Survivalism versus Corruptionism: Whose Nature? Which Personality?

I. Introduction

Contemporary interpreters are in the midst of an ongoing debate about Aquinas’s view of the status of human beings or persons in the interim period between death and resurrection. Everyone agrees that, for Aquinas, death is the separation of the soul from the body; the human body corrupts and ceases to exist, while the human soul survives and continues to exist. The disagreement is about Aquinas’s view of what happens to the human being or person—to Socrates, for example. According to corruptionists, Aquinas thought that human beings or persons corrupt along with their bodies—that is, they cease to exist at death and only begin to exist again when their souls are reunited with their bodies at the resurrection.¹ Survivalists, on the other hand, deny this. According to them, Aquinas thought that human beings or persons survive death along with their souls—that is, they continue to exist immediately after death, when their souls are separated from their bodies.²

The debate between corruptionists and survivalists has tended to focus on specific things that Aquinas says about human beings or human souls in the interim period between death and resurrection. For example, Eleonore Stump, a leading survivalist, defends survivalism by noting a number of things that Aquinas says about the interim period—that separated souls pray, for example, and that people are punished for their sins immediately after death—that, she argues, would not make much sense unless Aquinas thought that human beings or persons continued to exist along with their souls immediately after death.³ On the other hand, Patrick Toner, a leading corruptionist, defends corruptionism by noting other things that Aquinas says about the interim period—that the separated soul is not a person, for example, and that when we pray to the saints by name, we are only using their names to refer to their separated souls by synecdoche—that, he argues, would not make much sense unless Aquinas thought that human beings or persons ceased to exist along with their bodies at death.⁴

Jeffrey Brower laments that the debate between survivalists and corruptionists has had this focus on specific things that Aquinas says about the interim period between death and resurrection rather than proceeding on the basis of broader and more systematic metaphysical considerations.⁵ Indeed, I think that the previous focus of the debate has obscured what are in fact much deeper and more problematic disagreements between survivalists and corruptionists about how to understand some of the most basic principles of Aquinas’s metaphysics—principles such as essence, nature, form, matter, and personhood. In this paper, I want to begin to focus on these deeper disagreements. Of course, I do not expect to be able to settle these disagreements in this paper. But I do hope at least to identify where some of these deeper disagreements really lie and to begin to advance some more systematic reasons for thinking that corruptionists are right and survivalists are wrong—both about how to understand the basic principles of Aquinas’s metaphysics and about how to apply them to the question about the status of human beings or persons between death and resurrection.

II. Human Nature

I want to begin by stating a metaphysical argument for corruptionism that will help structure my discussion of the deeper disagreements between survivalists and corruptionists:

1. 1. The essence of natural substances includes both form and matter.

2. 2. Human beings or persons are natural substances.

3. 3. Thus the essence of human beings or persons includes both form and matter.

4. 4. A natural substance cannot exist without the parts of its essence.

5. 5. Thus human beings or persons cannot exist without both form and matter.

6. 6. But human beings or persons lose all their matter at death.

7. 7. Thus human beings or persons cease to exist at death.

I believe that Aquinas endorsed each of these premises and the inferences they express. In fact, this argument is the main reason that I have always thought Aquinas was a corruptionist. But of course, survivalists disagree. They believe that Aquinas rejected (or given...