Replies to the Objections and Soul vs. Spirit in Scripture (1 Thessalonians, the Magnificat, John 4)

Orientation #

He begins by “applying” the replies to the objections of the article whose body was treated already (“if you recall, there is saying that the understanding soul is incorruptible, but the other souls are corruptible”). He announces a break and then “these scriptural texts that are kind of relevant to this”. He does not say what comes next time. The previous class worked through the argument that man has one soul containing the vegetative, sensitive and rational powers, and the next takes up the following article on whether man has a substantial form besides the rational soul.

The class, in order #

1. Reply to the first objection (“does not have incorruptibility from the fact that it is sensing”) #

Point: the sensing soul of man is incorruptible, but not because it is sensing.

1. Objection (recalled): corruptible and incorruptible are not of one substance; the understanding soul is incorruptible, the sensing soul is not.
2. Thomas’s reply as he reads it: incorruptibility is owed to the soul because it has an operation not in the body, so it must have an existence not entirely in the body; the sensing soul’s operations are in the body.
3. Therefore a soul that is sensing only is corruptible (when the animal is destroyed, it is destroyed); a soul that senses and also understands is incorruptible — the sensing does not give the incorruption, but the incorruption cannot be taken away from an understanding soul.

2. Reply to the second objection (“forms are not placed in a genus”) #

Point: the difference corruptible/incorruptible on the side of form does not make man a different genus from the other animals.

1. Objection: in the tenth book of the Metaphysics, corruptible and incorruptible differ in genus; but man and dog are “animal” in the same sense.
2. Reply: forms are not placed in a genus or species; the composed thing is. Man is a species of substance; man is corruptible just as other animals are (“happens every day”).
3. The soul is only a part of man; it is led back to the genus substance as the form of a species, not as itself a species. The human soul is not an animal, though it is part of the human animal. Why Aristotle is right anyway: genus is originally taken from what we know from matter; matter is why things are corruptible; angels (Gabriel, Raphael, Michael — particular kinds of angel) are incorruptible because they have no matter, so they do not have the same genus as man, dog and cat. Observation he draws: considered by itself, our soul has more in common with the angels; considered in his body, man has more in common with the dog and cat.

• Logic aside: “that’s something again you learn in logic” — the form is not a species of the genus.

3. Digression: which is more me, body or soul? (“he’s gone”) #

Point: ordinary speech and judgement show that we take reason and choice, i.e. the soul, to be more ourselves than body and emotion.

• Nurses say “he’s gone” when the soul has left though the body is still there: the soul is treated as more “he” than the body.
• Premeditated murder is judged more severely than murder of passion: with reason involved “you seem to have done it more.”
• “I wasn’t myself yesterday”, “I lost control of myself”: something was in control — anger — so you take yourself to be less your anger than something else.
• Marriage: the priest does not ask about feelings but for the outward expression of a choice, as if what I choose is more me.
• Alcoholics Anonymous: the alcoholic is true to himself when true to his choice to stop drinking, not to his urge to drink; the choice, in the soul, is more him than the bodily urge. He notes that students, “especially a woman”, first answer that emotions are more them, but these questions bring them round; it is “not just the crazy philosophers” who think so.

4. Reply to the third objection (“replaced by more perfect soul”) #

Point: the earlier souls of the embryo do not remain alongside the later one; each is replaced.

1. Objection from Aristotle on the order of generation: the embryo has first a feeding soul, then a sensing, finally an understanding soul.
2. Reply: these are stages on the way to the generation of a full man; the earlier is replaced by a more perfect soul that carries on the earlier functions and adds new powers. Eventually the plant soul is replaced. Example, the three friendships: a friendship of usefulness (business partners) is replaced when we come to like each other by a friendship of pleasure, and that in turn by the highest friendship when we find each other virtuous; I do not then have three friendships but one that replaced the others. His father and the paint seller (utility: farm wagons needed paint) who became companions at ball games (pleasure). St Rose of Lima and the young man courting her for her beauty: she converted him, and a much higher friendship replaced the friendship of pleasure he wanted. Student exchange: does this go against the Church, and was it not resolved with the Immaculate Conception? He answers he does not know that the Church has formally decided when the understanding soul is infused; there may be probable opinions; perhaps implicitly resolved. A student adds that the intellectual soul seems “dormant” early; he agrees: “it’s there, it’s dormant.” He leaves it: “that’s our point here now to try to solve that, maybe.”

5. Reply to the fourth objection (“confusing logic with reality”) #

Point: “animal” and “rational” in the definition of man do not come from two souls but from one soul understood more generally and more precisely.

1. Objection: genus is taken from matter, difference from form; “animal” comes from a sensing soul, “rational” from an understanding soul, so there are two.
2. Reply (read): it is not necessary to take diversity in natural things according to diverse rationes or logical intentions that follow the way of understanding, because reason can understand one and the same thing in diverse ways. Since the understanding soul contains what the sensing soul has and more, reason can consider by itself what pertains to the sensing power as imperfect and material, find it common to man and the other animals, and form the thought of the genus; what exceeds it, it takes as formal and completive, and forms the difference.
3. Not like “healthy and white” (a geometer can be healthy without being a geometer): Lucy is not both a cat and, by something else, an animal; “animal” is understanding what a cat is in a more general, confused way. Examples of one thing understood at two levels:

• Triangle / rectilineal plane figure: the triangle is a triangle by its three sides and a rectilineal plane figure by having straight sides — the same lines; Euclid defines figure, then plane figure, then rectilineal plane figure, then subdivides by number of sides (quadrilateral, pentagon, hexagon). The difference is in the understanding (more distinct: four or three; more general: simply rectilineal), not in the lines. Student: “for some reason I’m not clicking” — he restates it until the student agrees.
• Man / woman / human being: to be a man or a woman is to be a human being; “human being”, “animal”, “living body” understand the same thing in a more general way.
• Five contains four: considering the four in five does not mean there are five ones and four other ones. He stresses: the objection confuses the way things are with the way we think — “the most common problem of philosophy.”

6. 1 Thessalonians 5:23 and Thomas’s commentary (“spirit, soul and body”) #

Point: Paul’s threefold “spirit, soul and body” does not posit two souls; spirit and soul differ by power, not by essence. He reads the Greek: autos ho theos tēs eirēnēs, may he sanctify you holoteleis and holoklēron — to pneuma, hē psychē, to sōma — kept blamelessly until the presence of the Lord. Thomas’s commentary read from the Latin: occasione istorum verborum dixerunt quidam quod in homine aliud est spiritus et aliud anima, ponentes duas in homine animas — and haec sunt reprobata in “that book Ecclesiasticus” [ed.: the same source cited in the article; likely De Ecclesiasticis Dogmatibus (inferred)]. A student notes a footnote saying the two-souls view was condemned by the Eighth Council of Constantinople. Correction: they differ not secundum essentiam but secundum potentiam. Some powers are acts of bodily organs (the sensing part); others are not (reason, understanding, will), and these are called spirituales, sometimes mens (he notes Augustine’s usage). Insofar as the soul animat a body it is called soul. So one soul: “spirit” as sharing understanding and will with angels and God, “soul” as form of the body. Paul speaks proprie: ad peccandum tria concurrunt — ratio, sensualitas, executio corporis. He prays there be sin in none: ut spiritus, i.e. mens vestra, servetur integer (in every sin reason is corrupted — Aristotle and Socrates: everyone who is bad is in some way ignorant); nec in sensualitate, whence anima; nor in the body, et corpus.

7. The Magnificat, the Hail Mary, Elizabeth (“My soul magnifies the Lord”) #

Point: Mary’s “soul” and “spirit” are one soul named from its bodily and its immaterial powers, and the order of the words fits. Greek: megalynei hē psychē mou ton kyrion … to pneuma mou epi tō theō. Two readings of “my soul magnifies the Lord”: (obvious) she praises God through her body — genuflecting, singing psalms — hence through the soul as form of the body; (more subtle, his preference) kyrios names God most strictly because he made us and we belong to him; his works magnify him; the greatest thing God made is the Word made flesh (he cites the Summa Contra Gentiles’ division: God in himself, God as maker, God as end and provident; in the third part the incarnation is the greatest thing God made); Mary cooperates in this by her flesh, blood and milk — through her body, so “soul”. “My spirit rejoices in God”: God in himself is an object only for the powers not in the body, reason and will — so “spirit”. Hail Mary: “full of grace, the Lord is with thee” refers to her spirit (grace is in the part of the soul transcending the body; theological virtues are in reason and will, not the senses, though infused moral virtues may be in the emotions); Elizabeth’s “blessed art thou among women, blessed is the fruit of thy womb” refers to the bodily aspect (only woman both virgin and mother; the incarnation). Same distinction, reverse order from the Magnificat. Augustine: Mary would profit nothing from conceiving Christ in her body had she not first conceived him in her soul/spirit.

• Aside: the mother’s blood circulates into the child and back — Christ really sharing her blood; he was surely breastfed.

8. Gethsemane, the Samaritan woman, the word “spirit” (“the spirit is willing”) #

Point: Scripture uses “spirit” for the immaterial.

• “The spirit is willing but the flesh is weak” (Matthew and Mark; he does not find it in Luke or John): spirit = the soul’s immaterial powers, less corrupted by the body; flesh = the soul as animating the body, sensuality — the division in oneself under temptation between reason and bodily emotions.
• The Samaritan woman: hoi alēthinoi proskynētai proskynēsousin tō patri en pneumati kai alētheia; the Father seeks such worshippers, for God is pneuma. God wants worship in spirit because he himself is spirit. “Spirit” comes originally from breath or air and is carried over to name what is immaterial — angels, God, and the soul of man; the souls of other animals are not called spirits. He closes returning to Paul’s ratio, sensualitas, executio corporis; “anima” for sensuality is “kind of a barbarous thing” [ed.: recording ends here].

His words #

• understanding soul / sensing soul / feeding soul: his renderings of the three grades [ed.: intellectual, sensitive, nutritive/vegetative]
• incorruptible owed to the soul because it has an operation not in the body
• forms are not placed in a genus; the composed thing is
• genus taken from matter, difference from form
• diverse rationes / “thoughts or logical intentions which follow upon the way of understanding”
• understood more distinctly vs. more confusedly, more particular vs. more general — one and the same thing
• confusing the way things are with the way we think: “the most common problem of philosophy”
• secundum essentiam vs. secundum potentiam
• spirituales, mens: the soul insofar as it has powers not in the body; anima: insofar as it animat a body
• ratio, sensualitas, executio corporis: the three that run together in sinning
• kyrios: Lord, most strictly said of God because he made us and we belong to him
• “Summa Carta Gentiles” [ed.: Summa Contra Gentiles]

Texts #

Read in class

• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I q.76 a.3 (inferred), replies to objections 1-4
• 1 Thessalonians 5:23 (Greek)
• Thomas Aquinas, Commentary on 1 Thessalonians, on 5:23 (Latin)
• Luke, the Magnificat (Greek)
• John, “worship the Father in spirit and truth” (Greek) (inferred locus)

Mentioned

• Aristotle, Metaphysics, book ten (corruptible and incorruptible differ in genus)
• Aristotle on the order of generation of the embryo
• Euclid, definitions of figure, plane figure, rectilineal figure
• Eighth Council of Constantinople (footnote, condemning two souls)
• Augustine (use of mens; Mary conceiving Christ first in her soul)
• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Contra Gentiles, division of the work
• Matthew and Mark, “the spirit is willing, the flesh is weak”
• Luke, Elizabeth’s greeting; the Hail Mary

His questions #

• Which is more me, my body or my soul? The soul: “he’s gone” is said when the soul leaves.
• Which do you judge more severely, premeditated murder or murder of passion? Why? Premeditated, because reason was more involved — a sign we think reason is more us than emotion.
• Are the lines by which this is a triangle other than the lines by which it is a rectilineal plane figure? No; the same lines understood more distinctly or more generally.
• Is it by one thing that you are a man and by something else that you are a human being? No; to be a man is to be a human being, understood more precisely or more generally.
• Does the third reply go against the Church? (student) He does not know it was formally decided; probable opinions; left open.
• What is the difference between the spirit and the soul in Paul? Not in essence but in power: immaterial powers vs. powers animating the body.
• Why does Mary say “soul” first and “spirit” later? Soul: she magnifies the Maker through her body in the incarnation; spirit: only the immaterial powers can rejoice in God in himself.
• What is the greatest thing God has made? The Word made flesh.
• Why does God want worship in spirit and truth? Because God himself is spirit.