I’m not in the position to thoroughly answer these questions. I thought you offered good insight, but feel free to elaborate if necessary.
That is an admirable response and I appreciate your circumspect approach. I’ll just offer some ideas on this.
First, the nature of the soul – what is it?
In perennial Catholic teaching from the Fathers of the Church, through St. Thomas Aquinas, through Garrigou-Lagrange and Cardinal Newman and the Catholic Catechism … the soul is:
**…the ultimate internal principle by which we think, feel, and will, and by which our bodies are animated. **The term “mind” usually denotes this principle as the subject of our conscious states, while “soul” denotes the source of our vegetative activities as well. That our vital activities proceed from a principle capable of subsisting in itself, is the thesis of the substantiality of the soul: that this principle is not itself composite, extended, corporeal, or essentially and intrinsically dependent on the body, is the doctrine of spirituality.
– Catholic Encyclopedia - Soul
newadvent.org/cathen/14153a.htm
What about the faculties or functions are the soul?
Those deal with “intelligence and will” and include memory and imagination – and in general “consciousness” or “self-awareness”.
The soul is the source of free-will.
It is also called, in Catholic philosophical terms: “the form of the body”. It is the supernaturally created “internal principle” of the body – united to the body.
What is the origin of the soul?
From the Catechism of the Catholic Church:
366 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.
De Fide dogma – God directly creates the human soul. It is not the product of evolution, physical laws or matter. It did not emerge gradually by a slow process of mutations.
1703 Endowed with “a spiritual and immortal” soul,[5] the human person is “the only creature on earth that God has willed for its own sake.”[6] From his conception, he is destined for eternal beatitude.
Doctrinal teaching – God willed human beings. Humans did not emerge from nature by an accidental, unintelligent, unconscious process – but were “willed into existence”. God knew about and planned for the creation of humans.
1704 The human person participates in the light and power of the divine Spirit. By his reason, he is capable of understanding the order of things established by the Creator. By free will, he is capable of directing himself toward his true good. He finds his perfection “in seeking and loving what is true and good.”[7]
Humans are capable, by the supernatural power of the Spirit in their rational souls – through intellectual apprehension of created things to “understand the order of things established by the Creator.”
That is basically the Design Argument right there – in the text of the catechism. But that’s a different point. We were looking at the soul and its powers.
The most important point here is that the soul is not completely independent and separate from the body. They are united and work together. This is obviously true regarding the operation of conscious intellect – it directs the body.
1705 By virtue of his soul and his spiritual powers of intellect and will, man is endowed with freedom, an “outstanding manifestation of the divine image.”[8]
Again, free-will is “by virtue of the soul” – it is not a material substance.
You have correctly argued that already many times.
The soul, however, has a direct influence on the body. It is united to the body itself. The soul is not subject to material laws, it was not produced by physical laws of nature and is not composed of matter. It can cause human beings to choose “against nature” – thus, humans are not subject (slaves) of natural powers like so-called evolution.
Human beings are not determined by evolutionary laws. If evolutionary theory was true (in its mainstream, most common presentation), then human beings would be entirely determined by natural processes. There could be no free-will, and nothing in humans that was not the result and outcome of “fixed natural laws”.
But that is what Darwinism teaches – that is Darwin’s challenge (which I provided a long time back in these discussions) that “Everything in nature is the result of fixed laws”. That is the foundation of evolutionary theory.
To say that “the soul is not a part of material nature” is true in one aspect. As easily understood here – the soul is directly created by God as immaterial.
But it is false with regards to “everything that happens in nature”. Clearly, the soul affects the human body. The human body is composed of elements of material nature.
So, the soul affects material nature.
