A person, what is a person?
What makes a person a person?
Father, I know a soul needs a body to be a man, and a soul
needs a body to be a woman. From this experience I now know I do not need a
body to be a person. In this experience, without a body, I was neither male nor
female yet, I was a person. A person is a soul. A human is a person with a soul
and a body.
Further loving Father, many persons have lost an arm, or a leg, or two arms and two legs, and though they are without these bodily parts, they were still persons, complete persons. Why? Because their spirit and their soul remains.
A person is:
a. a spirit made in the image and likeness of God, with
b. a soul created by God, with
c. a body conceived by the parents, (now a human) and
d. is a spirit with a soul, but with no biological life and
no body because of death, (no longer human) and
e. is a spirit with a soul and a glorified body at the resurrection.
A person is neither male nor female.
A person is a
spirit with a soul but without a body, and is, consequently, neither male nor
female. Our soul proper has no sexuality. Indeed, spirits and souls without
bodies are not even human. In our soul state, we are simply persons.
A man is a spirit and a soul with a male body and a woman
is a spirit and a soul with a female body.
When I was hovering above my body, in that state being
spirit and soul without a body, I was conscious Brothers that I was neither
male nor female. I had no body, there was nothing sexual about me. This aspect
of my personhood was a non-issue. Like all the other items I noted, everything
was perfectly normal. [1]
I now wonder about arguments used by persons who claim they
are either a male living in the body of a female or vice versa. Since our
personhood (our spirit and our soul) has no sexual reference point how can this
argument be put forward? Moreover, God who is Spirit is neither male nor
female. Since we (our spirits) are made in God's image, how can we (spirits
made in his image) claim to be a male person or a female person living in a
body of the opposite sex, when our spirit and our soul has no sexual reference
point? It is the body that determines one’s sex, not the spirit or the soul. Do
these claims reflect a gender identity disorder that is psychological in
nature?
“Brother Thomas, would you have a
thought on this?”
-Yes Brother Raymond, in my reply to Question: 93 Article:
6, (Whether the image and likeness of God is in man as regards the mind only?)
in my reply to Objection 2: I said,- “. . . we must understand that when
Scripture had said, ‘to the image and likeness of God he created him,’ it
added, ‘male and female he created them,’ not to imply that the image and
likeness of God came through the distinction of sex, but that the image of God
belongs to both sexes, since it is in the mind, wherein there is no sexual
distinction of sex, but that the image of God belongs to both sexes, since it
is in the mind, wherein there is no sexual distinction.[2] Wherefore the Apostle (Gal. 3:28 after saying, ‘According
to the image of Him that created him,’ added, ‘Where there is neither male nor
female.’”
"Brother Aurelius, what are your thoughts on this?
Does a soul have a masculine or feminine identity?"
-Brother Raymond, Let us now look at the quotation from
Genesis, where the woman was created out of the side of the man, and was
brought to him, and he said:-
“This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh.”
“Our opponent thinks that Adam ought to have said, 'Soul of
my soul, or spirit of my spirit,' if this, too, had been derived from
him." But, in fact, they who maintain the opinion of the propagation of
souls feel that they possess a more impregnable defense of their position in
the fact that in the Scripture narrative which informs us that God took a rib
out of the man's side and formed it into a woman, it is not added that he
breathed into her face the breath of life; for this reason, as they say,
because she had already been ensouled from the man. If, indeed, she had not,
they say, the sacred Scripture would certainly not have kept us in ignorance of
the circumstance.
With regard to the fact that Adam says, ‘This is now bone
of my bone, and flesh of my flesh,’ without adding, spirit or soul, from my
spirit or soul, they may answer, just as it has been already shown, that the
expression, ‘my flesh and bone,’ may be understood as indicating the whole by a
part, only that the portion that was taken out of man was not dead, but
ensouled; for no good ground for denying that the Almighty was able to do all
this is furnished by the circumstance that not a human being could be found
capable of cutting off a part of a man's flesh along with the soul. Adam went
on, however, to say, ‘She shall be called woman, because she was taken out of
man.’ Now, why does he not rather say (and thus confirm the opinion of our
opponents ‘Since her flesh was taken out of man?’ As the case stands, indeed,
they who hold the opposite view may well contend, from the fact that it is
written, not woman's flesh, but the woman herself was taken out of man, that
she must be considered in her entire nature endued with soul and spirit. For
although the soul is undistinguished by sex, yet when women are
mentioned it is not necessary to regard them apart from the soul.
On no other principle would they be thus admonished with respect to self-adornment. ‘Not with braided hair, or gold, or pearls, or costly array; but which (says the apostle) becometh women professing godliness with a good conversation.’ Now, godliness, of course, is an inner principle in the soul or spirit; and yet they are called women, although the ornamentation concerns that internal portion of their nature which has no sex."[3] (Underline is the author’s.)
Are the souls of a man or a woman the same? Are the
souls of every race the same?
The Catholic Church tells us, “The human[4]
person, created in the image and likeness of God, is a being at once corporeal
and spiritual. The biblical account expresses this reality in symbolic
language (1146, 2332) 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."
Man, whole and entire, is therefore willed by God.”[5]
It is important to underline here, that each and every human, male or female, whether one was born 160,000,000 years ago[6]
or 160,000,000 years hence, are all human persons, since they are bodies with a soul. They are all exactly the same where their spirits and
souls are concerned. Consequently, any individual who foolishly tries to define
another individual, or tries to typecast another person, simply by their sex, race, religion, ethnic background,
the color of their skin, or their height, or the wholeness of their limbs, or
their physical beauty, is truly lost in his or her own darkness.
All persons[7] are spirit with a soul, and in this regard we are
absolutely positively all the same, all made in the image and likeness of God.[8]
[1] Summa Theologica Question 76 Of the Union of Body and
Soul. Fourth article “Whether in Man There Is Another Form Besides the
Intellectual Soul?”
[2] Underline is the author’s.
[3] Author Kreeft’s footnote: Cf. note 13. St. Thomas here
refuses to compromise man's psychosomatic unity, any more than he would
compromise the soul's substantial independence and immortality. He has the
Augustinian habit of holding two apparently contradictory (but not really
contradictory) teachings together without compromising either, without
abandoning or weakening one for the other. There are many other examples: faith
and reason, freedom and predestination, creatures' autonomy and total
dependence on their Creator.
[4] The word
“human” is key. As long as we carry this body around, we are human. But the
moment we leave it, we are no longer human but are simply “persons.” In this
regard, the faithful departed can no longer be said to be human since they have
no bodies. But because they have their souls, they are and always will be
“persons.”
[6] Scientists find oldest-known human skulls Updated Wed.
Jun. 11 2003 9:50 AM ET Associated Press Scientists have unearthed three
160,000-year-old human skulls in Ethiopia that are the oldest known and
best-preserved fossils of modern humans' immediate predecessors
[7] For a good resumé on different religious beliefs on the rational soul, see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soul
[8] One winter,
Florence and I went to a concert. We were early and, since it was very cold
out, we waited inside in the lobby. A number of persons began entering the
building dressed in leather jackets, slacks, parkas, light sweaters etc. Some
were chewing gum, some were smoking, others eating a hamburger or drinking a
soft drink. Where did these individuals come from I wondered? Later, I
recognized their faces in the orchestra. They were dressed in tuxedos and full
gowns, each with their own instruments, dazzling our souls with Handel’s
Concerti grossi Opus 6. This made me think a bit of what Heaven must be like.
On this earth, each one of us is different, but together in Heaven together our
voices will sing in unison, in glorious praise to the Lord our God. Never ought
we demean or put down another, for that person, that voice, is essential for
God’s choir to be complete.