Annotatio CXLI

”A fire that is not kindled shall devour him.” — Job 20:26

Gregory, in book 15 of the Morals, seems from these words to deduce that the fire of hell is incorporeal,¹ and diverse in kind from this fire of ours — which indeed Jerome, writing to Avitus, reckons among the condemned assertions of Origen. The words from chapter 15 of the Morals run thus: “‘A fire that is not kindled shall devour him’: in a very wonderful manner, in few words, is the fire of gehenna expressed. For our fire is corporeal, and, that it may avail to be fire, needs corporeal fuel; and, when it must be maintained, is without doubt nourished by heaped-up wood — nor can it be [fire] unless kindled, nor subsist unless refreshed. But, on the contrary, the fire of gehenna, since it is incorporeal, and burns corporeally the reprobates cast into it, is neither kindled by human effort, nor nourished by wood, but, once created, endures inextinguishable; and needs no kindling, and lacks no heat.” Of this opinion of Gregory’s seem to have been Augustine, in book 12 On Genesis to the letter, where he taught that the place to which souls are borne after death is not corporeal but spiritual; and John Damascene, who concluded the end of book 4 On the Orthodox Faith with these words: “And the Devil shall be delivered, and his Demons, and his man — that is, Antichrist — and the impious, and sinners, into the eternal fire: not material, such as is with us, but such as God knoweth.”

But that Gregory did not think so is clearly demonstrated in book 4 of the Dialogues, chapter 29, where, to Peter asking whether he would confess the fire of gehenna to be incorporeal or corporeal, he answers: “That the fire of gehenna is corporeal I do not doubt, in which it is certain that bodies are tormented.” Wherefore it is to be known that these words of Gregory, in all the Lyons codices of Hugh à Porta, and in some manuscript exemplars, are read corruptly:² for where in these is had, “The fire of gehenna, since it is incorporeal,” the syllable “In” ought to have been deleted, so that, in place of the word “Incorporeus,” might be read “Corporeus”³ — for the following words of Gregory openly show this; and in this manner St. Thomas cites them, in the fourth volume of the Sentences, distinction 44, question 3, saying: saying that from this passage it cannot be deduced that the fire of hell is of another nature and species than this [our fire] is: “for although in these fires certain diverse properties may be found, yet of both the nature, form, and substance is the same.” But as to that which was brought forward from Damascene, Durandus of Saint-Pourçain, in the fourth [book] of the Sentences, freely pronounces that that author erred, thinking wrongly in this part.

But St. Thomas, as is his custom, treating Damascene urbanely and benignly, says that his mind can be interpreted in a twofold manner: first, that we understand him not simply to have denied the material fire of Hell, but [to have denied] that it is material in the same way as ours, which is distinguished from that fire by several properties. Secondly, that we understand him not to have denied the fire of Hell to be material as to substance, but as to the effect of punishment: for it punishes bodies by a certain spiritual action,⁴ which it neither dissolves nor consumes, and torments the souls themselves much more spiritually. What is to be answered to Augustine’s opinion, you have above, Annotation 40.