On the Immortality of the Soul

[polytropos]

I am not at all sure what the word “immaterial” means here. Or rather, what do you mean by a “material soul” - a soul by definition stands in opposition to “matter” as a co-principle of existant material substances Therefore a “material soul” is a contradiction in terms. .

A soul is just a form of a living thing. All forms are “immaterial” in the sense that it is not the “material cause” of a thing. But (since all forms are not matter by definition) that is not the relevant sense of “material” when one says that a soul is material or immaterial.

A soul is said to be immaterial just in case its highest essential function is immaterial. Most animals do not have any highest essential function, so their souls are material. (This includes vegetation and animals with only “appetitive” souls.) The Aristotelian claims further that humans have rational souls and that the rational power is “higher” that the other functions (since, in the order of nature, rational powers entail vegetative and appetitive powers, but the opposite is not true). If the Aristotelian/Thomist can establish that “the intellect has no bodily organ” (as the Ross article, for instance, attempts to do), then he claims that the soul is “immaterial” since its highest function is immaterial in operation. (This does not preclude that the soul is naturally associated with matter and depends on matter for its normal functioning.)

Where is the soul these days in the allegedly circular motion of the super lunar bodies that both Aristotle (and even Aquinas) posited had to exist? We can explain that mechanisticly so “poof” their souls no longer are credible to us . I don’t think any modern Aristotelian or Thomist would still be pushing that these days would they?

A couple points:

• I don’t think super lunar bodies were taken to be alive, so their forms would not have been called souls. (Though I may be wrong on this.)
• We can’t exactly explain the motion of heavenly bodies. We can describe and project them with Kepler’s laws (for instance) and more nuanced models. We know that gravity and inertia play a role in their continued orbit. We have some tentative explanations of gravity (the curvature of space-time). But until we have some sort of quantum gravity theory that unifies relativity with quantum mechanics, most of what we have are mathematical models, which when grouped with quantum theory, we know must be in some way incorrect and in need of modification.
• Souls are not posited in the Aristotelian tradition to account for unexplained phenomena. Whether something has a material explanation currently has no relevance to whether an Aristotelian will posit that it has a form. (Consider my previous example of the growth of a tree. Suppose that we have complete biological knowledge of such a species of tree. We still posit a form for it.) To posit a form is not to claim that phenomena do not have underlying causes. A form-matter ontology is selected for separate reasons (a more robust theory of knowledge, a better solution to the problem of universals, and a better solution to the problem of unity/individuation). We then just apply it to all substances we encounter.
• You are correct that contemporary Thomists don’t argue anything odd about heavenly bodies, or at least I have not seen anything in the writings of Oderberg, Anscombe, Geach, Haldane, Klima, Feser, or Ross, or any other Aristotelian/Thomist. So evidently, whatever Aristotle and Aquinas argued about the heavenly bodies is not in fact essential to the Thomist system.

Once the false philosophic assumptions they were working from have been exposed it isn’t too hard to extrapolate to vegetation or even animals and suggest that locomotion is purely mechanical in explanation. Of course a spiritual principle (or a separate final cause) may be needed to explain the chain of causality that started the locomotion. But efficient and material and formal causes of locomotion seem adequately explained at the sensible level without recourse to an inferred spiritual substance?

Again, this is a false dichotomy. Positing a form (or a power essential to that form) is not inconsistent with having a full material explanation of a phenomenon.

 

[polytropos]

I believe Thomists do hold that body and soul are separable - for that separation is the very definition of death.

I think what you mean is that matter and form are co-principles of material substances. In Aristotle’s Hylomorphic theory neither of these components have existance of themselves alone. Only when form actuates matter does a material substance exist.

This is not exactly the case. Matter and form are co-principles of material substances. The case is different when the substance (like humans) is not fully material.

The reason Aquinas was able to argue this is because in addition to Aristotle’s form-matter distinction, he drew an essence-existence distinction (in De Esse et Essentia). (This is a point where Aquinas’s philosophy of being reaches a greater generality than that of Aristotle.) So his point (in development of Aristotle) would be that if a substance is wholly material, then its esse (act of existing) just is for its form to instantiate matter. But if a form is essentially immaterial, then its esse is not just to be individuated by matter; its existence is not dependent on the matter in which it is instantiated.

I find Aquinas’s theory of the soul to be rather consonant with Christian theology. One can know that one’s soul is immaterial and will persist after death. Without revelation, though, there is not reason to believe that the soul can act after death, since it is dependent on matter for its activity even if not for its existence.

 

[polytropos]

But if a form is essentially immaterial, then its esse is not just to be individuated by matter; its existence is not dependent on the matter in which it is instantiated.

I want to add, Aquinas took matter as the principle of individuation, and so argued that angels (which are just subsistent forms, composed of essence and existence but not of matter and form) must each be of separate species; they can only be individuated if they have different essences. I am not opposed to this reasoning, but I don’t think we could say for certain that the disjunction here (“either a substance is individuated by matter or is of a unique species”) is complete (or that we could know it to be complete). I don’t see why there could not be some other principle of individuation among subsistent forms.

 

[Portofino]

I find Aquinas’s theory of the soul to be rather consonant with Christian theology. One can know that one’s soul is immaterial and will persist after death. Without revelation, though, there is not reason to believe that the soul can act after death, since it is dependent on matter for its activity even if not for its existence.

Yes; if one considers it proven that the human soul is immaterial in the sense of its being non-dependent on matter (body or brain), then one accepts that this human soul will not depend on body or brain for its continued existence.

What also would exist beyond the sphere of reason and within revelation is the positing – the prediction, really – of a resurrection of the body and a re-joining of body and soul. Nor could one well define why a re-joining of body and soul would be useful (insofar as we cannot know with certainty what powers or limitations are possessed by the soul, sans body; for all one knows, the soul without body is even less encumbered).

 

[polytropos]

What also would exist beyond the sphere of reason and within revelation is the positing – the prediction, really – of a resurrection of the body and a re-joining of body and soul.

Yes, as I said at the end of #14.

Nor could one well define why a re-joining of body and soul would be useful (insofar as we cannot know with certainty what powers or limitations are possessed by the soul, sans body; for all one knows, the soul without body is even less encumbered).

This, however, I do not think a Thomist would accept. The idea that we are encumbered at all by our bodies is decidedly un-Aristotelian. The Aristotelian theory of knowledge is based on the abstraction of universal forms from particular substances in the world. We do know with certainty that the powers by which we interact with the world are material (even if the abstracting process is itself rational and immaterial). I don’t think there would be much doubt that soul sans body cannot acquire information about the world like we can. (Feser discusses these issues a bit here.)

From a standard Aristotelian conception of the good, it would pretty clearly follow that it is less good to be separated from one’s body insofar that one cannot achieve one’s natural ends without the body. (That said, as Feser notes, we might achieve some greater supernatural end by having our souls separated from our bodies. But then our greatest state would be after the resurrection of the body.)

 

[Portofino]

Yes, as I said at the end of #14.From a standard Aristotelian conception of the good, it would pretty clearly follow that it is less good to be separated from one’s body insofar that one cannot achieve one’s natural ends without the body. (That said, as Feser notes, we might achieve some greater supernatural end by having our souls separated from our bodies. But then our greatest state would be after the resurrection of the body.)

This is an interesting concept. I’m pretty sure this concept will take some getting used to for many Catholics who are of a more Platonic bent. “Liberation from the confines of the body” has deep resonance with most human spiritual traditions and with their iconography – putting wings on angels would be one sense in which we associate immateriality with non-limitation. The connotations of the adjective “ethereal” would be another; “free as a bird”, etc.

There is also Jesus’ statement that “God is a spirit” – that God the Father, who is unlimited, has no physical body. Or there’s the idea that, with a body, there are the obvious limitations of time and space – plodding from point A to point B whereas, with thought, you can be at the other end of the world in an instant (or back to your childhood in an instant, through vivid memory). A body exists in the present but a mind, obviously, can contemplate the past and anticipate the future.

Then again, maybe the difference is not so essential a difference after all. One who posits a resurrection of the body presumably does not posit that one still has to plod along from point A to point B, or bump into walls as into obstacles that impede one’s motion; it will be a transformed body, a transformed materiality.

 

[polytropos]

This is an interesting concept. I’m pretty sure this concept will take some getting used to for many Catholics who are of a more Platonic bent. “Liberation from the confines of the body” has deep resonance with most human spiritual traditions and with their iconography – putting wings on angels would be one sense in which we associate immateriality with non-limitation. The connotations of the adjective “ethereal” would be another; “free as a bird”, etc.

I think the more Aristotelian, moderate realist position is pretty typical among Catholics. I cannot find citations now, but the Catholic view that the body is not a burden is quite evident in encyclicals like Veritatis Splendor. Catholics have also traditionally disagreed with gnostic sects that spurned the body/world and procreation. Some Catholic authors have had leanings in that direction (like Augustine), but its extremes do seem to be contrary to Catholicism.

 

[Blue_Horizon]

Yes, thank you : ) As I understand it, Aristotle actually sits quite well again with Christian theology, post-resurrection – without body and soul, you are not a complete human person. The trick is getting from death – separation of body and soul – to the resurrection, and explaining the properties of the soul in between (e.g., does the soul survive its separation from the body? Is it conscious and does it have memories? And if it would reunite its the body at some later point, how would it “find” its body again, the right one to inhabit?)

There, it seems to me – the separation of body and soul through death and the quality of the continued existence of the human personality – one has lost not only Aristotle but the means of purely philosophical proof, notwithstanding the immense importance of the question.

Yes, exactly the conclusion i have come to over the years .
So the bit of 'time" inbetween death and Resurrection of the Dead is opaque wrt to Aristotle and Catholic philosophy in general.

Plato makes some headway here as he believed immaterial form was the only really-real anyway. But then Resurrection and life on earth becomes problematic for Platonic Christian philosophy as Plato sees matter as “chaining/imprisioning” form which can never be expressed properly in matter, not even resurrected matter. That way lies Manicheanism.

So, it seems disembodied souls cannot really be harmonised well into a single coherent Catholic Philosophy. The cracks are only sealed by Revelation .

 

[polytropos]

So the bit of 'time" inbetween death and Resurrection of the Dead is opaque wrt to Aristotle and Catholic philosophy in general.

I don’t really see this conclusion… unless one has some reason to disbelieve the essence-existence distinction.

So, it seems disembodied souls cannot really be harmonised well into a single coherent Catholic Philosophy. The cracks are only sealed by Revelation .

To have the theory fleshed out by Revelation does not seem to be a weakness to me (ie. it does not seem to detract from a Catholic philosophy’s coherence). (The case seems exactly analogous to traditional demonstrations of God’s existence.) Catholicism never was a rationalist religion in which every doctrine was susceptible to demonstrative proof, nor has it ever claimed to be.

Now if there were holes that had to be patched up by Revelation, that would be another thing. But there are not. The extent is limited, and Revelation pitches in, but in doing so it is expanding the philosophy, not repairing or replacing (as I’ve tried to show).

 

[Blue_Horizon]

Nor could one well define why a re-joining of body and soul would be useful (insofar as we cannot know with certainty what powers or limitations are possessed by the soul, sans body; for all one knows, the soul without body is even less encumbered).

This is an interesting concept. I’m pretty sure this concept will take some getting used to for many Catholics who are of a more Platonic bent. “Liberation from the confines of the body” has deep resonance with most human spiritual traditions and with their iconography – putting wings on angels would be one sense in which we associate immateriality with non-limitation. The connotations of the adjective “ethereal” would be another; “free as a bird”, etc.

I am with PolyTropos on this point. This way lies tears methinks.
But you are right, the Early Church defintely leaned this way, especially in the East I believe. And use of Plato by Hellenists only made it worse.

In the Middle Ages this way of thinking was still rife in the West and went to excess in the Cathars and Albigenses. The Dominicans main task in France/Spain was to preach against this tendancy and of course Aquinas enlisted the newly discovered works of Aristotle to counter on a philosophic level.

Yet, even today this tendency is still strong in Christianity. It is said that highly intelligent believers generally start out as Platonists - the truly wise end up otherwise (presumably Aristotelian).

I suppose the reason why we naturally think that ultimate happiness lies in the purely spiritual (and that materiality is an encumbrance at least, a prision at worst) is due to the Fall. We have lost our original natural state and what we are left with looks intrinsically limiting and represents the whole extent of what materiality can possibly offer.

But Revelation (the Resurrection of the Dead, or perhaps Hebrew Philosophy versus Greek Philosophy) tells us this is not quite correct.

There is also Jesus’ statement that “God is a spirit” – that God the Father, who is unlimited, has no physical body. Or there’s the idea that, with a body, there are the obvious limitations of time and space – plodding from point A to point B whereas, with thought, you can be at the other end of the world in an instant (or back to your childhood in an instant, through vivid memory). A body exists in the present but a mind, obviously, can contemplate the past and anticipate the future.

This may not be a fair comparision. God (and the angels) are by Nature purely immaterial. Therefore for them all that you say about etheriality and free as a bird imagery etc is quite true.

But, if Human Nature involves materiality by definition then it is impossible for us to find our perfect happiness in being like an angel (or being like an animal for that matter). As the saying from the Desert Fathers goes “He who would attempt to be as the angels shall fall worse than the beasts.”

Then again, maybe the difference is not so essential a difference after all. One who posits a resurrection of the body presumably does not posit that one still has to plod along from point A to point B, or bump into walls as into obstacles that impede one’s motion; it will be a transformed body, a transformed materiality.

Yes, I believe this is exactly the way the Church squares the circle. It is from Aquinas.
The Bible speaks of the just receiving “spiritual bodies” at the end of the World.
Aquinas takes up those quotes.
However he understands them quite differently from how most Protestants (and even Catholics for that matter) do. There can actually be no spiritual (ie non-material) body for that is a philosophic contradiction in terms.

Aquinas says as much. But what he says it means is that the soul, through the restoration of Original Justice and grace (ie full Glorification), now aquires such mastery over the body that the body in fact is able to act in the manner you would call “etherial”. But it is still a material body and the laws of material nature are not being contradicted.

I believe Aristotle did not define the accidents of matter in the same way that Descartes did when he replaced Aristotelian substance with the 1st accident known as “quantity.”

So if Aristotle could posit the theoretic existance of material substances without extension (which obviously has implications for mass and maybe even the passing of time) then “etherial bodies” do not contradict material creation. But then we already knew that from Jesus’s Resurrection appearances of body and soul - as well as the Eucharist.

 

[Blue_Horizon]

I don’t really see this conclusion… unless one has some reason to disbelieve the essence-existence distinction.

Just hold fire there Polytropos.
I am still digesting your very helpful observations below regarding “immaterial soul”.
You have opened up something I may not have fully averted to in my Aquinas training (or perhaps my Roman professor himself blurred that area). If you are correct it ties up some loose ends that have been flapping around in my understanding for the last 20 years or so .

To have the theory fleshed out by Revelation does not seem to be a weakness to me (ie. it does not seem to detract from a Catholic philosophy’s coherence). (The case seems exactly analogous to traditional demonstrations of God’s existence.) Catholicism never was a rationalist religion in which every doctrine was susceptible to demonstrative proof, nor has it ever claimed to be./

I agree. What I am saying is that it is a weakness for those who believe a single traditional “christianised” philosophy (whether Aristotle or Plato) can be fully harmonised with the implications of revelation in this area.

If what you say below is true then Aristotle may not be as weak in this area as I have hereforeto considered the case.

 

[Blue_Horizon]

I want to add, Aquinas took matter as the principle of individuation, and so argued that angels (which are just subsistent forms, composed of essence and existence but not of matter and form) must each be of separate species; they can only be individuated if they have different essences. I am not opposed to this reasoning, but I don’t think we could say for certain that the disjunction here (“either a substance is individuated by matter or is of a unique species”) is complete (or that we could know it to be complete). I don’t see why there could not be some other principle of individuation among subsistent forms.

Good thinking - and Aquinas’s “opponents” had contrary positions on this point that have never been condemned as far as I know.

But if we keep to Aquinas…how does he actually individuale immortal disembodied souls?
I don’t think I have ever seen a lucid explanation either by Aquinas or his school.

Personally I am not covinced that souls become separate “species” (which appears to destroy the common possession of human nature by all such individuals) if we individuate them by reason of form. Why cannot the sub-species differentiation between male and female be due to bipolar differentiation in the souls rather than an “accident” of bodily materiality.

 

[Blue_Horizon]

Quote:
Originally Posted by Blue Horizon
I think what you mean is that matter and form are co-principles of material substances. In Aristotle’s Hylomorphic theory neither of these components have existance of themselves alone. Only when form actuates matter does a material substance exist.

I have been reviewing my Aristotle and Aquinas on these points. But I think I need a clarification or two wrt your comments.

It is my understanding that Aristotle held all organic organisms, like dogs and humans to be “material substances”. Yet above you make a distinction, saying humans are not “fully material.” Angels are obviously “immaterial substances.” I am not aware of any substances that can be called “partially material” - let alone humans .

I know what you mean - the problem is you don’t seem to be using Aristoelian terms consistently - or am I missing something?

 

[Portofino]

Yes, exactly the conclusion i have come to over the years .
So the bit of 'time" inbetween death and Resurrection of the Dead is opaque wrt to Aristotle and Catholic philosophy in general.

Ironically, I think, the conception could remain more wholly Aristotelian if the doctrine of soul sleep were posited to be correct, according to which body and soul will die together and will be raised, together, on the last day (with no interval of being a disembodied soul). This would be “tidier”, in any case, though the church obviously rejects this doctrine.

I’m not familiar with the essence/existence distinction as it’s applied to this question, but this obviously cannot address itself – as I’ve mentioned – to how a soul is going to find its particular body again, and (obviously) how the body is going to regenerate, etc.

, it seems disembodied souls cannot really be harmonised well into a single coherent Catholic Philosophy. The cracks are only sealed by Revelation .

From my perspective, as stated above, it would indeed be tidier if body and soul were laid to rest and came back together, never having separated in the first place; tidier, at least, from a philosophical, naturalistic perspective. Even then, of course, one would still be hard to pressed to prove philosophically that body and soul will rise again, to make that prediction, whereas one is making a prediction in saying that body and soul are separable per something like an existence/essence distinction vis-a-vis body and soul; one is predicting immortality via a logical, conceptual argument. So even an existence/essence distinction – assuming one accepts it – cannot predict an eventual re-unification of body and soul, after the death of the body. In this sense, relatively speaking, revelation is indeed filling in gaps left by reason and empirical observation, which is not a problem unless one rejects revelation (though many, of course, do, or hold to a form of revelation that is different from the particular Christian form). The Buddhist or Hindu doctrine of reincarnation, for example, is intriguing in that it could accept everything argued by reason about body and soul and their separability, and even agree with the notion that body and soul will one day be reunited…. Except that it posits the reunion of a soul with a different body than it had hitherto been joined with (a different body because, in an ironically more naturalistic vein, the previous body has decomposed and is no longer “available”).

 

[Blue_Horizon]

Ironically, I think, the conception could remain more wholly Aristotelian if the doctrine of soul sleep were posited to be correct, according to which body and soul will die together and will be raised, together, on the last day (with no interval of being a disembodied soul). This would be “tidier”, in any case, though the church obviously rejects this doctrine.

Yes, this intuitively appeals to me both philosophically and theologically.
Whether we are still card-carrying Cathlics for doing so may be moot.
I do believe it is a heterodox (yet acceptable) position.
This is ultimately also what the “no temporal time between death and Bodily Resurrection wrt immaterial souls” crowd are saying.
I am not sure if this view of “soul time” is logically defensible, perhaps it is.

Another solution may be to look at the rarely broached spiritual principle at work behind the deaths of Jesus and Mary.
We must affirm they died both by reason and by Revelation. (Don’t get me going on the view of the Assumption that says she didn’t quite die. The Eastern tradition is very clear she died (ie body and soul separated) even if they used a euphemism (“Dormition”). Western tradition is ambivalent (recent popular Western art usually has Mary assumed stand-ing up as if alive which is a complete contradiction to Early Church iconography) and the latest Encyclicals purposely purposely retain that ambivalence as the minority Western view (Mary did not die) is still acceptably tolerated. Perhaps that misplaced piety will be formally clarified in another 100 years or so when the faithful have been better instructed from the bottom up.

Anyways, the point I am making is that the bodies of both Mary and Jesus were indeed fully separated from their souls … however there still remained some sort of “connection” between the two which stopped corruption of the body (ie substantial change of the organic matter by lower life-forms).

Aquinas briefly mentions this wrt Christ and says this is due to the body somehow supported by his intrinisic Personal Divinity (not his human soul). I don’t quite know what that means. However the same mechanism holds for Mary (though obviously not through her intrinsic Divinity but somehow through her most perfect Divinisation). Even some of the holiest saints, while not as perfectly Divinised as the Immaculate Mary demonstrate in their remains a vestigal echo of this potency/mechanism.

So I suppose I am proposing half a solution - that even when body and soul are separated they still attract/interact with each other at a distance as it were. It is a defect of Wounded human nature (and loss of Original Justice) that the force is now so weak that it cannot heal or reconstitute the body from “dust” without Divine aid. Then again I may be going down a dead end. The mortally sinful also rise, so maybe the mechanism I speak of has nothing to do with Divinisation of the soul but some other actual (rather than sanctifying) grace of God.

But all this is just Revelation seeking philosophic grounding rather than Philosphy knowing anything of the immortality of Human Nature. If Aristotle assumed that even Humans are completely mortal, even though they have a soul whose intellective powers do not require a body to operate, and the soul ends with the death of the body…then I supect Aquinas relies more on Revelation than reason to make his argument to the contrary.

 

[Blue_Horizon]

Aristotle believed body and soul were inseparable – but, then again, he did not believe in an immortal soul and presumably held that the soul dies with the body.

I have been rethinking what you say here and have come to the conclusion that I previously did not fully understand the angle you were coming from.

Of course you are right. it is the very definition (“Nature”) of “Human” that we are composite material substances composed of body (matter) and soul (form)".

I am awaiting Polytropos’s comments on the appropriateness of Aristotle calling such a composite nature “material substance.” I believe “material sunstance” is quite correct as the only “immaterial substance” Aristotle speaks of seems to be the “Pure Form”, the “Uncaused Cause”. Hence all life, all substances involve matter except the “Pure Form.”
I don’t think he believed in angels or any other sort of heavenly subsistant intelligences (I believe that was Aquinas, taking the lead from NeoPlatonic writers).

So if Humans are by Nature inseparably composed of body and soul - then death of a particular man (the separation of those two principles) means that man has exited the human race and is “no more”.

Aquinas comes along and says “…he is no more a human, he is a disembodied-soul.”
OK, that is not illogical, but what is hard to understand is how these two completely different Natures (substances) have a connection. To go from being a self-subsisting Man to a self-subsisting Soul (which cannot be called “Man”) seems a substantial change.

There seems to be a contradiction here if we do not posit this substantial change.
For how can a naked co-principle (the soul) of a single substance (Man) itself be a substance or even the same sunstance? If this was true then Plato would seem correct - the body is really just a garment that the Soul wears.

Somehow I cannot see how Aquinas is being true to Aristotle when he uses Aristotelian hylomorphism and substance/accident distinctions to explain the immortality of rational souls .

 

[Portofino]

Yes, this intuitively appeals to me both philosophically and theologically.
Whether we are still card-carrying Cathlics for doing so may be moot.
I do believe it is a heterodox (yet acceptable) position.
This is ultimately also what the “no temporal time between death and Bodily Resurrection wrt immaterial souls” crowd are saying.
I am not sure if this view of “soul time” is logically defensible, perhaps it is.

I’m gratified that you are intrigued at the conceptual possibility. Luther and Tyndale both liked this idea, both because they felt it was validated Scripturally and because (one suspects) it enabled them to deny the doctrine of purgatory. On Luther: “While Luther is not always consistent, the predominant note running all through his writings is that souls sleep in peace, without consciousness or pain. The Christian dead are not aware of anything—see not, feel not, understand not, and are not conscious of passing events. Luther held and periodically stated that in the sleep of death, as in normal physical sleep, there is complete unconsciousness and unawareness of the condition of death or the passage of time.† Death is a deep, sound, sweet sleep.‡ And the dead will remain asleep until the day of resurrection, which resurrection embraces both body and soul, when both will come together again.”

solution may be to look at the rarely broached spiritual principle at work behind the deaths of Jesus and Mary.
We must affirm they died both by reason and by Revelation. (Don’t get me going on the view of the Assumption that says she didn’t quite die. The Eastern tradition is very clear she died (ie body and soul separated) even if they used a euphemism (“Dormition”). Western tradition is ambivalent (recent popular Western art usually has Mary assumed stand-ing up as if alive which is a complete contradiction to Early Church iconography) and the latest Encyclicals purposely purposely retain that ambivalence as the minority Western view (Mary did not die) is still acceptably tolerated. Perhaps that misplaced piety will be formally clarified in another 100 years or so when the faithful have been better instructed from the bottom up.

Yes, I did read something to this effect, and have just found the following words by John Paul II:

“It is true that in Revelation death is presented as a punishment for sin. However, the fact that the Church proclaims Mary free from original sin by a unique divine privilege does not lead to the conclusion that she also received physical immortality. The Mother is not superior to the Son who underwent death, giving it a new meaning and changing it into a means of salvation. Involved in Christ’s redemptive work and associated in his saving sacrifice, Mary was able to share in his suffering and death for the sake of humanity’s Redemption. What Severus of Antioch says about Christ also applies to her: “Without a preliminary death, how could the Resurrection have taken place?” (Antijulianistica, Beirut 1931, 194f.). To share in Christ’s Resurrection, Mary had first to share in his death. The New Testament provides no information on the circumstances of Mary’s death. This silence leads one to suppose that it happened naturally, with no detail particularly worthy of mention. If this were not the case, how could the information about it have remained hidden from her contemporaries and not have been passed down to us in some way? As to the cause of Mary’s death, the opinions that wish to exclude her from death by natural causes seem groundless. It is more important to look for the Blessed Virgin’s spiritual attitude at the moment of her departure from this world. In this regard, St Francis de Sales maintains that Mary’s death was due to a transport of love. He speaks of a dying “in love, from love and through love”, going so far as to say that the Mother of God died of love for her Son Jesus (Treatise on the Love of God, bk. 7, ch. XIII-XIV). Whatever from the physical point of view was the organic, biological cause of the end of her bodily life, it can be said that for Mary the passage from this life to the next was the full development of grace in glory, so that no death can ever be so fittingly described as a “dormition” as hers.”[5

all this is just Revelation seeking philosophic grounding rather than Philosphy knowing anything of the immortality of Human Nature. If Aristotle assumed that even Humans are completely mortal, even though they have a soul whose intellective powers do not require a body to operate, and the soul ends with the death of the body…then I supect Aquinas relies more on Revelation than reason to make his argument to the contrary.

This is a reasonable suspicion that I admittedly have, and I don’t think it would be quite fair to call it a cynical suspicion. It’s questionable to me whether Aquinas’ questionings are truly a matter of following reason wherever it leads - to sometimes unexpected places, with no forbidden possibilities – versus an example of rational argument directed towards a pre-determined course (to justify an already-known revelation, whose conclusions – such as life after death – are already in hand).

This is why the fact that you are willing to consider soul sleep as a conceptual possibility is gratifying to me – because, for many, this would be bumping up against a taboo topic, and you’ve remained open to the idea, and have admitted that – on some level – you find it to have appeal (and, perhaps, that it is not reason alone that would exclude such a notion, but faith in revelation).

 

[Blue_Horizon]

I’m gratified that you are intrigued at the conceptual possibility. Luther and Tyndale both liked this idea, both because they felt it was validated Scripturally and because (one suspects) it enabled them to deny the doctrine of purgatory. On Luther: “While Luther is not always consistent, the predominant note running all through his writings is that souls sleep in peace, without consciousness or pain. The Christian dead are not aware of anything—see not, feel not, understand not, and are not conscious of passing events. Luther held and periodically stated that in the sleep of death, as in normal physical sleep, there is complete unconsciousness and unawareness of the condition of death or the passage of time.† Death is a deep, sound, sweet sleep.‡ And the dead will remain asleep until the day of resurrection, which resurrection embraces both body and soul, when both will come together again.”

Yes, I did read something to this effect, and have just found the following words by John Paul II:

“It is true that in Revelation death is presented as a punishment for sin. However, the fact that the Church proclaims Mary free from original sin by a unique divine privilege does not lead to the conclusion that she also received physical immortality. The Mother is not superior to the Son who underwent death, giving it a new meaning and changing it into a means of salvation. Involved in Christ’s redemptive work and associated in his saving sacrifice, Mary was able to share in his suffering and death for the sake of humanity’s Redemption. What Severus of Antioch says about Christ also applies to her: “Without a preliminary death, how could the Resurrection have taken place?” (Antijulianistica, Beirut 1931, 194f.). To share in Christ’s Resurrection, Mary had first to share in his death. The New Testament provides no information on the circumstances of Mary’s death. This silence leads one to suppose that it happened naturally, with no detail particularly worthy of mention. If this were not the case, how could the information about it have remained hidden from her contemporaries and not have been passed down to us in some way? As to the cause of Mary’s death, the opinions that wish to exclude her from death by natural causes seem groundless. It is more important to look for the Blessed Virgin’s spiritual attitude at the moment of her departure from this world. In this regard, St Francis de Sales maintains that Mary’s death was due to a transport of love. He speaks of a dying “in love, from love and through love”, going so far as to say that the Mother of God died of love for her Son Jesus (Treatise on the Love of God, bk. 7, ch. XIII-XIV). Whatever from the physical point of view was the organic, biological cause of the end of her bodily life, it can be said that for Mary the passage from this life to the next was the full development of grace in glory, so that no death can ever be so fittingly described as a “dormition” as hers.”[5

This is a reasonable suspicion that I admittedly have, and I don’t think it would be quite fair to call it a cynical suspicion. It’s questionable to me whether Aquinas’ questionings are truly a matter of following reason wherever it leads - to sometimes unexpected places, with no forbidden possibilities – versus an example of rational argument directed towards a pre-determined course (to justify an already-known revelation, whose conclusions – such as life after death – are already in hand).

This is why the fact that you are willing to consider soul sleep as a conceptual possibility is gratifying to me – because, for many, this would be bumping up against a taboo topic, and you’ve remained open to the idea, and have admitted that – on some level – you find it to have appeal (and, perhaps, that it is not reason alone that would exclude such a notion, but faith in revelation).

Good stuff. Appreciate the JPII quote, wasn’t aware of that one, its the clearest statement I have seen from a Pontiff. Do you know what document that is from?
[/quote]

 

[Portofino]

Good stuff. Appreciate the JPII quote, wasn’t aware of that one, its the clearest statement I have seen from a Pontiff. Do you know what document that is from?

Sure, it is my pleasure to share it It was a “general audience” that John Paul II had delivered in 1997 and which is preserved on the Vatican website.

vatican.va/holy_father/john_paul_ii/audiences/1997/documents/hf_jp-ii_aud_25061997_en.html

 

[Portofino]

Sure, it is my pleasure to share it It was a “general audience” that John Paul II had delivered in 1997 and which is preserved on the Vatican website.

vatican.va/holy_father/john_paul_ii/audiences/1997/documents/hf_jp-ii_aud_25061997_en.html

p.s. While the below line from John Paul II’s speech doe not necessarily contravene the Catholic rejection of Manichaenism, it nonetheless does point to a tension or even ambivalence of sorts --Platonic, Pauline, or otherwise–that nonetheless does appear to crop up even within the confines of orthodoxy:

“At the end of her earthly life, she must have experienced, like Paul and more strongly, the desire to be freed from her body in order to be with Christ for ever (cf. Phil 1:23).”