I was readingthe thread concerning wether or not there is eating in heaven, or about angels appeearing in human form, here are some more brain teasers.

I had learned in Phlosophy when I ewas a seminarian in Rome that the human person is a being which is one and not divided, even though the human person is made up of both body and soul. This union of body and immortal soul is what constitutes a person as a person. St. Thomas Aquinas takes this position.

When we die our soul is seperated from our body and decays (usually) and our soul being immortal, lives on or exists. My question is: are we still our person after we die, being that our body is decaying and our soul is seperated from it? What do you think we are like once we pass out of our earthly existance.

Also, doesn't this give a good argument for the necessity of the resurrection? In order for us to be truely ourselves, our person, wouldn't we have to rise from the dead and be united to our physical glorified bodies? Just some thoughts to spark conversation.

Joe

-- Joseph Carl Biltz (jcbiltz@canoemail.com), January 13, 2003

Answers

Good question.

-- Jake Huether (jake_huether@yahoo.com), January 13, 2003.

Anybody else out there with a few words of wisdom?

Joe

-- Joseph Carl Biltz (jcbiltz@canoemail.com), January 14, 2003.

Yes, to be fully ourselves we have to be raised from the dead...that's what the general resurrection is about - even the damnned rise to be judged and go off to the lake of fire...cf. Mt.26:26.

There is question as to the time lapse - if time can be spoken of for souls who, once dead no longer inform a body and thus are no longer strictly "held" within the dimension of space (matter) and time (change) - between death and the general resurrection to judgement.

So technically a soul who died in 890 AD might "fast forward" to the end of time - rather than be held in a "statis" or purgatory..

Nevertheless, I believe the Church has taught that souls who go to heaven are in heaven from the moment they die - even "before" their resurrection/reunion with their bodies.

Alot of this is pure speculation - we know only a certain number of things: one, the human person is composed of body and soul - formed and created ex nihilo at the moment of conception. Two, that the separation of the organizing principle of life (the soul) which is the immortal form of the matter brings on death. Three, that at the instant of death the soul is judged and immediately knows if it is destined for glory or damnation regardless of how "long" it will suffer in "purgatory" if indeed it even makes sense to speak of "time".

Beyond these few certainties we know nothing - everything is speculation.

We do know that St. Paul revealed that those who have died before those who are alive at the end of the world do not have a disadvantage - or an advantage over those who come later. At least that's what he says in his letter to the Ephesians ( I believe...if memory serves). That would appear to imply that some form of "fast forwarding" "happens" to the soul who enters into God's eternal "Now".

-- Joe Stong (joestong@yahoo.com), January 17, 2003.

Just want to add...that if some Catholic theologian or authority out there spots some heresy in my post, I take back whatever I offered... After all, on these issues it behooves us to be open to greater wisdom and authority. :-)

-- Joe Stong (joestong@yahoo.com), January 17, 2003.

Thanks, Joe, I'll call you sometime!

Joe B

-- JOe B (joebiltz@netzero.net), January 18, 2003.

Interesting topic, I have studied it for years... plan to write a paper on it one day... but I have to say I think the general Catholic concensus is wrong.

Even in Aquinas there is a great tension. On the one hand he wants to say that the body and soul are dependent on each other for existence and hence make one thing. His inspiration for this is from Aristotle's doctrine of primary matter and substantial form as together forming one substance. On the other hand Aquinas wants to say that our intellect is spiritual (not material at all) and hence is not affected by the death of the body. The fact that it can exist even thought the body is destroyed means it has subsistence, which allows for immortality. But if it has subsistence and can exist separately from the body is it not then a separate substance? It seems so....

So the choices seem to be: (1) hylomorphism (the soul is the form of the body) and no immmortality or (2) Dualism the soul and body are separate substances, and immortality is secure. I opt for the later, Dualism, which by the way was the doctrine of St. Augustine.

So to answer your question, "are we still our person after we die, being that our body is decaying and our soul is seperated from it?"

I say yes... personhood entails intellect (Thinking) and will (choosing) neither of which comes from the body.

Just to close this off on a funny note if you do not embrace the dualism consider this 17th century puzzle. Suppose a cannibal eats me and my body through digestion becomes his flesh... who will have my body in Heaven? Me or the cannibal? It cannot be both of us and still be the SAME body...

-- Rob (rd@nonags.com), January 19, 2003.

Dear Rob,

There are some inherent problems with the idea of intellect as spiritual. First, is I.Q. therefore a measure of spirituality? And, if intellect is a function of the spirit or soul, how can it be damaged, or even effectively destroyed as a result of physical damage to the brain, a physical organ?

Peace! Paul

-- Paul (PaulCyp@cox.net), January 19, 2003.

Um, OK, my memory DIDN'T serve me well... the quote from Paul was from 1 Thesalonians, 4.

Regarding hylomorphism... the soul of animals and indeed any living thing, is merely the form of the matter. However because our soul - one of whose powers in intellect - is spiritual, it "survives" the decay of its matter. Thus it is not annihilated by the death of the body.

But this was stated above by Joe to begin with.

As to what we are without the body...we are technically a human soul. that is, bereft of the 5 senses, we have intellect, (mind) and will. But no sight, no hearing, no taste, no touch, no smell. Bodiless, we are also orphans in the "spirit world" - thus in need of our Guardian angels.

But - and here it's important to NOT TRY to imagine the landscape, as there is no visible "thing" to imagine... but as such, we are immediately set before God's judgement - we are cut off from all possibility of changing our mind and will. Whatever desire, whatever good - or ill - we are focused on the moment of death, that is the trajectory we are fixed into for eternity.

Love or hate. Selfishness or selflessness. Self-absorbtion or self- donation. To be a black hole or a star (to use an analogy).

In this life we are usually lords and masters of our body and through them of this creation. After death, we are at the mercy of either the loving Creator or fell spirits who have been lusting our destruction from the beginning of our incarnate existence.

How comforting then to know that Our Lord has gone to "prepare places in His Father's house for us"!

-- Joe Stong (joestong@yahoo.com), January 20, 2003.

Paul, I guess materialists will have a problem with the idea of intellect as spiritual but certainly this has been the long-standing tradition from Plato-Aristotle-Aquinas and beyond. IQ would not be a measure of "spirituality". It is supposed to be a measure of reasoning or something like that... Still I do not think the exists of IQ test or tests (quantitative or not) have anything to do with the ontological status of the mind (i.e. whether it is physical or non-physical). As a dualist, I would agree that the intellect (non-physical for me) cannot be damaged (at least not like a glass is damaged when it shatters...) The only exception is sin, which mars it in some ways but that is a theological matter I will postpone for now. So what you seem to mean is that since people's brains do get damaged (physically) and that as a result a person's mental skills decline that therefore the mind or intellect is physical. However this is an unwarranted deduction. In the earthly life the non-physical mind works through the physical organ, which limits it. So if the physical organ is damaged the mind appears to be damaged too even though it is not. Here is an analogy. Suppose we have a perfectly tuned piano and a great piano player. We will have great music. Now suppose the piano becomes out of tune and some of its keys break and no longer produce sound. Now despite the fact that the piano player remanins the same (namely great). The sounds coming out of the piano will sound bad, damaged. Should we infer that the player is to blame. In this analogy the piano is the physical brain and the player is the non-physical intellect/mind whatever term you like.

-- Rob (rd@nonags.com), January 22, 2003.

@ Joe Stong: You wrote "Regarding hylomorphism... the soul of animals and indeed any living thing, is merely the form of the matter." No, Aquinas clearly says this is not the case for humans, since they are intellectual, in Summa Contra Gentiles Book 2 Creation, chapter 51. If the human soul were merely "the form of matter" then it would not survive the death of the body. The irony is that Thomas wants the soul to be non-physical and subsistent (complete in esse, existence) and yet does not want to call it a substance... he wants to say it is incomplete in the sense that its essence "depends on matter". Other Catholic philosophers like Coulter have pointed out the contradiction here...

-- Rob (rd@nongas.com), January 22, 2003.

No Rob, you mis-read my statement. I wasn't lumping human beings in with "plants and all other living things." I was making the distinction right there, so I don't contradict Thomas at all! I said that the intellect is the proof of the spiritual nature of the human form, so in so far as we are intellectual, reasoning creatures, we can conclude that all human beings have a spiritual form or soul which does not decay upon the disolution of the matter or body.

Aquinas - unlike all modern philosophers - does not start with abtuse principles and work back to matter and daily reality. He STARTS with what we know from our senses and works up to what we know conceptually. But the ground is always what is perceived.

Thus the proof for the existence of soul is not some wide ranging theory of the afterlife and what is possible, but rather is based on what we know from every day experience of our mind: we conceive of things on a regular basis which are neither spatial or temporal, which have no perception attached to them: for example: freedom, love, duty, "rights"... if the mind can know such non-material things, then it must be adequate to such things - it itself must have an immaterial nature (without disdaining the brain and influence of matter).

Yes, like plants and animals we have a soul, but unlike them we also have by nature (not necessarily in act or even well formed) an intellect which conceives of things which are not atomic, not energic, and not imaginable - you don't see or feel or taste "honor" yet it exists. Sure certain physiological "feelings and emotions" MAY accompany the thought of honor or dishonor, but the concept itself is not the emotion... the very act of communicating and distinguishing between concepts and percepts proves a non-material quality to the human mind.

In this way Thomas leads us to conclude that while we share much in common with the animals and all other living things (insofar as we like they have bodies), we differ in an essential way.

Matter is animated by form - matter itself is not alive. Form can be considered the organizing principle of that matter. Imagine you as organizing principle putting together the dead and inert pieces of metal to form a working watch or computer... now the material parts move in some orderly, organized fashion, but did not organize themselves in that fashion. You supplied the order.

In living things, the ordering principle is not itself material. It's immaterial... form is not a shadow of matter. Order adds no weight or volume to matter.

But as far as it goes, the principle is dependent on the matter for existence just as "watch" or computer doesn't make sense without its constituent parts...take away a part and it ceases to "be" a watch! Take away a limb or organ and most living things cease to "live".

So in all non-human living things in the material world, the form is THIS matter's form or THAT matters' form. Take away the parts and the order ceases to be. Hence the plant or animal that dies or is killed loses order - and its form ceases to be.

But members of the species homo sapiens have intellect. So man must have something by nature which is not strictly material, and hence our form must be something other than the organizing principle of this matter. What other definition could there be for "spirit" if not some form that is not dependent on matter for its existence?

By essence we are ensouled bodies. Incarnate spirits. Essentially a man is body and soul: but the spiritual soul of man (as discovered by our intellectual capacity) can exist without the body - and this is why resurrection is possible, though not for unaided man alone.

This helps explain (as an aside) why St Paul mentions praying with both his soul and his spirit.

-- Joe (joestong@yahoo.com), August 26, 2003.