A problem for Aquinas's explanation of demonic obstinacy

1. Demonic obsinacy and the Thomistic explanation

Traditionally, Christian theologians have believed that demons will never be saved. In fact, this belief has the status of doctrine for Roman Catholics, Eastern Orthodox, and many Protestants, having been endorsed at the Second Council of Constantinople. To quote from the Council's statements:

If anyone says or thinks that the punishment of demons and of impious men is only temporary, and will one day have an end, and that a restoration (ἀποκατάστασις) will take place of demons and of impious men, let him be anathema. (The ninth anathema of the Emperor Justinian against Origen)

Moreover, this doctrine of demonic unsalvagability has generally been explained, or at least combined, with what I will call the idea of demonic obstinacy, i.e. the idea that demons' wills will never be restored to a state of righteousness or justice. Theologians have offered various explanations for demonic obstinacy. Gregory the Great, in his Morlia in Job, suggests that God does not restore the demons to justice because the demons sinned more seriously than did humans. Others have argued that, as purely spiritual beings, the demons never get tired and hence continually maintain their evil wills. In his commentary on the Sentences (Book 2, distinction 7, part 1, article 1, question 1), Bonaventure surveys a number of explanations of demonic obstinacy, rejecting most of them and then proposing his own (rather unsatisfying) explanation: each kind of creature has a certain period available to it for repentance, and demons cannot repent simply because their time for repentance has expired.

In his Summa Theologiae (henceforth ST), Thomas Aquinas explicitly rejects Gregory's theory that God leaves the demons in a state of sin because of the severity of their sin: "We must seek for the cause of this obstinacy, not in the gravity of the sin, but in the condition of their nature or state" (ST 1.64.2; all quotations from the ST follow the translation hosted at New Advent). Aquinas then proceeds to give an original and philosophically sophisticated explanation of demonic obstinacy.

To understand the Thomistic explanation of demonic obstinacy, we must distinguish between intellect and reason. In medieval Aristotelianism, the term intellectus, like the Greek term nous which it translates, can have either of two meanings. On one hand, it can refer to the intellectual powers in general, including the ability to reason from one piece of knowledge to another. On the other hand, intellectus can be used much more narrowly, to refer to the faculty by which we grasp the undemonstrable first principles (cf. Aristotle's use of nous in Posterior Analytics 100b5-17). Intellectus, in this sense, is more like perception than reason. By means of intellectus, we just see that certain principles are true, providing us with a starting point for reasoning. According to Aquinas, angels are purely intellectual beings (unlike humans, who are rational beings): they receive all of their knowledge through intellectus (ST 1.58.3). In the same way that human beings just see the first principles, the angels just see all of the concepts that they are capable of grasping.

With the distinction between intelligence and reason in mind, let's examine the Thomistic explanation of demonic obstinacy:

Now the angel's apprehension differs from man's in this respect, that the angel by his intellect apprehends immovably, as we apprehend immovably first principles which are the object of the habit of "intelligence" [intellectus]; whereas man by his reason apprehends movably, passing from one consideration to another; and having the way open by which he may proceed to either of two opposites. Consequently man's will adheres to a thing movably, and with the power of forsaking it and of clinging to the opposite; whereas the angel's will adheres fixedly and immovably. Therefore, if his will be considered before its adhesion, it can freely adhere either to this or to its opposite (namely, in such things as he does not will naturally); but after he has once adhered, he clings immovably. So it is customary to say that man's free-will is flexible to the opposite both before and after choice; but the angel's free-will is flexible either opposite before the choice, but not after. Therefore the good angels who adhered to justice, were confirmed therein; whereas the wicked ones, sinning, are obstinate in sin. (ST 1.64.2)

By his intellectus, an angel perceives, constantly and "immovably", all of the concepts that he is capable of grasping. Thus, once he has made his initial choice for or against God, no new information can reach him to change his mind. That, in a nutshell, is the Thomistic explanation of demonic obstinacy.

2. The problem

2.1. The problem in outline

I have long regarded the Thomistic explanation of demonic obstinacy as philosophically superior to other explanations. However, it occurred to me recently that the Thomistic explanation has a major difficulty.

The difficulty arises when we consider the parallel between demonic sinfulness and human sinfulness. As we saw, Aquinas believes that, given their condition, demons are incapable of turning away from sin on their own. However, according to the doctrine of original sin, the same would seem to be true of human beings. Aquinas says as much: "Non potest homo per seipsum iustificari, idest redire de statu culpae ad statum iustitiae" ("By himself [man] cannot be justified, i.e. he cannot return from a state of sin to a state of justice") (ST 2(1).109.7). Despite this, Aquinas believes that human beings can be restored to justice, through God's grace. Here, then, is the problem for Aquinas's explanation of demonic obstinacy: if God can restore human beings to justice through grace, then why doesn't he restore demons to justice in the same way?

2.2. A possible solution

I cannot examine all the solutions that might be proposed for the problem introduced in section 2.1. However, let's consider one possible solution. This solution takes its cue from Aquinas's account of justification, i.e. of the process by which human beings become just.

According to Aquinas, justification requires an act of free will on the part of the person being justified:

The justification of the ungodly is brought about by God moving man to justice. For He it is "that justifieth the ungodly" according to Romans 4:5. Now God moves everything in its own manner, just as we see that in natural things, what is heavy and what is light are moved differently, on account of their diverse natures. Hence He moves man to justice according to the condition of his human nature. But it is man's proper nature to have free-will. Hence in him who has the use of reason [literally, use of free will: usum liberi arbitrii], God's motion to justice does not take place without a movement of the free-will; but He so infuses the gift of justifying grace that at the same time He moves the free-will to accept the gift of grace [literally, "moves the free will toward the gift of grace which is to be accepted": movet liberum arbitrium ad donum gratiae acceptandum], in such as are capable of being moved thus. (ST 2(1).113.3) 

As Elenore Stump notes (1989, 182-83), the relationship between justifying grace and free will in Aquinas's theory is a vexed question. If God moves the free will (movet liberum arbitrium), then how is the will free (liber) at that time? However, we need not delve into that issue here. For our purposes, what matters is that Aquinas apparently accepts the following claim: God will not restore a being to justice by means of grace unless that being's will accepts the grace.

This claim might explain why God does not use grace to restore demons to justice. According to Aquinas, the "appetitive power" (vis appetitiva) is "proportioned" (proportionatur) to the "apprehensive" (apprehensivae) power (ST 1.64.2). This means, at least, that one can will X only if one apprehends (i.e. grasps) what X is. Since the demons made their choice in the full light of knowledge, and there is no further knowledge that they can grasp, there is no way for their wills to change while maintaining the "proportion" between the appetitive power and the apprehensive power. In principle, perhaps, God could override a demon's nature and turn the demon's will toward the good, but such an action would upset the "proportion" between the demon's will and his apprehension. In fact, one might argue that, by disregarding that "proportion", God would be overriding the demon's free will. I'm not sure that this explanation works, but Aquinas would probably have to say something like this in order to explain why God does not use grace to save the demons.

2.3. New problem: hypostatic union

At its most basic level, the proposal in section 2.2 was that something about the very nature of demonic cognition makes it inappropriate for God to use grace to restore demons to justice. However, this proposal raises a new problem, one that stems from a specific point of Christian doctrine. Aquinas might be excused for not thinking of this problem, since it's not a problem that would immediately occur to someone. However, I think it's a problem that Aquinas, as a believer in Christian doctrine, would have to take seriously, were he confronted with it.

Aquinas accepts the Christian doctrine of the "hypostatic union" as defined at the Council of Chalcedon and the Third Council of Constantinople. According to this doctrine, Christ's divine and human natures are united in a single "person" (Greek hypostasis), the person of God the Son. In other words, Christ's human body and soul are united with God the Son in such a way that they do not constitute a person in addition to God the Son. Christ has two distinct wills, a divine will and a human will, but the volitions of both wills are volitions of the same person, namely God the Son.

Now, if God can unite himself hypostatically with a human body and soul, then there seems to be no reason why he could not unite a demon hypostatically with a human body and soul. Suppose that God does so. In that case, the demon has a human will whose volitions are volitions of the demon himself. Now, God can restore human wills to justice through grace. So suppose that God gives grace to the demon's human will, enabling that will to consent to having the demon's demonic will be rectified. Since the human will's volitions are volitions of the demon himself, the human will's consent is the consent of the demon himself. And if the demon himself is consenting to having his demonic will rectified, then there seems to be no good reason for God not to rectify the demon's demonic will.

Indeed, in rectifying the demon's will, God would simply be acting analogously to the way in which (according to Aquinas) God acts when he restores ordinary human beings to justice. Recall: on Aquinas's account of justification, God moves a human being's will so that the human being consents to God's grace, and God's grace simultaneously rectifies the human being's will (ST 2(1)113.7). If a human being's consent to grace makes it appropriate for grace to rectify the human being's will, then it seems that a demon's consent to grace would make it appropriate for grace to rectify the demon's demonic will.

So here's the problem: if something about the very nature of demonic cognition makes it inappropriate for God to rectify a demon's will through grace, then why doesn't God hypostatically unite the demon with a human body and soul, enabling the demon to receive grace by means of a human will?

3. Sketches of possible defenses of the Thomistic explanation

How might the Thomist defend the Thomistic explanation of demonic obstinacy against the objections that I laid out in sections 2.1-2.3? Off the top of my head, I can think of three possible lines of argument:

1. The Thomist might accept a modified version of the theory (mentioned in section 1) that the severity of the demons' sin makes God unwilling to save them. If the Thomist took this route, then he could still say, along with Aquinas, that the demons, being purely intellectual, cannot change their minds on their own and are therefore "stuck" in sin. To this, the Thomist would simply add that God refrains from getting the demons "unstuck" because of the severity of the demons' sin.

2. The Thomist might focus his rebuttal on my argument that, if God hypostatically united a demon with a human body and soul, then the demon would be able to repent through his human will. I'm not sure how this rebuttal would go. Perhaps the Thomist could argue that, by virtue of being hypostatically united with the demon, the human soul would share in the demon's demonic knowledge, and so the demon would face the same problem all over again, i.e. no new information would be able to reach his human soul to change its mind. (I personally don't see why the hypostatic union would entail this. And some theologians, such as Duns Scotus, have explicitly denied that the hypostatic union between Christ's divine and human natures entails that Christ's human soul shares in Christ's divine knowledge, although Scotus, for example, believes that Christ's human soul does in fact share in Christ's divine knowledge.)

3. For Aquinas, restoring a person to justice is only part of what it takes to save that person. By sinning, a person brings upon himself a debt of punishment. Thus, to be saved, he must not only be restored to justice but also have his debt of punishment paid off. According to Aquinas, Christ's death "was sufficient and superabundant satisfaction for the sins of the whole human race" (ST 3.49.3). So a human being's debt of punishment can be paid off by Christ's death. But Christ assumed human nature, not demonic nature, so Christ's death arguably doesn't help to pay off the debt of punishment incurred by a demon's sins. So even if a demon is restored to justice, a Thomist might argue, the demon would still carry his debt of punishment, and thus it would be pointless for God to restore him demon to justice. That, perhaps, is why demons will never be restored to justice.

Clearly, my examination of the issues surrounding Aquinas's explanation of demonic obstinacy has only scratched the surface. I think this may be a fruitful area of exploration for students of medieval philosophy.

References:

Stump, Eleonore. "Atonement and Justification". Trinity, Incarnation, and Atonement: Philosophical and Theological Studies. Ed. Ronald J. Feenstra and Cornelius Plantinga. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1989.

Thomas Aquinas. Summa Theologica. Trans. Fathers of the English Dominican Province. Ed. Kevin Knight. New Advent. 2008. June 12, 2011 <http://www.newadvent.org/summa/>.

For the Latin text of the ST, I consulted the online site Corpus Thomisticum, which I have no idea how to make a bibliographic entry for.