Eschatology

12:00 PM ET Tue., Apr. 08, 2025

How has Thomas Aquinas shaped our thoughts on death, judgment, and the final destiny of our souls and of humankind? Contemplate Aquinas’ writings on the integration of different human dimensions in the vision of God in heaven, the necessity of embodied repentance, and how and whether we should include animals in the glorified universe.

The comprehensive and systematic character of Thomas Aquinas’ thought has for centuries informed inquiry into questions of human dignity, freedom, economic development, work, poverty, the environment, and other issues of global significance. Celebrate the 800th anniversary of the birth of Thomas Aquinas, exploring the ongoing importance of his thought to contemporary cultural, philosophical, and theological discussions. In gathering many of the most accomplished contemporary scholars of Aquinas’ thought from throughout the world working on themes in Ethics, Metaphysics, Epistemology, Anthropology, Political Theory, Christology, Trinitarian Theology, Sacramental Theology and Ecclesiology, among others, this series promotes fruitful interchange of diverse perspectives on the importance of Aquinas in the world today.

Featured Speakers:

Rev. James Dominic Rooney, O.P., assistant professor of philosophy at Hong Kong Baptist University
Catalina Vial de Amesti, Pontifical University of the Holy Cross in Rome, Italy
Jennifer Hart Weed, associate professor at the University of New Brunswick

What happens after death? Can we repent after judgment? Will our bodies matter in eternity? And do animals have a place in the life to come?

To celebrate the 800th anniversary of Thomas Aquinas’s birth, the Jacques Maritain Center convened three distinguished scholars for a dynamic conversation on eschatology, the soul, and the nature of divine love. Drawing deeply from Aquinas’s writings, the panel explored some of the most enduring —and pressing— questions about human destiny.

Fr. James Dominic Rooney – Postmortem Repentance and the Fixity of Will
Fr. James Dominic Rooney of Hong Kong Baptist University opened with a challenging claim rooted in Aquinas’s anthropology: after death, repentance is no longer possible. In the disembodied state, Rooney explained, the soul attains a kind of angelic clarity—its self-knowledge becomes luminous and fixed. Because no new relevant information arises and the will is fully exposed to itself, one’s orientation toward or away from God becomes final. Rather than arbitrary, this fixity reflects both divine justice and the soul’s freedom. Rooney’s paper addressed common critiques that such a doctrine portrays God as unmerciful, and clarified Aquinas’s belief that postmortem obstinacy is the result of transparent, fully chosen desire.

Dr. Catalina Vial – Embodied Joy and the Beatific Vision
Dr. Catalina Vial of the Pontifical University of the Holy Cross turned to the nature of the beatific vision, responding to critiques that Aquinas presents too intellectualized a view of heaven. Vial argued for a holistic and christological reading of Aquinas: that final union with God involves not just intellect, but the entire human person—will, affections, and glorified body. She emphasized that charity on earth shapes our capacity for heavenly glory, and that Aquinas’s eschatology, properly read, resists the charge of spiritual reductionism. The glorified body, far from being an afterthought, fully participates in the joy and radiance of divine life. In this vision, heaven is not sterile contemplation, but a transformative and communal reality suffused with love.

Dr. Jennifer Hart Weed – Animals and the Fittingness of Cosmic Renewal
Dr. Jennifer Hart Weed of the University of New Brunswick offered a creative and bold proposal: that Aquinas’s own principles of fittingness may open the door to the inclusion of animals in the glorified creation. While Aquinas held that animals, lacking rational souls, do not persist after death, Hart Weed reexamined this claim through his broader metaphysical framework. If divine goodness is superabundant and the new creation aims at cosmic perfection, she argued, it may be fitting for non-rational creatures to be restored in some transformed way. Drawing on Scripture and Thomistic logic, she proposed that glorified animals could manifest God’s generosity—not primarily for human enjoyment, but as part of creation’s full redemption.

A Living Dialogue with Aquinas
Hosted by Fr. Matthew Hovde, the event was marked by intellectual generosity and imaginative rigor. Questions from the audience drew out themes of angelic will, the resurrection of the body, and the continuity of personal identity. Rather than treating Aquinas as a static authority, the conversation presented him as a living interlocutor—capable of guiding fresh inquiry into what it means to love, to choose, and to hope for more.

Postmortem Fixity Is About Clarity, Not Cruelty
Fr. James Dominic Rooney reframed Aquinas’s teaching on judgment after death. Souls don’t miss out on Heaven because God is arbitrary or harsh. Rather, Aquinas believes that after death, we achieve full psychological transparency—we know ourselves completely, without distortion or confusion. With no new information to shift our desires, the choices we make at the moment of death become final not because of divine punishment, but because of the soul’s own clarity and freedom. It’s a sobering yet compassionate account of how eternal separation from God might stem from radical self-knowledge, not divine exclusion.

Heaven Engages the Whole Person
Dr. Catalina Vial challenged the stereotype of Aquinas as a cold intellectualist. Yes, the beatific vision is rooted in knowledge—but it’s not just about the mind. According to Aquinas, true happiness involves intellect, will, emotion, and even the glorified body. Heaven, then, is not sterile contemplation but a deeply relational experience of love, joy, and fulfillment. It’s the consummation of our entire humanity, not just a reward for our reasoning.

Our Bodies Matter in Glory
Aquinas doesn’t see the human body as an obstacle to salvation—it’s part of it. Dr. Vial emphasized that in the resurrection, our bodies are glorified and play a meaningful role in eternal happiness. While our senses won’t grasp God’s essence directly, they will participate by perceiving the radiance of divine glory in creation. This is not a disembodied spirituality but a vision in which our whole embodied history is redeemed and celebrated.

The Door Isn’t Closed on Animals
One of the most surprising insights came from Dr. Jennifer Hart Weed, who argued that Aquinas’s own logic could allow for animals in the afterlife. While Aquinas traditionally excluded them, his principle of fittingness—that God acts in ways appropriate to His nature as good and generous—opens the possibility that animals might be part of the renewed creation. Their inclusion would not be about merit, but about God’s desire to renew the world in its fullness. This expands the theological imagination: perhaps salvation is more than individual—it could be cosmic.

Aquinas Makes Room for Wonder
Across the panel, a bigger picture emerged: Aquinas’s theology is not narrow or rigid—it’s capacious and wonder-filled. The conversation highlighted how Aquinas attends to the full range of human experience—intellect and emotion, body and story, personal desire and cosmic renewal. His eschatology doesn’t flatten the world; it transfigures it. Heaven, in this view, isn’t just a private reward, but a radiant culmination of God’s work in all creation.

Radical Self-Knowledge After Death: “In the disembodied state, we will fully identify with our desires—including our sinful desires. And there will be no new relevant information after death that could cause us to reconsider those desires with which we identify ourselves at death.”
— Fr. James Dominic Rooney [00:12:24 → 00:13:07]
Vision Rooted in Relationship: “Our vision of God in heaven takes place as a participation in the eternal loving knowledge or glory that exists between the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit… It is an assimilation to the eternal life of the divine person made possible by the lumen gloriae.”
— Dr. Catalina Vial [00:33:54 → 00:34:53]
Eternal Joy Overflowing: “In everlasting life, man is united to God. God himself is the reward and the end of all our labors. This union with God consists in a perfect vision. It also consists in the highest praise. In everlasting life is the full and perfect satisfying of every desire.”
— Dr. Catalina Vial [00:47:03 → 00:47:47]
Redemptive Possibility for Animals: “Although animals are no longer useful to human beings who are enjoying the beatific vision, it is possible that God would include animals in the afterlife as an aspect of his redemption and restoration of creation.”
— Dr. Jennifer Hart Weed [00:55:16 → 00:56:01]
Creation Fully Glorified: “If it’s fitting for God to renew and glorify the elements so they may exist in the renewed world, how much more fitting would it be for God to renew and glorify animals so that he might continue to communicate his goodness and love to them?”
— Dr. Jennifer Hart Weed [01:10:39 → 01:11:10]

Eschatology

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