Thomists, how does the soul survive death?

[Sophie111]

So supply the text as requested.
PS a BA in theology hardly makes you a Thomist.

 

[teresa63]

You have called me out and I have responded.
I have called you out and you ignore me.

I don’t believe that I have “called you out”. You questioned my answers being posted to the original poster.
I defended my answers.

 

[Sophie111]

OK, you cannot provide your authority for your assertion and its only personal opinion.
Case closed.

When you can source your following view I would be interested:

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

 

[teresa63]

PS a BA in theology hardly makes you a Thomist.

I never claimed to be “a Thomist.”
I am a Catholic whose religious philosophy most resembles that expressed in Thomas’ Summa.

 

[teresa63]

When you can source your following view I would be interested:

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

The “source” would be referred to as the “sensus fidei”.
This Catholic ‘common sense’, for instance, believes that the saints in heaven can intercede for us with God Himself. Is this something we on earth can do?

 

[Sophie111]

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.

You will have to forgive me for suggesting that it is poor philosophic methodology to only accept the translations, interpretations and understandings of Catholics on this point and not take into account other Aristotelian expert schools/persons of equal sincerity and intelligence and education who disagree.

That alone suggests Aristotle is not as clear as some Catholics want him to be due to their own vested interest in Revelation.

 

[Sophie111]

Sophie111:

When you can source your following view I would be interested:

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

The “source” would be referred to as the “sensus fidei”.
… the saints in heaven can intercede for us with God Himself. Is this something we on earth can do?

Please.
If you are referring to the soul’s natural capacity after death then it must apply to the just and unjust alike.

I suggest the powers you refer to are aided divinely by God only in the just and not natural at all.
They are not in fact natural powers at all are they. Such things appear to be gifts. Even you agree they are in heaven.
Just as Aquinas speculates.

 

[teresa63]

That alone suggests Aristotle is not as clear as some Catholics want him to be due to their own vested interest in Revelation.

It was the Catholicism of St. Thomas Aquinas that perfected the philosophy of Aristotle and Plato before him. He stood on their shoulders but reached heights surpassing them both.

 

[RandomAlias]

I am not convinced that it is only spiritual in nature. When we receive the Eucharist, it is not merely spiritual. It is the the real flesh and blood of Christ. Does this not join our bodies to his in a more flesh-and-blood sense?

 

[teresa63]

That’s a bit of a red herring. You disagreed with my statement about the disembodied spiritual soul having greater powers than the embodied spirit. The greater powers are merely descriptive of the nature of “spirit” which is immortal, unrestricted by space and time, etc.

 

[teresa63]

What we receive in the Eucharist (the Body of Christ) is the real Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity of Christ, so yes, during Communion we are in a sense joined physically with Christ.

But the Body of Christ is also the Church. And the “Mystical Body of Christ” (mentioned in my post above) is not specifically referring to the Eucharist but includes the Church Triumphant (heaven), the Church Penitent (purgatory) and the Church Militant (on earth).

 

[Sophie111]

Okayyy. When you have a relevant authoritative quote perhaps we can take your view further.

 

[Sophie111]

… 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”.

It is this biased reading of highly difficult Aristotle text through the lense of Christian Revelation that I and others speak of.

You and others conveniently leave out the face-value texts right next to it that dont match Christian truths and therefore the text is not properly understood.

Lets assume that Aristotle is speaking of the soul (he uses the word “nous” actually which is a far more difficult concept). Lets also assume he is speaking of “death” which is also far from clear.

If that be so then you must also address the following text:

“But since the nous has always been active, why do we not remember its activity from before
birth…?”

So if you wish to interpret Aristotle along the lines you begin above then you must also include by “eternal” his belief in the soul existing before birth as well. I need not remind you this contradict’s Revelation.

I think it clear though that Aristotle is saying something quite different altogether - and it really has absolutely nothing to do with the immortality of a created soul after death. It does have something to do with part of the soul being outside of time and if by that is meant “after-life” then it must also refer to “before-life”.

 

[Richca]

Richca:

… 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”.

You and others conveniently leave out the face-value texts right next to it that dont match Christian truths and therefore the text is not properly understood.
If that be so then you must also address the following text:

“But since the nous has always been active, why do we not remember its activity from before
birth…?”

(1) I don’t know where you are getting your quote from or who translated it?
(2) The translation seems to be Platonic and not Aristotlelian.
(3) The passage in question from Book III, ch. 5 listed above from me needs to be interpreted I believe in the light of the whole Aristotlelian corpus and thought. Many interpretations have been offered. My interpretation of the passage in question which follows that of Aquinas is that Aristotle is talking about the intellectual power in the human soul which he divides as it were into the possible or potential intellect and the agent intellect. He calls the intellect separated not that it exists outside the soul but because it has an operation independent of the body or any bodily organ unlike the sense and vegetative powers of the soul. It is this part of the soul he says that is immortal and perpetual not that the intellect could exist after death apart from the soul but that the soul remains with this power after death.

He continues “passive intellect is corruptible, and the soul understands nothing apart from this latter.” The passive intellect here is what Aristotle calls the cogitative power which is an interior sense power of the soul that functions through some bodily organ which is corrupted upon death of the body and which is responsible for the phantasms which the human intellect in this life knows nothing without and thus he says “and the soul understands nothing apart from this latter.”

Aristotle’s metaphysics Book XII Chapters 2 and 3: 1069b 32-1070a 30 is very helpful I believe in interpretating the passage in question here. He discusses how forms only come to be when the composite comes to be and the human soul is the substantial form of the body so the human soul begins to exist when it is united to its matter or the body. And then he says “But whether any form continues to exist afterwards is a question that requires investigation. For nothing prevents this from being so in certain cases, for example, if the soul is of this sort, not every soul but the intellectual; for perhaps it is impossible that every soul should continue to exist.”

 

[RandomAlias]

Ratzinger said it better. When I have time, I will find the book at the library and quote it for you.

Okay, here is the passage:

… The word “soul” is to be found in all cultures, with basic meanings that are related but that developed in very varied fashion in individual instances. In the way it is used in the Christian tradition, it is a product of faith, impossible to conceive outside the context of the gospel of Jesus Christ and in fact appearing nowhere else. It expresses the particular character of the human being, as intended by the Creator: man is that creature in which spirit and material meet together and are united in a single whole. […] When many people say that a disembodied soul, between death and resurrection, is an absurdity, then obviously they have not listened carefully enough to Holy Scripture. For since the Ascension of Christ the problem of the soul’s being disembodied no longer exists: the Body of Christ is the new heaven, which is no longer closed. If we ourselves have become members of the Body of Christ, then our souls are safely held within this body, which has become their body, and thus they await the final resurrection, in which God will be all in all.
…

Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, from an essay titled “My Joy Is to Be in Thy Presence: On the Christian Belief in Eternal Life,” in the collection God Is Near Us: The Eucharist, the Heart of Life.

 

[Sophie111]

As I say the passage is brief, dense and difficult to translate and there are likely as many translations as there are religions that want to use Aristotle to support their view - including Aquinas and scholastics. And each will of course say their view is most faithful to their understanding of the Corpus as a whole.

So nothing new to see here sorry - inconclsusive.
Hunt around and you will easily find the “before birth translation”. I found it in my first search.
Obviously scholastics will not translate it this way even if that is a valid reading of the text.

For myself I see Aristotle as saying that the nous lives in two parallel universes at the same time in this life.

This link pretty much says it all: inconclusive.

Active intellect - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/08066a.htm

 

[Sophie111]

Well found.
So in Jesus’s resurrected body the disembodied souls of the faithful receive the material faculties they need … which is the divine aid that Aquinas speculated was necessary.

 

[Richca]

Richca:

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.

You will have to forgive me for suggesting that it is poor philosophic methodology to only accept the translations, interpretations and understandings of Catholics on this point and not take into account other Aristotelian expert schools/persons of equal sincerity and intelligence and education who disagree.

I do not consider it poor philosophic methodology because others, expert or not, disagree with either mine or better yet Aquinas’ interpretation and understanding of Aristotle which is substantiated with sound arguments. As far as Aquinas is concerned, I think someone would have a tall order to substantiate on their hands if they considered he used poor philosophic methodology.

That alone suggests Aristotle is not as clear as some Catholics want him to be due to their own vested interest in Revelation.

Catholicism isn’t founded on Aristotle and for some reason or other you have reduced my posts to a discussion on Aristotle when I originally only mentioned Aquinas. As I have said in a prior post, Aquinas isn’t Aristotle.

 

[Richca]

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.

You had stated ‘That has never actually been proven philosophically’, i.e., the immortality of the soul for which I mentioned Plato. Your logic here doesn’t follow either. Plato was correct in asserting the immateriality and immortality of the human soul. He was not correct in asserting the pre-existence of the human soul before the ensoulment of the body or his belief that the soul is in the body as its motor like the captain of a ship and not the form of the body. Plato was partially correct.

 

[Richca]

So nothing new to see here sorry - inconclsusive.
Hunt around and you will easily find the “before birth translation”. I found it in my first search.
Obviously scholastics will not translate it this way even if that is a valid reading of the text.

You provided the ‘before birth translation’ so you provide the source otherwise I’m going to take it as non-existent as I’ve never seen it. That this lone passage in question has been controversial or inconclusive by some concerning the immortality of the soul (there are other related texts) does not, however, substantiate or prove what you claimed in an earlier post, namely,

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

To which I responded with the text from Aristotle: “Only separated, however, is it [the intellect] what it really is. And this alone is immortal and perpetual”. According to the best of my knowledge, this is a valid translation of the text and he is certainly speaking, in my opinion, of the human intellectual soul although some commentators have mistakenly, IMO, located the ‘agent intellect’ outside the soul or even identified it with God even though Aristotle in the beginning of this passage says ’ …so there must be these differences in the soul’, namely, the possible and agent intellect.