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Question

Dear Father Angelo,

First of all, thank you for your continuous work of elucidation. I have a small doubt that I would like to try to resolve with your help.

St. Thomas tells us that the soul is both a substantial  and subsistent form. But when he speaks of the form itself, not yet defined in any particular matter, can we think of it as a common essence present in the Word?

It’s also true, as he specifies in the Summa Theologica, that the individual intellectual soul is directly created by God so that it shapes the unborn baby by replacing the sensory form and assuming in itself the vegetative and sensitive functions.

So my question is the following: is the intellectual form itself a common or even universal essence in the mind of God and will it be identified in a particular matter only afterwards? Or is it already created in its individuality in relation to a fetus who is just actualized in the sensory form? 

I thank you in advance in case of your answer, considering your many commitments.

In the meantime I will remember you with affection and esteem in my prayers.

Thank you for your attention,

Giorgio

Priest’s answer

Dear Giorgio,

1. The human soul is a subsistent form because, being spiritual in nature, it will survive the body.

It is not subsistent, on the other hand, in the meaning that it pre-exists the body.

However, even if it is able to survive the body, it is in an incomplete and imperfect state.

2. From exactly this state of imperfection, theologians conclude that the resurrection of the bodies promised by Jesus Christ and their reunion with the soul is not something to be considered unnatural.

The soul that is separated from the body will eagerly wait for the reunion, because its function is to vivify a body and not to solely exist by itself.

That is why it is reasonable to believe in the resurrection of the body, as we enounce in the Apostles’ Creed.

3. To prove that the soul cannot pre-exist the body, St. Thomas makes this argument: God created every being in their natural and perfect state.

But the soul, when separated from the body, is in a condition of incompleteness and imperfection.

Now, since God does not create anything imperfect, this means that the soul is created simultaneously with the generation of the body.

4. In what sense could we say that the soul pre-exists the body?

Exclusively when meaning that, before its creation, the soul is found in the mind of God. It is found, however, as an idea. The body as well is found as an idea in the mind of God.

This is because everything is pre-known by God.

But from this we cannot deduce that souls exist by themselves.

One can only say that they exist in mente Dei, in the same way that bodies and all realities that do not yet exist, do.

5. Now, coming to the question that interests you the most: whether the soul gains its singularity or individuality from the moment it is infused into the body, or whether before this moment all souls are the same (as Origen had mistakenly thought).

But the latter is not possible, because this would mean that souls pre-exist the body and would therefore have been created in a state of imperfection.

This would be contrary to divine revelation, because Deus bene omnia fecit (cf. Qo 3:11), as we have seen.

6. At best, we could say that souls are all the same in their essence in the same way that human bodies are also all the same because they all belong to the same human nature.

But this statement is the result of an abstraction thanks to our intelligence, which distinguishes between essence and individuality.

In concrete terms, however, there are no essences alone (for example: there is no human nature in itself), but there are only individuals belonging to human nature.

We can conclude then that the human soul is created in its singularity with the purpose of being the substantial form of a particular body.

I congratulate you for this truly cunning question, perfectly fit for a professional philosopher as yourself.

I bless you and gladly remember you in my prayers, 

Father Angelo