Being Human, Part IBody, Soul, Spirit

I shall be entirely useless if none of my training were to be indigestible to lay believers; Pope Francis is correct in criticising "desk-bound theology"--

The Church, in her commitment to evangelization, appreciates and encourages the charism of theologians and their scholarly efforts to advance dialogue with the world of cultures and sciences. I call on theologians to carry out this service as part of the Church’s saving mission. In doing so, however, they must always remember that the Church and theology exist to evangelize, and not be content with a desk-bound theology (Evangelii gaudium, n.133).

For this reason, this post (and a few of my previous ones) seeks to make digestible some of the points of my research; my Dorktorvater told me--in essence--that he hopes the way I gave my answers at the comprehensive examination isn't the way I would preach or catechise!  True, true.

That being said, this post will explore humanity in its three parts--the "tripartite human nature" as it's sometimes called--namely "body," "soul," and "spirit."  We have heard this phrase many times, particularly in the apostolic writings of the New Testament:

May the God of peace himself sanctify you wholly; may your spirit and soul and body be kept sound and blameless at the Coming of our Lord Jesus Christ (1 Thess 5:23);

 For the Word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and spirit, of joints and marrow... (Hebrews 4:12).

St Paul's line to the Church at Thessalonika has become classic; the passage from Hebrews is a more fleshed-out (pun intended!) way of saying the same thing, except "body" has been replaced with "joints and marrow."

The question, though, is a straightforward one:  What is the difference between "soul" and "spirit"?  In conversational language, we speak of the "spiritual life" and "spiritual growth," but we refer to "my soul" and to "the salvation of souls."  How do bodies and souls and spirits differ from each other?

"Body"

Let's begin with the obvious.  The "body" is simple enough:  It is the organic matter, the "flesh" of which we are made:  skin covering organs and bones.  It is the matter of human nature, but here we mean it in a narrower sense than merely the "stuff" of of our makeup.  In the language of the New Testament, "body" is σῶμα (sṓma) is contrasted with "flesh," σάρξ (sárks) in that the former has the flavour of pointing towards the whole person, whereas the latter tends to point to the material aspect of the person.  This is simplifying things a bit, but it'll have to do for our purposes.

In my dictionary of words used by St Thomas Aquinas, corpus is given for "body" and it has the meaning of "either in the physical sense as material, or mathematical as tridimensional, frame, synonym of elementum, the opposite of spiritus" (Deferarri, 247).  "Flesh," on the other hand, in Latin, is related to the word for "meat," namely caro, carnis, "(1) flesh in the proper sense of the word, the opposite of spiritus, (2) flesh in the improper sense of the word, carnal inclination, carnal disposition of man, also the opposite of spiritus (Deferarri, 133).

In both cases, they are contrasted with "spirit."

"Soul and Spirit"

Now we can get onto St Thomas' exegesis of 1 Thessalonians 5:23, wherein he distinguishes between "soul" and "spirit"--

For it should be realized that these two elements do not differ essentially, but only by reason of the powers present in them. There are certain powers in our soul which are linked to bodily organs, such as the powers of the sensitive part of the soul.  And there are other powers which are not linked to bodily organs, but function apart from the body, insofar as they are the powers of the intellectual part of the soul. The latter powers are regarded as spiritual powers in that they are immaterial and separated in some manner from the body in that they are not functions of the body but are referred to as the mind. Be renewed in the spirit of your minds (Eph 4:23). Yet it is called the soul insofar as it animates the body, for this is proper to it (Commentary on 1 Thessalonians, , §137).

"Soul" and "spirit" are not different things; rather, they are different functions within the one thing.  Here is where we need to keep our vocabulary like ducks in a row:  "soul" can mean the whole spiritual aspect of human nature; in a narrower sense it can also mean a certain function in contrast to the function of the "spirit."

Notice that St Thomas speaks of the "sensitive part of the soul" and then the "intellectual part of the soul."  Both the "sensitive part" and the "intellectual part" are in the soul, but, as he said, "[t]he latter part [= "intellectual part"] are regarded as spiritual powers...[and] are referred to as the mind."  In other words, the "spirit" is the cognitive part, the thinking and willing part.  St Thomas cites Ephesians 4:23 to demonstrate this:  "...and be renewed in the spirit of your minds..."  Calling attention to the hinge "of," he compares it to "...by putting off the body of flesh..."  In other words, "spirit of your minds" relates 'spirit' to 'mind,' just as "body of flesh" relates 'body' to 'flesh,' no less than the "pages of a book" relates pages to books, or "people of the crows" relates 'people' to 'crowd.'  There is a sense of 'symmetry' in the definition.  Hence, in his Commentary on Ephesians (§243) St Thomas wrote:

Or spirit could refer to the rational spirit and would be identical with our mind, similar to the expression: in despoiling of the body of the flesh (Col 2:11), that is, the body which the flesh is.  Likewise here, in the spirit of your mind would refer to the spirit which the mind is. He would qualify it in this way since there is another spirit within us, differing from the mind, and which is common to both us and the beasts.

 So the "spirit" refers to the mind.  This is why, then, we read about Jesus:

And immediately Jesus, perceiving [ἐπιγνοὺς] in his spirit that they thus questioned within themselves... (Mark 2:8).

The scribes were thinking to themselves, but "in His spirit" Jesus was able to "perceive":  The Greek verb here means "to know exactly, to recognize" (Strong's #1921), clearly an operation of the mind, a mental operation.

Before we talk more about the "soul" in the sense of the "sensitive soul," let's look at the next paragraph of St Thomas' commentary on 1 Thessalonians 5:23, where he explains how one is "blameless" in all three parts of human nature:

Paul speaks here in a specific sense.  Now there are three elements involved in sin: reason, the sensitive appetite, and the actual actions of the body.  Paul is anxious that all three of these areas be free of sin. Since he wants reason to be free of sin, he says:  that your whole spirit, that is, your mind, may be preserved.  For in every sin, reason is corrupted in the sense that every bad person is in some way ignorant. There should be no sin in the sensitive appetite either, and Paul refers to this when he says:  and soul. Nor should there be sin in the body, and so Paul adds: and body.

To be "blameless" in "spirit" is to be blameless in our "reason" or the mind, that is, in our habits of thinking.  This is why we pray in the Confiteor at Mass, "I confess to almighty God...that I have greatly sinned, in my thoughts..." (The Order of Mass, 4).  To be "blameless" in "body" has to do with "the actual actions of the body," the things we do--where we go, how we (mis-) use our hands, how we (mis-) use our voice.  Again, as we confess at Mass, "...that I have greatly sinned, in my thoughts and in my words, in what I have done and what I have failed to do..."  Thus the elements of "reason" and the "actual actions of the body" involved in sin.  What about the "soul"?

The "soul" (in the narrower sense, that is, in contrast to "spirit," rather than the larger sense which includes both) is the seat of the emotional life or, more properly, the "passions."  This is why St Thomas referred it as the "sensitive appetite."  Hence St Thomas wrote that "[t]here should be no sin in the sensitive appetite..."

Experience tells us that when our passions are "inflamed," we are enticed to sin, like when I drive by a billboard featuring the very large and shapely "St Pauli girl" on the highway.  This is at the heart of the saying, "Don't let your emotions cloud your judgment."  We're going to come back to this.

Hence St Peter, several times, speaks of how the Christian ought to no longer allow his or her passions to enslave him or her:

As obedient children, do not be conformed to the passions of your former ignorance... (1 Peter 1:14);

Beloved, I beseech you as aliens and exiles to abstain from the passions of the flesh that wage war against your soul (1 Peter 2:11);

...so as to live for the rest of the time in the flesh no longer by human passions but the will of God... (1 Peter 4:2);

...by which he has granted us his precious and very great promises, that through these you may escape from the corruption that is in the world because of passion, and become partakers of the divine nature (2 Peter 1:4);

...and especially those who indulge in the lust of defiling passion and despise authority...   For, uttering loud boasts of folly, they entice with licentious passions of the flesh men who have barely escaped from those who live in error (2 Peter 2:10, 18).

In these passages, St Peter makes clear that the "passions" are self-destructive and are related, somehow, to ignorance.  Again, "Do not let your emotions cloud your judgment."  He also contrasts the "passions" with divinization and doing the will of God.  This brings us to our last point:  The ordering or hierarchy of the soul's functions.

Spirit > Soul > Body

If you're in the habit of watching Big Bang Theory you will notice--especially in its earlier seasons--that Dr Sheldon Cooper appears to be almost entirely aloof when it comes to sex.  The implication, clearly, is that his intelligence finds such satisfaction with the "life of the mind" that he has little use for sex beyond what's practical, that is, to propagate the human species.  On the other hand, his intensely cerebral life has made him rather insensitive to his friends and acquaintances.  Whoever wrote the series, I dare to say, was an 'anonymous Thomist,' to paraphrase Karl Rahner!

In contrast, consider people in your lives who maybe wholly given over to sexual pleasures.  Experience tells us that they tend to be, on the whole, dullards, because "venereal pleasures" (as St Thomas calls them) tends to "override" the pleasures of the intellectual life.  (Is it any wonder that Alfred Kinsey was an utter boor?)

It is for this reason that, in St Thomas' system, the spirit or the mind or the intellectual part of the soul holds first rank, because how we think ought to govern everything else.  This is why he calls prudence the "charioteer of the virtues," but we'll look at that closely in the next post.  Hence Catholic doctrine teaches that, with the introduction of sin, the "integrity" of our first parents was lost; in other words, whereas before sin, reason governed our emotions, but after sin emotions became 'passionate' and governed, or rather enslaved, our reason.  Experience tells us this, too:  Nobody sins because they've decided it was a good thing to do; rather, we sin because we get excited about something, with excitement gaining the upper hand over thinking.  "Don't let your emotions cloud your judgment."

The contemporary implications of this are enormous.  How many times have we heard someone explain their point of view by saying "I feel that..." rather than "I think that..."  Emotions are good, but they don't think.  (Believe me, I've tried that in high school algebra:  "I feel the answer is 'c'" never got me an 'A'!

This is why, in his commentary on Hebrews, St Thomas explains that the Word of God cleaves between the "soul" and "spirit"--in order to re-set and re-order the priority of thinking over emoting; as a two-edged sword, that is, very sharp and piercing, it evenly slices between "soul and spirit," that is, between the emotional life and the intellectual life, and "joints and marrow," that is, the bodily life:

The Word of God effects and distinguishes between all those divisions and species, namely, how the sensibility is distinguished from reason; also, the species of the same sensibility in itself; also, the species of the function of reason, and what arises in the rational soul from the consideration of spiritual and earthly things (Commentary on Hebrews, §222).

This is why in the Garden of Gethsemane, Christ did not allow His emotions to override His thinking.  We will explore this more fully in future post, but it suffices for now to highlight the steps Christ took in order to maintain the correct "ordering" of His soul's powers:

"Now is My soul troubled.  And what shall I say?  'Father, save me from this hour'?  No, for this purpose I have come to his hour.  Father, glorify thy Name! (John 12:27).

 This is how St Thomas unpacks this single, yet enormous Biblical verse:

And so the soul of Christ was troubled in such a way that its perturbation was not opposed to reason, but according to the order of reason... (Commentary on John, §1651).

The full quote is too long to include here, but I will summarise how, according to St Thomas, the Lord Jesus Christ maintained the correct ordering of the soul as an example for us.

1.  Fear (the emotion) makes one take counsel; i.e., He turns to reason in order to pacify His emotion:  "And what shall I say?"
2.  Christ rhetorically asks, on the basis of his sensitive soul, "Father, save me..."
3.  Christ answers His own rhetorical question, "For this purpose I have come...", thus subordinating his emotions to his reason;
4.  Finally, a correct prayer is devised:  "Father, glorify Thy Name!"

Therefore, to speak of the "spiritual life" we mean, in part, to speak of the life of the 'whole soul' guided by the 'spirit of our mind,' which is constantly being "renewed" according to God's purpose.  "Don't let your emotions cloud your judgment," yes, but:  "Don't let your judgment cloud the will of God."

This is why, for example, the preservation of the liberal arts was once the domain of monastics:  Both Hugh of St-Victor and John of Salisbury wrote an extensive treatise on classical learning and, later, St Albert the Great's sanctity owed a great deal to this mental prowess on account of his scientific achievements; Thierry of Chartres wrote a commentary on Boëthius' On Arithmetic and the Cathedral School he was affiliated with furnished Europe with scholars-clerics of renown--not just for their learning but, concomitantly, for their piety.  The "unflappability" with which St Bernard of Clairvaux could write about the very suggestive themes of the Song of Songs owes to the mental training in intellectual delights so prevalent in monastic culture.  This is at the heart of the Dominican charism of intelligence and holiness going hand-in-hand.

And that is why, equally, there is a decline in contemporary education:  Feelings, emotivism, or more precisely, the passions have the weightier say, making us less-than-intelligent and, thereby, less-than-human.

In a subsequent post, we will look at how simply 'having' a body, soul, and spirit is insufficient to be human, and how the virtues, in fact, humanize us.