Thomists, how does the soul survive death?

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Regarding disembodied souls, or their impossibility, I recall something from Cardinal Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI, in God Is Near Us: The Eucharist, the Heart of Life, a collection of some of his homilies and essays.

He reminds us that, by virtue of Jesus’ Incarnation, Passion, and the Eucharist, we are members of the Body of Christ. Could it be that this Body of which we are a part is not merely symbolic or organizational, but the actual human body of Christ? If so, can our souls find harbor in it, and can we exist as whole living persons, body and soul much as we are now, until the last day when own bodies are resurrected?

I can’t help but think of this when I read the Gospel of John, especially the Bread of Life discourse, the Last Supper discourses and the prayer of Jesus to the Father, which is full of phrases like “remain in me” and “I in you and you in me.”
(John 6:51) …the bread that I will give is my flesh for the life of the world… (6:56) Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me and I in him.

(14:20) … I am in my Father and you are in me and I in you.

(15:4-6) Remain in me, as I remain in you. Just as a branch cannot bear fruit on its own unless it remains on the vine, so neither can you unless you remain in me. I am the vine, you are the branches. Whoever remains in me and I in him will bear much fruit, because without me you can do nothing. Anyone who does not remain in me will be thrown out like a branch and wither…

(17:11) Holy Father, keep them in your name that you have given me, so that they may be one just as we are.

(17:20-23) I pray not only for them, but also for those who will believe in me through their word, so that they may all be one, as you, Father, are in me and I in you, that they also may be in us, that the world may believe that you sent me. And I have given them the glory you gave me, so that they may be one, as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may be brought to perfection as one…
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Perhaps our membership in the Body of Christ, our Communion with Jesus Christ whose own body is resurrected and glorified, allows our souls to remain embodied and fully human after death.

Ratzinger said it better. When I have time, I will find the book at the library and quote it for you.
 
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That seems to imply that our organic brains are similar to a radio, quite passive in itself but responding as a receiver of thought from a universal mind, which is God.
 
Actually, the brain would be supplying the mind with raw data to use. For instance sensory information would still be processed by the brain as sensory information is a purely physical thing. It is immaterial abstract thought like the concept of infinity that the immaterial mind would be needed to handle. So the brain is not merely passive but is part of the thinking process. This is why people who have damaged brains are affected in their minds. Whereas in dualism (separate mind/soul and body) it is hard to explain why the mind is affected by brain damage. Hylemorphism doesn’t suffer from this problem because the soul and body are not separate substances but are quite connected to one another and are both needed to perform the functions we can do. How exactly the immaterial mind and brain interact I do not know. However, under hylemorphism (Aquinas) the soul is the form of the body in living things. Its just that in humans who have a rational soul they have an different balance than most living organisms such that the form includes an immaterial mind. And this is the reason the soul (form) can survive the death of the body.
 
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Thank you, that’s interesting. I’d like to pick up on this thread later on.
 
The powers of the soul are not the essence of the soul, they are called proper accidents and flow from the essence of the soul which is the subject of the powers. So the spiritual powers of the intellect and will are seated in the essence of the soul which is of a spiritual nature and so it is not just the powers of the soul that remain after death but the whole soul itself which is the principle of the powers. As the CCC says, humans are a composite of spirit and body. The human soul can subsist apart from the body so it is a substance in a certain sense but apart from the body it is not a substance that is complete in a specific nature. The soul is a simple spiritual form so it can’t be divided into parts like the body. The whole soul survives death but the sensory powers remain in it not actually but virtually.
 
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You agree that the soul is spiritual. Why would it be possible for a spiritual thing to be corrupted?
 
RealisticCatholic said:
Thomists, how does the soul survive death in any meaningful way?

The soul is the form of the human body. The spiritual aspect is part of this “soul,” and it is the part that survives death until the resurrection of the body. But if this spiritual aspect is not a substance in its own right, but just a power of the overall human substance, then how can it survive death in any meaningful way to account for other Catholic concepts like the Beatific Vision after death, the communion and intercession of saints, and just a general consciousness after death?
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Not a view of St. Thomas Aquinas, rather St. Gregory of Nyssa
… that which is made in the image of the Deity necessarily possesses a likeness to its prototype in every respect; it resembles it in being intellectual, immaterial, unconnected with any notion of weight , and in eluding any measurement of its dimensions ; yet as regards its own peculiar nature it is something different from that other. Indeed, it would be no longer an image, if it were altogether identical with that other; but where we have A in that uncreate prototype we have a in the image; just as in a minute particle of glass, when it happens to face the light, the complete disc of the sun is often to be seen, not represented thereon in proportion to its proper size, but so far as the minuteness of the particle admits of its being represented at all.
…

Not even then, when those atoms have again been dissolved into themselves, has that bond of a vivifying influence vanished; but as, while the framework of the body still holds together, each individual part is possessed of a soul which penetrates equally every component member, and one could not call that soul hard and resistent though blended with the solid, nor humid, or cold, or the reverse, though it transmits life to all and each of such parts, so, when that framework is dissolved, and has returned to its kindred elements, there is nothing against probability that that simple and incomposite essence which has once for all by some inexplicable law grown with the growth of the bodily framework should continually remain beside the atoms with which it has been blended, and should in no way be sundered from a union once formed. For it does not follow that because the composite is dissolved the incomposite must be dissolved with it.
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On the Soul and the Resurrection, Gregory of Nyssa

http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/2915.htm
 
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Vico said:
Not a view of St. Thomas Aquinas,
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While I agree re much of this paragraph I am not sure re the boldened parts.
I believe Aquinas had no probs with disembodied souls of the just receiving the Beatific Vision.
 
Sophie111 said:
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Vico:
Not a view of St. Thomas Aquinas,
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While I agree re much of this paragraph I am not sure re the boldened parts.
I believe Aquinas had no probs with disembodied souls of the just receiving the Beatific Vision.
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You mean: the communion and intercession of saints, general consciousness after death, and the Beatific Vision after death?

For communion and intercession, the prayers of the saints are mentioned in Rev. 5:8, we should ask others to pray for us 1 Tim. 2:1–4, and there is a tradition of Church praying for the dead since ancient times.

2 Maccabees 12:46 It is therefore a holy and wholesome thought to pray for the dead, that they may be loosed from sins.

The Beatific Vision is heaven, so those in heaven have it, and that may occur at death with the particular judgment, even as those just souls freed from Sheol by Christ in the Harrowing of Hell. The Holy Trinity surely can make known to the Intellect and Will the joy of the Beatific Vision.
 
I think my main confusion stemmed from the fact that some Thomists are adamant about the spiritual aspect not being its own substance. Because for the Thomist, a substance is a unity in its own right, so the “human substance” or whatever regards the human person as a single unity, with both bodily and spiritual aspects. So the Thomist wants to stress the unity of the human person.

But even when stressing that the spiritual aspect is not a unique substance independent from the body, the Thomist still admits that the spiritual aspect can exist independently of the body.

Now I’m just a little perplexed in that, while the Thomist admits bodily/physical activity underlying various mental processes, it still leaves certain mental capacities in the realm of the immaterial — like the intellect and according to some, even self-consciousness.

So while the “mind-body” or “mind-brain” may not be as extreme for the Thomist as the traditional dualist (i.e., Cartesian or Platonist), who regards the soul as the person and all its mental operations, the Thomist still has to admit there is some interaction between the spiritual aspect of man and the bodily/physical aspect.
 
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Arkansan said:
You agree that the soul is spiritual. Why would it be possible for a spiritual thing to be corrupted?
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I believe the point is that if a substance is composed of spirit and body and the substance ceases to exist with the corruption of the body then for all intents and purposes the soul has met the same fate as the body and no longer exists just as the inventor of this system (Aristotle) held for both animals and humans.

Where does the personal form/soul of tabby the cat go when tabby dies?
 
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I simply mean that Aquinas did not hold that disembodied souls cannot have the BV.
Though I am confused as to what RC was saying above.
 
RealisticCatholic said:
I think my main confusion stemmed from the fact that some Thomists are adamant about the spiritual aspect not being its own substance. Because for the Thomist, a substance is a unity in its own right, so the “human substance” or whatever regards the human person as a single unity, with both bodily and spiritual aspects. So the Thomist wants to stress the unity of the human person.

But even when stressing that the spiritual aspect is not a unique substance independent from the body, the Thomist still admits that the spiritual aspect can exist independently of the body.

Now I’m just a little perplexed in that, while the Thomist admits bodily/physical activity underlying various mental processes, it still leaves certain mental capacities in the realm of the immaterial — like the intellect and according to some, even self-consciousness.

So while the “mind-body” or “mind-brain” may not be as extreme for the Thomist as the traditional dualist (i.e., Cartesian or Platonist), who regards the soul as the person and all its mental operations, the Thomist still has to admit there is some interaction between the spiritual aspect of man and the bodily/physical aspect.
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Although the person is not the body or soul alone, per St. Thomas, it is for the good of the composite body-soul, having its vital activities in virtue of its soul, that the soul is united to the body, and the the human soul is in essence the substantial form of a human body.
 
RealisticCatholic said:
I think my main confusion stemmed from the fact that some Thomists are adamant about the spiritual aspect not being its own substance. Because for the Thomist, a substance is a unity in its own right,
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Can you quote where you think Aquinas is saying this?
It really sounds like you are one step removed from Aquinas and relying on some person giving his interpretation of what Aquinas meant. This is a very subtle area and something is not quite right in the way you express this.

Aquinas (and Aristotle) discuss at length which of the following is best called “substance”: matter, form or a being that exists as a composite of both. Even Aquinas states that each of these three can rightly be called “substance” in some way. Which is “best” seems to be moot, though matter is not on the table.
 
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The body is merely “carne” … meat.

The soul is much different.
 
RealisticCatholic said:
Now I’m just a little perplexed in that, while the Thomist admits bodily/physical activity underlying various mental processes, it still leaves certain mental capacities in the realm of the immaterial — like the intellect and according to some, even self-consciousness.
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“Self consciousness” is not really a Thomistic or Aristotelian concept - it is a thoroughly modern concept. Therefore Thomas has nothing direct to say on the matter and you only have the conjecture of “Thomists”.

Not sure what you mean by “mental capacities” as that is not a Thomistic concept either.
I think you are trying to speak of “philosophy of mind” which for Aquinas is well defined and quite involved and subtle. It involves imagination (a material power) and the presence of a “phantasm” to ground immaterial concepts. It also involves different powers/operations of the intellect known as active and passive intellects.

Given his POM involves the reflexive presence of both the material phantasm and the “light” of the immaterial active intellect producing a concept residing in the immaterial passive intellect … it does seem that a disembodied soul, left to its own devices, cannot have “consciousness” as we know it scotty. It would be incapable of knowing individual material particulars because the material powers of the mind are not possible (ie historical/material memories and imaginations/phantasms are impossible because the material bodily organ (the brain) is missing.

And if a material phantasm is not possible then also there can be no universal concepts possible as the active intellect, while present, cannot shine its spiritual light upon the material phantasm…whose reflection results in an abstract/universal concept resulting in “understanding” and presumably “consciousness” as we call it today.

Why is probably why Thomists are perplexed re the “life” of disembodied souls and posit the necessity of spiritual aids from God to make a personal consciousness possible.

Aristotle of course had no such problem - he did not speak of the immortality of the soul.
 
“RealisticCatholic said:
I think my main confusion stemmed from the fact that some Thomists are adamant about the spiritual aspect not being its own substance. Because for the Thomist, a substance is a unity in its own right, so the “human substance” or whatever regards the human person as a single unity, with both bodily and spiritual aspects. So the Thomist wants to stress the unity of the human person.

But even when stressing that the spiritual aspect is not a unique substance independent from the body, the Thomist still admits that the spiritual aspect can exist independently of the body.
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Yes, the Thomists would be heretics if they didn’t admit the immortality of the human soul and its continued existence after the death of the body which is of the catholic faith and divine revelation. The spiritual human soul is not a unique substance in the sense that it constitutes the whole nature of something. It is a substantial part of the human being and it is subsistent of itself which is a property or characteristic of substances, i.e., to exist by itself, which the human soul can do even apart from the body. There is a sort of weak sense it can be called a substance or incomplete substance or maybe better a substantial subsistent part of a human being. Aquinas calls it a substance in ST, Part I, Q. 75, art. 2 and also a ‘this particular thing’ in the same article (reply to obj. 1) which is also a characteristic of substance. He even calls parts of bodies such as hands or feet substances in a certain sense which Aristotle does too. But there are nuances at play here in this sort of use of the word and there are very specific meanings of words like substance, subsistence, hypothesis, a thing of nature and possible nuances of them in Thomistic philosophy.

A hand wouldn’t be called a substance in the same sense as the whole human being but it is a substantial part of a human being, it is a part of their substance. The substance exists in itself and by itself while a part exists as a part of a whole. Aquinas gives the various meanings of substance in Part I, Q. 29, art. 2 but it doesn’t really explain here how a hand, for example, can be called a substance in a certain sense which he does call it in Part III, Q. 1, art. 12, reply to objection 2. I think his commentaries on Aristotle have more of this. Just off the top of my head, the hand is not an accident but a substantial part of the body so in a certain sense it can be called a substance or individual or particular thing I suppose or is substance. The main thing is that our faith teaches us that our soul survives the death of the body and goes to the immediate judgement, we have the communion of saints, and other truths of the faith that just by common sense we can come to a reasonable explanation for starters about what we are talking about here and fit that into the Thomistic anthropology of human beings which St Thomas does himself.
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