A Soul Is Infused At Conception

[Apotheoun]

[quote name='HartfordWhalers' date='Sep 11 2004, 11:11 AM'] 2) Where does the Church say that a soul is infused at conception, in light of my previous post--I wasn't saying everything St. Augustine said was infallible. I said that between him and you, I chose him any day. Moreover, that was in response to a comment from someone who did not at all take into account the facts or the points but just left a useless one-liner: "St. Augustine isn't infallible" pretty much implying that if someone is not infallible, nothing he says is correct, regardless of evidence. [/quote]
The choice is not between Augustine and me, but between Augustine and the Magisterium.

The Church's doctrines of the incarnation and the immaculate conception become non-sensical if the soul is not immediately infused into the body at the moment of conception. It is the soul that gives form and actuality to the body, and so the body cannot exist without its connatural soul. The rational soul, because it exceeds the matter that it actuates can exist in separation from the body, but when it exists in this manner it is in some sense incomplete, and that is why the resurrection of the body is so important. Man is a single hylomorphic being, and thus body and soul are not to be thought of as two substances or two subsistences; instead, they form a single subsistence.

[HartfordWhalers]

[quote name='Apotheoun' date='Sep 11 2004, 01:42 PM'] The Church's doctrines of the incarnation and the immaculate conception become non-sensical if the soul is not immediately infused into the body at the moment of conception. [/quote]
"those declarations don't say that ALL men are immaculate from sin at conception (obviously), so you can't extend to everyone the soul at conception"

Like I said, we are going in circles here... can you address the other things I said?

[Apotheoun]

[quote name='HartfordWhalers' date='Sep 11 2004, 09:44 AM']"The Church's Magisterium has always held, in connection with both the dogma of the incarnation and the dogma of Mary's immaculate conception, that the body, of necessity, is infused from the first instant of conception with a rational soul, and to say otherwise is to fall into heresy."

Well, I guess since St. Augustine did the same, so he must be a heretic, as well? Moreover, the Immaculate Concpetion says that THE BLESSED VIRGIN was conceived immaculately. It doesn't say that every person is infused with a soul that way. This is similar to th argument for Christ. Just because He and the Blessed Virign, the two exceptions in all of histroy from sin, had Their Souls infused at conception, does not mean all men do.[/quote]
Certainly, St. Augustine can be a material heretic when a later definition of faith makes explicit something that he either denied or simply didn't hold, but he would not be culpable for this material heresy, and would still be a saint. When a man is canonized as a saint, it does not follow that everything he ever taught is thereby canonized with him. St. Gregory of Nyssa taught a form of the apokatastasis heresy, but he is still a saint, because the definitions on that doctrine were only made explicit after his death. This is not all that unusual.

The Church teaches that grace is not irresistible, while St. Augustine taught that it is. I will go with the Church on this one.

[qfnol31]

[quote name='HartfordWhalers' date='Sep 11 2004, 01:41 PM'] [b]You keep skirting this question: since you say the soul is infused at conception, do you say that identical twins/triplets, etc. have only a fraction of a soul, or do you say the original embryo has more than one soul?[/b]

"Why would you think that there is more than one soul? The soul is the form of the body, the body cannot exist in act without its connatural soul."

I would think that since you said the soul is infused at conception. Either the embryo is infused at conception with 2 souls or the two or more humans that come from that embryo only have a fraction of a soul. Quite simple really. [/quote]
We are not able to say when the second soul, or third as it may be, etc., is infused. However, it would appear that at some point in time there would have to be because the soul will not work against itself and cause the body to split. As soon as the embryo splits it would seem that there must be a second soul septerating out.

Now how would it have a fraction of a soul? A soul is incorporeal and so two can theoretically coexist in the embryo.

[quote]I would think that since you said the soul is infused at conception. Either the embryo is infused at conception with 2 souls or the two or more humans that come from that embryo only have a fraction of a soul. Quite simple really.[/quote]

How would a fraction of a soul explain this? I don't think it's that simple. I could see no reason why two souls were not infused at conception, can you?

[jmjtina]

[quote name='HartfordWhalers' date='Sep 11 2004, 11:56 AM'] I don't recall Apotheoun being declared infallible.

Hmm... Apotheoun or Augustine, Apotheoun or Augustine.. not a hard choice.

In any event, if I am a heretic, so is St. Augustine, which CLEARLY is not true, since we was canonized. Use some deductive reasoning here... [/quote]
Apotheoun is stating what the church teaches, I thought that was obvious. I know if I start quoting, sharing and explaining an infallible doctrine to someone who is unfamiliar with it, it shoots all all other opposing ideas anyone may have had, (also see how far we have come in understanding in the Church)....not because they are my own thoughts, but thoughts guided and protected by the Holy Spirit in our Holy Mother Church.

I think it's important to point out that we are coming to a deeper understanding of many things in regards to life through technology (the age answer of when life actually begins has been answered, which Augustine couldn't have answered then), not having new and contradiction thoughts, but a deeper and better understanding. Augustine is awesome, but we have come to a deeper and better understanding since then.

God Bless.

Edited September 11, 2004 by jmjtina

[qfnol31]

Hartford Whalers, you claim that you are with Augustine, so I want to ask just two questions for now. Do you think that the soul is infused at the beginning of life? For Augustine did.

When do you think life begins?

[Apotheoun]

[quote name='HartfordWhalers' date='Sep 11 2004, 11:47 AM'] "those declarations don't say that ALL men are immaculate from sin at conception (obviously), so you can't extend to everyone the soul at conception"

Like I said, we are going in circles here... can you address the other things I said? [/quote]
If you are correct, it follows that Christ possesses an essentially different kind of human nature, and He saved no one. His human nature is identical to every other man's, sin alone being the exception, but remember that sin is not a quality of the soul, it is the absence of sanctifying grace. Thus, even though He is not in a state of original sin, His humanity is identical to ours. Since His soul is infused immediately into His body, it follows of necessity, that this is true of every man.

We are going in circles because you, unwittingly, are denying the dogmas of the incarnation and the immaculate conception. The soul must be infused immediately into man's body or the incarnation and the immaculate conception are proved false, and I won't agree with you in saying that. The rational soul is the form of the body, it is that which makes the body actual. As St. Thomas said, "The soul communicates that existence in which it subsists to the corporeal matter, out of which and the intellectual soul there results unity of existence; so that the existence of the whole composite is also the existence of the soul. This is not the case with other non-subsistent forms. For this reason the human soul retains its own existence after the dissolution of the body; whereas it is not so with other forms." [St. Thomas, [u]Summa Theologica[/u], Prima Pars, Q. 76, A. 1] Now, understanding that matter is to form as potency is to act, if follows that the soul is what gives actuality to the body, and that the body cannot exist without it's connatural form. As he goes on to say in reference to the rational soul as the substantial form of the body, ". . . it is impossible for any accidental disposition to come between the body and the soul, or between any substantial form whatever and its matter. The reason is because since matter is in potentiality to all manner of acts in a certain order, what is absolutely first among the acts must be understood as being first in matter. [i]Now the first among all acts is existence[/i]. Therefore, it is impossible for matter to be apprehended as hot, or as having quantity, [i]before it is actual[/i]. [i][b]But matter has actual existence by the substantial form, which makes it to exist absolutely, as we have said above [/b][/i]. Wherefore it is impossible for any accidental dispositions to pre-exist in matter before the substantial form, and consequently before the soul." [St. Thomas, [u]Summa Theologica[/u], Prima Pars, Q. 76, A. 6] The rational soul as the substantial form of the body, gives the body actual existence, thus there cannot be a delay in the infusion of the soul into the body, and to even say that this is possible is irrational.

God bless,
Todd

[CreepyCrawler]

I'm no theologian but I do have a biology background so I have a few things to note: first, humans have 46 chromosomes in their DNA. They have billions upon billions of chromosomes in their entire bodies because every cell has a complete set of 46 chromosomes in the nucleus (with some exceptions, such as RBC's). But to start with, the sperm provides 23 chromosomes and the egg provides 23, making 46 total in the embryo. At first, the embryo is only one cell. Then it splits into two cells. Then they split, creating 4, then 8, then 16, etc. If for some reason, the embryo splits and separates, each of the resulting cells/embryos becomes one of the future twins, triplets, etc. What first started with one human ends with two, or three, but they all have the same number of chromosomes (46) in their cells, making them equally human yet individual. Why couldn't it be that the soul divides in the same way that the embryo does? When the embryo splits into two people, why doesn't it follow that the soul splits into two individual souls of equal "value," (assuming that the soul can be quantified) not simply a fraction of the soul? Just like if at day one there were only one embryo and it died, it would be one human death and if at day two there were two embryos and they died, it would be two deaths, why can't it be that at day one with one embryo there is one soul and at day two, there is two? Makes sense in my head. Hope it makes sense on the net.

[Deeds]

I don't see what is wrong with the idea that a group of cells can have more than one soul. On a larger scale, Siamese twins do not have separate bodies and yet clearly have two souls. Why can't the same be true for a blastocyst which is destined to become separate twins?

[MichaelFilo]

The fact that the fertilized egg, still at the point of being a singular cell, containing 46 chromosomes cannot house 2 or more souls is absurd.

The arguement you put to this is that a human cell has 32 chromosomes and for 2 or more souls to be in cell, they'd have to split the chromosomes, which then wouldn't make them human, as they wouldn't have enough.

Aside from the fact that you claimed the human cell has 32 chromosomes(it has 46), the rest doesn't logically add up. If a full grown human male has 2 arms, a chest, a head, and 2 arms, then if he were to lose an appendage, such as an arm, then he no longer is human? If he lost half of his body, does he no longer remain a human? Obviously, he does. Now, a fertilized egg has 46 chromosomes, if it has less, is it not human? Certian people have 3 sex chromosomes(trisomy), are they no longer human?

My point is, there are norms, but to subject everything to the norm would be to deny room for exceptions.

God bless,

Mikey

[Laudate_Dominum]

A former philosophy professor of mine expressed the view (which was not his original idea but was adopted from some source that I can't recall) that when a developing human body (zygote, small cluster of cells, whatever) splits to bring about twins, it is not that a new person splits off of the old but that the original body/soul composite in that eariest stage of bodily development actually dies (that soul is seperated from what was once it's body) and it's matter becomes the basis of the developing bodies of two new persons (with two distinct souls).
These matters are quite speculative and I think that trying to arrive at a doctrinal certitude is a bit much. What we do know is that a fertilized egg produces a new and distinct human life with it's own unique DNA and life dynamisms. I see no real reason for asserting that this entity is anything other than a new human being (albeit in a quite primitive stage of development). And further if one denies that a human life has a human soul at conception (which really rests upon your understand of what the soul is), I would challenge you to offer some real evidence in favor of the alternative (such as a theory of quickening or something). And appeals to authority are kind of lame, especially when those "authorities" had ridiculously limited biological knowledge.

[HartfordWhalers]

LD: "These matters are quite speculative and I think that trying to arrive at a doctrinal certitude is a bit much"

Thank you! Finally a rational statement. I wasn't arguing FOR any point of view. I was just critizing the one point of view that seems to be a physical imbossibility...

qfnol31,

"As soon as the embryo splits it would seem that there must be a second soul septerating out."

I think you have the point here I have been trying to make. That is the absolute EARLIEST that the second soul could be infused. That is NOT at conception. That soul is being infused post-conception, since the first cell lives for some period of time before it splits, even if it is less than one second (which, if I have my biology correct, it is longer than that amount of time).

michaelfilo,
"you claimed the human cell has 32 chromosomes(it has 46)"

I said I wasn't sure what the number was, but that I adopted 32 to the bets of my memory... you are still in high school, it's easy to remember that stuff. I haven't taken biology in years... It doesn't change the fact that an organism that has the set number for one human being is ONE human being, not two. Yes, there are deformations, such as a few extra or a few more (to make a comparison, it would be like you said, someone later in life loosing a leg), but to say: ONE human as 46 chromosomes. Then to say, that organism that has 46 chromosomes is actually TWO people is absurd. It would be like saying: ONE human has 2 legs, 2 arms, and 1 head. BUT an organism that looks just like a normal human and couldn't be deciphered as different than any other human is actually TWO humans, who happen to just be somehow mysteriously conjoined, as this embryo is... that is basically what you're saying on a scientific level.

In any event, I have realized this is a futile argument on 2 levels:

1) no one here on this site ever seems to be open minded about anything (especially on this topic, it seems)

2) this is not a dogma and has nothing to do with dogma. There is no need to debate this. It makes no sense to believe that the soul is infused at conception, and it is physically impossible to do so unless the embryo has more than one soul or the twins have the same soul. I am finished arguing, though, so as not to break the commandment of St. Paul to St. Titus: But avoid foolish questions, and genealogies, and contentions, and strivings about the law. c. iii v. 9

[Laudate_Dominum]

[quote name='HartfordWhalers' date='Sep 11 2004, 07:10 PM'] 1) no one here on this site ever seems to be open minded about anything (especially on this topic, it seems)

2) this is not a dogma and has nothing to do with dogma. There is no need to debate this. It makes no sense to believe that the soul is infused at conception, and it is physically impossible to do so unless the embryo has more than one soul or the twins have the same soul. I am finished arguing, though, so as not to break the commandment of St. Paul to St. Titus: But avoid foolish questions, and genealogies, and contentions, and strivings about the law. c. iii v. 9 [/quote]
Hey! What about my post? I haven't been given a chance to go at it on this topic yet.

God bless.

[HartfordWhalers]

[quote name='Laudate_Dominum' date='Sep 11 2004, 07:16 PM'] Hey! What about my post? I haven't been given a chance to go at it on this topic yet.

God bless. [/quote]
Sorry maybe we can discuss one of my two other favorite topics: Novus Ordo vs. TLM or Outside the Church no salvation (the 2 favs among "traditionalist schismatics"--so you know, I believe JPII is Pope). I would liek to discuss these, but I think they are off limits...

[Pio Nono]

JMJ
9/11 - Twenty-third Saturday

[quote]Novus Ordo vs. TLM or Outside the Church no salvation[/quote]

Yes, debate on these issues is entirely off-limits. Like I said in another topic, debate on this will only serve to scandalize the neophytes.