Souls?

[vianney]

So lets hear it. I obviously know that man's soul has a natural thought and reason to it while an animals might not. But I just wanna know what ppl think bout this.

[musturde]

If they do they are not immortal souls.

[Dave]

Yes, animals and plants do have souls. However, unlike humans, their souls are material. So when they die, the souls die too.

[Chrysologus]

I might tend to say that they have something like spirits, but not immortal souls.

[Chucho]

I like this:http://www.newadvent.org/summa/1.htm

Go to "MAN (SPIRIT AND MATTER)"; esp. no. 75

[Aloysius]

:blink: plants don't have souls

animals have animal souls, which are not immortal

that's all i know, and i could always be wrong.

[Luke2219]

I know that animals do have souls, and as I understand, so do plants. Anything that is alive has a soul; a soul is required for life. But only people were created in God's image. Our soul is immortal because God is immortal. Plant and animal souls die with them.

Do all dogs go to Heaven? Well they don't have immortal souls, so in the strict sense, no. No animals go to Heaven. But we don't and can't know what Heaven will be like. We know that we will be complete and happy. If Fido brings me peace and happiness on earth, then it's not too problematic to believe that I will see him again in Heaven. However, I must always realize that Fido does not have an immortal soul and isn't made in God's likeness as I am. And also, that if Fido doesn't happen to be in Heaven when I get there, that I won't be dissapointed. I will be happier than I ever imagined.

[Aloysius]

good post luke

but i don't think plants have souls... however i culd b wrong

nah, i really don't think they do. I think a soul is required for animate life, but for inanimate life it isn't.

[VanHooty]

How can any form of life be inanimate? Plants respond to stimuli and react to their environment. They just don't have a central nervous system and move around.

If we want to use that standard, there are certain animals that move a lot less then certain plants.

[vianney]

plants have souls it is in the catechism

[kdewolf2]

Do animals have souls? Yes. Do Plants have souls? Yes. All living organisms have souls. Are these souls spiritual, immortal, or rational? No. I found an article which gives a really good explanation:

Souls and Spirits

[cmotherofpirl]

"BODY AND SOUL BUT TRULY ONE"

362 The human person, created in the image of God, is a being at once corporeal and spiritual. The biblical account expresses this reality in symbolic language when it affirms that "then the LORD God formed man of dust from the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being."229 Man, whole and entire, is therefore willed by God.

363 In Sacred Scripture the term "soul" often refers to human life or the entire human person.230 But "soul" also refers to the innermost aspect of man, that which is of greatest value in him,231 that by which he is most especially in God's image: "soul" signifies the spiritual principle in man.

364 The human body shares in the dignity of "the image of God": it is a human body precisely because it is animated by a spiritual soul, and it is the whole human person that is intended to become, in the body of Christ, a temple of the Spirit:232

Man, though made of body and soul, is a unity. Through his very bodily condition he sums up in himself the elements of the material world. Through him they are thus brought to their highest perfection and can raise their voice in praise freely given to the Creator. For this reason man may not despise his bodily life. Rather he is obliged to regard his body as good and to hold it in honor since God has created it and will raise it up on the last day. 233

365 The unity of soul and body is so profound that one has to consider the soul to be the "form" of the body:234 i.e., it is because of its spiritual soul that the body made of matter becomes a living, human body; spirit and matter, in man, are not two natures united, but rather their union forms a single nature.

366 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.235

367 Sometimes the soul is distinguished from the spirit: St. Paul for instance prays that God may sanctify his people "wholly", with "spirit and soul and body" kept sound and blameless at the Lord's coming.236 The Church teaches that this distinction does not introduce a duality into the soul.237 "Spirit" signifies that from creation man is ordered to a supernatural end and that his soul can gratuitously be raised beyond all it deserves to communion with God.238

368 The spiritual tradition of the Church also emphasizes the heart, in the biblical sense of the depths of one's being, where the person decides for or against God.239

[cmotherofpirl]

Spirit

(Lat. spiritus, spirare, "to breathe"; Gk. pneuma; Fr. esprit; Ger. Geist). As these names show, the principle of life was often represented under the figure of a breath of air. The breath is the most obvious symptom of life, its cessation the invariable mark of death; invisible and impalpable, it stands for the unseen mysterious force behind the vital processes. Accordingly we find the word "spirit" used in several different but allied senses: (1) as signifying a living, intelligent, incorporeal being, such as the soul; (2) as the fiery essence or breath (the Stoic pneuma) which was supposed to be the universal vital force; (3) as signifying some refined form of bodily substance, a fluid believed to act as a medium between mind and the grosser matter of the body. The hypothesis of "spirits" in this sense was familiar to the Scholastic age, in fact down to the end of the eighteenth century, "animal spirits", "vital spirits", "natural spirits" were acknowledged agencies in all physiological phenomena (cf. Vesalius, Descartes, Harvey, Erasmus, Darwin, etc.) "Magnetic" spirits were employed by Mesmer in his theory in very much the same way as modern Spiritists invoke the "ether" of the physicists.

In Psychology, "spirit" is used (with the adjective "spiritual") to denote all that belongs to our higher life of reason, art, morality, and religion as contrasted with the life of mere sense-perception and passion. The latter is intrinsically dependent on matter and conditioned by its laws; the former is characterized by freedom or the power of self-determination; "spirit" in this sense is essentially personal. Hegelianism, inDouche, in its doctrines of Subjective, Objective, and Absolute Spirit, tries to maintain the categories of spiritual philosophy (freedom, self-consciousness and the like), in a Monistic framework. But such conceptions demand the recognition of individual personality as an ultimate fact.

In Theology, the uses of the word are various. In the New Testament, it signifies sometimes the soul of man (generally its highest part, e. g., "the spirit is willing"), sometimes the supernatural action of God in man, sometimes the Holy Ghost ("the Spirit of Truth Whom the world cannot receive"). The use of this term to signify the supernatural life of grace is the explanation of St. Paul's language about the spiritual and the carnal man and his enumeration of the three elements, spirit, soul, and body, which gave occasion to the error of the Trichotomists (1 Thess., v, 23, Eph., iv, 23).

Matter has generally been conceived as in one sense or another the limitation of spirit. Hence, finite spirits were thought to require a body as a principle of individuation and limitation; only God, the Infinite Spirit, was free from all admixture of matter. Thus, when we find the angels described as asomatoi or auloi, in the writings of the Fathers, this properly means only that the angels do not possess a gross, fleshly body; it does not at all imply a nature absolutely immaterial. Such Scripture expressions as "bread of angels", "they shall shine as the angels", as well as the apparitions of these heavenly beings, were adduced as proofs of their corporeality. So speak Sts. Ambrose, Chrysostom, Jerome, Hilary, Origen and many other Fathers. Even in Scholastic times, the degree of immateriality that belongs to finite spirits was disputed. St. Thomas teaches the complete simplicity of all spiritual natures, but the Scotists, by means of their famous materia primo prima, introduced a real composition, which they conceived to be necessary to a created nature. As regards the functions of spirits in the world, and their active relations to the visible order of things, see GUARDIAN ANGELS and DEMONOLOGY. Scripture abounds in instances of their dealings with men, chiefly in the character of intermediaries between God and His servants. They are the heralds who announce his commands, and often too the ministers who execute His justice. They take a benevolent interest in the spiritual good of men (Luke, xv, 10). For these reasons, the Church permits and encourages devotion to the angels.

[cmotherofpirl]

Soul

(Greek psyche; Latin anima; French ame; German Seele).

The question of the reality of the soul and its distinction from the body is among the most important problems of philosophy, for with it is bound up the doctrine of a future life. Various theories as to the nature of the soul have claimed to be reconcilable with the tenet of immortality, but it is a sure instinct that leads us to suspect every attack on the substantiality or spirituality of the soul as an assault on the belief in existence after death. The soul may be defined as the ultimate internal principle by which we think, feel, and will, and by which our bodies are animated. The term "mind" usually denotes this principle as the subject of our conscious states, while "soul" denotes the source of our vegetative activities as well. That our vital activities proceed from a principle capable of subsisting in itself, is the thesis of the substantiality of the soul: that this principle is not itself composite, extended, corporeal, or essentially and intrinsically dependent on the body, is the doctrine of spirituality. If there be a life after death, clearly the agent or subject of our vital activities must be capable of an existence separate from the body. The belief in an animating principle in some sense distinct from the body is an almost inevitable inference from the observed facts of life. Even uncivilized peoples arrive at the concept of the soul almost without reflection, certainly without any severe mental effort. The mysteries of birth and death, the lapse of conscious life during sleep and in swooning, even the commonest operations of imagination and memory, which abstract a man from his bodily presence even while awake-all such facts invincibly suggest the existence of something besides the visible organism, internal to it, but to a large extent independent of it, and leading a life of its own

It was Christianity that, after many centuries of struggle, applied the final criticisms to the various psychologies of antiquity, and brought their scattered elements of truth to full focus. The tendency of Christ's teaching was to centre all interest in the spiritual side of man's nature; the salvation or loss of the soul is the great issue of existence. The Gospel language is popular, not technical. Psyche and pneuma are used indifferently either for the principle of natural life or for spirit in the strict sense. Body and soul are recognized as a dualism and their values contrasted: "Fear ye not them that kill the body . . . but rather fear him that can destroy both soul and body in hell."

In St. Paul we find a more technical phraseology employed with great consistency. Psyche is now appropriated to the purely natural life; pneuma to the life of supernatural religion, the principle of which is the Holy Spirit, dwelling and operating in the heart. The opposition of flesh and spirit is accentuated afresh (Romans 1:18, etc.). This Pauline system, presented to a world already prepossessed in favour of a quasi-Platonic Dualism, occasioned one of the earliest widespread forms of error among Christian writers -- the doctrine of the Trichotomy. According to this, man, perfect man (teleios) consists of three parts: body, soul, spirit (soma, psyche, pneuma). Body and soul come by natural generation; spirit is given to the regenerate Christian alone. Thus, the "newness of life", of which St. Paul speaks, was conceived by some as a superadded entity, a kind of oversoul sublimating the "natural man" into a higher species.

[TempleofVesarius]

how should i know?????

there is no way one can prove if animals have souls or not...and you can argue both sides all day and get nowhere...kind of like the existance of God.

I guess its a thing of faith...I dont think i would hurt anyones chances at salvation if they did believe animals had an eternal soul. they might just respect animals a little more whether they were right or wrong