On the Separated Soul according to St. Thomas Aquinas

Abstract

On the Separated Soul according to St. Thomas Aquinas Melissa Eitenmiller Introduction There is an ongoing debate between two predominantly analytic1 groups of Thomists, those holding the "survivalist"2 view of the human person after death and those maintaining the "corruptionist"3 view. Those who defend [End Page 57] the survivalist view wish to claim that the human person does not cease to exist at death, and although, according to Mark Spencer, the survivalist camp does not identify the human person with the separated soul, it nevertheless "contends that, in the separated state, a person is constituted by a soul, while remaining an individual rational animal and individual substance of a rational nature."4 The corruptionist view, on the other hand, will be represented in the present article by Patrick Toner5 in his "St. Thomas Aquinas on Death and the Separated Soul," in which he argues that St. Thomas held that "human beings cease to exist at their deaths,"6 at least until the resurrection of the body. Toner presents this in the following manner: (1) "human beings" are composites of body and soul (therefore, as he quotes Aquinas, "my soul is not me"7); (2) death is a substantial corruption of the composite; and (3) [End Page 58] "hence, humans stop existing at their deaths."8 In this article, I would like to propose that Aquinas's view is more nuanced than either side appears ready to acknowledge.9 It seems to me important to emphasize that, although death truly involves a separation of body and soul (thus constituting a corruption of the human person as such), nevertheless, the soul remains the "essential part" of the person and maintains a certain identity with that person as a subject of attribution10 [End Page 59] already capable of enjoying the absolute bliss of the Beatific Vision (or the suffering of temporal or eternal punishment in purgatory or hell, respectively), even before the general resurrection.11 Consequently, it would be wrong, and even spiritually dangerous, to ignore the importance of the intermediate state. It is not at all clear to me that Toner means to do this, but in emphasizing the destruction of the human person at death, he and other corruptionists do appear to leave themselves open to that sort of interpretation. In fact, Serge-Thomas Bonino, who calls these two camps12 the "minimalists" (i.e., corruptionists) and the "maximalists" (i.e., survivalists), points out that: According to the minimalists, the refusal to attribute personhood to the separated soul not only means that St. Thomas calls into question the identity between the current "me" and the separated soul, but also implies a minimal conception of the activity of the [End Page 60] separated soul, reduced to a comatose state of prolonged vigil. The separated soul would have … an existence similar to that … which the Ancients would concede to the shadows which haunt Sheol.13 As an example of this, Bonino cites B. Carlos Bazán, who declares, "a soul without its ontological correlate [i.e., matter] cannot operate, and consequently does not live."14 This statement will be shown to be false when we speak of the operations of the separated soul. First, however, I would like to review each of Toner's three points mentioned above. The Composite Human Person With regard to Toner's first point, it is certainly true that, according to St. Thomas Aquinas, the human person, "an individual substance of a rational nature,"15 is a composite of both body and soul, together with a human esse. Gilles Emery explains that "since the person is an individual substance, it is a reality that possesses its proper being in a complete manner, in itself and through itself, and which exercises on its own the act of existing. … [Therefore,] what accounts for my uniqueness is not only my concrete individual essence (my own humanity), but my proper act of existing in the human nature common to all human beings."16 In other words, other than in the case of Christ, the union of body and a rational soul necessarily implies the act of existence proper to a human person (since the act of being...