There is a quote often attributed to C.S. Lewis that goes something akin to:
"You are not a body. You are a soul. You merely have a body."
Lewis never said it, but that's beside the point. I have heard and read far too many Christians repeating this phrase approvingly, tweeting it and posting it on Facebook and otherwise passing it along as some pearl of profound wisdom. But if you're a Christian, this is bad theology. Let me explain.
When you say something like "I am a soul, I only have a body," you've split the body and soul into two different things, with the soul being the really real thing, and the body to be a mere appendage or tool, a vehicle for getting around, a spacesuit to allow the soul to temporarily survive in this alien environment. You're a ghost in a machine, as Rene Descartes would say. But is that the case? Is that what things are like?
There is a profound and obvious difference between the experience of stubbing your toe and the experience of crashing your car. Your car is a vehicle, accidental to and outside of yourself; when you crash while inside of it, you feel its impact, but when the fender crumples, you don't crumple, and you don't experience a sensation of pain along with it. And when you stub your toe, your first thought isn't, "Dang, I hope the insurance covers the damage to my toe. Is the toe repair shop open on Sundays? Should I call a toe truck?" (I couldn't resist!) No, your thought is something akin to, "OWW!!! MY TOE!!!" One is related to you; one is you.
I would guess that people are drawn to this "You are a soul" phrase because it sounds spiritual and holy and ethereal and mysterious. But such thinking actually does harm to the idea of a human being. It divides us against ourselves. It alienates us from our own bodies. It destroys our integrity.
The classic Catholic definition of the human person, as laid out by St. Thomas using the philosophy of Aristotle, maintains the distinctiveness of the soul and body while insisting on their absolute unity and dependence on each other. A person is not two substances glued together, like an arts & crafts project; a person is the combination of two principles making a natural whole, sort of like a lyric and a melody making a song. The soul is what makes this collections of organs and tissues into a living human body; a body gives the spirit a corporeal existence and makes it a human soul, as opposed to some angel-like thing. A person is an ensouled body, or an embodied soul. When a person dies, and the soul separates from the body, each is incomplete. A body without its soul is a corpse, and a soul without its body is a spirit eagerly awaiting the Resurrection.
There's an important point: denigrating the body denigrates the doctrine of the Resurrection. It's amazing how often we forget it! We think of our eternal destiny as living with God forever in heaven (ideally), but for some reason there is a tendency to think of it as a purely spiritual existence. What about the "resurrection from the dead, and the life of the world to come"? Our destiny is precisely an embodied destiny, because as human beings we are by nature embodied creatures; that will not fundamentally change at the end of time. God likes what's he done with His design of us.
There is a great moral danger hidden in the erroneous view of "You are a soul": the potential of thinking,"Well, if I really am only my soul, and my body is just a temporary husk, then what does it matter to my eternal destiny what I do with my body? Why shouldn't I eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow I'll simply die and be rid of this hunk of flesh? Party time! Bring on the booze and the dames!" Certain groups of Gnostics in the early Church took to this way of thinking, and promoted (or at least didn't discourage) hedonism. Don't go down that dark road, my friends.
What you do with your body affects you, because it is you who does it. You make the decision, you do the act, you suffer the consequences. You are your body, AND you are your soul, because both are required to make you. When you die, the two are separated, and pine for each other. And on the Last Day, your soul will be rejoined to your body and you will meet your eternal destiny as you, whole, once again.
Showing posts with label soul. Show all posts
Showing posts with label soul. Show all posts
Tuesday, March 11, 2014
Thursday, January 2, 2014
Why Are the Sacraments Only for the Living?
Recently I heard a tragic story of a couple whose baby was stillborn. The couple requested that their stillborn baby be baptized, and the priest had to gently deny their request. Some people hear this and are shocked, dismayed, and even angered: "Why won't he baptize their baby? They're in pain and anguish, and he won't even grant this simple request. Isn't the Church supposed to help people in times like this?" What is the answer?
The Church would not baptize a stillborn baby or any other deceased person because it cannot. That is, you could go through the motions of baptism, but no baptism would happen. Why not? Because the sacraments are for the living. What does that mean? And why is that the case?
A human person is a composite of body and soul, not as two separate "things" connected by some metaphysical glue, but rather as two principles that together make a whole--it is an embodied soul and an animated body. The human person is alive when the body and soul are united, and dead when they are separated. In the dead person, the link between the body and soul has been severed for a time. Your consciousness, seated in your seal, does not feel the pain of your pinched arm when you're dead.
Now let's consider the sacraments. Much like a person, sacraments are a composite of two principles: a physical sign and a spiritual reality conveyed by the sign. In baptism, we have the physical sign of the washing of water and the spiritual reality of the cleansing from sin, the dying to self (as by drowning) and being born again in Christ (through "water and the Spirit," like coming forth from a spiritual womb). The physical sign is applied to the body, and the spiritual effect affects the soul (as well as the body). BUT if the soul is no longer joined to the body, i.e. if the person is dead, then, just as a disembodied soul can't feel the pain of a pinched arm, so a disembodied soul can't receive the spiritual effect of a baptized head. The link between body and soul has been broken, and thus the sacraments cannot be applied. This is why the sacraments are for the living, for those in the "wayfaring state": only to them can they be applied.
Some will ask, "How do we know when the soul has left the body? Maybe when a person appears to be physically dead, the soul is still there for a time." The soul is what gives life to the body--if there is no life in the body, there is no soul in the body. If you have no good reason to think someone is alive, you shouldn't assume they are. We don't leave cadavers unburied "just in case they wake up." And we don't give the sacraments to corpses, just in case they might still be somehow alive without us noticing.
Now, the parents of that stillborn baby are in what may well be the most terrible moment of their lives, and I can understand them seeking some comfort for themselves and their deceased child. And the Church should give them all the comfort it can. But it shouldn't give them the comfort it can't. The priest should, at the proper time, explain to the parents that there's no need for baptism at this point, that their child is already in God's loving hands, and that we can trust in His mercy. In the end, that is all any of us can do.
The Church would not baptize a stillborn baby or any other deceased person because it cannot. That is, you could go through the motions of baptism, but no baptism would happen. Why not? Because the sacraments are for the living. What does that mean? And why is that the case?
A human person is a composite of body and soul, not as two separate "things" connected by some metaphysical glue, but rather as two principles that together make a whole--it is an embodied soul and an animated body. The human person is alive when the body and soul are united, and dead when they are separated. In the dead person, the link between the body and soul has been severed for a time. Your consciousness, seated in your seal, does not feel the pain of your pinched arm when you're dead.
Now let's consider the sacraments. Much like a person, sacraments are a composite of two principles: a physical sign and a spiritual reality conveyed by the sign. In baptism, we have the physical sign of the washing of water and the spiritual reality of the cleansing from sin, the dying to self (as by drowning) and being born again in Christ (through "water and the Spirit," like coming forth from a spiritual womb). The physical sign is applied to the body, and the spiritual effect affects the soul (as well as the body). BUT if the soul is no longer joined to the body, i.e. if the person is dead, then, just as a disembodied soul can't feel the pain of a pinched arm, so a disembodied soul can't receive the spiritual effect of a baptized head. The link between body and soul has been broken, and thus the sacraments cannot be applied. This is why the sacraments are for the living, for those in the "wayfaring state": only to them can they be applied.
Some will ask, "How do we know when the soul has left the body? Maybe when a person appears to be physically dead, the soul is still there for a time." The soul is what gives life to the body--if there is no life in the body, there is no soul in the body. If you have no good reason to think someone is alive, you shouldn't assume they are. We don't leave cadavers unburied "just in case they wake up." And we don't give the sacraments to corpses, just in case they might still be somehow alive without us noticing.
Now, the parents of that stillborn baby are in what may well be the most terrible moment of their lives, and I can understand them seeking some comfort for themselves and their deceased child. And the Church should give them all the comfort it can. But it shouldn't give them the comfort it can't. The priest should, at the proper time, explain to the parents that there's no need for baptism at this point, that their child is already in God's loving hands, and that we can trust in His mercy. In the end, that is all any of us can do.
Sunday, February 17, 2013
The Week in Review: Keepin' it Classy
Nothing of much note to share with you from this week, apart from class-related items, so we'll get to it:
Medieval Philosophy: This week we read some excerpts from works by one Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius, commonly known to history simply as Boethius. He lived in the late 5th-early 6th centuries AD, and is sometimes called "the last of the antique men"; that is, he was what one might call the last true Roman. He grew up in an aristocratic family, and was appointed to high offices by Theoderic, the Visigothic general who had de facto control over Italy. He did something to fall out of favor, though, and was imprisoned for treason. He spent a year in jail before being executed, but during that time wrote what was to be a lasting work in the history of Western thought: The Consolation of Philosophy. This is a dialogue in which Boethius and "Lady Philosophy" investigate a number of philosophical questions. His method, in which he considers objections to a position, lays out his own answer, then responds to the objections, became the standard for the "school men" or scholastics of the Middle Ages. He's quoted quite often as an authority by St. Thomas Aquinas in his Summa Theologica. And Boethius' translations of Greek philosophical terms into Latin became definitive. And he writes beautifully. Always nice when your assignments are a pleasure to read.
Philosophical Anthropology: We tend to think of human beings as the only things possessing souls, but Aristotle (and St. Thomas) took a different position. They used the term more broadly for the that principle which gives life to any material living thing; and different kinds of things have different kinds of souls, depending on the powers that sort of thing has. For example, a vegetative soul allows a thing to take nourishment, grow, and reproduce; so a tree has a vegetative soul. A sensitive soul would add movement and sensation to the powers of the vegetative soul; thus, a dog has a sensitive soul. A rational soul would add intellect to the powers of the sensitive soul; thus, humans have rational souls. Thomas was also clear that only humans have immortal souls, since eternal life would not perfect the powers of the vegetative or sensitive souls--one needs not the opportunity to contemplate God eternally if one has not the power of contemplation.
Metaphysics: When the subject matter of your class is defined as "everything that really exists," you start to wonder "How on earth are we going to cover this in 4 months?"
Patristic Spirituality: More Origen this week. We read excerpts from his De Principiis (On First Principles) dealing with his kooky cosmology and his theories on Scriptural interpretation. The latter was much more sensible than the former; and anyone who ever talks about the "spiritual sense" of Scripture owes a big debt to Origen. But his speculations about the nature of the universe got him into trouble later. Trying to fit Christian theology into his Platonist philosophy, he theorized that in the beginning God created all the intelligent beings that would ever exist, and they existed in a state of contemplation of God; but they got bored or lazy and turned away from God. The ones that fell the least became angels, the ones that fell the most became demons, and the ones in the middle were given material form and became human beings. This ain't kosher with Catholic theology, and it got his ideas condemned at an ecumenical council. But he had the whole Scripture thing going for him... which is nice.
Medieval Philosophy: This week we read some excerpts from works by one Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius, commonly known to history simply as Boethius. He lived in the late 5th-early 6th centuries AD, and is sometimes called "the last of the antique men"; that is, he was what one might call the last true Roman. He grew up in an aristocratic family, and was appointed to high offices by Theoderic, the Visigothic general who had de facto control over Italy. He did something to fall out of favor, though, and was imprisoned for treason. He spent a year in jail before being executed, but during that time wrote what was to be a lasting work in the history of Western thought: The Consolation of Philosophy. This is a dialogue in which Boethius and "Lady Philosophy" investigate a number of philosophical questions. His method, in which he considers objections to a position, lays out his own answer, then responds to the objections, became the standard for the "school men" or scholastics of the Middle Ages. He's quoted quite often as an authority by St. Thomas Aquinas in his Summa Theologica. And Boethius' translations of Greek philosophical terms into Latin became definitive. And he writes beautifully. Always nice when your assignments are a pleasure to read.
Philosophical Anthropology: We tend to think of human beings as the only things possessing souls, but Aristotle (and St. Thomas) took a different position. They used the term more broadly for the that principle which gives life to any material living thing; and different kinds of things have different kinds of souls, depending on the powers that sort of thing has. For example, a vegetative soul allows a thing to take nourishment, grow, and reproduce; so a tree has a vegetative soul. A sensitive soul would add movement and sensation to the powers of the vegetative soul; thus, a dog has a sensitive soul. A rational soul would add intellect to the powers of the sensitive soul; thus, humans have rational souls. Thomas was also clear that only humans have immortal souls, since eternal life would not perfect the powers of the vegetative or sensitive souls--one needs not the opportunity to contemplate God eternally if one has not the power of contemplation.
Metaphysics: When the subject matter of your class is defined as "everything that really exists," you start to wonder "How on earth are we going to cover this in 4 months?"
Patristic Spirituality: More Origen this week. We read excerpts from his De Principiis (On First Principles) dealing with his kooky cosmology and his theories on Scriptural interpretation. The latter was much more sensible than the former; and anyone who ever talks about the "spiritual sense" of Scripture owes a big debt to Origen. But his speculations about the nature of the universe got him into trouble later. Trying to fit Christian theology into his Platonist philosophy, he theorized that in the beginning God created all the intelligent beings that would ever exist, and they existed in a state of contemplation of God; but they got bored or lazy and turned away from God. The ones that fell the least became angels, the ones that fell the most became demons, and the ones in the middle were given material form and became human beings. This ain't kosher with Catholic theology, and it got his ideas condemned at an ecumenical council. But he had the whole Scripture thing going for him... which is nice.
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