Spirit, Matter, and the Spirituality of the Human Soul

The Church teaches that every spiritual soul is created immediately by God- it is not “produced” by the parents- and also that it is immortal: it does not perish when it separates from the body at death, and it will be reunited with the body at the final Resurrection. 1

As mentioned in my previous apologetics post, if I were going to explain the Catholic faith to someone then I would start by discussing faith and reason. The second thing I would discuss is the spirituality of the human soul, the study of which begins with understanding the difference between spirit and matter.

Lamentation by Giotto

Spirit and Matter

The universe (which God created and in which we exist) consists of two things: spirit and matter. Spirit is invisible. It has no shape and no parts. God is a spirit. Only a spirit can know and love. Because they cannot decompose all spirits are immortal. Angels are spirits, too. To be spirit is to lack parts and to have the faculties of reason and will.

Matter is not immortal. It has parts and occupies space. Living things- plants and animals- are matter. Plants and animals have souls but they are not rational souls (since they are not made of spirit) and so plants and animals cannot know or love like spirits can. Unlike spirit, all matter will eventually decompose and cease to exist. 

So how does all of this spirit and matter affect human beings?

Vitruvian Man by Leonardo da Vinci

The Spirituality of the Human Soul

We humans are the only creatures in the universe who are made of both spirit and matter. Your body is matter but your soul is spirit and so- unlike other living things- you can know and love. After you die, your body will decompose but your soul- which is spirit and thus immortal- will never die. So what will happen to your immortal soul after you die? This is an important question and begs further discussion (though I think most people today would rather avoid this topic altogether).

For thousands of years, people much smarter than you and me have grappled with the question of whether or not man has a soul. Even pagan philosophers and non-religious people- through reason- can come to the realization that man must have a spiritual soul.

Proving the spirituality or immateriality of the human soul is easy. Human beings can study the visible world and, from sensible experiences of material objects or events, create purely immaterial realities called ideas. For example, a person sees crimes being committed and criminals being punished. From these observations the mind forms the idea of “justice,” a purely spiritual reality. He may see justice being applied in individual cases, but the idea of “justice” is a universal, abstract concept that is immaterial or spiritual.

If you doubt this, simply form any abstract idea in your mind and ask yourself: How much does this idea weigh? How long is it? What color is it? What shape is it? How much space does it take up? The answer is that your idea has no weight, no length, no color, no shape, and takes up no space. It simply has no material attributes at all. Something with no material attributes is immaterial, another word for spiritual.

Immaterial ideas imply an immaterial faculty capable of forming them. It is impossible for something material to create something immaterial. Therefore, the faculty capable of forming spiritual ideas must itself be spiritual. This spiritual faculty can only come from a spiritual substance, the soul.

In short, human thinking reveals the ability to form purely immaterial concepts, called ideas.

These immaterial concepts require an immaterial faculty, the intellect.

This immaterial faculty requires a spiritual reality, the soul.

The Thinker by Auguste Rodin

Limits of Materialism

Materialists believe that the only reality is the material universe. They deny God, the spiritual soul, angels, and all other spiritual realities. Hard-core materialists deny universal ideas and free will, since these are spiritual realities. Materialism is the underlying philosophy of communism, which has enslaved billions since the early 1900s. Communists attempted to replace God with the communist state. They outlawed belief in God. In communism, atheists achieved their greatest victory.  

Vladimir Lenin

We are creatures of sense. Our five senses put us in contact with the external world. Human knowledge, no matter how advanced, depends on knowledge that was initially obtained through the senses. Our contact with the material world through the senses is direct, concrete, and immediate. Our knowledge of spiritual realities requires that we reason with abstract concepts. This means forming immaterial ideas from the sensation of material things, a process that is obviously indirect, abstract, and less immediate. Because of this difference between knowing sensible things and spiritual things, many people accept the position of materialism: that the only reality is what can be known through the senses and that spiritual knowledge is simply imaginary.

Materialism claims that physical matter is the only reality, and that everything in the universe- including thought, feeling, mind, and will- can be explained in terms of matter and products of matter.

Karl Marx 

If everything in the universe is matter made from matter, then human thinking is a product of matter. Matter acts, not for its own purposes, but rather, out of necessity. Water doesn’t choose to flow downhill; it simply must. But if all matter acts necessarily, following physical laws to inevitable results, then human thought- also a product of matter- is simply the result of necessary physical causes. Our thoughts, then, are not true or false. They simple are, as a necessary effect of our physical state. 

If materialism is true, we are not free to choose one theory over another based on which fits the evidence better. We must think as we do, for all thought is the inevitable effect of physical causes. Therefore, it is absurd for us to try to “convince” another person that our idea is “true.” Truth and choices are illusions. Atheists’ attempts to persuade are sheer folly. No one can freely change his thinking, for man’s thoughts result from his physical condition. Of course, if his physical condition changes, then his thoughts will change correspondingly. But no one- including an atheist- is free to weigh the evidence, or choose the idea that best corresponds to reality. No one is free to think, let alone convert. 

Materialism is self-contradictory. If materialism is true, then thoughts cannot be true- they simply are- including the thought of materialism. The claim that all thought is the necessary result of physical conditions destroys the possibility of thought. It is, as G.K. Chesterton observed, a thought that stops all thought. If materialism is right, then thinking is an illusion, including thinking that materialism is right.  

G.K. Chesterton

Materialism destroys the very things atheists extol: reason, free will, and, ultimately, science. You can’t do science if you can’t form abstract, immaterial ideas. You can’t do science if you aren’t free to choose the theory that best fits the evidence. 

Materialism grants atheists a victory, but at a terrible cost. Materialism does banish spiritual entities such as God. But it also eliminates abstract thought, freedom, and all human inquiry. Honest atheists will find this price too high. 2

Saint Paul Preaching in Athens by Raphael

Conclusion

We live in a world of spirit and matter where human beings grow increasingly materialistic and treat spirit as superstition. But man is a union of spirit and matter. To deny spirit is to deny ourselves and to live in a dangerous fantasy world. Matter can give us temporary pleasure and gratification but only spirit can give our souls complete and everlasting joy and peace.

I believe through reason we can demonstrate 1) man has a soul, and 2) man's soul must be spiritual. After explaining to someone the difference between spirit and matter- and how man's spiritual soul is immortal- I would then ask him or her two basic theological questions. First, what do you think is the origin of your spiritual soul? And second, where do you think your soul will ultimately spend eternity? I think these two questions are worth asking for Catholics and non-Catholics alike. In fact, what questions could be more important to the human race? 

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1  Catechism of the Catholic Church (Città del Vaticano, Libreria Editrice Vatican, 1994)
2  Fr. Frank Chacon and Jim Burnham, Beginning Apologetics 4: How to Answer Atheists & New Agers (Farmington, NM : San Juan Catholic Seminars, 2010)


Recommended Links:

Archbishop Daniel Pilarczyk – A Brief Summary of Catholicism

From Death to Life by Christoph Cardinal Schönborn

Theology and Sanity by Frank Sheed