What makes a man?

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JaredR

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I am trying to understand the relationship between body, spirit, and soul in Catholic thought. Could anyone be bothered to explain the nature of a human being to me?
 
A man is a body and a soul, he is an animal-spirit creature. Without a body, the man is a spirit; without a spirit, the man is a corpse. A soul is not a man nor is a body a man, but a spirit and a body, united, is a man. That is why there are only spirits in Heaven and why Jesus says we will be like the angels after death. The only human person in Heaven is Mary and the only Man in Heaven is Jesus; only Jesus and Mary have bodies in Heaven. But after the resurrection, everyone will have their bodies back, and so everyone will once again be men. But this dosen’t mean you lose your personality or free-will in Heaven, because the soul is the will, imagination, and intellect; so you’re still you yourself after death. And a man is made at conception when God creates the human soul.
 
Eucharisted said:
But this doesn’t mean you lose your personality or free-will in Heaven, because the soul is the will, imagination, and intellect; so you’re still you yourself after death.
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I’m delighted you make the very important point that we still have free will after we die. It is absurd to suppose we lose our power to choose… and therefore to love…
 
A person is, heart, soul, mind, and strength, within a body of senses.

Sensations are the true boundaries of our existence.
 
Hmmm ! What shall I say that would add to nothing.
Code: 
Hamlet:
What a piece of work is a man, how noble in reason, how
infinite in faculties, in form and moving how express and
admirable, in action how like an angel, in apprehension how like
a god! the beauty of the world, the paragon of animals—and yet,
to me, what is this quintessence of dust? Man delights not me—
nor woman neither, though by your smiling you seem to say so.
This passage has provoked bitter scholarly battles—over its punctuation. Is Hamlet saying that man is like an angel in apprehension (understanding), or like a god in apprehension? The different placement of commas in the early texts of the play makes all the difference.

We’re not going to settle the argument here; you probably get the drift of Hamlet’s speech anyway. Man is the noblest of all God’s pieces of work, the “quintessence of dust” (the fifth, or purest, extract from the dust of which all things are compounded). But despite the nobility, the reason, the grace, and the beauty of man, Hamlet cannot be delighted. At least, so he tells the king’s parasites, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, as he explains his melancholia. This is one of the moments where Hamlet’s sincerity is genuinely in question. Like his claim that Denmark seems to him a prison [see THERE IS NOTHING EITHER GOOD OR BAD, BUT THINKING MAKES IT SO], Hamlet’s disgust here seems more than an act, though perhaps he exaggerates for the benefit of the king’s spies.
…

What is man or mankind if he and she are not made to give love and glory to God the Most High.
 
centurionguard said:
Hmmm ! What shall I say that would add to nothing.
Code: 
Hamlet:
What a piece of work is a man, how noble in reason, how
infinite in faculties, in form and moving how express and
admirable, in action how like an angel, in apprehension how like
a god! the beauty of the world, the paragon of animals—and yet,
to me, what is this quintessence of dust? Man delights not me—
nor woman neither, though by your smiling you seem to say so.
This passage has provoked bitter scholarly battles—over its punctuation. Is Hamlet saying that man is like an angel in apprehension (understanding), or like a god in apprehension? The different placement of commas in the early texts of the play makes all the difference.

We’re not going to settle the argument here; you probably get the drift of Hamlet’s speech anyway. Man is the noblest of all God’s pieces of work, the “quintessence of dust” (the fifth, or purest, extract from the dust of which all things are compounded). But despite the nobility, the reason, the grace, and the beauty of man, Hamlet cannot be delighted. At least, so he tells the king’s parasites, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, as he explains his melancholia. This is one of the moments where Hamlet’s sincerity is genuinely in question. Like his claim that Denmark seems to him a prison [see THERE IS NOTHING EITHER GOOD OR BAD, BUT THINKING MAKES IT SO], Hamlet’s disgust here seems more than an act, though perhaps he exaggerates for the benefit of the king’s spies.
…

What is man or mankind if he and she are not made to give love and glory to God the Most High.
Click to expand...
A freak of nature! Thanks for your commentary. I was taking Hamlet’s words at their face value - particularly the contrast between reason and dust which sums up so effectively the difference between the theist’s and atheist’s concept of man. 🙂
 
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