In post 104, Aloysium begins with the observation that knowledge transforms us.
“Knowledge transforms us. It is one of the gifts of the Holy Spirit to mankind.
There must have been some knowledge of good and evil present in the original man, or Eve would not have understood the serpent.”
A friend reasons that however our material/physical anatomy came about, God’s infusion of the spiritual soul transformed the being into a radically superior natural species, our own human species.
From the
Catechism of the Catholic Church, Second Edition, paragraph 365
scborromeo.org/ccc/para/365.htm
**“365 **The unity of soul and body is so profound that one has to consider the soul to be the “form” of the body: i.e., it is because of its spiritual soul that the body made of matter becomes a living, human body; spirit and matter, in man, are not two natures united, but rather their union forms a single nature.”
Link to Catechism
scborromeo.org/ccc.htm. While perusing this link, check out paragraphs 355-421. Comments are welcomed on this thread.
Replying to my questions about CCC 404, (post 103) which has this informative statement,** …**
**"**How did the sin of Adam become the sin of all his descendants? The whole human race is in Adam “as one body of one man”. By this “unity of the human race” all men are implicated in Adam’s sin, as all are implicated in Christ’s justice."
… hicetnunc, in post 105, writes about the reference to “as one body of one man”.
“I have a few thoughts on the passage from De Malo. In question 4 of DM, Thomas is asking whether, and in what way, sin can be said to be transmitted from one person to another—i.e., from Adam to the whole human race. The quote from the CCC is taken from article 1 of the question. Here, Thomas makes a very interesting claim which he repeats throughout many of his works, especially for example in his Commentaries on the Pauline Epistles. What he says is that the human person can be considered in two ways: first, as an individual per se (hence his definition of the person as being “an individual substance of a rational nature”) and in a secondary way as a member of a community. It is not possible to understand the human person without understanding the human being as being oriented towards other in community.”
The first thing I spotted in hicetnunc’s post was St. Thomas Aquinas’ definition of the person as being “an individual substance of a rational nature".
Looking at this post as I write it, there is a consensus that the human person can think (which is a faculty or ability of the spiritual soul) in a manner beyond the sentience or consciousness of other species. :doh2:
I do recognize that current published research on the human being often implies that our ability to think rationally comes from our blood and guts, especially the lump in our scull. Technically, this is known as the “emergence from the physical anatomy” theory or an epiphenomenon of matter. But is that really a rational conclusion when one observes nature without prejudice?
Of all the wonderful species that share our natural environment, we, the walking-on-two-legs people are the only ones who use our rational (because we have a spiritual soul) minds in a superior productive manner. Birds fly. We sit in airplanes. Birds sing. We design and build opera houses. Birds sing in a set pattern of sounds. We sing…
Our friend, St. Thomas, an observer of nature par excellence, a quintessential seeker of truth, observed, in the above from post 105, that while we are individuals, we are also necessarily a member in community.
Did I get that right, hicetnunc?
Could it be that St. Thomas was observing the origin of the “unity of the human race” mentioned in the above sample from CCC 404?
I also learned that a good proof reader looks for the missing information which is a tad different from spell check.