ABSTRACT
This chapter deals with Augustine and Aquinas on the soul and body and heaven and hell. (Anselm is not featured until the section on hell, since he did not write extensively on the soul or the afterlife.) After a quick proof of heaven, the topic is the nature of the human person, a unity of soul and body together. Augustine and Aquinas both offer proofs for the incorporeal nature of the soul and its immortality. A more challenging issue is the resurrection of the body. Augustine, especially, works to defend this doctrine against Platonists who find it absurd. What will the afterlife be like for those in heaven? They will enjoy eternal happiness beholding God. What about hell? Augustine and Aquinas are compatibilists, meaning that God could have drawn everyone into heaven without damaging their free will. He did not do so because the damned serve various purposes that are likely to strike the modern reader as uncharitable. Anselm's libertarianism allows for a more satisfactory explanation for why hell is not empty: God respects our free agency to such an extent that He allows us to choose hell.
