Does the soul grow?

[rossum]

Immutability (unchanging) is a proper attribute of God. In fact, being unchanging is the very definition of God.

I strongly disagree. There was a time when the universe did not exist, at that point God was not “the Creator” because back then He had not created anything. Only after He had performed the act of creation did he change to become “the Creator”. An unchanging eternal creator requires that the universe is also eternal.

It is incorrect to say that the Bible describes a changing God.

So, you are telling us that Sunday is no different to the other six days of the week, because what God did on the seventh day, “rested”, was unchanged from what He had done on the previous six, “worked”. You are straining language beyond credulity if you are saying that rest = work. Of course if you are offering me paid work, then I am willing to consider an offer.

God, as described in the Bible obviously changes. God died on the cross. Was that a change? If it wasn’t a change, then everybody had already been redeemed from before the creation of Adam and events in 33 CE had no particular significance because they didn’t change anything. If the crucifixion was a significant event, then it was a change.

God has to change in order to perform any action in time. All actions involve change: a change from “I will act” to “I am acting” and a second change from “I am acting” to “I have acted.” Any unchanging entity cannot act, or at best can endlessly repeat one single act unceasingly. That is not the God described in the Bible. The Bible God acts in history, and thus is acting in time. Hence God must be changing.

rossum

 

[Pugsly]

I strongly disagree. There was a time when the universe did not exist, at that point God was not “the Creator” because back then He had not created anything. Only after He had performed the act of creation did he change to become “the Creator”. An unchanging eternal creator requires that the universe is also eternal.

So, you are telling us that Sunday is no different to the other six days of the week, because what God did on the seventh day, “rested”, was unchanged from what He had done on the previous six, “worked”. You are straining language beyond credulity if you are saying that rest = work. Of course if you are offering me paid work, then I am willing to consider an offer.

God, as described in the Bible obviously changes. God died on the cross. Was that a change? If it wasn’t a change, then everybody had already been redeemed from before the creation of Adam and events in 33 CE had no particular significance because they didn’t change anything. If the crucifixion was a significant event, then it was a change.

God has to change in order to perform any action in time. All actions involve change: a change from “I will act” to “I am acting” and a second change from “I am acting” to “I have acted.” Any unchanging entity cannot act, or at best can endlessly repeat one single act unceasingly. That is not the God described in the Bible. The Bible God acts in history, and thus is acting in time. Hence God must be changing.

rossum

I think that God is immutable in His absolute and eternal ability to change…“Behold I make all things new”–God

 

[rossum]

I think that God is immutable in His absolute and eternal ability to change…“Behold I make all things new”–God

How can God make something if He does not change? If He is always making it, then the thing is co-eternal with God. If the thing has a beginning, like the material universe, then there is a time when God was not making it. Hence, God has changed from not-making to making.

A God who actually does something must change. An unchanging God is frozen in aspic and is unable to act within time.

rossum

 

[Skye_Ariel]

I don’t want to get off topic, but that was a fascinating puzzler for me. I have no idea what the answer would be, but googled it and found members on this forum asking the same questions years ago. Maybe it will help answer your questions.

A discussion on chimeric individuals, from 2006: forums.catholic-questions.org/showthread.php?t=110979

A discussion on twins, from 2008: forums.catholic-questions.org/showthread.php?t=218011

Yeah that’s very fascinating! I believe when one body is abosorbed by the other, then one soul departs and goes to heaven. When one egg splits to make identical twins, the instant the egg splits God puts another soul in one. He already knows which eggs will split and make twins so He puts another soul in the moment they become 2 separate people. Even cojoined twins like Abigail and Brittany have 2 souls and one body because they are 2 people. They literally have one body and 2 heads, but each controls one side of the body and it’s amazing how they can move in unison to do ordinary things.

“The measure that you measure with will be measured back to you”…Jesus

Souls can expand with suffering…and…souls can shrink into hardness too.

Souls can get dull with indulgence.

Souls can soar to heights of gratitude and glorious love…and…souls can sink into darkness and mire and be trapped by addictions.

Great Souls can seek the lowest place…like St Theresa (the lil flower)…and be lifted high

Nothing-horror souls can seek the highest place (like Leviathan–the ancient dragon–the Devil)…and be cast down forever.

Souls…therefore…have the ability to change “posture”…to be humble or not.

Souls can indeed…“expand” with suffering…“and through your own soul a sword will pass…so that the thoughts of many hearts shall be revealed”.

But…do souls “grow” according to our body shape? I don’t think loosing a limb in Boston makes one a smaller soul…but rather the experience will EXPAND the soul.

I like this!

mmhhh. Where does the soul come from? The soul comes from the A!mighty, right? So if the soul is a part of the A!mighty, and if the A!mighty is eternal, how could the soul change? Isn’t, consequently, the soul eternal also? Hence, I conclude that the soul does not change. It must be everything else of our being that changes, but it can’t be the soul.

Our bodies come from God too and everything on earth was made by God, yet our bodies change and the earth changed.

 

[Love4All]

I understand the soul is not material. But, your answer suggests the soul has a boundary. Since you say the soul is “in every part of the body”; but, has no “physical location outside the body.” That boundary is our a exterior. Then it could be said the soul has volume, without mass (since its immaterial). Since the volume of the body changes from childhood to adult, the soul must also be changing in volume as well. So that I can again ask; is the soul growing?:banghead:

Your soul is your self. Does your self grow?

 

[Love4All]

. . .
God has to change in order to perform any action in time. All actions involve change: a change from “I will act” to “I am acting” and a second change from “I am acting” to “I have acted.” Any unchanging entity cannot act, or at best can endlessly repeat one single act unceasingly. That is not the God described in the Bible. The Bible God acts in history, and thus is acting in time. Hence God must be changing.

rossum

Time is the measure of change. God is eternal. Time is within eternity. The reality of time is that it is always now. You yourself know from experience, there is no getting away from “now.” God, in eternity, knows all times in eternity, and from the Divine perspective, all times are “now.” So the difference is in our perception. For God, there is the “now” of the time of Creation, and the “now” of today, and the “now” of next week, and there is no distinction for God of which of the nows you are experiencing now. For God, it is all Now.

Hence God acts without changing.

 

[Christianus_Dei]

How can God make something if He does not change? If He is always making it, then the thing is co-eternal with God. If the thing has a beginning, like the material universe, then there is a time when God was not making it. Hence, God has changed from not-making to making.

A God who actually does something must change. An unchanging God is frozen in aspic and is unable to act within time.

rossum

He is not within time, but exists in eternity. From that moment of eternity, he chooses all his acts at the same moment(not the right word, but the closest), and where they are in the timestream.

Jesus could die, and therefore “change” because he had a human nature. From every point of eternity, he entered into time when he was born. The easiest way to explain eternity is that he is in every moment since he isn’t bound by time… that’s not entirely it, but again, it’s difficult to put into words. You know, “Before they ever were, I AM.”

Imagine reading every letter of every word of every page of a book at the same time, while comprehending the meaning of the sentence and story. That is analogous to eternity. Not a perfect analogy at all, though.

I’m sorry for any confusion. When talking about eternity, it’s less grasping at straws and more like grasping at the burning sun.

 

[Love4All]

. . .

God, as described in the Bible obviously changes. God died on the cross. Was that a change? If it wasn’t a change, then everybody had already been redeemed from before the creation of Adam and events in 33 CE had no particular significance because they didn’t change anything. If the crucifixion was a significant event, then it was a change.

The Incarnate Word died on the Cross. The Father did not die on the Cross, and the Holy Spirit did not die on the Cross, only the Son died on the Cross, in His Sacred Humanity. In the time of the Incarnation, the Word experienced time just as we do, thus, Jesus’ suffering was not illusory but real. That is why in Heaven, in the time after the Crucifixion, Jesus has the marks of the Crucifixion in His hands, feet, and side.

Jesus, in His human nature, suffered, died, was buried, descended into hell, and rose again on the third day. Did God then undergo change? Jesus is God, so it would seem that if Jesus died, God died. But that is absurd, since God is immortal.

The solution to the dilemma is found in what is called the Hypostatic Union. A hypostasis is a person. What unites the man Jesus Christ to the Divine Word is His Person. Therefore we say that the Person, Jesus Christ, is both fully man and fully God. The Divine Word assumed human nature through the Virgin Mary. Thus, God, in time, became a human being, and the human Jesus is God. The human Jesus and the Divine Word is the selfsame Person, and we know that Person not only as God but also as Jesus of Nazareth.

So: the nature of God did not become human. Nothing about God changed. God is still the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, infinite, omnipotent, eternal, with no shadow of change. The same that I said in my previous post about the eternal Now, plainly cannot change. It is thus manifest that from eternity, God knew and willed His Crucifixion, and that time in which He became Incarnate, lived, died, and rose from the dead, is known to God in the eternal Now.

So, one the one hand, it is true, what you said above, that “everybody had already been redeemed from before the creation of Adam,” but it is not true that “events in 33 CE had no particular significance.” The events in 33 A.D. were in fact always significant, even when from a human perspective they yet lay in the future. All the prophets and partiarchs, in fact, put their hopes in the Messiah to come. When the time came for Him to arrive, He redeemed the human race as a human being.

This is an important theological point that is often missed. It is the human Jesus who redeemed us. It is the fact that He was willing to lay down His life for us, that earned for Him the right to be called God. The same Person who redeemed us is also the Divine Word, the Second Person of the Trinity, without mixing of natures. The nature of God remains the nature of God, while the human nature of Jesus remains human nature. What unites them is the Person.

What I am attempting to elucidate is a Mystery, so if I have not succeeded in explaining it clearly, I apologize. It is not within ordinary human comprehension, although it is not by that token illogical or contradictory. But I have tried.

 

[The_Serpent]

Not that I agreed with you, but just to go with what you said (in bold)… Why would the soul have to change in volume as well, what makes you draw this conclusion? The body could grow, and the soul could still remain the same size, no? It could still “fit” into the body of a baby when we’re adults, no?

If the soul is joined to the body, so that it fills it, like water in a balloon. Where is the expansion of soul coming from, as you grow or gain size? And where does the decrease go, if say you loose weight. So I speculate there is an aspect of the soul we haven’t understood or explored!

Is your view then, that the soul is like a flame on a lit candle in a room illuminating it, but not filling it? So it can be in any size body.

 

[The_Serpent]

I understand your frustration. It is not the easiest topic in the world. Firstly, let me point you toward the most authoritative source on this topic, St. Thomas in the Summa. He has a whole article on whether the soul is in every part of the body and addresses this question (but he uses very technical language which might not help make thing much clearer for for). newadvent.org/summa/1076.htm#article8

I’ll try to distill it. St. Thomas is basically saying that when we say the soul is in “every part of the body” we can mean this in a few different ways. One way is in terms of quantity, so if there are 120lbs worth of body, there must be 120lbs worth of soul. As you pointed out, however, the soul is immaterial and does not have mass, so this is not what we mean.

Another way we might mean it is in terms of logical and essential parts. This is the correct meaning. The soul is the form of the body and its principle of life. The soul is united with the parts of the body, not in terms of their chemical make up, per se, but in the way that they function as part of a whole thing. Using an example, the soul is not necessarily united to carbon atoms or the electrons and protons of those atoms, that make up the body, but the soul is united to the living cells of the body. The soul is what makes those cells be part of a body. As soon as some organ is not longer part of the body, the soul is no longer in it. So in the case of an organ transplant, as soon as the organ is removed from one person, that person’s soul ceases to be united with it, and as soon as it becomes part of another person’s body, that person’s soul is united with it.

All of this means that the soul is united with the body in terms of logical and essential parts, and not in terms of quantity, so even if the body grows and dimensionally increases, the soul does not.

In regards to loosing a organ or limb. If I loose a leg, my soul is no longer in that leg. Then is the soul elastic in nature?

 

[Katholish]

I strongly disagree. There was a time when the universe did not exist, at that point God was not “the Creator” because back then He had not created anything. Only after He had performed the act of creation did he change to become “the Creator”. An unchanging eternal creator requires that the universe is also eternal.

Technically speaking, there was not a time before the universe existed. Time is a measure of change, as you have said, but “before” the creation of the universe, there was no change, and hence no time. Lest you argue that the creation of the universe itself was the change, I should point out that creation is actually not a change.

St. Thomas explains this in ST I, Q 45, A 2, ad. 2:
“Creation is not change, except according to a mode of understanding. For change means that the same something should be different now from what it was previously. Sometimes, indeed, the same actual thing is different now from what it was before, as in motion according to quantity, quality and place; but sometimes it is the same being only in potentiality, as in substantial change, the subject of which is matter. But in creation, by which the whole substance of a thing is produced, the same thing can be taken as different now and before only according to our way of understanding, so that a thing is understood as first not existing at all, and afterwards as existing.”

The basic point is that for change to occur, there must be some thing that undergoes the change, and in the case of creation, there is no such subject, hence it is technically not a change. While we might say that the universe had a beginning in time, it would be wrong to imply that there was time “before” the universe. Time began when the universe was created.

So, you are telling us that Sunday is no different to the other six days of the week, because what God did on the seventh day, “rested”, was unchanged from what He had done on the previous six, “worked”. You are straining language beyond credulity if you are saying that rest = work. Of course if you are offering me paid work, then I am willing to consider an offer.

Well, for starters, one need not suppose the days of creation were literal 24 hour periods, but that is another question. God’s work comes about in time, but that does not necessarily mean His creative act occurs in time. Allow me to offer a poor analogy. I put bread in the toaster and push the button down. 5 minutes later, there is a ding noise and toast pops out of the toaster. When did my act occur? When you saw the effect? or when I pushed the button? Of course I am not suggesting God’s interventions in the world are mechanicalistic, but the point is that just because an action is terminating at one point in time as we perceive it, does not mean that the action from the doer occured at that time.

As for the 7th day, it was different because nothing new was created on that day. Does that mean God was “less active” that day compared with others? No. God is always 100% active (In fact, He is pure Act). He never sleeps, takes a break, or “rests” as a human would.

 

[Katholish]

continued response to rossum…

God, as described in the Bible obviously changes. God died on the cross. Was that a change? If it wasn’t a change, then everybody had already been redeemed from before the creation of Adam and events in 33 CE had no particular significance because they didn’t change anything. If the crucifixion was a significant event, then it was a change.

You must remember that Jesus Christ had two natures, a human nature which absolutely could change, and a Divine Nature which could not. It would be incorrect to say that the Divine Nature died, and hence it underwent no change. That being said, because the Son died on the cross, and He is both human and Divine, it is correct to say that “God died on the cross”, however, we need to be aware of the limitations of that statement.

God has to change in order to perform any action in time. All actions involve change: a change from “I will act” to “I am acting” and a second change from “I am acting” to “I have acted.” Any unchanging entity cannot act, or at best can endlessly repeat one single act unceasingly. That is not the God described in the Bible. The Bible God acts in history, and thus is acting in time. Hence God must be changing.

God’s action can terminate in time even though He acts outside of time. Time for another analogy! Pretend you are looking at a timeline beginning with creation and ending with the end of the world. This timeline is written on a piece of paper. In some ways, God must view us very similarly. He sees all of time as if it were present. he sees the beginning, the middle and the end all at the same time. We really cannot conceive of that, except by imagining a timeline on a piece of paper. Now pretend that you reach down and touch the timeline in three places. Maybe put a finger when God spoke to Moses, another during the time of Elijah, and another when a certain census brought Joseph and Mary to Bethlehem. You are touching the line in three places simutaneously.

God’s action occurs in a similar manner. He touches the timeline in many places, all at once, because He is not “in” the timeline… He is above it, standing outside of it, viewing the entire thing at once. Human beings perceive His actions as occuring at different times, because they really do occur at different points of the timeline, but from God’s perspective, even though He touches many points, it is all part of the same action which occurs outside of time.

Let us consider the alternative for a minute. If God were not immutable, He would be part of time, as you have said, and would not truly be Eternal (which properly speaking means outside of time). Neither could God be perfect Act, because any change involves a movement from potency to act. That means that is God has the potential to be something else or do something else, he technically isn’t all powerful. He couldn’t be all perfect either, because something that is truly all perfect, cannot change since any change would either add to perfection, implying it wasn’t “all” perfect before, or take away seom perfection. If God is not all perfect, He would not be all good since perfection is a good.

If God were inside of time, how could He know the future? Anything that changes, is passive, and something else affects the change. Is God the efficient cause of His own changes? That would mean that He is not the uncaused cause, the the forever self-causing cause? It doesn’t make much sense. All of the attributes of God fall away if you try to remove this one, i.e. immutability.

All monotheistic beliefs accept the immutability of God as far as I know. It is a tenet shared by Jews, Christians, and Muslims. Were this attribute denied, it is clear that we would not be speaking of the same God, but of something else entirely. You list your religion as Buddhist, so maybe that is something you accept, but the idea is absolutely foreign and incongruous with Christianity.

 

[Katholish]

If the soul is joined to the body, so that it fills it, like water in a balloon. Where is the expansion of soul coming from, as you grow or gain size? And where does the decrease go, if say you loose weight. So I speculate there is an aspect of the soul we haven’t understood or explored!

Is your view then, that the soul is like a flame on a lit candle in a room illuminating it, but not filling it? So it can be in any size body.

The candle analogy isn’t bad. The water balloon one is way off the mark. “Fill” is entirely the wrong word to use because it is a dimensional term, and the unity of the soul with the body is an essential unity, and not a dimensional one. Thinking of the soul as water necessarily makes it material.

Light is a slightly better analogy because we perceive it to be less “material”. Saying that the soul illuminates all parts of the body has a certain poetic ring to it as well. In truth, what the soul does is a little more active (animates would be a better word than illuminates).

In regards to loosing a organ or limb. If I loose a leg, my soul is no longer in that leg. Then is the soul elastic in nature?

To be honest, I am not quite sure what you mean by “elastic” in this context.

 

[Skye_Ariel]

In regards to loosing a organ or limb. If I loose a leg, my soul is no longer in that leg. Then is the soul elastic in nature?

LOL! The soul is not in your body that way, the soul is in the brain, your consciousness. The soul grows the same way your mind and understanding grows, not in a physical sense but in an ability sense in what it can know and understand.

 

[Katholish]

LOL! The soul is not in your body that way, the soul is in the brain, your consciousness. The soul grows the same way your mind and understanding grows, not in a physical sense but in an ability sense in what it can know and understand.

Not just the brain though. The soul is in every part of the body.

 

[Skye_Ariel]

Not just the brain though. The soul is in every part of the body.

That’s not true. Think about people who get transplants and blood transfusions. Think about disabled people, if they can’t walk, is their soul crippled too?

 

[rossum]

Time is the measure of change. God is eternal. Time is within eternity. The reality of time is that it is always now.

False. You just said that “Time is the measure of change”. If it is always now, then there is no measure. ‘Now’ is our current perception of where we are in time, just as ‘here’ is our current perception of where we are in space. Both are relative to ourselves and are not universal measures. My ‘here’ is not the same as your ‘here’.

Hence God acts without changing.

God does not act in eternity; God acts in time. Since He is acting inside time then He is changing. How can God act inside time without Himself being inside time? If He is acting inside time then He is changing.

rossum

 

[rossum]

He is not within time, but exists in eternity.

I disagree. He acts within time, so He must be within time as well. If God is omnipresent, then He is present within time as well as outside time.

From that moment of eternity, he chooses all his acts at the same moment(not the right word, but the closest), and where they are in the timestream.

If the acts are within time, then God is also within time. By acting within time He must change, since all actions within time require change. You cannot act inside time without changing.

Jesus could die, and therefore “change” because he had a human nature.

Then why was Jesus’ death required? If Jesus death was just another human death, then there was nothing special about it. Humans have been dying for a very long time. His death was special because He wasn’t simply another human being.

rossum

 

[rossum]

The Incarnate Word died on the Cross. The Father did not die on the Cross, and the Holy Spirit did not die on the Cross, only the Son died on the Cross, in His Sacred Humanity.

The trinity and the death of Jesus give rise to a large paradox:

• God is immortal and cannot die.
• Jesus is God.
• Jesus died on the cross.

These three are not easy to justify together.

In the time of the Incarnation, the Word experienced time just as we do, thus, Jesus’ suffering was not illusory but real.

So you agree that Jesus experienced change. If Jesus is God, then at the same time God also experienced change. This proves my point. If Jesus is God, and Jesus changed then God also changed.

rossum

 

[rossum]

Technically speaking, there was not a time before the universe existed.

That is a matter for cosmologists. The multiverse may well have an analogue of time.

Lest you argue that the creation of the universe itself was the change, I should point out that creation is actually not a change.

I strongly disagree. There is obviously a change from no-universe to universe. If nothing changed at creation, then after creation would be identical to before creation. Is that what you are saying? That implies an eternal universe. Whatever doesn’t change is eternal; whatever changes is not eternal.

The basic point is that for change to occur, there must be some thing that undergoes the change, and in the case of creation, there is no such subject, hence it is technically not a change.

I disagree. Going from nothing to something is also a change.

While we might say that the universe had a beginning in time, it would be wrong to imply that there was time “before” the universe. Time began when the universe was created.

Then the universe is eternal. There is no point in time at which the universe does not exist. An eternal universe needs no creator, so God can remain as an unchanging non-creator of an eternal universe. That seems to me to be a long way from standard Christian doctrine.

continued response to rossum…

You must remember that Jesus Christ had two natures, a human nature which absolutely could change, and a Divine Nature which could not. It would be incorrect to say that the Divine Nature died, and hence it underwent no change. That being said, because the Son died on the cross, and He is both human and Divine, it is correct to say that “God died on the cross”, however, we need to be aware of the limitations of that statement.

Then what makes Jesus’ death special? If His death was just another human death why was it needed? There are millions of human deaths every year. There are also some very abstruse theological problems with separating Jesus’ human nature and His divine nature; those problems are well above my pay grade.

God’s action can terminate in time even though He acts outside of time.

He may possible act outside time. However, He very obviously acts inside time as well. If He is acting inside time, then He is changing.

God’s action occurs in a similar manner. He touches the timeline in many places, all at once, because He is not “in” the timeline… He is above it, standing outside of it, viewing the entire thing at once. Human beings perceive His actions as occuring at different times, because they really do occur at different points of the timeline, but from God’s perspective, even though He touches many points, it is all part of the same action which occurs outside of time.

The concept of “change” is defined from the human perspective. It is a word in a human language expressing a human concept. Since humans perceive God as changing, then change is the correct word to apply. Maybe from God’s perspective the word would not be “change” but “tshongs” in God’s language. We are human so we have to use a human perspective. We are not God so we are unable to use God’s perspective.

Let us consider the alternative for a minute. If God were not immutable, He would be part of time, as you have said, and would not truly be Eternal (which properly speaking means outside of time).

I suspect I see change differently from you. In Buddhism, change is fundamental: it is one of the three characteristics that apply to everything. All gods, including the Abrahamic God, change. Any god that acts in time must change and since the Abrahamic God acts in time He must change.

Neither could God be perfect Act, because any change involves a movement from potency to act. That means that is God has the potential to be something else or do something else, he technically isn’t all powerful.

Of course God isn’t all powerful. For example, He can never learn anything new, as you or I can. Because He already knows everything through His omniscience there is nothing new left for Him to learn.

If God were inside of time, how could He know the future?

The same way a skilled pool player knows the path that the eight ball will take into the pocket after she has struck the cue ball. Humans are perfectly capable of knowing the future to a limited extent. Why cannot God do the same to a far greater degree of precision.

rossum