Tertullian, A Treatise on the Soul 56

A debate springs up: does this also happen the moment life ends, or does some reason hold certain souls here for a while, or is it even allowed for souls already received to intervene later from the lower world, whether by choice or by command? None of these opinions lacks persuasive arguments. People have believed that the unburied are not conducted to the lower world before they receive their due rites, following Homer’s account of Patroclus’ funeral, where Patroclus appears to Achilles in a dream and begs him for burial because he cannot otherwise approach the gates of the lower world, since the souls of the buried keep him at a distance. We know, however, that beyond poetic conventions Homer also displays an industrious piety. He placed such great weight on burial, and he also blamed the harmful delay it inflicted on souls; at the same time he wanted to prevent anyone who kept a corpse at home from being tormented himself by excessive grief nourished by the pain of sorrow. Thus the complaints of the unburied soul are settled on both counts: so that the urgency of the funeral and the honor due the body may be preserved, and so that the sorrow of the affections may be tempered. Besides, how vain is it for the soul to sustain the body’s rites, as if it were going to carry something from them to the lower world? It is even more vain if the omission of burial is counted as an injury to the soul, which ought to accept that omission with gratitude. For the soul would certainly prefer to be delayed in being drawn down to the lower world, since it did not wish to die in the first place. It will love the impious heir through whom it still feeds on the light; or if a genuine injury exists in being cast under the earth later, the title of that injury is the omission of burial, through which an unjust injury strikes the soul, even though the omission is not chargeable to the soul but to the nearest relatives. They also say that those cut off by immature death wander here until the remainder of their allotted lifespans is completed, lifespans they would have reached had they not died prematurely. Furthermore, either times are fixed for each person, and I do not believe they can be snatched away; or if they are fixed, they are nevertheless mutilated by the will of God or some power, and they are mutilated in vain if the soul simply waits after they have already been fulfilled; or if they are not fixed, there will be no remainder of times that were never fixed. I add this: look, an infant dies at the breast, suppose a boy just invested with the toga, suppose a youth just assumed the manly gown, who nevertheless would have lived eighty years. What does its soul do here after death with those snatched-away years? It cannot grasp age without a body, because ages operate through bodies. Our people also consider that the same bodies will receive the souls in the resurrection, the bodies in which they died. Therefore the same bodily modes, and the same ages that produce those modes, will also be hoped for. How, then, can an infant’s soul transact the snatched-away years here so that it rises again in the body of a one-month-old? Or if those destined times must be fulfilled here, will the soul also run through the order of life allotted with them here, so that it studies from infancy, delegated to childhood; serves as a soldier from adolescence, stirred to youth; acts as a judge from youth, weighted by old age; exacts interest and works the field, sails, litigates, marries, labors, undergoes illnesses, and experiences whatever sad and joyful things remained with it and the times? But how can these things be transacted without a body? Life without life? The times would be empty, fulfilled only by passing through. What prevents them from being fulfilled in the lower world, where there is just as little use for them? Thus we say that every soul, whatever age it died, stands in that state until that day when the perfect is promised, tempered to the measure of angelic fullness. Therefore neither will those torn away by force be treated as strangers to the lower world, those whom they suppose were violently seized, especially through the atrocities of punishments — I mean the cross, the axe, the sword, and the wild beast; nor will these violent exits, which justice decrees, be avenged by violence. And so, you will say, every wicked soul is excluded from the lower world. You must then establish another: either a good lower world or an evil one. If evil, then the worst souls ought to be cast down there immediately. If good, why do you not judge the same, that immature and unmarried souls, pure and innocent by reason of age, are not worthy of the lower world in the meantime?