Whether the separated soul can suffer from a bodily fire?

❌ Objection 1 : It would seem that the separated soul cannot suffer from a bodily fire. For Augustine says (Gen. ad lit. xii): "The things that affect the soul well or ill after its separation from the body, are not corporeal but resemble corporeal things." Therefore the separated soul is not punished with a bodily fire.

❌ Objection 2 : Further, Augustine (Gen. ad lit. xii) says that "the agent is always more excellent than the patient." But it is impossible for any body to be more excellent than the separated soul. Therefore it cannot suffer from a body.

❌ Objection 3 : Further, according to the Philosopher (De Gener. i) and Boethius (De Duab. Natur.) only those things that agree in matter are active and passive in relation to one another. But the soul and corporeal fire do not agree in matter, since there is no matter common to spiritual and corporeal things: wherefore they cannot be changed into one another, as Boethius says (De Duab. Natur.). Therefore the separated soul does not suffer from a bodily fire.

❌ Objection 4 : Further, whatsoever is patient receives something from the agent. Therefore if the soul suffer from the bodily fire, it will receive something therefrom. Now whatsoever is received in a thing is received according to the mode of the recipient. Therefore that which is received in the soul from the fire, is in it not materially but spiritually. Now the forms of things existing spiritually in the soul are its perfections. Therefore though it be granted that the soul suffer from the bodily fire, this will not conduce to its punishment, but rather to its perfection.

❌ Objection 5 : Further, if it be said that the soul is punished merely by seeing the fire, as Gregory would seem to say (Dial. iv, 29). On the contrary, if the soul sees the fire of hell, it cannot see it save by intellectual vision, since it has not the organs by which sensitive or imaginative vision is effected. But it would seem impossible for intellectual vision to be the cause of sorrow, since "there is no sorrow contrary to the pleasure of considering," according to the Philosopher (Topic. i, 13). Therefore the soul is not punished by that vision.

❌ Objection 6 : Further, if it be said that the soul suffers from the corporeal fire, through being held thereby, even as now it is held by the body while living in the body; on the contrary, the soul while living in the body is held by the body in so far as there results one thing from the soul and the body, as from form and matter. But the soul will not be the form of that corporeal fire. Therefore it cannot be held by the fire in the manner aforesaid.

❌ Objection 7 : Further, every bodily agent acts by contact. But a corporeal fire cannot be in contact with the soul, since contact is only between corporeal things whose bounds come together. Therefore the soul suffers not from that fire.

❌ Objection 8 : Further, an organic agent does not act on a remote object, except through acting on the intermediate objects; wherefore it is able to act at a fixed distance in proportion to its power. But souls, or at least the demons to whom this equally applies, are sometimes outside the place of hell, since sometimes they appear to men even in this world: and yet they are not then free from punishment, for just as the glory of the saints is never interrupted, so neither is the punishment of the damned. And yet we do not find that all the intermediate things suffer from the fire of hell: nor again is it credible that any corporeal thing of an elemental nature has such a power that its action can reach to such a distance. Therefore it does not seem that the pains suffered by the souls of the damned are inflicted by a corporeal fire.