Thomists, how does the soul survive death?

[Sophie111]

i.e., to exist by itself, which the human soul can do even apart from the body.

That has never actually been proven philosophically.
Aristotle, whose “soul system” we use, never felt the need to say that it was immortal just because it was spiritual.

 

[Richca]

Richca:

i.e., to exist by itself, which the human soul can do even apart from the body.

That has never actually been proven philosophically.
Aristotle, whose “soul system” we use, never felt the need to say that it was immortal just because it was spiritual.

Aquinas proves philosophically the incorruptibility of the human soul from many angles. It should be understood as well that Aquinas’ philosophy and metaphysics is not a ‘static’ remake of Aristotlelianism or Platonism but an upgrade as it were, reformulations, an advancement, a deeper penetration into metaphysical reality where Aristotle as well as Plato left off and did not tread. Aquinas’ metaphysics is grounded in the act-of-being, existence if you will, whereas Aristotlelianism and Platonism is more about essences.

If I’m not mistaken and for some reason or another, Aristotle did not speak much at least from what we have from his writings about the immortality of the human soul except in passing as it were and kind of leaves the question undecided or doesn’t pursue it. On the other hand, Plato was a firm believer in the immortality of the human soul and argues such philosophically in various of his works which various Church Fathers such as St Augustine take up.

The Church’s teaching concerning the immortality of the human soul is founded not on any philosophical system as useful as this may be but on divine revelation, the word of God, in Sacred Scripture and Sacred Tradition and the ‘living’ magisterium of the Church. For example, we just celebrated the Solemnity of All Saints Day and the Feast of All Souls Day. The Church’s celebration of these feasts did not spring from philosophy but from the living word of God, the deposit of the faith, and the action of the Holy Spirit.

 

[Sophie111]

Aquinas proves philosophically the incorruptibility of the human soul from many angles.

Please quote and reference where Aristotle clearly states the human soul survives death if that is what you are trying to say?

Plato was a firm believer in the immortality of the human soul and argues such philosophically in various of his works which various Church Fathers such as St Augustine take up."

A bit of a red herring. Aristotle’s “soul talk” works were not accessible before C11 in the West.
So individual Christian thinkers continued to dabble in Plato’s soul talk via Jewish and Greek vectors that were available. However that philosophy was very different and not a good vehicle for Catholic belief as it constantly led to a despising of matter, flesh and the body as even Augustine demonstrates. It was ultimately cast aside by Catholicism and Aquinas himself demonstrated the errors of Plato’s soul talk. Nevertheless there are many remnants of Plato especially in Augustinianism, Monasticism and Catholic Mysticism which is perfectly accepted if it does not go into soul talk.

My personal conclusion is that the weaknesses of Aristotelian soul talk have now in turn been coming to the fore since medieval times. While Plato was strong on the soul (and its immortality) at the expense of the role of the body…Aristotle is not quite as balanced as Christians would like.
He is slightly more in favour of the body at the apparant expense of poor clarity on the survival of the personal soul beyond death.

 

[Richca]

Richca:

Aquinas proves philosophically the incorruptibility of the human soul from many angles.

Please quote and reference where Aristotle clearly states the human soul survives death if that is what you are trying to say?

Aquinas is not Aristotle. As I said and you quote "Aquinas proves philosophically the incorruptibility of the human soul from many angles’. Why then do you ask me about Aristotle? For references, go to ST. Part I, q. 75; SCG, Book II, ch. 55-90, especially 55, 78-81, ch. 78-79 have a number of references to Aristotle; various Quaestiones Disputatae. Link to Aquinas’ works in english and commentaries on Aristotle:
https://dhspriory.org/thomas/

However, I am going to have to make a correction to my previous post concerning Aristotle himself where I said that I thought he left the matter undecided. Apparently, I must have been thinking of earlier statements of his in De Anima where he is beginning his investigation of the soul and intellect and working his way through it such as in Books I-II and raising the possibility of the immortality of the human soul or at least the intellectual part until he apparently finally concludes in Book III, chapter 5, 430a10–430a25: “Only separated, however, is it [the intellect] what it really is. And this alone is immortal and perpetual”. Go to above link, Aquinas’ commentary on Aristotle’s De Anima and also confer the ‘Note’ to the section just mentioned.

 

[Richca]

Richca:

Plato was a firm believer in the immortality of the human soul and argues such philosophically in various of his works which various Church Fathers such as St Augustine take up."

A bit of a red herring. Aristotle’s “soul talk” works were not accessible before C11 in the West.
So individual Christian thinkers continued to dabble in Plato’s soul talk via Jewish and Greek vectors that were available. However that philosophy was very different and not a good vehicle for Catholic belief as it constantly led to a despising of matter, flesh and the body as even Augustine demonstrates. It was ultimately cast aside by Catholicism and Aquinas himself demonstrated the errors of Plato’s soul talk. Nevertheless there are many remnants of Plato especially in Augustinianism, Monasticism and Catholic Mysticism which is perfectly accepted if it does not go into soul talk.

I don’t think this is entirely accurate. The Church Fathers did not read Plato as if they were reading Holy Scripture. Far from it. They took from Plato what could be in accord with Holy Scripture and the catholic faith and left out what was not or changed the meaning of it. Various heresies that surfaced they wrote against such as a dual principle of creation, good and evil, or God and an evil principle such as matter or bodies, cf. manichaeism. The orthodox fathers knew the error of this and wrote against it as early as St Irenaeus I believe if not earlier. The Fathers taught and believed that God created the world out of nothing and that it was good including matter as Genesis 1 says a number of times and concluding with “God saw everything he had made and it was very good”. There were some aberrations among a few of the fathers such as Origen who allowed his Platonism to influence some unorthodox teachings of his but which were not yet defined by the Church. That said, Origin was one of the greatest christian scholars and theologians of his time.

The idea in a certain sense of ‘despising’ the flesh and the body was more about sin and christian asceticism, taming the desires of the flesh, concupiscience, original sin, and growth in holines. St Paul himself says ‘I see another law in my members’ and ‘the flesh lusted against the spirit and the spirit against the flesh’. It was not that our very bodies, flesh, or matter were evil, this was heretical and were heresies. Jesus himself said ‘He who does not deny himself and take up his cross and follow me cannot be my disciple’. Christian asceticism is a necessary component of the christian spiritual life, growth in holiness, and the following of Christ.

 

[Sophie111]

Aquinas is not Aristotle.

Indeed, I suppose that is the nub of my point.
The Church’s soul talk is NOT a harmonious blend of extracting God’s partial truth from many ancient sources. It is a 99.9 percent use of Aristotle and adapting it almost unchanged to almost all Catholic theological underpinnings by Aquinas.

It was a huge undertaking by Aquinas and he succeeded in uniting almost all of Catholic theology which up until that time was fragmented and disparate and a hodge podge of many ununified schools of thought using different philosophic terms and concepts even if many words sounded the same. He is right called universal doctor of the Church.

Aquinas to the best of my knowledge never disagreed with Aristotle significantly in the main philosophic underpinnings of his universal and united theological corpus. Certainly not on the point of the immortality of the soul where he considered himself a mere interpreter of “The Philosopher” as he called Aristotle. Yes, he may also have seen himself as consistently extending things Aristotle never explored - because Aquinas had the extra “imagination” that Revelation offers that Aristotle did not have.

So the issue is whether Aristotle’s framework extends or cracks with the proposition of the immortality of the soul.

I believe it best argued that Aquinas, under his natural assent to Revelation re such concerns, poorly interpretted Aristotle and mistakenly believed/interpretted that the Philosopher agreed philosophically with Revelation in ambiguous passages when in fact later minds as great as Aquinas also dedicated to Aristotle cannot agree.

I get it that you disagree.

I further suggest that if it is easier to prove the existence of “god”, and that is clearly contentious and the Church has never stated that Aquinas succeeded, then matters are even more moot re the soul’s immortality.

 

[teresa63]

RealisticCatholic,
consistent with Thomism, Catholic magisterial teaching describes the human person as a ‘composite’ of two aspects: spiritual and corporeal. Human nature is comprised of both immortal spiritual soul and mortal physical body. To answer your question more pointedly, a human person can exist without a body but cannot exist without the spirit. It is the immortal spiritual soul of man that is created in the image of God, not the human body.

All living things have “soul”—the life force that animates the body; but only humans have an immortal spiritual soul with faculties of human intellect and will.

 

[teresa63]

How do Thomists understand or talk about the spiritual aspect of man surviving death, then?

As stated earlier, Thomistic teaching is consistent with magisterial Catholic teaching regarding the immortality of the human spiritual soul which can live entirely without a corporeal body. (It may not be ‘complete humanity’ without a body, but it is living and conscious. The resurrection of the body fulfills the completeness of humanity that death renders apart.)

 

[teresa63]

But is it so handicapped where it cannot be conscious and be active members of the communion of saints?

The human spiritual soul is not “handicapped” after death. As a disembodied spirit, the human being has powers that far surpass humanity on earth. However, only those completely purified (a process of purgation) will then behold the beatific vision.

At death, each person receives an individual (particular) judgment by Christ. The result is binary: either heaven or hell. Those who die (most) without having reached a state of perfected virtue must then be further purified (purgatory) before entering heaven.

This is clearly Thomistic who preached, taught and wrote extensively about perfection of virtue.

 

[teresa63]

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?

As the Church, we share in the “Mystical Body of Christ” with Christ as the Head, and we as the members. This mystical body is spiritual in nature.

 

[Sophie111]

I am not sure what you are aguing against.
Plato’s philosophy of the soul/body is intrinsically inconsistent with revelation as Aquinas himself demonstrated. Therefore his framework is philosophically flawed if revelation is correct.

Logically then if his flawed framework also concludes the soul is immortal then this conclusion is also without a credible foundation. It may be true - but Plato can no longer credibly prove it.
And a further weakness is that for Plato this “soul” may not be “personal” as we know it Scotty.

 

[Sophie111]

As a disembodied spirit, the human being has powers that far surpass humanity on earth.

No.
This is the very early Church Platonic mysticism repeatedly condemned by the Church and by Aquinas.
It is why we finally baptised Aristotle instead of Plato re the soul.

And according to Aristotle’s framework the soul is definitely weakened and handicapped in its powers without a body and you are very mistaken.

Which is why even Aquinas had to posit the necessity of divine aid for the disembodied souls of the just to overcome this attenuation of the soul’s natural powers.

I would ask you to provide a post Aquinas, Catechetical, Conciliar or respected doctor of the Church quote on this point if you wish to pursue it. I do not believe you will find one.

Sure, you may find something from the Early Fathers who flirted with Plato on this very point as individuals. But by C12-C13 this “theology” of the soul was finally discarded by the Church Universal as having gone down a wrong track.

A disembodied soul by definition has weakened natural powers because the body is important for human functioning even at the spiritual level. The soul is NOT imprisioned in flesh and weakened on earth as the early Christian thinkers following Plato often concluded.

Only when we get back our bodies on the last day (or a divine aid in the mean time) will we have the heightened powers you speak of.

Those who have transfigured bodies will of course have powers heightened even beyond the divine aids God supplies to the souls of the just before the general resurrection.

 

[teresa63]

Are you saying the disembodied human spiritual soul is limited by the physical world?

 

[teresa63]

And according to Aristotle’s framework the soul is definitely weakened and handicapped in its powers without a body and you are very mistaken.

I do not believe that I am mistaken. However, much of what you have posted is not in line with traditional/magisterially-backed Catholicism. Were you formally trained in Catholic theology or secular philosophy?

 

[Sophie111]

If you cannot supply authoritative sources for your mistaken personal neo-Platonic view this discussion is not really worth “re-litigating” here. You might like to start a new thread if what I summarise is new to you.

In the mean-time your personal spirituality enunciated on this point and its place in Church history is likely found between the lines of these links:
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/10742b.htm
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/12159a.htm

The following quote seems to summarise where you are at re the powers of the disembodied soul which is almost pure Platonic thinking:

Christian thinkers, almost from the beginning of Christian speculation, found in the spiritualism of Plato a powerful aid in defending and maintaining a conception of the human [soul] http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/14153a.htm) which pagan materialism rejected.
Christian writers took advantage of the support thus lent to the doctrine that there is a spiritual world more real than the world of matter."

Christian Platonists underestimated Aristotle… The Middle Ages completely reversed this verdict… Their successors, however, in the twelfth century came to a knowledge of the psychology, metaphysics, and ethics of Aristotle, and adopted the Aristotelean view so completely that before the end of the thirteenth century he occupied in the Christian schools the position occupied in the fifth century by Plato.

 

[teresa63]

he soul is NOT imprisioned in flesh and weakened on earth as the early Christian thinkers following Plato often concluded.

This is a strawman argument. A statement that you have made.

 

[Sophie111]

Yes. I am a long and formally trained Thomist.
Are you able to provide me your own authority for your personal view as suggested?

 

[teresa63]

You haven’t answered my question above:

Are you saying the disembodied human spiritual soul is limited by the physical world?

 

[Sophie111]

You have called me out and I have responded accordingly with my authorities and my credentials.
I have called you out and you ignore me.

Further polite and respectful dialogue is no longer possible with you sorry.

 

[teresa63]

Are you able to provide me your own authority for your personal view as suggested?

I have a BA in Theology from a Catholic university and my answers are consistent with St. Thomas’ Summa.