Friday, November 6, 2015

Selected quotes concerning the rational soul

■ "But death primarily involves the dissolution of the entire psychophysical personality of man. The soul survives and subsists separated from the body, while the body is subjected to gradual decomposition according to the words of the Lord God, pronounced after the sin committed by man at the beginning of his earthly history: You are dust and to dust you shall return." ─Pope John Paul II: Salvifici Doloris, IV.

■ “What constitutes man is principally the soul, the substantial form of his nature. From it, ultimately, flows all the vital activities of man. In it are rooted all the psychic dynamisms with their own proper structure and their organic law. It is the soul which nature charges with the government of all man’s energies, in so far as these have not yet acquired their final determination.” ─Pope Pius XII: Address to the 5th Int. Congr. of Psychotherapy and Clinical Psychology. (Apr. 13, 1953)

■ “It is one thing to ask the meaning of the word animal, and another to ask its meaning when the animal in question is man.” ─St. Thomas: Summa Theologica, Ia. q. 29, a. 4.

■ “Human souls and pure spirits [angels] are different kinds of things.” ─St. Thomas: Summa Theologica, Ia. q. 75, a. 7.

■ “THE human soul is the actuality of an organism, which is its instrument—not, however, for every activity, for some activities of the soul surpass the range of the body.” ─St. Thomas: Disputations Concerning the Soul, 2. 

■ “The mind is a subsisting form, and is consequently immortal. Aristotle agrees that the mind is divine and perpetual.” ─St. Thomas: Disputations Concerning the Soul, 14.

■ “The soul is that through which we have communion with animals, spirit that through which we have intercourse with spiritual substances. Nevertheless it is one and the same substance which quickens body and which, by its power called mind, is able to understand." ─St. Thomas: Commentary on Hebrews, 4, lect. 2.

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