I’m reading this book for class, and I have a few questions. If anyone who has any knowledge of Church History, your insights would greatly be appreciated. Since I don’t have any formal training in philosophy or in theology, I’m having a hard time finding credible resources for my questions. Can you give me some clarity and insight into:
- The Teachings of the Church Fathers (and which ones) on the human soul and if whether the Church has ever pronounced/accepted it as being allocated to any anatomical parts in the past as Zimmer insinuates
- The different stages of solidification of Church teachings regarding the soul and the different specific heresies that popped up during those time b/c Zimmer seems to portray the Church as a being horrible entity impeding scientific progression
- The issue of why there was a disconnect between Vesalius and the Church
For example: here’s an excerpt of what he writes
“According to the Old Testament, the soul is simply life itself, residing in the blood and disappearing at death. Christianity, on the other hand, anchored itself to a different sort of soul, an immortal soul that faced eternal salvation or damnation. In Galen, the church fathers found a solution to this contradiction. The OT soul became Galen’s lower souls of the liver and the heart. The immortal soul had no physical dimension, but the church fathers put its faculties in the empty ventricles of the head, where they could not be corrupted by weak, mortal flesh.”
Thanks!
I believe it is historically a somewhat recent trend to tie a person’s core identity with the brain. I had a philosophy professor (an atheist) even use the hypothetical example of someone getting a brain transplant to prove a point. I didn’t recognize it at the time, but the unspoken (and fallacious) premise of his argument was that our identity --what makes us
us – resides solely in the brain.
If you’re looking for what the Early Church Fathers have to say about man as composed of body and soul, I would recommend locating a copy of Jurgens’ 3 volume
The Faith of the Early Fathers. In the topical index in Volume 3 (which points you to all three volumes), there is a section on “Man” (p. 372) that would probably address what you’re looking for.
Another book you might find handy for refuting the ridiculous idea that the Church impedes scientific progress is
How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization. Quite the opposite, science would have not progressed nearly so quickly without Christianity. There is a reason that science grew up and flourished in the Christian West.
Good luck!
EDIT: I just wanted to add that you might also want to look at some of what Aquinas says (though he came too late chronologically to be an early Church Father, he is nonetheless probably the most influential theologian in Church History). In the First Part of his seminal work, the
Summa Theologica, he has an entire section on man, which includes discussion of the soul:
newadvent.org/summa/1.htm
If you’ve never read Aquinas before, it may be helpful for you to know his
modus operandi. This is how Aquinas operates. He will:
(1) pose the question,
(2) articulate several “objections” (i.e. the opposing points of view),
(3) give the correct answer concisely from authority (“on the contrary”) utilizing the writings of the Fathers of Scripture,
(4) explain the correct answer in a little greater detail (“I answer that”), and
(5) specifically respond to each separate objection from #1.
If you don’t realize what he’s doing when he begins by articulating the point of view of his opponenets, then you might walk away with a very incorrect view of what Aquinas is trying to say!
