Questions on the Soul

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Mr_Inquisitive

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Hello fellow Catholics,
I have some questions about the Soul.
  1. In Church teaching Souls have no shape, size or form how then can we see each other in the afterlife without our bodies?
  2. If the Soul has three powers associated with the brain (memory, will and intellect) then why is the Soul given no specific place in the body?
    I may have more questions but these are the first two that come to mind.
    I await your help with these questions.
    Thank you
    John
 
  1. We will not “see” one another as we will not have eyes, just as the saints do not “hear” our prayers as none but Mary have ears. We will simply know one another through our memory and intellect, responding to one another through our wills.
 
  1. As I understand it, when (if we persevere) we receive our glorified bodies, they will be like our current bodies, only at their absolute peak, free of corruption, and with abilities in-line with them being more closely joined with our souls. Possibly, for example, being able to move instantly between places, appear behind locked doors, etc. as the Lord did after His Resurrection So, I would assume that we will see, recognize and know each other as God truly intended us to be.
  2. As we are our souls much more than we are our bodies, I can speculate that relegating the soul to a specific bodily locale, like any organ, would be akin to putting yourself inside your nasal cavity. It wouldn’t make sense. The soul gives life to and enables our body to be animate. So, while it is not directly causing neurological impulses or contracting muscles and moving tendons, none of that would be possible without our body being inhabited by our soul, which is our true essence.
Is that in any way helpful?
 
A “material” (for lack of a better word) substrate is needed to experience time, just as it is to see, smell or move. Therefore if there is a “bodiless” phase to the afterlife, it occupies no time and so would not be perceived by the human mind.

Soul per se has no shape, but fills the human body; and so can be described as having the shape of the human body, from which the soul is “inseparable.”

In death, the human soul moves from the dead body, which the soul cannot energize any more, to the spiritual body (Biblically: pneumatikon soma) without experiencing time. Upon which, the person regains their eyes, etc.

ICXC NIKA
 
Memory, will and intellect (which, in part, we often call the human mind), reside in our heads, but that is not all Soul does.

Soul also keeps the Body alive. As such, it is not limited to our heads, but fills the whole body.

ICXC NIKA
 
Your assumptions are inaccurate, you seem to think that we need our physical capacities to know what goes on in a metaphysical afterlife. The word for that is “scientism”, the belief that all that is true must be proven by science.
 
GEddie said:
A “material” (for lack of a better word) substrate is needed to experience time, just as it is to see, smell or move. Therefore if there is a “bodiless” phase to the afterlife, it occupies no time and so would not be perceived by the human mind.

Soul per se has no shape, but fills the human body; and so can be described as having the shape of the human body, from which the soul is “inseparable.”

In death, the human soul moves from the dead body, which the soul cannot energize any more, to the spiritual body (Biblically: pneumatikon soma) without experiencing time. Upon which, the person regains their eyes, etc.

ICXC NIKA
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This^^^

Well done, GEddie! 👍
 
adamhovey1988 said:
Your assumptions are inaccurate, you seem to think that we need our physical capacities to know what goes on in a metaphysical afterlife. The word for that is “scientism”, the belief that all that is true must be proven by science.
Click to expand...
I don’t know that anyone said we will “need” our physical capacities, or sensory perceptions, to perceive what is going on in a metaphysical afterlife. I would agree that we would not. However, “need” is a slippery concept.

We know we will have glorified bodies after the resurrection, and we can probably safely assume that all our parts will be essentially where they were before. So it stands to reason we will have our eyes and ears and all of our corporeal sensory organs.

Will we “need” them? Perhaps not. Will we “need” these bodies at all? Again, perhaps not. However, it has been revealed to us that God chooses to give his faithful these bodies. He could choose to resurrect us as pure spirit, or as talking capybaras, or as giant potatoes, but since the form He made for us in the first place is very good, I suppose He sees no reason to simply throw it away.

Unless the eyes in our glorified bodies will simply be a sort of simulacrum, it would follow we will perceive things with them. The idea is that their perception will be more perfect. It seems to me hasty to peg someone with the stigma of being a believer in pure scientism, simply because their initial thought might have been that our physical senses, which were created by God, would still function once they had been perfected by God. To remove all capability of something to function would seem to me the opposite of perfecting it.
 
Describe what is meant by a “metaphysical” afterlife, anyhow?
 
Hello all,
I am grateful for all your answers and they have been helpful.
I realize that after the resurrection we will have new bodies but the period I am interested in is the time after death and before the resurrection.
I recall Jimmy Akin on Catholic Answers saying that the Souls have no shape or extension of their own but exist in God’s presence and therefore how can something without a shape or form be seen or perceived?
It appears that the period of time that I am talking about is glossed over alot.
Thank you
John
 
Fascinating to read all these opinions about the afterlife, which I suspect none of us have yet experienced.

I don’t know the answers.
All I know is what it says in the Bible, that we will all be raised, and changed in an instant.
And I met a woman who died and came back to life, and she said she could see and sense love surrounding her, so she has never feared death since.

I think God has it figured out. We can rely on him, since he got us this far in one piece.
It is a little scary, but the alternative to faith is fear, which is no fun.

.
 
Mr_Inquisitive said:
Hello all,
I am grateful for all your answers and they have been helpful.
I realize that after the resurrection we will have new bodies but the period I am interested in is the time after death and before the resurrection.
I recall Jimmy Akin on Catholic Answers saying that the Souls have no shape or extension of their own but exist in God’s presence and therefore how can something without a shape or form be seen or perceived?
It appears that the period of time that I am talking about is glossed over alot.
Thank you
John
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Everything can be “seen” by God.
This can be perceived (understood as true) by us, we don’t need to see any dead person’s soul, do we?

:confused:
 
pianistclare said:
Everything can be “seen” by God.
This can be perceived (understood as true) by us, we don’t need to see any dead person’s soul, do we?

:confused:
Click to expand...
Hello Claire,
There is no doubt that God can see or perceive everything.
What I mean is can we see each other in the afterlife before the resurrection when we and all of the other Souls have no form and no eyes?
I have always been genuinely baffled by how Angels and Souls have no form and exist in any logical way even though I naturally believe in both.
Thank you
John
 
Mr_Inquisitive said:
Hello Claire,
There is no doubt that God can see or perceive everything.
What I mean is can we see each other in the afterlife before the resurrection when we and all of the other Souls have no form and no eyes?
I have always been genuinely baffled by how Angels and Souls have no form and exist in any logical way even though I naturally believe in both.
Thank you
John
Click to expand...
When you are a pneumatikon soma, you will have eyes (and a form).

“Before” that, you would not need them, as your mind would be in an abeyance; just as someone under anesthesia doesn’t mind their eyes being taped shut.

ICXC NIKA
 
Mr_Inquisitive said:
Hello Claire,
There is no doubt that God can see or perceive everything.
What I mean is can we see each other in the afterlife before the resurrection when we and all of the other Souls have no form and no eyes?
I have always been genuinely baffled by how Angels and Souls have no form and exist in any logical way even though I naturally believe in both.
Thank you
John
Click to expand...
Ah,now there’s your problem. You’re getting hung up on our human understanding of what is “logical”. Is it logical for a person to rise from the dead? Or heal blindness? Or walk through doors?

I think the poster that expressed a fear that you might be swerving into a type of scientism may have been justified. Everything is possible with God, but many things are not fully understandable, in an empirical or scientific sense, to our finite human minds.

This may be one of the things we need to consider as a mystery and trust in God about. There is a great deal of the understanding of the universe and reality in the truth of Catholicism that is knowable and logically understandable. That’s one of the great things about Catholicism; we don’t have some fear of science or logic. However, there are some things that are simply a mystery which only God can fully understand - such as exactly how the Trinity works.

I would suggest not focusing too much on the minutia or mechanics of a specific miraculous idea, (such as how we see things without our eyes or any form whatsoever) and try to trust that God makes it work. The stubborn part of your rational mind might not like that at first, but if you let it, trusting in God about things of this nature can bring a sort of peace.
 
GEddie said:
Memory, will and intellect (which, in part, we often call the human mind), reside in our heads, but that is not all Soul does.

Soul also keeps the Body alive. As such, it is not limited to our heads, but fills the whole body.

ICXC NIKA
Click to expand...
The intellect and will being “in our heads”? Sounds odd… Angels and God have intellect and will but have no heads. We may use the brain to carry out the function of the will and intellect, at least in part, but that does not mean they are “in the head.”
GilGalaad said:
Ah,now there’s your problem. You’re getting hung up on our human understanding of what is “logical”. Is it logical for a person to rise from the dead? Or heal blindness? Or walk through doors?

I think the poster that expressed a fear that you might be swerving into a type of scientism may have been justified. Everything is possible with God, but many things are not fully understandable, in an empirical or scientific sense, to our finite human minds.

This may be one of the things we need to consider as a mystery and trust in God about. There is a great deal of the understanding of the universe and reality in the truth of Catholicism that is knowable and logically understandable. That’s one of the great things about Catholicism; we don’t have some fear of science or logic. However, there are some things that are simply a mystery which only God can fully understand - such as exactly how the Trinity works.

I would suggest not focusing too much on the minutia or mechanics of a specific miraculous idea, (such as how we see things without our eyes or any form whatsoever) and try to trust that God makes it work. The stubborn part of your rational mind might not like that at first, but if you let it, trusting in God about things of this nature can bring a sort of peace.
Click to expand...
Getting through a locked door is not illogical, as it does not ultimately imply a contradiction of terms. Seeing something that has no color is a contradiction in terms. God is logical - we are not Muslims, for whom God is even above reason and can therefore be illogical and self-contradictory.
Mr_Inquisitive said:
Hello all,
I am grateful for all your answers and they have been helpful.
I realize that after the resurrection we will have new bodies but the period I am interested in is the time after death and before the resurrection.
I recall Jimmy Akin on Catholic Answers saying that the Souls have no shape or extension of their own but exist in God’s presence and therefore how can something without a shape or form be seen or perceived?
It appears that the period of time that I am talking about is glossed over alot.
Thank you
John
Click to expand...
There is nothing to see or see with. Whence cometh the difficulty? Any meaningful knowledge comes through a special grace of God (“illumination” you might call it), since we can’t understand (by nature) without phatasms, which are tied with our memory (which is rooted in the brain) and sense organs… Without the body, our existence is a half-existence, even for the saints, until the Resurrection.
 
Mr_Inquisitive said:
I recall Jimmy Akin on Catholic Answers saying that the Souls have no shape or extension of their own but exist in God’s presence and therefore how can something without a shape or form be seen or perceived?
Click to expand...
Why couldn’t a spirit take shape and form, and be seen ?
 
e_c said:
The intellect and will being “in our heads”? Sounds odd… Angels and God have intellect and will but have no heads. We may use the brain to carry out the function of the will and intellect, at least in part, but that does not mean they are “in the head.”

Getting through a locked door is not illogical, as it does not ultimately imply a contradiction of terms. Seeing something that has no color is a contradiction in terms. God is logical - we are not Muslims, for whom God is even above reason and can therefore be illogical and self-contradictory.
Click to expand...
Certainly God is logical. He is also above us in every way, and He defines what is logical and reasonable. Therefore He is capable of putting into effect things which may be logical, but above our current ability to understand them. I would think only pride and ego would allow someone to state that they fully understand all the kinematics and methodologies of what God does. If I am wrong, then will you please give me a logical and thoroughly comprehensible explanation of exactly how the Trinity works? This is the best infographic I can seem to dig up.
 
GilGalaad said:
Certainly God is logical. He is also above us in every way, and He defines what is logical and reasonable. Therefore He is capable of putting into effect things which may be logical, but above our current ability to understand them. I would think only pride and ego would allow someone to state that they fully understand all the kinematics and methodologies of what God does. If I am wrong, then will you please give me a logical and thoroughly comprehensible explanation of exactly how the Trinity works? This is the best infographic I can seem to dig up.
Click to expand...
Ya can’t see without color or without eyes. And this is to be distinguished from some other phenomenon in a quasi-imaginative faculty (since an integral part of our imagination is dead!)…

God can’t make a rock too heavy for Him to lift… If you can understand why, you will begin to see the matter clearly.
 
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