The pre-existence of the soul

Our visit to hell hasn’t ended.  (How could it?)  More on the subject of damnation in a forthcoming follow-up post.  But first, a brief look at another topic which, it seems to me, is illuminated by the considerations raised in that previous post.  Can the soul exist prior to the existence of the body of which it is the soul?  Plato thought so.  Aquinas thought otherwise.  In Summa Contra Gentiles II.83-84 he presents a battery of arguments to the effect that the soul begins to exist only when the body does.

The metaphysically crucial idea here, of course, is the Aristotelian thesis that the human soul is the substantial form of the living human body.  (See sections 9 and 10 of SCG Book II, Chapter 83, linked to above.)  More precisely, it is the substantial form of a substance which has both corporeal faculties (as other animals do) and incorporeal faculties (as angels do).  Because the corporeal faculties do not exhaust this substance, it can carry on in an incomplete state after the corporeal faculties are lost at death.  Because the corporeal faculties are possessed by the substance in its normal state, however, it would seem that the soul comes into being only when the entire substance in its normal state comes into being, which means when the body comes into being. 

The way Aquinas develops the point is to argue, first, that a perfect specimen of a thing is metaphysically prior to the imperfect specimen.  (Cf. section 11)  Hence the entire human substance – corporeal and incorporeal aspects together – is prior to the incomplete substance which would be the substance reduced to its incorporeal aspects alone, viz. the soul as it persists beyond death.  So, it would seem from that that the soul comes into being only with the body.  Aquinas also adds (in sections 34-36) that since matter is, on the Thomistic view, what individuates souls, a new soul must only come into being when its associated body does.

It is at least arguable that these considerations are not decisive.  In Real Essentialism, David Oderberg briefly and tentatively suggests that it might be the case that the soul’s existence and identity conditions might be met even if it pre-exists its body, as long as it will be at some future date associated with that body.  (See note 25 at p. 293.  He had earlier made the same point in his article “Hylemorphic Dualism,” at note 47.)

However one comes down on that issue, however, there is another Thomistic consideration which seems to show that whether or not it is possible for human souls to pre-exist their bodies, they do not in fact do so – a consideration deriving from the arguments surveyed in my recent post on damnation (linked to above).  According to those arguments, a completely incorporeal thing immediately and irreversibly chooses, as its ultimate end, either God or something less than God.  That is why an angel is either saved or damned immediately upon its creation, and a human soul is either saved or damned immediately upon death.  And in the case of the human soul, this choice cannot be altered even when it is rejoined to its body.

So, suppose a human soul pre-existed its body.  Then – being free of any corporeality -- it would, just like an angel, immediately choose either God or something less than God as its ultimate good, and this choice would be irreversible.  But in that case, that soul would be unable to reverse this choice one way or the other even once it is conjoined to its body for the first time.  So, if our souls pre-existed our bodies, we would be unable to make such a choice.  Everyone would already unalterably have chosen either God or something less than God, and thus already be either saved or damned.  But that is not the case.  We are still able to choose either God or something less than him, as is evident both from ordinary experience and from Christian doctrine, which calls on all human beings to repent while they still have time to do so.  Hence our souls must not pre-exist our bodies.