I think, a human being is a physical spirit. Thinking this as I do, it is a little strange to see ideas like “human body, and human spirit, and a connection between the two.” There are not two disparate entities to require a connection, there is only the human being, the physical spirit. As spirit, we think, feel, reason, imagine, etc. As physical, we eat, sleep, drink, and carry on the life of physical creatures. But we are both. A human who is not both is a dead human.
Every created being is a single nature. Physical beings are natures composed of matter and form ( Aristotle’s hylomorphism ). Man is a nature composed of body and soul. This is explained by St. Thomas as a special case of hylomorphism ( S.T., Part 1, ques 76, ans 1). " On the contrary, According to the Philosopher, Metaph. viii (Did. vii 2), difference is derived from the form. But the difference which constitutes man is “rational,” which is applied to man on account of his intellectual principle. Therefore the intellectual principle is the form of man.
I answer that, We must assert that the intellect which is the principle of intellectual operation is the form of the human body. For that whereby primarily anything acts is a form of the thing to which the act is to be attributed: for instance, that whereby a body is primarily healed is health, and that whereby the soul knows primarily is knowledge; hence health is a form of the body, and knowledge is a form of the soul. The reason is because nothing acts except so far as it is in act; wherefore a thing acts by that whereby it is in act. Now it is clear that the first thing by which the body lives is the soul. And as life appears through various operations in different degrees of living things, that whereby we primarily perform each of all these vital actions is the soul. For the soul is the primary principle of our nourishment, sensation, and local movement; and likewise of our understanding. Therefore this principle by which we primarily understand, whether it be called the intellect or the intellectual soul, is the form of the body. This is the demonstration used by Aristotle (De Anima ii, 2). "
Also, this is the De Fide teaching of the Catholic Church ( CCC, para 365, Council of Vienne) " 365 The unity of soul and body is so profound that one has to consider the soul to be the “form” of the body:234 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."
Therefore man is not a " physical soul, " that would be a contradiction not only of terms but of reality. The soul is not physical, that would also be a contradiction of terms ( S.T., Part 1, ques 75, art 1). Nor is the body spiritual, that is a contradiction in terms also.
Man, human nature, is therefore a being composed of body and soul, such that the soul is the substantial form of the body. Man is not a " physical spirit. "
To describe man as a " physical spirit " is a dangerous way to describe human nature because it may lead others to think man is two things and that is not correct. Man is a single nature, a single person composed of body and soul, a single functioning unit. He is not a soul trapped in a body.
Linus2nd
