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Introduction
Pierre Benoit question about the state of the soul after death in his article ‗Resurrection:
At the End of Time or immediately after Death?‘ is what propelled me to inquire about the
intermediate state.
Let me begin with two of the things that are certain and that we earnestly profess.The
first and most immediate and empirically certain of last things is physical death. As the Wisdom
literature of the Old Testament emphasizes, death comes alike to all, rich and poor, wise and
foolish. ―Who can live and never see death?‖1 For us Catholics, however, death is never simply
a natural event. Death is a consequence of sin.2 As Paul says: ―The wages of sin is death‖
(Rom. 6:23). Central to this message of hope is the conviction that death is not final: ―O death,
where is thy victory? O death, where is thy sting?‖3 In God‘s Kingdom, ―death shall be no
more‖4 And this leads us to second point which is certain of the last things i.e. the resurrection of
the body which we Christians profess.
There is a difficulty, however, for the believer who believes in the resurrection of the
body which, like the soul, will be delivered from the yoke of sin by returning to life which is
won for us by Jesus Christ himself.5 This difficulty is found in the delay of the promised
resurrection of the body. The basis for this resurrection of the body is Christ‘s resurrection, and
this resurrection of Christ ought to set free the men it hold captive and not take any others
prisoner. But that does not happen. The dead of the past ages still lie in their graves, the living
still die, the resurrection promised to both is still postponed from one age to another, and this has
1
Ps. 89:48
2
De Fide
3
1 Cor. 15:55
4
Rev. 21:4
5
Pierre Benoit, Resurrection: At the End of Time or immediately after Death?, Concilium 10 (1970): 103.
Hereafter Benoit, Resurrection.

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been going on for ages. He further posed another problem wherein he said: ―But there still
remains a difficulty whose solution is rather less easy to find in revealed truth. What are we to
understand by this intermediate state in which the Christian is placed between his death and his
resurrection? How are we to regard man‘s state during this long period of waiting?6
Herein lies the question of ―intermediate state‖: What is the status of the self between
death and resurrection? Although the question is not a new one, for there are clear indication of
it right at the beginning of Christianity.7 Recently, the question of intermediate states has been
debated and that makes this problem worthy of examination. Joseph Ratzinger has written about
it and it is my goal in writing this article to present the idea of one of the foremost theologians of
our time, the idea of a theologian who became Benedict XVI.
I. Traditional Belief
The debates about the resurrection of Jesus found their counterparts in theological
discussions about the nature of our own resurrections. Traditional doctrine long had it that at death
the immortal soul, now separated from the body, enjoyed the vision of God, or suffered the loss of it,
and the resurrection of the body had to wait until the final judgment at the end of time. Therefore,
there was an intermediate state in which the soul lived on without the body until the time of
judgment.
6
Benoit, Resurrection, 103-104.
7
Benoit, Resurrection, 104

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II. After Vatican II
But in the aftermath of the Council this separation of body and soul seemed too dualistic both
in regard to the unity of human beings expressed in the Scriptures, as well as found in modern
thought. Why not say that our human unity is preserved in death, and therefore our resurrection takes
place at the time of our death? Hints of such an approach appeared right after the Council in the
Dutch Catechism8 and were expressed in a theory in which the whole person is raised at the moment
of death, that is, there is a ―resurrection in death,‖9 by Gisbert Greshake in 1969. But since our bodies
continue to lie in their graves, Greshake must advance another view of the body beyond the
common-sense one. ―Matter will be perfected, not in itself or by itself, but rather in ‗the other,‘
namely, in the spirit, or the person.‖10 ―Matter as such (as atom, molecule, organ...) cannot be
perfected... This being so, then if human freedom is finalised in death, the body, the world and the
history of this freedom are permanently preserved in the definitive concrete form which that freedom
has taken.‖11
Greshake tells us that many Christians believe more in the immortality of the soul than in the
resurrection of the body, but the ―real perfection and completion lie in resurrection of the body. Does
this mean the actual resuscitation of dead bodies and the opening of graves? Surely not.‖12 But his
alternative to a resuscitation remains rather not clear. Our personalities and the world are not totally
separable. We hope not in the immortality of the soul ―but for the renewed life of the person indelibly
8
Joseph Ratzinger, Eschatology: Death and Eternal Life. Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press.
1988. p. 108. Hereafter, Ratzinger, Eschatology.
9
Cf. Gisbert Greshake, Death and Resurrection. Theology Digest 26 (1978): 16-18. Hereafter Greshake, Death and
Resurrection.
10
Greshake, Death and Resurrection, 17.
11
Ratzinger, Eschatology, 108-109.
12
Greshake, Death and Resurrection, 17.

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stamped by his interaction with the world.‖13 What this could mean when it is a question of
resurrection in death, besides the immortal soul without the body, is unclear.
III. Joseph Ratzinger
The main opponent of the idea of Greshake about resurrection in death is the prominent
German theologian who later became Pope Benedict XVI. In 1977, Benedict XVI, then Joseph
Cardinal Ratzinger in his Eschatology, subjected both the idea of a resurrection at the time of death
and the context from which it had emerged to a series of well-targeted criticisms. It had become
popular, he felt, to imagine that speaking of the soul was unbiblical. Instead, the idea of the ―absolute
indivisibility‖14 of the human being was the message found in the scriptures and happily confirmed
by modern anthropology. His own position was sharply opposed to what he saw as a post-conciliar
consensus in which ―a resurrection in death and a consequent rejection of the concept of the soul had
made considerable inroads.‖15 Was a theory like Greshake‘s, he asked, really about some corporeal
resurrection, or was it simply a camouflaged way to talk about the immortality of the soul because
wasn‘t what actually perdured after death in such a theory what had traditionally been called the
soul? Did this view of the resurrection actually do justice to the church‘s teaching of the resurrection
on the last day, and ―in the self-same flesh in which we live, exist, and move,‖ as the Council of
Toledo in 675 had put it?16
But what is most striking in Ratzinger‘s analysis, and important for our goal to present his
understanding of the intermediate state, is his assertion that while the church took ideas about body
and soul from the Greeks, it had transformed them in a long process that found ―its final and
13
Greshake, Death and Resurrection, 18.
14
Ratzinger, Eschatology, 106.
15
Ratzinger, Eschatology, 261.
16
Ratzinger, Eschatology, 135.

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definitive form only in the work of St. Thomas Aquinas.‖17 He is saying this not because he is a
Thomist18 but because he realized that the view of the soul that is found in St. Thomas is a product of
Christian faith. St. Thomas, working within the nurturing atmosphere of faith, had fused Aristotle
and Plato together to create a philosophical doctrine of the relationship between body and soul that
would be in harmony with Christian doctrine. This Thomistic view, Ratzinger thought, meant that the
soul as the form of the body could never leave behind its relationship with matter, as Greshake‘s
theory appears to make it do.19 And Thomas‘ view allows us to make a distinction between matter as
a ―physiological unit‖ and ―bodiliness‖ because ―the material elements from out of which human
physiology is constructed receive their character of being ‗body‘ only in virtue of being organized
and formed by the expressive power of the soul.‖20 This was a view of the relationship between body
and soul found its full expression in St. Thomas:
―The individual atoms and molecules do not as such add up to the human
being. The identity of the living body does not depend upon them, but upon the fact
that matter is drawn into the soul‘s power of expression. Just as the soul is defined in
terms of matter, so the living body is wholly defined by reference to the soul. The
soul builds itself a living body, a self-identical living body, as its corporeal
expression. And since the living body belongs so inseparably to the being of man,
the identity of that body is defined not in terms of matter but in terms of soul.‖21
In May, 1979 a statement by the Congregation for the Defense of the Faith, on certain questions on
eschatology expressed the traditional doctrine in response to new theories and the unrest they could
cause among the faithful. The resurrection of the dead, it emphasized, deals with the whole human
being, and between death and resurrection the church affirms ―the continuity and independent
17
Ratzinger, Eschatology, 148.
18
He is not because his own training and theological inclinations were more on Augustine.
19
Ratzinger, Eschatology, 179.
20
Ratzinger, Eschatology, 179.
21
Ratzinger, Eschatology, 179

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existence of the spiritual element in man after death,‖22 which can be called the soul. In commenting
on this document, Ratzinger mentions the kind of dynamics we have been seeing.
When Ratzinger wrote an Afterword to the English edition of Eschatology in 1987 he noticed
some movement in the controversy with Greshake, for example, modifying his position about the
value of the notion of the soul.23 Ratzinger commented: ―As this debate proceeds, it becomes ever
clearer that the true function of the idea of the soul‘s immortality is to preserve a real hold on that of
the resurrection of the flesh. The thesis of resurrection in death dematerializes the resurrection.‖24
22
Ratzinger, Eschatology, 245.
23
Ratzinger, Eschatology, 266.
24
Ratzinger, Eschatology, 267.

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Conclusion
Arthur Schopenhauer once quipped that ―every parting gives a foretaste of death, every
reunion a hint of resurrection‖. My goal here is to present that comma, that ―in between‖ in
Schopenhauer‘s statement above through the eschatological view of Joseph Ratzinger which I
mainly relied from a nine volume series of dogmatic theology which was published in 1977 in
German and is intended for German readership but which was translated into English in 1988. I
am very much sure that it‘s difficult to grapple with a German writer. And English translation
from a German original makes it more difficult. I have limited my quest to Ratzinger‘s idea of
intermediate state to his Eschatology: Death and Eternal Life. Another difficulty on my part is
the shift of Ratzinger‘s thought. I read somewhere that during the council, he was tagged as
among the liberals. But after the council, Ratzinger is seen as conservative. Another difficulty
that I have encountered in treating this question about the intermediate state is the Augustinian
background and leanings of Ratzinger and hence more on Platonic mindset but as my research
progressed, I have seen that he employed the ideas of St Thomas Aquinas (Aristotelian
influenced). I myself am not convinced of this work of mine. I really wanted to go inside. I really
wanted to dive into the thoughts of this great theologian but I really found it difficult especially
with the subject that still in progress – in debates. To conclude this work of mine, Ratzinger said
that the Last Day, if taken as a shared ending of all history, would raise the question as to what
happens ―in between.‖ This ―in between‖ is Ratzinger‘s primary concern in the book
Eschatology and that is the idea of the intermediate state, whether the dead can be said to exist
between death and general resurrection. For Joseph Ratzinger, the soul is taken and understood
as the fundamental reality of matter, a Thomistic idea. Ratzinger has an illuminating discussion
of the development of ideas about the postmortem condition of the dead, from the shadowy

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existence in Sheol which involved neither reward nor punishment (a nearly universal concept
which the Hebrews once shared), through the realization that the nature of God excluded the
possibility that he might allow his beloved to fall into non-existence, even temporarily, and so to
theodicy and the expectation of a final resurrection. Ratzinger is very careful of Protestant
sensibilities, but he does argue that Luther‘s idea of ―soul sleep‖ is neither coherent nor
consistent with Scripture. He states the Catholic doctrine of Purgatory and contrasts it with the
corresponding Orthodox ideas by suggesting that the latter are simply less developed. (The
Orthodox pray for the dead, but Orthodox eschatology does not include the idea that the
intermediate state is a condition of cleansing.)
Regarding the soul, Ratzinger demonstrates that the Christian understanding of it is
simply not Platonic. Neither is the specifically Thomist view of the soul really Aristotelian.
Aquinas, like Aristotle, said that the soul is the form of the body. However, Aristotle thought of
―form‖ as a perishable material quality. For Aquinas, the form, the soul, is spiritual, but
immortality is not intrinsic to it. The immortality of the soul arises from the soul‘s essential
connection to God; indeed, to judge from the book‘s argument, this relationship is what
generates the soul, almost like a kind of induction. When a man is understood in terms of the
formula anima forma corporis, that relationship to God can be seen to express the core of his
very essence. As a created being he is made for a relationship which entails indestructibility. If
we take up this thought, we can describe man accordingly as that stage in the creation, that
creature, then, for whom the vision of God is part and parcel of his very being. Because this is
so, because man is capable of grasping truth in its most comprehensive meaning, it also belongs
intrinsically to his being to participate in life. This is not to say, however, that the postmortem

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state is immediately the final state. Salvation is ultimately for the Communion of the Saints, for
all the blessed of the human race, and it cannot be perfected until history is over.
To put it in a nutshell the intermediate state is no longer seen as the immortal soul
returning to spiritual fellowship with God. Rather, it is God knowing each of us and
remembering everything about us in preparation for returning each human being to full bodily
life at the general resurrection. It is God‘s individual love for us that grants each of us temporary
life with Him apart from our bodies. In that memory, those who have loved God and joined to
Him through Christ are contemplated in the light of the Savior, and God reshapes us in
preparation for eternal bliss with Him after the resurrection. During that time we are granted a
preparatory glance of the beatific vision in eschatological anticipation of our final end in a
renewed body. In like manner, the damned are remembered in their rejection of God, and their
memory invokes the wrath and sorrow of God for their wasted lives. Just as God sends the rain
on the just and the unjust alike, He will also reunite His image reflected in men on both the just
and the unjust alike. Embodied man was made for immortality from the very beginning and —
for good or ill — all men will participate in that immortality, whether in paradise or perdition.

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Bibliography
Benoit, Pierre. Resurrection: At the End of Time or immediately after Death?, Concilium 10
(1970).
Greshake, Gisbert. Death and Resurrection. Theology Digest 26 (1978).
Ratzinger, Joseph. Eschatology: Death and Eternal Life. Washington, DC: The Catholic University
of America Press, 1988.