Man was created by God in unity of body and soul[238]. “The spiritual and immortal soul is the principle of unity of the human being, whereby it exists as a whole — corpore et anim
I am pleased to address all of you taking part in this international Conference entitled “Mind, Body and Soul”, a topic which for centuries has engaged research and reflection in t
I am delighted with the first theme which you have chosen: the origin of life and evolution—an essential theme of lively interest to the Church, since Revelation contains some of i
"God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him, male and female he created them."218 Man occupies a unique place in creation: (I) he is "in the image of God"
It is not surprising that such discord and error should always have existed outside the fold of Christ. For though, absolutely speaking, human reason by its own natural force and l
This document is an act of service on the part of the Church to the women and men of our time, to whom she offers the legacy of her social doctrine, according to that style of dial
Adhering firmly to the foundation of the catholic faith, other than which, as the Apostle testifies, no one can lay, we openly profess with holy mother church that the only begotte
Human beings are material entities but they are also persons, that is subjects of consciousness, experience, perception and agency. As physical beings they are causally responsible for effects in the world, as rational agents they are morally responsible for what they do and fail to do. What, then, is the relationship between their physical and their personal natures? This is an ancient question and a difficult one to resolve, hence the ‘mind / body problem’. Broadly there are three kinds of answer: 1) material identity: the mind is part of the body, the best candidate being the brain and central nervous system; 2) dualist non-identity: mind and body are distinct entities forming some sort of temporary union, so in reality a human person is a body + a mind or soul; 3) dependency: the mind stands in some other relation to the body, not the same as part of it nor altogether distinct but a non-material aspect of it. There are arguments for and against these three positions. Contra 1) persons are a) subjects but their bodies and body parts are all b) objects, so they cannot be the same kind of thing. Against 2) what sense can be made of immaterial minds? and how do they inhabit and interact with ‘their’ bodies? Contra 3) what other relation is there than identity or non-identity? and how can there be ‘aspects’ of bodies other than physical ones? The problem goes back to the beginnings of Western philosophy and is also to be found in Eastern and other ancient traditions. Most of the great premodern, and modern philosophers such as Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, Aquinas, Descartes, Spinoza, Locke etc. have had views on it, and it remains a major topic in contemporary philosophy. Early Christians inherited Jewish views which tended to identify the person with the living human body, but through the incorporation of Greek philosophical ideas the early Church Fathers of East and West tended towards dualism. With Aquinas’s appropriation in the 13th century of Aristotelianism, versions of 3) were developed which had influence in Catholic teachings on the person. Today, however, most Christians tend to some version of 2) i.e. dualism, linking this with belief in continuing personal life after the death of the body.
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