Can There Be Repentance in the Final Judgement?

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If our possibility for repentance is due to our corporeal reality (and hence this is why the demons cannot repent), then it follows that those in Hell cannot repent.
However, in the Final Judgement, our bodies are reunited with our soul, presumably in a way very similar to now and not a glorified way as this includes the souls and bodies of the damned. However, after this, that means we would be corporeal again. Would this mean we then have the possibility of repentance? I feel like the official answer is no though I am unsure. Well? Would the possibility of repentance in the Final Judgement be? Why or why not?
 
Kei said:
If our possibility for repentance is due to our corporeal reality (and hence this is why the demons cannot repent), then it follows that those in Hell cannot repent.
However, in the Final Judgement, our bodies are reunited with our soul, presumably in a way very similar to now and not a glorified way as this includes the souls and bodies of the damned. However, after this, that means we would be corporeal again. Would this mean we then have the possibility of repentance? I feel like the official answer is no though I am unsure. Well? Would the possibility of repentance in the Final Judgement be? Why or why not?
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At death, the particular judgement occurs and determines heaven, purgatory, or hell. The Parousia is later with the resurrection of the body.
 
Kei said:
If our possibility for repentance is due to our corporeal reality (and hence this is why the demons cannot repent), then it follows that those in Hell cannot repent.

However, in the Final Judgement, our bodies are reunited with our soul, presumably in a way very similar to now and not a glorified way as this includes the souls and bodies of the damned. However, after this, that means we would be corporeal again. Would this mean we then have the possibility of repentance? I feel like the official answer is no though I am unsure. Well? Would the possibility of repentance in the Final Judgement be? Why or why not?
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The answer is no because the judgement that determines your destination (damned or saved) takes place immediately after death at the Particular Judgement. No repentance possible after that. The dead at the Final Judgement will be reunited with their bodies but their destination remains unchanged. Whatever their destination is decided at the Particular Judgement will simply be confirmed at the Final Judgement.
 
As Ed Feser explains it, based on his understanding of Aquinas, no. It is not just our corporeality that allows our will to change, but that our will never existed without a body before, too. It came into existence with the body. Separated from the body the intellect and will act like an angelic intellect and will. It immediately chooses based on how it’s habituated. It doesn’t think dicursively anymore. There’s no intellectual process in the way a bodily mind works. Aquinas advises that the nature of the resurrected body is necessarily tailored to the nature of the soul to which it is conjoined, it’s tailored to a soul with an intellect and will that has already set (like clay left unworked), and the will is no longer swayed by bodily appetites and passions.

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It’s something I’m still musing over in my mind.

Church teaching, regardless of Aquinas, is that there is no repentance after death.

CCC 1013 Death is the end of man’s earthly pilgrimage, of the time of grace and mercy which God offers him so as to work out his earthly life in keeping with the divine plan, and to decide his ultimate destiny. When “the single course of our earthly life” is completed,584 we shall not return to other earthly lives: "It is appointed for men to die once."585 There is no “reincarnation” after death.
 
Kei said:
However, in the Final Judgement, our bodies are reunited with our soul, presumably in a way very similar to now and not a glorified way as this includes the souls and bodies of the damned.
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No… the bodies of the condemned will likewise be eternal and glorified.

(And, since I’d make that assertion, I would likewise assert that the answer to your question is “no, there’s no ‘second bite at the apple’, so to speak…” 😉 )
 
This. No do-overs. No oopsies God, I was just kiddin.

That’s why the Sacrament of Reconciliation is so beautiful. 💗
 
Gorgias said:
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Kei:
However, in the Final Judgement, our bodies are reunited with our soul, presumably in a way very similar to now and not a glorified way as this includes the souls and bodies of the damned.
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No… the bodies of the condemned will likewise be eternal and glorified.
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Eternal, yes. Glorified, no. A glorified body is one made perfect through God. The bodies of the damned will not be perfect; they will be imperfect, crippled, pained.
 
ProdglArchitect said:
Eternal, yes. Glorified, no. A glorified body is one made perfect through God. The bodies of the damned will not be perfect; they will be imperfect, crippled, pained.
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Aquinas disagrees with you, I’d assert. He claims not only that imperfections and pains that were received during life will be removed – both for the saved and the condemned – but also that the condemned will be incorruptible and impassible (inasmuch as we’re using that particular sense of ‘impassible’ in this discussion). See the supplement to the Summa Theologiae, question 86. (Insert normal disclaimers about this being the supplement to the ST and not the parts of the ST that Aquinas himself wrote…)
 
Gorgias said:
He claims not only that imperfections and pains that were received during life will be removed – both for the saved and the condemned – but also that the condemned will be incorruptible and impassible (inasmuch as we’re using that particular sense of ‘impassible’ in this discussion).
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I agree that the damned will be incorruptible insofar as their bodies will not deteriorate, but wouldn’t the removal of the imperfections and pains of life be a “good” and therefore contrary to the nature of Hell?
 
Wesrock said:
Separated from the body the intellect and will act like an angelic intellect and will. It immediately chooses based on how it’s habituated. It doesn’t think dicursively anymore. There’s no intellectual process in the way a bodily mind works. Aquinas advises that the nature of the resurrected body is necessarily tailored to the nature of the soul to which it is conjoined, it’s tailored to a soul with an intellect and will that has already set (like clay left unworked), and the will is no longer swayed by bodily appetites and passions.
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Yes, but at the Final Judgement, we regain our bodies. So why would we not regain a more human intellect and will?
 
I attempted to explain that in my post. Which part of it specifically didn’t make sense?
 
I apparently missed the important part, it’s quite the queer thing.

So the nature of the resurrected body would be much closer to the soul, in a sense?
 
More like the glorified body is made in a way appropriate to (or compatible with) a will that has become set into the choice it made, and Feser writes that this is necessarily so, and at different points Feser has given the analogy that the will after death is like clay that has set. Left unworked and allowed to dry out clay becomes set and it can’t become malleable again. And this follows simply from the nature of the way the intellect and will work, not some arbitrary imposition.

I’m still mulling on that myself.
 
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Wesrock said:
More like the glorified body is made in a way appropriate to (or compatible with) a will that has become set into the choice it made
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This is basically what I figured. But interesting that Feser says it might not be so. I’ll look into that, because I was wondering about something closely related.

I also remembered there is this paper by a good Dominican priest I was meaning to check out:

 
ProdglArchitect said:
I agree that the damned will be incorruptible insofar as their bodies will not deteriorate, but wouldn’t the removal of the imperfections and pains of life be a “good” and therefore contrary to the nature of Hell?
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Aquinas says “no”. He asserts that for every person, our human nature will be perfected. Remember – the condemned aren’t deprived of all ‘goods’ (if so, wouldn’t that mean that they should be deprived of existence? 😉 ), and so, for all, God’s gift of life implies that we will all reach the perfection of our human nature in the eschaton. He also argues that if the condemned ‘carried’ their physical woundedness into the eschaton, that would lead to unfair punishment.

He cites a hypothetical: Suppose there are two condemned guys (let’s call them Cain and Judas, just for the sake of argument). Cain suffered greatly in his body and sinned sufficiently to justify condemnation. Judas was a near-perfect physical specimen, but he sinned to a much greater extent while alive on earth. Now, we would expect that it would be just for Judas to suffer more greatly, because of his sin, but if the condemned suffered in the imperfections that they had while alive on earth, then that would mean that Cain would suffer more greatly than Judas! And, Aquinas argues, that would be an offense to God’s justice.

So, no… the “removal of the imperfections and pains of life” is part of what God gives us when He gives us life and offers us eternal life. If we reject that offer, we suffer the consequences, but that does not include the lack of natural perfection in the eschaton.
 
I believe that God would help all people at the time of death to repent, give them a final choice to love Him.
 
Gorgias said:
He cites a hypothetical: Suppose there are two condemned guys (let’s call them Cain and Judas, just for the sake of argument). Cain suffered greatly in his body and sinned sufficiently to justify condemnation. Judas was a near-perfect physical specimen, but he sinned to a much greater extent while alive on earth. Now, we would expect that it would be just for Judas to suffer more greatly, because of his sin, but if the condemned suffered in the imperfections that they had while alive on earth, then that would mean that Cain would suffer more greatly than Judas! And, Aquinas argues, that would be an offense to God’s justice.
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This is only accurate if the physical suffering resulting from the ailment of the body is the only suffering. If Cain suffer’s physically from his bodily ailment, but less from the external or internal torments of Hell, while Judas suffers less from his bodily ailment but more from the external and internal torments of Hell, then God’s justice would still be fulfilled.

Either way, we’re not going to know this side of eternity, so I’m not saying I’m absolutely right or anything. I just feel that the damned, having bodies that are “glorified” insofar as they will not degrade, will not enjoy the physical perfection and lack of physical ailment and suffering that the saved will enjoy.
 
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ProdglArchitect said:
This is only accurate if the physical suffering resulting from the ailment of the body is the only suffering. If Cain suffer’s physically from his bodily ailment, but less from the external or internal torments of Hell, while Judas suffers less from his bodily ailment but more from the external and internal torments of Hell, then God’s justice would still be fulfilled.
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The point of the thought experiment is that it’s possible for someone who sinned less but suffers more than another who sinned more but would suffer less. 😉
ProdglArchitect said:
I just feel that
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That’s what’s fun about speculative theology. Everyone gets to have an opinion. 🤷‍♂️
 
Once you are dead, you cannot repent anymore, because you have already had millions of chances to do so on earth, and if you were going to hell, of course you would want to repent, but that is just not how justice works.

We are judged by what we do on earth, our sins, and our merits. We can’t do anything to change what we did on earth once we die.
 
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