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c h ap t e r 1 3 The Immediate Creation of the Human Soul by God and Some Contemporary Challenges I have picked out this topic for presentation to you today for a special reason, extending beyond merely philosophical concern. In the last few years this topic has become a new and hotly debated one of serious theological and not merely philosophical concern, a test case of traditional Christian, or at least Catholic, thought and, in addition, a direct challenge to the position of Saint Thomas Aquinas, which for a long time has also been the unquestioned position of traditional Catholic thought in both philosophy and theology. Hence I would like to present to you again this old problem in the light of the specific new challenges being brought to it today. What should be of special interest and concern to us as members of the American Catholic philosophical community is that these new challenges are not coming simply from professed materialist and reductionist positions, which have long been known to us, but from Christian thought itself, mainly Protestant thinkers, but increasingly Catholic ones too. What I propose to do is (1) briefly present traditional Catholic doctrine on the subject; (2) then the classic philosophical argumentation of Saint Thomas for it; then (3) the new contemporary challenges to it from within Christian thought. Traditional Catholic Doctrine The spirituality of the soul and its immediate creation by God have been accepted as traditional Catholic doctrine, even pertaining to faith, at least since the great Fathers of the Church of the fourth century, although the early Church held an unclear position (Tertullian apparently believed that 173 174 The Immediate Creation of the Human Soul the soul was a quasi-material power handed down by sexual generation).1 We find the doctrine clearly stated in Denzinger’s Enchiridion, the standard repository of official Church teaching from all sources, in at least three texts: (1) In a ‘‘Profession of Faith,’’ imposed for a particular occasion in 1054, Pope Leo IX states: ‘‘That the soul is not a part of God, but created out of nothing [ex nihilo creatam] I believe and teach [credo and praedico].’’2 (2) In an 1887 condemnation by the Holy Office of the doctrinal errors of Rosmini-Serbati it is stated as number twenty of the condemned propositions : ‘‘It is not repugnant that the human soul is multiplied by generation, so that it may be understood as proceeding from the imperfect state, namely, the sense level of being, to a perfect state, namely, the intellectual level.’’3 (3) In his encyclical Humani Generis of 1950, Pope Pius XII declares : ‘‘The Magisterium of the Church does not prohibit the development of the doctrine of ‘evolution’ insofar as it investigates the origin of the human body as arising from already existing and living matter—for the Catholic faith orders us to retain the doctrine that souls are immediately created by God.’’4 This last text is the strongest, declaring it a matter of faith for the whole Church. Pope John Paul II reaffirmed the doctrine in his remarkable Letter on Evolution5 several years ago, when he urged Catholic thinkers to no longer resist the general theory of evolution but integrate it into an enriched vision of how God created our material world and worked on it through billions of years of guided development to finally bring forth humanity as the crown of the whole process. The pope, however, makes explicit exception for the immediate creation of the human soul by God, once again referring to a common tradition of the Church. But it must be conceded that according to the rules of strict theological interpretation, none of the above qualifies as a formal, officially defined doctrine of the Church to be believed by all under pain of heresy. It is simply taken for granted as a traditional doctrine of Catholic faith (even an encyclical—powerful a witness though it be—does not automatically qualify as an official definition obliging under faith unless explicitly so stated, which is not the case here). It remains clear, however, that for many centuries, since even before the Middle Ages, it has been taken for granted and explicitly asserted as being part of Catholic faith. Philosophical Justification by Saint Thomas Aquinas is clear and adamant not only on the spirituality of the soul, but also that it is immediately created by God, that is, produced...

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