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IWantGod
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Are all subsistenceless beings essentially a mind or dependent upon a mind?
If the soul is a "substance-less form," how can the saints pray for us?
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Prodigal_Son
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No being is “substanceless”. The Greek for “substance” is just the word “being”. To say “it exists, but it is not a substance” is basically a contradiction.
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IWantGod
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Okay, well then i am asking the same qeustion for a substance that is not a material substance.
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Wingz
Guest
The spirit is the breathe of life therefore it enlivens the body. If the spirit is outside the body however the body does not live.
Since the spirit is the breathe of life it is what we are. Without the breathe of life we would not be alive and therefore not exist.
Since the spirit is the breathe of life it is what we are. Without the breathe of life we would not be alive and therefore not exist.
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AveOTheotokos
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The immaterial human soul is indeed a substance-less form, but it is also pure intellect; pure will. Concepts such as love, desire, hatred, joy, etc… are all immaterial things; they cannot be held or weighed or measured, yet they still exist and are experienced.
Thomas Aquinas speaks about the human soul and how intellect can be the form of the body in his Summa Contra Gentiles:
http://dhspriory.org/thomas/ContraGentiles2.htm#68
I would recommend reading from Ch. 68 (linked above) on, and definitely check out Ch. 91
Thomas Aquinas speaks about the human soul and how intellect can be the form of the body in his Summa Contra Gentiles:
http://dhspriory.org/thomas/ContraGentiles2.htm#68
I would recommend reading from Ch. 68 (linked above) on, and definitely check out Ch. 91
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KindredSoul
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“Substance” in formal theology just seems to mean “something.” Even spiritual “something,” so the soul has (or perhaps more accurately, is) substance, just not a material substance.
However, I grant that many people in casual parlance may use “substance” to mean “matter.” Just pointing out the nuance.
That said, spirit doesn’t work like matter. Where matter seems to require complexity and moving “parts” to achieve anything like thought or action, spirit does not. God Himself is not made of parts (putting aside the Humanity of the Incarnation), yet a more potent and intelligent Being does not exist, so it is at least plausible for a being without matter, a simple and indivisible being, to have potential for action and thought.
That said, the human soul is admittedly different from God or angels. We seem to need bodies/brains for anything beyond merely existing, at least in THIS life, hence coma patients who recover often recall nothing: If the conscious brain was inactive, the soul didn’t “do” anything… So yes, it’s puzzling how souls in Heaven do.
But It’s not impossible that God transforms the souls in Heaven so that they can do, without bodily aid, what they couldn’t do without it on Earth. Alternatively, being outside of time, they may be eternally “in touch” with their resurrected bodies, since to be in Heaven may be to be simultaneously present at every moment, and outside of every moment, at once…as it seems to me God is, and as seems to me to be the nature of “eternity,” which is not merely “forever” but transcends time.
However, I grant that many people in casual parlance may use “substance” to mean “matter.” Just pointing out the nuance.
That said, spirit doesn’t work like matter. Where matter seems to require complexity and moving “parts” to achieve anything like thought or action, spirit does not. God Himself is not made of parts (putting aside the Humanity of the Incarnation), yet a more potent and intelligent Being does not exist, so it is at least plausible for a being without matter, a simple and indivisible being, to have potential for action and thought.
That said, the human soul is admittedly different from God or angels. We seem to need bodies/brains for anything beyond merely existing, at least in THIS life, hence coma patients who recover often recall nothing: If the conscious brain was inactive, the soul didn’t “do” anything… So yes, it’s puzzling how souls in Heaven do.
But It’s not impossible that God transforms the souls in Heaven so that they can do, without bodily aid, what they couldn’t do without it on Earth. Alternatively, being outside of time, they may be eternally “in touch” with their resurrected bodies, since to be in Heaven may be to be simultaneously present at every moment, and outside of every moment, at once…as it seems to me God is, and as seems to me to be the nature of “eternity,” which is not merely “forever” but transcends time.
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KindredSoul
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I wouldn’t think it heretical. It’s essentially what I have posited in my post just now, too, albeit I don’t think of it as “fast forwarding” so much as having entered into a state of “constant presence throughout, transcending, and outside of all time.” Which seems to me to just be part of what it would mean to exist in eternity. So given that the Church teaches eternity is different than simply “interminable,” that seems rather compatible with the thought that a soul in eternity exists “already” in the future even as it exists in the present, and even as it exists outside of both, etc.
Interestingly, since the resurrected bodies also will exist in eternity, then they too share this time-transcendent nature, so the unity of soul and resurrected body is a meeting from both directions: I’d think it reasonable to think both transcend time and thus are united throughout even though the general resurrection itself takes place at a specific “point” in time.
It’s difficult to wrap the mind around what this experience must BE like, but I do think it’s compatible with what the Church seems to believe about the nature of eternity.
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IWantGod
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When you die you immediately wake up at the resurrection. You face judgement immediately. I don’t believe in human ghosts. The only way that could be possible is if people in purgatory live out their purgatory on earth. But i don’t know about that.
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fisherman_carl
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That would be soul sleep which is what JW’s believe, but is not a Catholic teaching. Evidence from NDE’s suggest that when we die we have continued conscious existence apart from our bodies. Also, if we fell asleep until the Resurrection we could not pray for others. Catholic teaching is that when we die we face a personal judgement or life review, afterwards we go either to heaven, hell or purgatory. After the Resurrection there will be no purgatory. And everyone will have the general judgement.
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catholic1seeks
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This is helpful, but I still wonder what it means for there to be “incorporeal aspects” or “spiritual operations” and yet not a spiritual substance. What is it that DOES the “spiritual operations”?
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IWantGod
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I did not know that it was a Jehovahs witness belief that we immediately wake up at the resurrection. Thanks for the heads up. Neither did i know that we continue our conscious existence after death apart our bodies.
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Vouthon
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Aristotle defined soul as the form of a living body, dividing “souls” up into vegetative, animal and rational degrees based upon their distinct teleological functions (i.e. growing for a vegetative soul, sensation for an animal soul, intellect for human souls).
Souls are what make living things alive, in his understanding. The soul, consequently, was not an independently existing substance for him, which temporarily separates from the body at death.
Since he understood souls to be bodies animated by a core set of capacities, Aristotle believed that souls perished with the body, including the rational human type of soul. Here is what Aristotle himself had to say on this topic:
Other philosophies do not need to grapple with this contradiction, although it must be said that no secular or pagan philosophy will be a perfect fit for the deposit of faith in every respect.
There is no need for a Catholic to interpret their faith through the lens of Aristotelianism, despite this being common as a result of Thomistic influence in the last few centuries (Thomism actually remained for quite a long time a doctrine held principally by Dominican theologians).
Indeed, I discern a move away from this paradigm post-Vatican II, towards a more patristic-Augustinian and Bonaventurian model (Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI was especially indebted to St. Bonaventure).
As Pope St. John Paul II stated in an encyclical:
I personally do not favour Aristotelianism, which has led me into an unfortunate state of isolation on this sub-forum since the place is literally riddled with Aristotelians!
Souls are what make living things alive, in his understanding. The soul, consequently, was not an independently existing substance for him, which temporarily separates from the body at death.
Since he understood souls to be bodies animated by a core set of capacities, Aristotle believed that souls perished with the body, including the rational human type of soul. Here is what Aristotle himself had to say on this topic:
When Aristotelian philosophy was inculturated by the Thomists to provide the intellectual foundations for their particular brand of scholastic theology, they were compelled to reconcile this fundamentally physicalist notion with the Catholic dogma of soul immortality and temporary separation from the body at death in heaven.
Other philosophies do not need to grapple with this contradiction, although it must be said that no secular or pagan philosophy will be a perfect fit for the deposit of faith in every respect.
There is no need for a Catholic to interpret their faith through the lens of Aristotelianism, despite this being common as a result of Thomistic influence in the last few centuries (Thomism actually remained for quite a long time a doctrine held principally by Dominican theologians).
Indeed, I discern a move away from this paradigm post-Vatican II, towards a more patristic-Augustinian and Bonaventurian model (Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI was especially indebted to St. Bonaventure).
As Pope St. John Paul II stated in an encyclical:
See:
Jesus, Interpreted
In this sequel volume to his Dark Passages of the Bible (CUA Press, 2013), author Matthew Ramage turns his attention from the Old to the New Testament, now tackling truth claims bearing directly on the heart of the Christian faith cast into doubt by contemporary New Testament scholarship: Did...
books.google.co.uk
(Bonaventure was primarily a Platonist-Augustinian who knew Aristotle well and made astute use of certain Aristotelian doctrines but was wary of relying too much on him and was at times very critical of some of his ideas)
I personally do not favour Aristotelianism, which has led me into an unfortunate state of isolation on this sub-forum since the place is literally riddled with Aristotelians!
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Vouthon
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Indeed, this is a de fide doctrine of the Catholic Church.
Pope Benedict XII, in the dogmatic constitution “Benedictus Deus” (1336), defines that the pure souls of the just immediately following death, or after their purification in purgatory, enter heaven and attain to the Beatific Vision, before our bodily resurrection:
Benedictus Deus On the Beatific Vision of God - Papal Encyclicals Online
Constitution issued by Pope Benedict XII in 1336 By this Constitution which is to remain in force for ever, we, with apostolic authority.
www.papalencyclicals.net
Thus, we live in a state of conscious separation from the body, temporarily, in heaven.
Catholics are not permitted to believe in soul sleep and nor is it biblical.
And yes, Aristotle and all subsequent physicalists got this wrong. The soul does not perish with the body. Just as St. Bonaventure was not a pure Platonist, St. Thomas Aquinas was not a pure Aristotelian and corrected his mentor on this critical point where he clearly conflicted with Catholic doctrine.
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Vouthon
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@IWantGod Soul sleep and instantaneous bodily resurrection isn’t biblical either IMHO.
In 2 Corinthians 5:4, for example, Paul employs a metaphor describing the unresurrected human body as a burdensome but temporary earthly tent. This directly echoes language from the Wisdom of Solomon (9:15):
Furthermore, both texts are herein referring to the travails of bodily existence, that is of unglorified, embodied life.
As already mentioned, in his second letter to the Corinthians, Paul uses the nearly identical image of an earthly body weighing down a soul identified with the “we/I” inhabiting the body:
In this regard, Fredrik Lindgård argued in his very exegetically dense 2005 study entitled, Paul’s Line of Thought in 2 Corinthians 4:16-5:10 p. 140:
In 2 Corinthians 5:4, for example, Paul employs a metaphor describing the unresurrected human body as a burdensome but temporary earthly tent. This directly echoes language from the Wisdom of Solomon (9:15):
As Klaus Berger notes, this text offers two verbal parallels to to 2 Corinthians 5:4 (“weigh down” and “tent”) and “a third could just as well be present (“groan”)”.
Furthermore, both texts are herein referring to the travails of bodily existence, that is of unglorified, embodied life.
As already mentioned, in his second letter to the Corinthians, Paul uses the nearly identical image of an earthly body weighing down a soul identified with the “we/I” inhabiting the body:
The Greek phrase translated as “earthy tent” in both Wisdom of Solomon and 2 Corinthians is not the normative word for tent (skene) but rather the highly unusual skenos which is found only twice in the New Testament (here and in v. 4) in this single passage, and only once in the LXX corpus in Wisdom of Solomon 9:15, where it is used figuratively to refer to the ensouled human body, leading one authority on the Apocrypha to conclude that Paul “had at sometime read this passage and [was] impressed by the Wisdom of Solomon.” Metzger, An Introduction to the Apocrypha at 158.
In this regard, Fredrik Lindgård argued in his very exegetically dense 2005 study entitled, Paul’s Line of Thought in 2 Corinthians 4:16-5:10 p. 140:
While David Edward Aune in his 2013 Jesus, Gospel Tradition and Paul in the. Context of Jewish and Greco-Roman. Antiquity. Collected Essays II p. 365 noted:
(continued…)
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Vouthon
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Wisdom 8:19-20 states: “As a child I was by nature well endowed, and a good soul fell to my lot; or rather, being good, I entered an undefiled body.” As with the exegesis provided of the Pauline paragraph in 2 Corinthians above by many scholars, where it can be inferred that Paul identifies the “we” that inhabits the body with the “inner person” or separable soul; Wisdom likewise differentiates between the “I”, identified with the soul, and the body, which the “I/soul” enters and inhabits like a perishable “tent” (Wisdom 9:25) until death, when “the souls of the righteous are in the hand of God, and no torment will ever touch them. In the eyes of the foolish they seemed to have died, and their departure was thought to be a disaster, and their going from us to be their destruction; but they are at peace.” (Wisdom 3:1-3) or as Paul would put it the soul will be “away from the body and at home with the Lord” (2 Corinthians 5:8) and “I am torn between the two. I desire to depart and be with Christ, which is far better indeed. But it is more necessary for you that I remain in the body” (Philippians 1:23-24).
Notice how in Wisdom of Solomon and the Pauline epistles the “I” is within the body but can leave it (“departure”/“depart”) at death to be with God/Christ.
This is important for properly making sense of the anthropology in both texts, which is holistic but also suggests a duality within the whole, in the sense that (according to Paul) the soul can be temporarily separated from the body at death (described as “nakedness”) before being re-joined to a glorified body at the resurrection by God, which seems to be subtly implied too in Wisdom 3:7 “In the time of their visitation [resurrection?] they [the righteous souls] will shine forth, and will run like sparks through the stubble.”
Paul was not, therefore, a “mortalist” or advocate of unconscious soul sleep but rather a proponent of Hellenistic Jewish “body-soul” duality; just like the intertestamental Wisdom of Solomon, which he was so greatly influenced by, and this dualism was holistic in nature: ultimately looking forward to being a heavenly, pneumatic body at the resurrection, as opposed to a perpetual disembodied “nakedness” in the Greek Platonist sense (as the Corinthians appeared to have wrongly understood it, thereby occasioning Paul’s explanation that this wasn’t a complete picture without bodily resurrection at the Eschaton).
Notice how in Wisdom of Solomon and the Pauline epistles the “I” is within the body but can leave it (“departure”/“depart”) at death to be with God/Christ.
This is important for properly making sense of the anthropology in both texts, which is holistic but also suggests a duality within the whole, in the sense that (according to Paul) the soul can be temporarily separated from the body at death (described as “nakedness”) before being re-joined to a glorified body at the resurrection by God, which seems to be subtly implied too in Wisdom 3:7 “In the time of their visitation [resurrection?] they [the righteous souls] will shine forth, and will run like sparks through the stubble.”
Paul was not, therefore, a “mortalist” or advocate of unconscious soul sleep but rather a proponent of Hellenistic Jewish “body-soul” duality; just like the intertestamental Wisdom of Solomon, which he was so greatly influenced by, and this dualism was holistic in nature: ultimately looking forward to being a heavenly, pneumatic body at the resurrection, as opposed to a perpetual disembodied “nakedness” in the Greek Platonist sense (as the Corinthians appeared to have wrongly understood it, thereby occasioning Paul’s explanation that this wasn’t a complete picture without bodily resurrection at the Eschaton).
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catholic1seeks
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This seems to be saying that the spirit is a substance, almost like the “ghost in a body.” I know this may not be want you want to get across, but it seems to suggest the same dilemma before: That the soul is the spirit – a spiritual “thing.”
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ProdglArchitect
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You are correct. I misspoke. In my reading, the OP was trying to say that since souls aren’t physical they can’t do anything, and I misconstrued substance to mean matter.
To the OP, souls aren’t substance-less, they are merely non-physical. We are a soul-body composite, a physical reality and a spiritual reality in one. Our souls may lose their physical aspect at our death (at least temporarily), but they do not lose the capacity for act and will.
To the OP, souls aren’t substance-less, they are merely non-physical. We are a soul-body composite, a physical reality and a spiritual reality in one. Our souls may lose their physical aspect at our death (at least temporarily), but they do not lose the capacity for act and will.
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Vouthon
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If we return to the original patristic definition and don’t get caught up in trying to justify or reconcile Aristotelian physicalism with Catholic doctrine, it is really rather straightforward.
God created human beings as a perfect unity of body and soul. Nonetheless, disembodied souls exist in an intermediate conscious state between death and resurrection.
In other words, body and soul are distinct (material/immaterial) yet integrated into/are a single whole, for which reason the the soul can still exist separately after death in a temporary state. Body and soul are, however, united in creation, redemption and ultimately eternal life.
We thus affirm that (1) body and soul are distinct (2) that the soul can exist apart from the body and (3) that they are one whole.
Whether or not you wish to understand this according to Augustinian holistic dualism or Thomism or another framework is a philosophical decision on your part but is not per se contingent upon the basic truths outlined in the Church’s deposit of faith. (The Thomist interpretation is somewhat more holistic than the Augustinian because of the Aristotelian categories underlying it but both affirm the essential requirements of divine revelation on this matter).
According to the Catechism of the Catholic Church: “The Church teaches that every spiritual soul is created immediately by God—it is not ‘produced’ by the parents—and also that it is immortal: it does not perish when it separates from the body at death, and it will be reunited with the body at the final Resurrection.” In his address to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences in 1996, Pope St. John Paul II said, “It is by virtue of his spiritual soul that the whole person possesses such a dignity even in his body. Pius XII stressed this essential point: if the human body takes its origin from pre-existent living matter, the spiritual soul is immediately created by God.”
God created human beings as a perfect unity of body and soul. Nonetheless, disembodied souls exist in an intermediate conscious state between death and resurrection.
In other words, body and soul are distinct (material/immaterial) yet integrated into/are a single whole, for which reason the the soul can still exist separately after death in a temporary state. Body and soul are, however, united in creation, redemption and ultimately eternal life.
We thus affirm that (1) body and soul are distinct (2) that the soul can exist apart from the body and (3) that they are one whole.
Whether or not you wish to understand this according to Augustinian holistic dualism or Thomism or another framework is a philosophical decision on your part but is not per se contingent upon the basic truths outlined in the Church’s deposit of faith. (The Thomist interpretation is somewhat more holistic than the Augustinian because of the Aristotelian categories underlying it but both affirm the essential requirements of divine revelation on this matter).
According to the Catechism of the Catholic Church: “The Church teaches that every spiritual soul is created immediately by God—it is not ‘produced’ by the parents—and also that it is immortal: it does not perish when it separates from the body at death, and it will be reunited with the body at the final Resurrection.” In his address to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences in 1996, Pope St. John Paul II said, “It is by virtue of his spiritual soul that the whole person possesses such a dignity even in his body. Pius XII stressed this essential point: if the human body takes its origin from pre-existent living matter, the spiritual soul is immediately created by God.”
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catholic1seeks
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So after some quick reading of Aquinas (via the link provided by a previous poster), it seems obvious that Aquinas considers the form of the human body to be an intellectual substance. Or, as he also puts it, a “subsistent form.”
I just need to chew on this. Not all forms are immortal: Material forms expire when the matter and form separate. But I’m just trying to better understand what it means for a form to be “intellectual” or “spiritual” substance, as in the case of humans. Hopefully Aquinas isn’t merely assuming this must be the case, since he of course believed in Angels (and God).
I just need to chew on this. Not all forms are immortal: Material forms expire when the matter and form separate. But I’m just trying to better understand what it means for a form to be “intellectual” or “spiritual” substance, as in the case of humans. Hopefully Aquinas isn’t merely assuming this must be the case, since he of course believed in Angels (and God).
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Vouthon
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It’s complicated, because St. Thomas Aquinas was attempting to achieve something difficult: a synthesis of Aristotelianism and Catholic doctrine, trying to stay as close to Aristotle as possible without contravening the Catholic Faith.
He succeeded but it wasn’t easy:
He succeeded but it wasn’t easy:
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