belongs, would death more belong.” And further, before this, he points to another reason, of this sort as it were: “For what reason is causing pain a proof of death, since rather it is a sign of life? For it is certain that everything in pain is alive” - as if he were to argue: if being in pain necessarily implies life, it does not necessarily imply death.”

138. I say, however, that sometimes, indeed most of the time, death does follow extreme pain, because a disproportion in some natural quality requisite for life follows -and to set down how it follows would require making clear how the imaginative faculty and appetite can act on natural qualities. But however it may be, no formal repugnance exists there between any sensation or pain and any degree of natural quality necessary for life. Therefore, it is not so great a miracle that some pain exists without death as it is that a real quality simply contrary to the quality of a mixed body exists along with life. For there would in the latter case be a sort of formal repugnance between the quality induced by the contrary and the quality requisite for life; and if the second quality were not posited, it would be a miracle that life existed without that mixed quality.

139. But in the former case the only miracle required is one that suspends pain, for the most part, from having its effect, namely so that a disproportion in the mixture’s humor repugnant to life not follow on the pain. And for the pain to be suspended from having such effect there is no need to posit a new miracle, but only to reduce it to the same thing as the suspension of contraries within is reduced to so that they do not cause corruption - namely so that, because of the final state to which they have been reduced, God may, for the most part, suspend causes from their effects, which effects, if they followed, the composite would be destroyed.

140. Besides, third, Scripture seems to say that the same damned person suffers from contraries, according to the verse of Job 24.19, “From waters of snow will they pass to extremes of heat.” And although an alternating of these afflictions would be saved according to the surface reading of the text, no probable saving would be possible of why the damned would suffer contraries simultaneously at their peak and really. But that they suffer them at the same time and at their peak can be saved, because the [intentional] species of contraries, even at their peak, are not contrary.

141. Therefore this way [n.142], about intentional effect without real effect [cf. n.133], can save more things pertaining to the affliction of the damned than the other way can.