62. The soul is what makes every individual person a man.

The soul is what makes every individual person a man.

YOUCAT Catechism + Catechism of the Catholic Church Lesson 62

Ave Maria series

62.  What is the soul?

The soul is what makes every individual person a man:  his spiritual life-principle and inmost being.  The soul causes the material body to be a living human body.  Through his soul, man is a creature who can say “I” and stand before God as an irreplaceable individual.  [362-365, 382]

James (Jimmy) Earl Carter, Jr., 39^th president of the United States, Baptist, and a man off great integrity.  .....62

In 1982, Jimmy Carter founded the Carter Center, which has played in active role in human rights and disease prevention issues globally. The Carters helped publicize Habitat for Humanity. Carter received his Nobel Prize in 2002. He received the award "for his decades of untiring effort to find peaceful solutions to international conflicts, to advance democracy and human rights, and to promote economic and social development." Harry Truman was Carter’s favorite President. Carter told The Guardian in 2011 that he admired Truman for not trying to profit off his presidency. –National Constitution Center

Men are bodily and spiritual creatures.  A man’s spirit is more than a function of his body and cannot be explained in terms of man’s material composition.  Reason tells us that there must be a spiritual principle that is united with the body but not identical to it.  We call it the “soul”.    Although the soul’s existence cannot be “proved” scientifically, man cannot be understood as a spiritual or intellectual being without accepting this spiritual principle that transcends matter.  153-154, 163

“He became what we are, so that he might make us what he is.”  St. Athanasius the Great (ca. 295-373, Father of the Church)

“Man is truly himself when his body and soul are intimately united.  …Should he aspire to be pure spirit and to reject the flesh as pertaining to his animal nature alone, then spirit and body would both lose their dignity.  On the other hand, should he deny the spirit and consider matter, the body, as the only reality, he would likewise lose his greatness.”  Pope Benedict XVI, Deus Caritas est

[362-365, 382]

"BODY AND SOUL BUT TRULY ONE"

362 The human person, created in the image of God, is a being at once corporeal and spiritual. The biblical account expresses this reality in symbolic language when it affirms that "then the LORD God formed man of dust from the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being."( Genesis 2:7.)²²⁹ Man, whole and entire, is therefore willed by God. –Catechism of the Catholic Church, Second Edition

363 In Sacred Scripture the term "soul" often refers to human life or the entire human person.( Compare Matthew 16:25-26; John 15:13; Acts of the Apostles 2:41.)²³⁰ But "soul" also refers to the innermost aspect of man, that which is of greatest value in him,(  Compare Matthew 10:28; Mt 26:38; John 12:27; 2 Maccabees 6:30)²³¹ that by which he is most especially in God's image: "soul" signifies the spiritual principle in man. --CCC

364 The human body shares in the dignity of "the image of God": it is a human body precisely because it is animated by a spiritual soul, and it is the whole human person that is intended to become, in the body of Christ, a temple of the Spirit(Compare 1 Corinthians 6:19-20; 1 Cor 15:44-45.)²³² --CCC

Man, though made of body and soul, is a unity. Through his very bodily condition he sums up in himself the elements of the material world. Through him they are thus brought to their highest perfection and can raise their voice in praise freely given to the Creator. For this reason man may not despise his bodily life. Rather he is obliged to regard his body as good and to hold it in honor since God has created it and will raise it up on the last day. (Gaudium et Spes 14 § 1; compare Daniel 3:57-80.)²³³ --CCC

365 The unity of soul and body is so profound that one has to consider the soul to be the "form" of the body(Compare Council of Vienne (1312): Denzinger-Schonmetzer 902. )²³⁴ i.e., it is because of its spiritual soul that the body made of matter becomes a living, human body; spirit and matter, in man, are not two natures united, but rather their union forms a single nature. --CCC

IN BRIEF

382 "Man, though made of body and soul, is a unity" (Gaudium et Spes 14 § 1). The doctrine of the faith affirms that the spiritual and immortal soul is created immediately by God. --CCC