Do souls have gender?

[Tomyris]

No. That’s precisely the wrong understanding of what ‘form’ means here. One only makes this leap of logic if he misunderstands what ‘form’ means in this context.

Go back to p. 244 and re-read at the bottom of the page: “the soul, which is the first principle of life, is not a body, but the act of a body.”

Moreover, in the footnote you cite, there’s a description of what it means for the soul to be the form of the body: “it is the very life of the body.”

So, in a philosophical sense, being a ‘form’ of something does not imply that it’s an ‘outline’ or a ‘representation’ of that thing. In this context, it simply means that the soul is what makes a body a human (by virtue of intellect). (In fact, back in post #72 in this thread, I cited ST I.76.1 as a proof that precisely contradicts the ‘form as representation’ idea. )

Hardly. I went back and reread this and also 1.76. Nothing contradicts what I said.

 

[Tomyris]

Yes, it is unreasonable. Since God creates souls immediately (that is, without the mediation of anyone or anything else), then your conclusion is that God directly creates these anomalies. That runs counter to Catholic thought.

Well, platonic thought. Or neoplatonic. You are arguing, I think, for an unfallen soul, as if the fall did not affect the soul. So sin has no effect on the soul. Straight out of Plato. We ascend upwards to our “real natures”?

Surely you realize the absurdity of your position, at least as I read how you are presenting it? If I recall correctly, Augustine argued for the generation of the soul from the parents, or something like that.

Source, please, as to where this idea is that the soul is directly created and not impacted by the fall is official Catholic teaching?

Body and soul are one, a compound, but both affected by the fall and sin. So there can be anomalies in the soul.

 

[ethereality]

Yes, spiritual bodies (pneumatikon soma) are different, viz. power and movement and deathlessness. But they remain human beings, with head, hands, feet etc.

So it’s not too much a stretch to conjecture that “gender” remains. There is continuity to an extent between bodies.

ICXC NIKA

Given how strong Paul’s language is about the surpassing greatness of heaven, “Eye has not seen, …” it appears to be meaningless, or at least futile, to say that there will be gender in heaven, because we have no idea what that would mean in heaven, just as we don’t know how events will occur because time is a physical phenomenon.

It seems the most we can say is, “Whatever good there is in gender here, that goodness will be perfected in heaven. Whatever deprivation we experience with gender here, we will not suffer this lack in heaven.”

What do those letters mean at the end of your post?

 

[ethereality]

If I recall correctly, Augustine argued for the generation of the soul from the parents, or something like that.

Source, please, as to where this idea is that the soul is directly created and not impacted by the fall is official Catholic teaching?

Jim Blackburn cites the Catechism in declaring, ‘The Church teaches that every spiritual soul is created immediately by God—it is not “produced” by the parents’.

 

[Tomyris]

Jim Blackburn cites the Catechism in declaring, ‘The Church teaches that every spiritual soul is created immediately by God—it is not “produced” by the parents’.

Thank you. That’s 366 in the Catholic Catechism.

This may bear also

362 The human person, created in the image of God, is a being at once corporeal and spiritual. The biblical account expresses this reality in symbolic language when it affirms that "then the LORD God formed man of dust from the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being."229 Man, whole and entire, is therefore willed by God.

363 In Sacred Scripture the term “soul” often refers to human life or the entire human person.230 But “soul” also refers to the innermost aspect of man, that which is of greatest value in him,231 that by which he is most especially in God’s image: “soul” signifies the spiritual principle in man.
364 The human body shares in the dignity of “the image of God”: it is a human body precisely because it is animated by a spiritual soul, and it is the whole human person that is intended to become, in the body of Christ, a temple of the Spirit:232

Man, though made of body and soul, is a unity. Through his very bodily condition he sums up in himself the elements of the material world. Through him they are thus brought to their highest perfection and can raise their voice in praise freely given to the Creator. For this reason man may not despise his bodily life. Rather he is obliged to regard his body as good and to hold it in honor since God has created it and will raise it up on the last day. 233
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.

This is a fence against neoplatonism, by the way, which would say the soul is good and the body bad. Both are good.

Yet the body is fallen and sin impacts it, and the soul. I don’t see anything in the Catechism that will directly answer PR’s question. Perhaps you do?

 

[GEddie]

Given how strong Paul’s language is about the surpassing greatness of heaven, “Eye has not seen, …” it appears to be meaningless, or at least futile, to say that there will be gender in heaven, because we have no idea what that would mean in heaven, just as we don’t know how events will occur because time is a physical phenomenon.

It seems the most we can say is, “Whatever good there is in gender here, that goodness will be perfected in heaven. Whatever deprivation we experience with gender here, we will not suffer this lack in heaven.”

What do those letters mean at the end of your post?

We do however, know that we will be human in body (in some way) and human embodiedness is inconceivable without gender. Gender is as intrinsic to human bodyhood as limbedness or headedness.

ICXC NIKA is Greek for “Jesus Christ Victorious.”

ICXC NIKA

 

[ethereality]

human embodiedness is inconceivable without gender. Gender is as intrinsic to human bodyhood as limbedness or headedness.

Why do you think this? I see no reason to suppose gender is intrinsic to embodiment; indeed, your own example belies your conclusion, as men are sometimes born without limbs.

Rather, it appears to me that gender in terms of sexual differentiation is merely an artifact of sexual reproduction, itself a feature of evolutionary fitness to survive in a hostile environment. Without a need for sexual reproduction, there is no need for gender, and we can conceive of a society without sexual differentiation, or with shifting sexual expression. Gender, in that case, becomes simply a social construct to suit interacting parties. These societies seem to me more perfect than our own, which is marked by sexual limitation. (Perfection, as theologians like Fr. Robert Spitzer have noted, is a lack of limitation.)

 

[GEddie]

Why do you think this? I see no reason to suppose gender is intrinsic to embodiment; indeed, your own example belies your conclusion, as men are sometimes born without limbs.

Rather, it appears to me that gender in terms of sexual differentiation is merely an artifact of sexual reproduction, itself a feature of evolutionary fitness to survive in a hostile environment. Without a need for sexual reproduction, there is no need for gender, and we can conceive of a society without sexual differentiation, or with shifting sexual expression. Gender, in that case, becomes simply a social construct to suit interacting parties. These societies seem to me more perfect than our own, which is marked by sexual limitation. (Perfection, as theologians like Fr. Robert Spitzer have noted, is a lack of limitation.)

Good point about the limbs, and indeed I probably should have stuck with “headedness.” No head, no life.

Still, if someone lacks his or her limbs, that is recognized as a severe abnormality, and we assume that in any Resurrectional form, that human being will be fully limbed. The default human body is limbed.

Likewise, the default human body is gendered, and that is even more intrinsic to the body than the limbs or even the head, as every one of the trillions of soma-cells carries it via the DNA, and has done so since before the embryonic limbs and head developed. There can be no human body without gender.

Imagining a science-fiction species without it, or where it can truthfully be changed, makes for interesting science fiction, but isn’t human life anymore. Full stop.

ICXC NIKA