Book contents
- The New Cambridge Companion to Aquinas
- Other Volumes in the Series of Cambridge Companions
- The New Cambridge Companion to Aquinas
- Copyright page
- For our teachers
- Contents
- Contributors
- Abbreviations
- A Select List of Aquinas’s Works
- Introduction
- Part I Life and Works
- Part II Metaphysics and the Ultimate Foundation of Reality
- Part III Epistemology
- Part IV Ethics
- Part V Philosophical Theology
- 13 Original Sin
- 14 The Incarnation
- 15 Evil, Sin, and Redemption
- 16 Resurrection and Eschatology
- Bibliography
- Index
- Other Volumes in the Series of Cambridge Companions (continued from page ii)
16 - Resurrection and Eschatology
from Part V - Philosophical Theology
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 30 July 2022
- The New Cambridge Companion to Aquinas
- Other Volumes in the Series of Cambridge Companions
- The New Cambridge Companion to Aquinas
- Copyright page
- For our teachers
- Contents
- Contributors
- Abbreviations
- A Select List of Aquinas’s Works
- Introduction
- Part I Life and Works
- Part II Metaphysics and the Ultimate Foundation of Reality
- Part III Epistemology
- Part IV Ethics
- Part V Philosophical Theology
- 13 Original Sin
- 14 The Incarnation
- 15 Evil, Sin, and Redemption
- 16 Resurrection and Eschatology
- Bibliography
- Index
- Other Volumes in the Series of Cambridge Companions (continued from page ii)
Summary
Toward the end of his life, Aquinas delivered a series of catechetical talks in the vernacular on the Apostles’ Creed to an Italian audience, which were preserved in Latin by his secretary, Reginald of Piperno. Its eschatological themes, including the resurrection, would have been of huge importance to Aquinas’s audience.1 His exposition shows his commitment in faith to the future resurrection of all the dead for judgment, and to an eternal reward bestowed on those who die in a state of grace and an eternal punishment for those who die in sin. In our own times there has been widespread theological debate over whether an eternal hell will ever be populated, especially in view of those passages in Scripture that suggest a renewal of creation. In Aquinas’s time and place there was no such controversy about hell. But while the beatitude of heaven enjoyed priority over hell in his theological thinking, with infernal punishment understood to consist primarily in the eternal loss of the beatific vision, fundamental to each was the bodily resurrection common to both the blessed and the wretched.
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- The New Cambridge Companion to Aquinas , pp. 361 - 380Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2022