https://doi.org/10.25167/so.5754
Jacob Böhme's work Vierzig Fragen von der Seele (Psychologia vera) is a response to Balthasar Walther (1558-1631). This publication is concerned with analyzing Böhme's answers to Walther's questions 18 through 29. Constructing a theological psychology of the soul is not an easy task, since the Bible sheds little light on the soul's intermediate state compared to that shed on a universal eschatology involving the second coming of Christ, the universal resurrection of the dead and the reintegration of the cosmos. However, Böhme finds biblical texts that he interprets in favor of an intermediate state. Among these texts, the parable of the rich man and poor Lazarus plays an important role. Böhme proceeds like Jesus, who used the Pentateuchal text in his discussion with the the Sadducees (Luke 20:27-40): God is the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob to justify the universal resurrection of the dead. From the truth of the God of the living and not of the dead, Jesus deduced the truth of the universal resurrection of the dead. Similarly, Böhme, who deduced from the parable of the rich man and poor Lazarus the existence of an intermediate state of the soul. Lazarus, basically his soul, lives in Abraham's bosom, and the rich man, basically his soul, - in gehenna. The situation takes place while the rich man's brothers are still alive on earth, and therefore before the Last Day. Böhme reinforces his argument for the intermediate state with the Apocalypse text about souls in white robes before the altar slain for the Word of God (Rev. 6:9-11). Böhme does not always interpret biblical texts orthodoxy. An example is his understanding of the immortality of the soul. He refers to the biblical text about man as the image of God, which he relates to the soul. However, the image is not the Primordial, which Böhme seems to have forgotten and treated the image as the substance of the Primordial, i.e. God, which is a Manichean interpretation. In depicting the intermediate state of the soul, Böhme also refers to the primordial Church idealizing its holiness. Like Luther, he wants to reform the deformed Papal Church. The main cause of this deformation Böhme sees in greed: “the root of all evil is greed for money” (1 Tim 6:10). However, Böhme does not reject the prayers of the early Church for the souls of the dead and the possibility of saved souls appearing to those living on earth. Böhme accepts the state of salvation and the state of condemnation of souls, but while he considers these states definitive, both salvation and condemnation are not complete. To be complete, they lack the resurrection of life (Jn 5:29) or the resurrection of damnation (Jn 5:29). Böhme does not assume a vision of the soul's happiness in the state of salvation. By doing so, he avoids the problems facing Catholic eschatology: if seeing God gives happiness to the soul in the intermediate state, will the resurrection of the body magnify this happiness of the soul? If not, it would be depreciating the resurrection, and if so, the vision of happiness. Böhme also approaches the Catholic concept of communio sanctorum, which includes not only the holy church, but also “poor souls” who are between the states of heaven and hell. These “poor souls” can be subject to the prayers of the inhabitants of the earth and can contact them. Saved souls are excluded from such a possibility. Theirs, as it were, is the only possibility to give glory to God, and therefore they have no interest in the inhabitants of the earth. Böhme's conception of the intermediate state is thus sort of suspended between the Lutheran and Catholic conceptions of it.
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