Spiritual experience?

[free_thinker]

Does the Catholic Church or the Bible say anything about the origin of one’s soul?

My question is: Did we all exist in spirit before we inhabited a physical body or do we receive our soul at conception? Are we merely human beings having a spiritual experience… or are we spiritual beings having a human experience?

I don’t remember anything like that being covered in CCD, and I will be the first to admit that I don’t know the Bible cover to cover.

If there is no scripture or church doctrine to answer that question, what do you think the answer is and why?

 

[JimR-OCDS]

CCC
365 The unity of soul and body is so profound that one has to consider the soul to be the “form” of the body:234 i.e., it is because of its spiritual soul that the body made of matter becomes a living, human body; spirit and matter, in man, are not two natures united, but rather their union forms a single nature.

My friend had a debate about this with me, and was corrected by a monk on retreat.

The creation of the soul requires the material of the human flesh to come into being.

Jim

 

[Aelred_Minor]

The human soul is created directly by God. As far as time goes, we can speak of it being created at the moment the living human body of which it is the form comes into existance.

 

[free_thinker]

The human soul is created directly by God. As far as time goes, we can speak of it being created at the moment the living human body of which it is the form comes into existance.

But how do we know this for sure? Of course when we die our soul lives on, so therefore a soul can be independent of the body. How do we know our soul didn’t exist before our body and then at conception was assigned to a body?

 

[Portofino]

But how do we know this for sure? Of course when we die our soul lives on, so therefore a soul can be independent of the body. How do we know our soul didn’t exist before our body and then at conception was assigned to a body?

Speaking as a non-Catholic who is somewhat familiar with Catholic beliefs, I can attest that body and soul are largely inseparable, in the Catholic consciousness.

What I do know is that lay Catholics often conceive of the relationship between soul and body in very “Platonic” terms (after the Greek philosopher Plato). In other words, you die, your soul separates from your body, and you go to heaven, hell, or purgatory.

From what I understand, orthodox Catholic belief is actually much more Aristotelian (after Aristotle, of course). For Aristotle, body and soul were inseparable (just as “matter” and “form”, both of which are Aristotelian terms, are inseparable). The great Catholic Aristotelian was, of course, Saint Thomas Aquinas. He helped reconcile Catholicism, philosophically, with what it had already believed – namely, the doctrine of the resurrection of the body.

It’s in the Nicene Creed, of course – the physical body will be resurrected, and the soul will inhabit it. This ultimate inseparability of body and soul is very consistent with Hebrew thought, as well (so, not only Aristotle). For the Hebrews, blood represented life.

Even beyond the doctrine of the resurrection of the body, the inseparability of body and soul fit quite nicely with other Catholic doctrines – for example, holy relics and the fact that the bones of a saint – or the vile of blood from a saint – are themselves intrinsically holy.

It also fits nicely with the “body and blood of Christ.” The Platonist in me once quipped, “I don’t want Christ’s body; give me Christ’s spirit.” But, for a Catholic, body and soul are inseparable. You cannot have the body of Christ, without also having the soul of Christ – in other words, the full person of Christ. For the Catholic, the full person is a composite of body and soul.

Personally, I’m more sympathetic to a “Platonic” view of the matter. Perhaps the most Platonic verse in the Bible is the phrase “it is the spirit that gives life; the flesh profits nothing.” I don’t personally believe that body and soul are inseparable, so – like you – could entertain the idea that the soul pre-existed the body, and that the soul can well exist – for an eternity, if need be-- without the body.

Nonetheless, this more “Aristotelian” view of the body-soul relationship – which, again, is why it is meaningful to have a vile of a saint’s blood, as something intrinsically holy – is interesting.

 

[Aelred_Minor]

Speaking as a non-Catholic who is somewhat familiar with Catholic beliefs, I can attest that body and soul are largely inseparable, in the Catholic consciousness.

What I do know is that lay Catholics often conceive of the relationship between soul and body in very “Platonic” terms (after the Greek philosopher Plato). In other words, you die, your soul separates from your body, and you go to heaven, hell, or purgatory.

From what I understand, orthodox Catholic belief is actually much more Aristotelian (after Aristotle, of course). For Aristotle, body and soul were inseparable (just as “matter” and “form”, both of which are Aristotelian terms, are inseparable). The great Catholic Aristotelian was, of course, Saint Thomas Aquinas. He helped reconcile Catholicism, philosophically, with what it had already believed – namely, the doctrine of the resurrection of the body.

It’s in the Nicene Creed, of course – the physical body will be resurrected, and the soul will inhabit it. This ultimate inseparability of body and soul is very consistent with Hebrew thought, as well (so, not only Aristotle). For the Hebrews, blood represented life.

Even beyond the doctrine of the resurrection of the body, the inseparability of body and soul fit quite nicely with other Catholic doctrines – for example, holy relics and the fact that the bones of a saint – or the vile of blood from a saint – are themselves intrinsically holy.

It also fits nicely with the “body and blood of Christ.” The Platonist in me once quipped, “I don’t want Christ’s body; give me Christ’s spirit.” But, for a Catholic, body and soul are inseparable. You cannot have the body of Christ, without also having the soul of Christ – in other words, the full person of Christ. For the Catholic, the full person is a composite of body and soul.

Personally, I’m more sympathetic to a “Platonic” view of the matter. Perhaps the most Platonic verse in the Bible is the phrase “it is the spirit that gives life; the flesh profits nothing.” I don’t personally believe that body and soul are inseparable, so – like you – could entertain the idea that the soul pre-existed the body, and that the soul can well exist – for an eternity, if need be-- without the body.

Nonetheless, this more “Aristotelian” view of the body-soul relationship – which, again, is why it is meaningful to have a vile of a saint’s blood, as something intrinsically holy – is interesting.

I think this is a somewhat misleading characterization. There really is a sense in which the soul “separates” from the body at the moment of death, in that there is no longer a physical body to correspond to that form. We do not believe, for example, that the soul of a saint is present in a relic of that saint. We venerate the relic in memory of the person it was once a part of, and because the body is destined to be returned to that person at the resurrection.

That doesn’t change the fact that the person’s soul is the form of their living body. It’s just that they don’t have a living body anymore, until the resurrection.

Ordinarily of course you can’t have an existing, subsisting thing that is form without matter or matter without form, not counting God of course for whom such divisions do not really apply. That is why believe the souls of plants or non-human animals do not survive death. The living being, which like all creatures was a compound of form and matter, is simply gone.

With human souls we occasionally speak of them having “spiritual matter” to get across the idea that their endurance as something that actually exists does not depend upon the survival of the physical body. Basically, the soul of a human being is given a mysterious non-physical kind of subsistence from the very first moment of its existence. This explains why it can survive death, but it does not change the fact that like all souls it comes into existence at the moment the physical body of which it is the form comes into existence.

 

[R_C]

An Ask an Apologist answer can be found here.

Genesis 2:7 shows that conception and the birth of the soul are one event, that is, that the soul did not exist before conception.

The Lord God formed man of dust from the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being

[Notice from subsequent psalms that “dust” and “ground” are employed in describing conception (ex. Psalm 139, Job 10)]

Assuming, then, that the soul is the single most significant aspect (for “the spirit gives life, the flesh does not profit”), then we can assume that we have an established identity from the moment we receive a soul, we see how the prophets who spoke of formation of the body in the womb speak of this as the time in which they came to be as living beings (not before).

Psalm 139

For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place. When I was woven together in the depths of the earth, your eyes saw my unformed body. All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be.

Job 10

Remember that you molded me like clay. Will you return me to the dust? Did you not pour me out like milk and curdle me like cheese, clothe me with skin and flesh and knit me together with bones and sinews?

Isaiah 44:24

This is what the Lord says–your Redeemer, who formed you in the womb

Jeremiah 1:5

Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I set you apart; I appointed you as a prophet to the nations.

Zechariah 12:1

The saying of the LORD, who …] formed the spirit of man within him.

Notice how there is never a statement of “existing” before conception: God knows me even before conception, since an eternal creator is necessarily outside of time, yet he “forms me” in the womb, body and soul. It is the very soul that gives life to the body - as Genesis spells out, and as Christ himself reaffirms in John 6:63.

The only time in which we hear of existence before conception is with regards to Christ: “Before Abraham was, I am”, “in the beginnign was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God …] and the Word was made flesh”.

The Second Council of Constantinople took a rather clear stance on the topic:

If anyone asserts the fabulous pre-existence of souls, and shall assert the monstrous restoration which follows from it: let him be anathema.

There must therefore be rather solid evidence, in Scripture and Tradition, against pre-existence of the soul, if the conciliar fathers used such strong words in condemning it as erroneous.

 

[LEMAITRE]

But how do we know this for sure? Of course when we die our soul lives on, so therefore a soul can be independent of the body. How do we know our soul didn’t exist before our body and then at conception was assigned to a body?

CCC 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.

Pre-existing souls is a heresy. It follows a Platonic thought which incorrectly places the ‘personhood’ of someone as their soul.

That is not a Catholic understanding. We are a union of soul and body, the joining of the two. The body is not simply a shell for our soul\person, but is integral to our personhood.

That is why Resurrection of the body is so important that it is even part of our Creed. It means that we were in Heaven as the people we are.

God knows us before we were born simply because God knows All, past present and future.

He created us at the time when the matter of our parent’s union united to form a new body, animated by a new soul.

What you are describing is possibly soul sleep or the Buddhist notion of reincarnation (recycling of souls) or the Mormons view of a pre-mortal existence.

Catholics do not believe the soul pre-existed prior to the moment of conception.

God exists outside time and space as we know it. He has forseen the creation of all souls for all time in the Mind of God however the soul has not existed for all time in the mortal coil. In other words our souls were eternally in Gods Mind however did not exist yet.

CUE WILLIE NELSON ♪ ♫ *You were always on my mind, you were always on my mind…*♪ ♫

 

[sweetpetunia]

But how do we know this for sure? Of course when we die our soul lives on, so therefore a soul can be independent of the body. How do we know our soul didn’t exist before our body and then at conception was assigned to a body?

The body and the soul being separated (i.e. death) is both unnatural and temporary. It is a consequence of sin, and as others have mentioned, will be righted at the resurrection.

 

[Aelred_Minor]

CCC 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

What you are describing is possibly soul sleep or the Buddhist notion of reincarnation (recycling of souls) or the Mormons view of a pre-mortal existence.

Catholics do not believe the soul pre-existed prior to the moment of conception.

God exists outside time and space as we know it. He has forseen the creation of all souls for all time in the Mind of God however the soul has not existed for all time in the mortal coil. In other words our souls were eternally in Gods Mind however did not exist yet.

CUE WILLIE NELSON ♪ ♫ *You were always on my mind, you were always on my mind…*♪ ♫

Pre-existing souls is a heresy. It follows a Platonic thought which incorrectly places the ‘personhood’ of someone as their soul.

That is not a Catholic understanding. We are a union of soul and body, the joining of the two. The body is not simply a shell for our soul\person, but is integral to our personhood.

That is why Resurrection of the body is so important that it is even part of our Creed. It means that we were in Heaven as the people we are.

God knows us before we were born simply because God knows All, past present and future.

He created us at the time when the matter of our parent’s union united to form a new body, animated by a new soul.

This sounds about right except for the part I’ve highlighted, which would logically mean we lose our personhood when we die.

 

[LEMAITRE]

This sounds about right except for the part I’ve highlighted, which would logically mean we lose our personhood when we die.

If the body and soul make up the personhood and are reunited in Heaven following Judgement then logically the personhood would be there as whole.

Body alone is not personhood.
Soul alone is not personhood.
Body and Soul = personhood.
Upon death our soul is released from the Body and the two are separated but are reunited in personhood after Judgement Day.

Was that right?

 

[free_thinker]

God exists outside time and space as we know it. He has forseen the creation of all souls for all time in the Mind of God however the soul has not existed for all time in the mortal coil. In* other words our souls were eternally in Gods Mind however did not exist yet.
*

This actually supports why I think our soul exists before our body. Anything from the mind of God is ultimately in existence, is it not? I think when it’s said that God always knew us… it was really referring to the soul. The body is the means in which our soul can experience this physical world.

 

[free_thinker]

If the body and soul make up the personhood and are reunited in Heaven following Judgement then logically the personhood would be there as whole.

Body alone is not personhood.
Soul alone is not personhood.
Body and Soul = personhood.
Upon death our soul is released from the Body and the two are separated but are reunited in personhood after Judgement Day.

Was that right?

Ok I am a little confused. When we die our bodies are supposed to be reunited with our soul after Judgement? If our soul is our “spiritual body” why would we need our flesh body anymore?

 

[LEMAITRE]

This actually supports why I think our soul exists before our body. Anything from the mind of God is ultimately in existence, is it not? I think when it’s said that God always knew us… it was really referring to the soul. The body is the means in which our soul can experience this physical world.

:newidea: aaahhh…how do you think we envision God and his existence with relation to us, time and space?

We view God as seeing us in a continuum timeline; all things about you/me/universe (pre-creation, our creation, life, death etc) are occurring at once. God does not experience time as we do.

It might be better to say we do exist in the mind of God; using “did” gets back to time issues, which in turn leads people to think of “God in time” (according to our concept of time).

 

[Iron_Donkey]

If the body and soul make up the personhood and are reunited in Heaven following Judgement then logically the personhood would be there as whole.

Body alone is not personhood.
Soul alone is not personhood.
Body and Soul = personhood.
Upon death our soul is released from the Body and the two are separated but are reunited in personhood after Judgement Day.

Was that right?

I think it would be slightly more correct to say that the human person is made of body and soul joined together, and that separation is unnatural and can be considered as damage, but not that separation makes us lose our personhood.

A body is not required in general to be a person - angels do not have bodies, for example. Having a body is part of being human, but a human who has been separated from his body is still a human - just in an incomplete state. Much like saying that the human body has two arms, but that a body that does not currently have two arms (whether born without or by amputation) is a human body that is damaged, but still a human body.

So I would say the body/soul-ness is integral to our humanity, but not our personhood, and during the time of separation it would be accurate to say we are not complete as humans, but not that we are not persons.

How this applies to us - when we are created, we are created with body and soul, because that is what a human is. When we die, we are damaged and separated from our bodies, but are still humans - just damaged humans. After the resurrection, we will once again be complete.

Portofino summed it up pretty well I thought. (As a side note, I did not read what he said about relics as saying - and think it would be incorrect to say - that there is some soul fragment left in relics. Rather, it is that the relic really and truly is part of the saint, because our bodies are really and truly part of who we are - we are reunited with glorified versions of the body we have now, not given new bodies entirely. They of course don’t have any magical powers, but they really are part of the saint, if a currently “uninhabited” part.)

 

[LEMAITRE]

Ok I am a little confused. When we die our bodies are supposed to be reunited with our soul after Judgement? If our soul is our “spiritual body” why would we need our flesh body anymore?

The short answer is because Christ has power over death. “If the dead are not raised, then Christ has not been raised. If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins. Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished” (1 Cor. 15:13–18)."

St Paul tells us, the Christian faith cannot exist without this doctrine, it has been infallibly defined by the Church. It is included in the three infallible professions of faith—the Apostles’ Creed, the Nicene Creed, and the Athanasian Creed—and has been solemnly, infallibly taught by ecumenical councils.

The body and soul were designed by God to be one (personhood). They are meant to be together. The physical body is only separated from the soul due to a physical death which is an unnatural state due to our fallen nature. We were originally designed for everlasting life.

When we die, our soul passes an immediate judgement of where it will spend eternity. If we are in a state of original sin or depart in actual mortal sin the Soul enters Hell immediately. If we die in a state of grace but in need of purification the soul goes to Heaven via Purgatory. If we die in a perfect state the Soul enters Heaven immediately.

“BODY AND SOUL BUT TRULY ONE” CCC

362 The human person, created in the image of God, is a being at once corporeal and spiritual. The biblical account expresses this reality in symbolic language when it affirms that "then the LORD God formed man of dust from the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being."229 Man, whole and entire, is therefore willed by God.

363 In Sacred Scripture the term “soul” often refers to human life or the entire human person.230 But “soul” also refers to the innermost aspect of man, that which is of greatest value in him,231 that by which he is most especially in God’s image: “soul” signifies the spiritual principle in man.

364 The human body shares in the dignity of “the image of God”: it is a human body precisely because it is animated by a spiritual soul, and it is the whole human person that is intended to become, in the body of Christ, a temple of the Spirit:232

Man, though made of body and soul, is a unity. Through his very bodily condition he sums up in himself the elements of the material world. Through him they are thus brought to their highest perfection and can raise their voice in praise freely given to the Creator. For this reason man may not despise his bodily life. Rather he is obliged to regard his body as good and to hold it in honor since God has created it and will raise it up on the last day. 233
365 The unity of soul and body is so profound that one has to consider the soul to be the “form” of the body:234 i.e., it is because of its spiritual soul that the body made of matter becomes a living, human body; spirit and matter, in man, are not two natures united, but rather their union forms a single nature.

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.235

367 Sometimes the soul is distinguished from the spirit: St. Paul for instance prays that God may sanctify his people “wholly”, with “spirit and soul and body” kept sound and blameless at the Lord’s coming.236 The Church teaches that this distinction does not introduce a duality into the soul.237 “Spirit” signifies that from creation man is ordered to a supernatural end and that his soul can gratuitously be raised beyond all it deserves to communion with God.238

 

[Iron_Donkey]

Ok I am a little confused. When we die our bodies are supposed to be reunited with our soul after Judgement? If our soul is our “spiritual body” why would we need our flesh body anymore?

Depends on what you mean by need. If you mean, “why did God want us to have bodies in the first place?” I have no idea.

If you mean, “Given that things are the way that they are, why will we be returned to our bodies?” then it is because God created us as body-soul hybrids, and without such reunification we would be incomplete.

But as to why God did not limit creation to pure spirits like the angels - couldn’t tell you. I have a random unsubstantiated off the wall theory that God created (from a timeless point of view, so from our point of view “has created, is creating, or will create”) everything that it would be good to create. So angels are pure spirits, we are spirit-animal hybrids, animals are, uh, animals (semi-autonomous, morally neutral, completely material creatures), and inanimate matter is itself.

 

[cornbread_r2]

Is God under any obligation to infuse rational/spiritual souls into every human at conception?

If, for some reason, God chose not to infuse a particular person with a soul, how would we be able to tell if that person had a soul or didn’t have a soul?

 

[Iron_Donkey]

Is God under any obligation to infuse rational/spiritual souls into every human at conception?

If, for some reason, God chose not to infuse a particular person with a soul, how would we be able to tell if they had a soul or didn’t have a soul?

He is not obligated to do so, but He does. To refrain from doing so would to be to contradict how He made us (our ability to produce other humans, and not just human bodies), and that’s not really His style.

But if he for some reason did not give a human a rational soul, the only other options are an irrational soul or a dead body (since the soul can be called the life principle). An irrational soul would probably be impossible to recognize, since the absence of those things normally brought about by rational souls could also be caused by a damaged body. I hear that red hair is a hint though, but I’ve never really understood why.

 

[Linusthe2nd]

Speaking as a non-Catholic who is somewhat familiar with Catholic beliefs, I can attest that body and soul are largely inseparable, in the Catholic consciousness.

What I do know is that lay Catholics often conceive of the relationship between soul and body in very “Platonic” terms (after the Greek philosopher Plato). In other words, you die, your soul separates from your body, and you go to heaven, hell, or purgatory.

From what I understand, orthodox Catholic belief is actually much more Aristotelian (after Aristotle, of course). For Aristotle, body and soul were inseparable (just as “matter” and “form”, both of which are Aristotelian terms, are inseparable). The great Catholic Aristotelian was, of course, Saint Thomas Aquinas. He helped reconcile Catholicism, philosophically, with what it had already believed – namely, the doctrine of the resurrection of the body.

It’s in the Nicene Creed, of course – the physical body will be resurrected, and the soul will inhabit it. This ultimate inseparability of body and soul is very consistent with Hebrew thought, as well (so, not only Aristotle). For the Hebrews, blood represented life.

Even beyond the doctrine of the resurrection of the body, the inseparability of body and soul fit quite nicely with other Catholic doctrines – for example, holy relics and the fact that the bones of a saint – or the vile of blood from a saint – are themselves intrinsically holy.

It also fits nicely with the “body and blood of Christ.” The Platonist in me once quipped, “I don’t want Christ’s body; give me Christ’s spirit.” But, for a Catholic, body and soul are inseparable. You cannot have the body of Christ, without also having the soul of Christ – in other words, the full person of Christ. For the Catholic, the full person is a composite of body and soul.

Personally, I’m more sympathetic to a “Platonic” view of the matter. Perhaps the most Platonic verse in the Bible is the phrase “it is the spirit that gives life; the flesh profits nothing.” I don’t personally believe that body and soul are inseparable, so – like you – could entertain the idea that the soul pre-existed the body, and that the soul can well exist – for an eternity, if need be-- without the body.

Nonetheless, this more “Aristotelian” view of the body-soul relationship – which, again, is why it is meaningful to have a vile of a saint’s blood, as something intrinsically holy – is interesting.

For a person of your persuasion this was very good. Second to last paragraph would not be held by Catholics of course.