If the soul is a "substance-less form," how can the saints pray for us?

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Perhaps I misunderstand what the definition of a human soul is when it is called a “substance-less form,” and I know not all Catholic theological traditions follow the Thomistic understanding.

But it seems to be the dominant understanding of what a soul is.

So if after death, the form of the body remains, and if the soul is not a substance, then how can it act on its own, especially be conscious and pray for us on Earth, before it is reunited with its resurrected body?
 
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Substance is matter, physical reality. The soul is immaterial, it has no physical dimension. That does’t mean that it lacks will or intelligence.

You are incorrectly conflating a lack of physicality with a lack of capacity.
 
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I am confused. My understanding was that by definition the only things that exist are substances. This is classic Aristotle, and I thought Aquinas agreed. Thus to say that God exists is to say that God is a substance. Hence in the Creed we say the trinity are “one in substance / consubstantial”. I’m pretty certain Aquinas would never call God – or the dead – a substanceless form.

You seem to be confusing “matter” with “substance”. “Matter” is the divisible stuff out of which material/sensible objects are made. Substance is not stuff, even if hylomorphic dualism might say that SOME substances are unities of matter and form.

I don’t think what I’m saying really answers your question, but ProdigalArchitect would be right to say that God and the angels lack MATTER (though not substance).
 
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ProdglArchitect said:
Substance is matter, physical reality.
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This goes directly against Aristotle’s view, which is that form is more fundamental to substance than matter. But I can’t speak to Aquinas. Usually Aquinas agrees with Aristotle, in my experience.
 
Well it seems trivial to me. God fills in the form. The line forms on the left.
File this answer for later reference.
 
The “soul” is a term for living thing’s being it used to describe the existence of a being. The soul contains what makes it up the mind (conscious), the spirit, and the body. The mind and soul do not technically exist (have no substance) but are terms used to describe the consciousness, and being of a person, respectively.

Something that is not living has no being and therefore no soul.

Something that only has a mind or consciousness (if that can exist) would only be able to think and not interact in the world in any way and therefore might as well not exist.

Spirit and body do have substance however. When a person dies their spirit leaves the body. Therefore the saints are still in spirit and able to intercede for us.

God and the angels do have substance. The Bible says “God is spirit”

Also, the Nicene Creed states that the Son is consubstantial with the Father. “Consubstantial” means “of the same substance” If God did not have substance than how could the Son and Father be of the same substance?

It is pretty complex since the spirit, mind, and soul are things outside of the physical world and kind of hard to understaand. Anyway, I hope I explained it well enough.
 
Today on Catholic radio, Dr. David Answers called the soul a substance-less form.
 
I think this helps, but Dr. David Anders is very knowledgeable in Catholic theology, and on the radio today, he was addressing how reincarnation isn’t philosophically intelligible by proceeding to explain what the soul was. He called it “substance-less” and “form.”

So I just assumed he knew what he was talking about.

However, I have heard others say something similar — by calling the human soul a form.
 
Found this. I’m still not sure I totally understand it, though:
For in Aquinas’s view, the human soul is the form of a substance, that substance is a human being, and a human being has both corporeal and incorporeal operations. Hence the soul is not the form of a substance which is entirely bodily or corporeal. Rather, it is the form of a substance which is corporeal in some respects and incorporeal in others. Now, those corporeal respects are the ones summed up in the phrase “the body.” Hence the soul is, naturally, the form of the body. But it simply doesn’t follow that the soul is the form of a substance which is exhausted by its body, viz. by its bodily operations.

This is why there is nothing terribly mysterious about why the soul, as Aquinas understands it, can persist beyond the death of the body. For the substance of which the soul is the form does not go out of existence with the death of the body. Rather, the corporeal or bodily operations of that substance cease, while the incorporeal operations continue. To be sure, the substance in question has been severely reduced or damaged; that is why Aquinas thinks of the disembodied soul as an “incomplete substance.” But an incomplete substance is not a non-substance. Thus, to say that the soul persists beyond the death of the body is not to say that the form of a substance persists after the substance has gone out of existence (which certainly would be a very mysterious thing for an Aristotelian like Aquinas to say!)
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This seems odd, because it seems to be saying that the SOUL is the form of the human substance, which consists of bodily and spiritual aspects, and therefore after death, the spiritual components of the human substance remain… so in effect, it sounds like Feser is saying that the SOUL is the form of a SPIRITUAL SUBSTANCE (after death). Which is redunant. That is, the soul is the form of the human substance, which is body and soul. Confused.
 
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“That is, the soul is the form of the human substance, which is body and soul.”

I think you are confusing soul and spirit.

It should be-
The soul is the form of the human substance, which is body and spirit.

The soul is the form of a living thing or being. When something dies it loses its body. Therefore its spirit is all that is left. Since the person or being is only spirit its soul or form is only spirit.

When something is alive it has both body and spirit therefore its soul is both body and spirit.
 
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catholic1seeks said:
Today on Catholic radio, Dr. David Answers called the soul a substance-less form.
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He said something mistaken, then. He must have meant that the soul is a matter-less form.
catholic1seeks said:
This seems odd, because it seems to be saying that the SOUL is the form of the human substance, which consists of bodily and spiritual aspects, and therefore after death, the spiritual components of the human substance remain… so in effect, it sounds like Feser is saying that the SOUL is the form of a SPIRITUAL SUBSTANCE (after death). Which is redunant. That is, the soul is the form of the human substance, which is body and soul. Confused.
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Yeah, I find all this puzzling too, which is why I personally tend to think that the dead are outside of our time, and they as it were “fast-forward” to the resurrection of the dead. That’s probably heretical, though. Sigh.
 
It should be-
The soul is the form of the human substance, which is body and spirit.

The soul is the form of a living thing or being. When something dies it loses its body. Therefore its spirit is all that is left. Since the person or being is only spirit its soul or form is only spirit.
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That seems to only push the problem back one step. Is the spirit a substance? Also, what’s the point of talking about the soul, a third component, if we could just say the human is “spirit and body.” Most people who say humans are body and soul ARE saying that humans are body and spirit. Is this not equivalent?
 
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Yeah, I find all this puzzling too, which is why I personally tend to think that the dead are outside of our time, and they as it were “fast-forward” to the resurrection of the dead. That’s probably heretical, though. Sigh.
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I mean, we still have to accept that God and the angels are conscious and have minds.
 
catholic1seeks said:
I mean, we still have to accept that God and the angels are conscious and have minds.
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Well, I don’t find that to be a problem, since by no means is the essence of an angel a unity of body and soul. But it seems plausible that the essence of a human being IS a unity of body and soul.
 
Yes the spirit is a substance. God and the angels are spirit and they are substance as well.

The term “soul” is used rather than “body and spirit” because soul includes both of these things. It is easier to say “human soul” rather than “human body and spirit.”

As for whether soul and spirit are equivalent-
The soul describes the form of person. In a living person this is body and spirit. In a person that is dead this is only spirit.

A person can still exist without a body but can not exist without spirit. Therefore, the basis of the human soul is spirit.

This means that when someone is speaking of someone’s soul they are usually talking about their spirit although if the person the are talking about is alive then they are talking about the person’s body and spirit which is the current form of their being.

Since a spirit can exist without its body and is the basic component of the soul people often interchange the two terms even though they are talking about two different aspects of the person.

When a person’s spirit leaves their body when they die their soul leaves with it since the spirit is the person’s soul.
 
catholic1seeks said:
Perhaps I misunderstand what the definition of a human soul is when it is called a “substance-less form,” and I know not all Catholic theological traditions follow the Thomistic understanding.

But it seems to be the dominant understanding of what a soul is.

So if after death, the form of the body remains, and if the soul is not a substance, then how can it act on its own, especially be conscious and pray for us on Earth, before it is reunited with its resurrected body?
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Gravity is immaterial, but it is there. And yet, it has no substance. How then can it work? An act? A dimensionless phenomenon that took an apple to fall on a certain English man’s head, to explore what is this event.

Radio signals, are immaterial. For even a signal coming from a satellite is immaterial. But yet, we can measure radio signals by band.

Sound and gravity are immaterial. Meaning, substance-less as what is meant by it in physics/science.

Then, what governs a flower to be a flower? Or then, what governs the elements to work in a particular way, to be fashioned and formed? For that h2o is water. And no other atomic configuration as that, could make up water. So something governs, makes, shapes, and forms a thing to be. And the necessary governance of the that order governs it so that it can only be sustained and maintained in that way.

Consider love. That is immaterial. But a trait of human character no doubt. And then hatred is also immaterial. And yet, they act through the body.

If all those immaterial things hold to be true, how can Aristotle or any of the Greek Classicists argue against the ability of saints to pray?

For saints do not come from the natural order, but rendered by God on the human soul (the person.) And, the same governance and order served out by that God, also rendered to come into the existence of flesh. Because all things are possible with God. Even His ability that His Word, the closest person to the bosom of the Father. Could no doubt, no less, be able to take on human form: a body. And that was Him, incarnate.

Those are possibilities by God, by a Creator, Who so governs the universe, and made things to be, and stand as they stand. And thus, all/both the material/immaterial presence: the visible, and invisible. As we say in the Creed.

Aristotle, could easily observe that then, as we do with the marvel of science today. Just as Sir Isaac discovered this event called gravity.
 
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After reading the article you site and also reflecting on what I have read from Feser previously I think you may be confused about what he means by form and soul. Feser would say that Aquinas denies the modern dualist idea that we are ghosts in a machine. Such that we just discard our bodies as uneeded when we die. He makes his point that the form of a thing is simply a description of a thing like the form of a ball is that it is round. So it is abstract and does not survive the destruction of the ball. Now the form of a living thing is called a soul. Aquinas would say an animal’s soul does not survive the death of it’s body. It has no substance that survives death. Whereas the human soul is different because it has been given an Intellect. And this intellect has an immaterial nature to it. It exists apart from the physical body because nothing physical can produce it. Since it has abstract and immaterial thoughts that even in principle can not come from material things. Therefore, since it already exists apart from the body it can also survive the death of the body. It is this immaterial part that survives the death of the body that I think is what Feser refers to as the incorporeal substance in the article. This is not the same as a ghost in the machine. For the immaterial mind uses the body to think and process sensual information. It is how we as part corporeal creatures exist. So for the mind to be apart from the body is to be incomplete. The form of a human would include the immaterial mind as well as the physical body. Thus it is incomplete but not completely lost at physical death. If our bodies were not important to our nature then why God want to raise them from the dead? Our complete form will be regained in the Resurrection.

A dualist would say we are 2 separate substances (or natures), body and spirit. Whereas I think Aquinas/Feser would say we are really one substance that has both corporeal and incorporeal aspects to it. And that one is incomplete without the other. The soul being the form of the body speaks of the close union of this substance. (See CCC 365)

Nonetheless, the Saints can only pray for us because God enables them to do so. (See also CCC 367). Saints like Mary already have their glorified bodies.
 
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A human being is both body and soul. No one knows what it means to be a human soul without a body, or if such a thing is even possible. Some theologians have speculated that our souls will be harbored in Christ’s body until our own bodies are resurrected. This is a literal understanding of Paul’s teaching (1 Corinthians 12) that we are members of the Body of Christ.

Now to answer the question posed in the Original Post, the saints are able to hear our prayers and act upon them through Christ’s body. Mary’s case is a bit different, since she was assumed into heaven body and soul.
 
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