CatholicTheology.info

Choose a topic from Part 1:

• God and His Attributes
• The Blessed Trinity
• Creation
• The Angels
• The Days of Creation
• Man
  • 75. Man's Soul
  • 76. Union of Soul and Body in Man
  • 77. Faculties of the Human Soul: In General
  • 78. Faculties of the Human Soul: In Particular
  • 79. The Intellective Human Faculties
  • 80. The Appetitive Human Faculties
  • 81. The Sensitive Appetite in Man
  • 82. The Intellective Appetite in Man: The Will
  • 83. Free Will
  • 84. Man's Knowledge of Bodily Reality
  • 85. The Manner or Mode of Man's Understanding
  • 86. What the Intellect Knows in Material Things
  • 87. Man's Knowledge of Himself
  • 88. Man's Knowledge of Nonmaterial Things
  • 89. Knowledge in the Separated Human Soul
  • 90. The First Production of Man's Soul
  • 91. The Production of the First Human Body
  • 92. The Production of Woman
  • 93. Man as the Image of God
  • 94. The Intellect of the First Man
  • 95. The Will of the First Man
  • 96. The Ruling Power of Man in the State of Innocence
  • 97. The Preservation of Man in the State of Innocence
  • 98. The Preserving of the Human Race in the State of Innocence
  • 99. The Bodily LIfe of Offspring in the State of Innocence
  • 100. The Righteousness of Offspring in the State of Innocence
  • 101. The Knowledge of Offspring in the State of Innocence
  • 102. Paradise
• The Divine Government

90. The First Production of Man's Soul

1. The human soul is not an outpouring or sharing of thesubstance of God. God is pure actuality and absolute simplicity.His substance, therefore, cannot be divided or parceled out. Thehuman soul is not a thing eternally existing in God's being. Itis a creature. It is a thing made.

2. The soul is made by God's creative act. It iscreated; it is made out of nothing. It is a spirit, having initself no material element nor any essential dependence upon whatis material. Now, such a spiritual being can have no possibleorigin but by the direct creative act of God.

3. Since creation is an act proper to God alone, in whichno creature can serve as a medium (such as an instrumental cause ora ministering cause), the soul must be created immediately byalmighty God.

4. The human soul is not created and held in readiness forunion with its body. For every soul is the soul of one definitehuman being, and not just a soul, suitable for any one ofa number of bodies. Thesoul bears a definite real relation toits own body, that is, the body which it is to constitute as theliving body of one individual human being. There is nopre-existence of human souls. Soul and body together make onesubstantial thing, one essence and nature; the soul begins to existwhen this one nature begins to exist. Therefore, the human soul isnot produced before the body.

"Before a man chooses his confessor, he ought to think well about it, and pray about it also; but when he has once chosen, he ought not to change, except for most urgent reasons, but put the utmost confidence in his director."
St Philip Neri

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"What good does it do to speak learnedly about the Trinity if, lacking humility, you displease the Trinity? Indeed it is not learning that makes a man holy and just, but a virtuous life makes him pleasing to God. "
Thomas á Kempis

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"To do God's will -- this was the goal upon which the saints constantly fixed their gaze. They were fully persuaded that in this consists the entire perfection of the soul. "
St Alphonsus de Liguori

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