IMMORTALITÀ DELL'ANIMA UMANA

IMMORTALITY OF THE HUMAN SOUL — The property of the human soul by which it survives the death of the body.

OUTLINE:

I. Immortality in the history of religions

II. Immortality in the history of philosophy

III. Immortality in the Old Testament

IV. Immortality according to Christian philosophy

I. Immortality in the history of religions

Of immortality in the philosophical-theological sense to be treated below, there is no trace in non-Christian religions, whether primitive, national, ethnic, ancient or modern.

In all these religions, however, the belief in the survival of the soul is firmly established; a belief that arises as a natural instinct of the permanence of the individual and of his continuation beyond life. This idea of survival beyond the grave is also a consequence of the social structure tied to the person of the group leader, regarded as always present and operative for its benefit. This concept of the perpetuity of the leader is found, in the domestic cult of the Romans, in the figure of the *genius* of the *paterfamilias*, and, during the Hellenistic period, in the concept of the “great souls” destined for an immortal life.

Regarding the survival of the soul and the manner in which this is represented in its condition of being separated from the body (bird, butterfly, scarab, winged being), V. ANIMA. The transmigration of souls or reincarnation cannot be considered an equivalent of immortality, since it excludes the persistence of the individual consciousness of immortality.

Among the Semites the abyss separating the world of men from that of the gods is unbridgeable. Even when benevolent deities wish to bestow the gift of immortality upon men, this does not come to pass because of the fault of men; thus in Babylon, the wise Adapa, to whom Anu would offer the food and water of life, rejects them on the advice of Ea; and Gilgamesh, who wishes like his ancestor Utnapishtim to be admitted into the company of the gods, lets slip from his hand the plant of youth that would have given him immortality.

In Egypt the popular belief in the survival of the soul was sublimated into the vision of an immortal soul through the myth of Osiris, primordial king of Egypt, who, slain by his brother Seth, rises again to reign immortally over the realm of the dead and thus becomes the prototype of his faithful, who, by means of the Osirian funeral rite performed upon their corpse, can attain immortality. (v. MISTERIO; OSIRIDE).

Among the Aryo-Europeans (India, pre-Zoroastrian Persia, Greece, Rome, Celts, Germans, Slavs) immortality is an exclusive privilege of the gods. In Vedic India only the gods are immortal (*a-martya*), not men, who nonetheless knew that not everything ends with death and therefore practiced a scrupulous regard for ancestors (*pitṛs*) and the due funeral rites.

Brahmanism, given its pantheistic vision of the cosmos, uses the same word *dīman* (= breath, wind) to designate both personal immortality and universal immortality, that is, the animating principle of the universe: this is thus a single impersonal perpetuity that has nothing to do with the genuine concept of immortality.

Buddhism denied the identification of personal immortality with universal immortality, maintaining that the soul is not a permanent spiritual substance but the result of a series of consciousness-states detached from one another, even though they are associated in sequence.

The goal to be attained is the annihilation of individual existence in *nirvāṇa* (= extinguished, quenched), already in life through the quenching of every passion (*nirvāṇa*) that prepares the way for complete extinction (second *nirvāṇa*, *pari-nirvāṇa*), that is, the impossibility of a new birth.

Yet the doctrinal development of Buddhism led to overcoming this overly agnostic vision of original Buddhism (the so-called *Hīnayāna*), incapable of giving vent to individual mysticism, and introduced (the *Mahāyāna*) the transcendent and permanent concept of divinity in the figure of the cosmic Buddha, revealed in time in the person of the historical Buddha. Every individual can become a Buddha, provided that he directs the merit of his personal sacrifice—consisting in renouncing, for the sake of others, the liberation that would lead him to enjoy beatitude in the Buddha paradise—toward the benefit of others; this amounts to an implicit real affirmation of immortality. Mazdaism, preached by Zoroaster, places among the immortal saints who surround the throne of Ahura Mazda, the “Wise Lord,” Amaretat, immortality, the reward of a life conducted according to justice. The *Fravaši* (which in pre-Zoroastrian times were the souls of the dead) are set over the individual as guardian angels, and with their assistance guarantee his immortality.

In Greece the survival of the soul is documented, from the Minoan period onward, by funerary objects (especially the sarcophagus of Hagia Triada), but not even in Homer do we find an affirmation of immortality, which is the exclusive privilege of the gods, thanks to the ambrosia and nectar of which they partake.

The evolution from the concept of survival to that of immortality in Greece came about through the mysteries (v.), particularly those of Dionysus (v.), with their orgiastic rites that gave initiates the sense of having attained a supernormal state; the Orphic mysteries, which are its theological sublimation, and the Eleusinian mysteries (v.).

For the philosophical-religious development of the concept of immortality in Greece during the Hellenistic period, V. below.

Islam, which drew its doctrinal elements from Jewish and Christian sources, affirms the immortality of the soul where it speaks both of the particular judgment (Qur’an, 7:35; 50:16) and of the universal judgment that Allah will make of the good and the wicked (Qur’an, 21:48). Further theological development in Islam has maintained this faith while orienting it, with Avicenna, in an Aristotelian direction and, with al-Ghazālī, in a mystical one.

II. IMMORTALITY IN THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY

1. GREEK PHILOSOPHY — The belief in the survival of the soul after death seems to belong to the original patrimony of human consciousness and, together with the existence of divinity, constitutes the other pole of religious consciousness: this conviction manifests itself in popular consciousness especially through the cult of the dead, through practices of divination (*manteia*) and purification, above all through practices of religious exaltation (*bacchic frenzy*, *mania*).

According to Rohde, it is above all the cult of Dionysus, which came from Thrace, that nourished in popular consciousness the hope of immortality, so that man, after the trials of life, might with death attain a happy life similar to that of the deity.

Easier was the defense of the soul when, with Pythagoreanism, the "incorporeal" (ἀσώματος) nature of the soul began to be asserted. From the Pythagorean position derived the Platonic doctrine, whose definitive pillars are: 1) "that which moves itself" (ἀποκίνητος) is in act by itself and cannot perish; 2) that which moves itself is not moved by another, but is itself the principle of motion for other movable things, and such is the soul; 3) now every such principle is by its nature "ungenerated" (ἀγέννητος) and eternal (cf. Phaedr., 245 c etc.); 4) the perhaps most consistent argument is that drawn from the ἀνάμνησις of the Phaedo, inasmuch as it appeals to pure intellectual knowing, which demands an ontological order superior to that of sensations (Phaed., 73 c-77 d). In Plato, the soul is expressly conceived with an individual character, but is then hindered, among other things, by the theory of pre-existence and metempsychosis, which divert it into myth, in a contradiction of making it "ungenerated and eternal" like that of the divinity and yet consigning it to the continuous passage from body to body for purification.

Aristotle deepens the argument of knowledge, but seems to affirm the soul as a property of the nous, since (unlike the νοῦς παθητικός φθαρτός) it is said to be τούτο μόνον ἀθάνατον καὶ ἄθλιον (De an., III, 5, 430 a 24 sgg.) precisely because by its nature it is impassible and simple (ἀπώτης καὶ ἀμνήτης καὶ τήν οὐσίαν ἀνέργειαν ἰδίαν, 10). Probably Aristotle did not attain a clear consciousness of personal soul, as seems indicated by the statement that the desire for the soul remains within the realm of the impossible: βούλησις ἀνάνατον οἷον ἀθάνατος (Eth. Nic., III, 4, 111 b 23). Thus even when in De gen. anim., II, 3, 736 a 15 Aristotle speaks of the νοῦς that comes "from outside" (θύραν), he seems to intend the activity of the begetter who transmits life with the seed and not a creative act of God who infuses the spirit.

The explicit denial of the soul appears with Democritus, who considers the soul a "composite" substance of atoms and thus dissolves at death like other bodies, and in this he is followed by Epicurus (H. Diels, Dox. gr., p. 393 a 8). The Stoics, while considering the soul a "portion of the divine" (ἀποσπάσμα τοῦ θεοῦ), remained hesitant between the moral exigency of a perfect justice and happiness of the best spirits, which demands individual soul, and the logic of their own materialist metaphysics that excluded it; they affirm the soul, e.g., Chrysippus and even Seneca, who make souls migrate to the stars; they deny it Panaetius, Posidonius, Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius, etc., for whom the sage, free from the disturbances of the passions, can enjoy on this earth the perfect happiness of his virtue (ἀπαραξία, ἀπάθεια).

Plotinus, in the special treatise devoted to the soul (Enn., IV, 7), after a rigorous critique of Stoic and Aristotelian doctrines, draws on the moral element, but of which he utilizes the positive elements, returns to the Platonic doctrine, reserving however absolute soul to the principal soul or world soul, in which individual souls are reabsorbed. The cosmic character of the soul is amply developed in Proclus' system in the various degrees of διὰ σώματος (the heaven and the stars: cf. Arist., De coelo, II, 1, 284 a 1): μερικὰ ψυχὰ, δαίμονες and δίαι ψυχαί, holding fast to the equivalence of soul and eternity (πᾶν τὸ ἀθάνατον ἄθλιον) and substantially accepting for the human soul too an incorruptible material vehicle (δύναμα) of celestial origin (Proclus, Elementa theologiae, ed. E. R. Dodds, Oxford 1932, prop. 105-107; cf. especially Excursus, p. 315 sgg.).

It may then be concluded that, while absolute denial of the soul in Greek philosophy is rare and sporadic, its demonstration in the sense of rigorous spiritualism and personalism was not clearly attained: the soul is affirmed by some in function of an incorruptible (the celestial aether), simple, etc. corporeity from which derive the stars and divinity itself; by others the soul is said "incorporeal" (ἀσώματος) as number, harmony, first act, etc.: it is therefore destined to vanish with the dissolution of the body at death. In both tendencies the soul has a cosmic nature and becomes a cosmic function and does not fulfill the desire that agitates every man for survival. The final Greek conception of the Neoplatonists seeks to fuse in a more embarrassing synthesis the principles of the various schools. Traces of this metaphysical conception of a soul, founded on incorruptible corporeity, return in Macrobius (In somn. Scipionis, I, 12, 13) and in Boethius himself (Cons. philosoph., III, 9); in the 17th century it makes its appearance in the Cambridge Platonists (cf. R. Cudworth, Systema intellectuale, II, Jena 1733, p. 1903 sgg.).

II. PATRISTIC, SCHOLASTIC, RENAISSANCE. The intrigue of the philosophers’ doctrines on the i. was bound to make Christians wary of resorting to philosophy. In the earliest writers, this distrust of reason is accompanied by the conviction that the soul at birth and by its very nature is mortal, but later becomes immortal through grace and good works. Tatian (Oratio adversus Graecos, 13) expressly declares: οὐκ ἔστιν ἀθάνατος καὶ ἀνάμνησιν ψυχῆς... δυνάμην δὲ (PG 6, 833; cf. 15, 837). The Latin writers are no less resolute. Lactantius makes clear the difficulty philosophers have encountered in the problem of the i.: the Pythagoreans and Stoics, in order to affirm it, must deny creation and feign metempsychosis (Div. inst., III, 13). Treating expressly of the i. (ibid., VII, 5-8), Lactantius admits that man at birth enjoys only animal life, whereas the i. is an ethical task: *Homo rectus in coelum spectat, quia proposita est illi immortali, nec tamen venit nisi tribuatur homini a Deo. Nam nihil interest iustum et iniustum, siquidem omnis homo natus immortalis fieret. Ergo immortalialitas non est sequela naturae sed merces praemiumque virtutis est... Quae ratio docet mortalem nasci hominem, postea vero immortalem fieri, cum coeperit ex Deo vivere, id est iustitiam sequi* (ibid., VII, 5, 753-54). And earlier he distinguishes two lives in man, earthly and celestial: *Illam nascendo accipimus, hanc assequimur laborando ne immortalitas homini sine ulla difficultate constaret. Illam primam nescientes accipimus, hanc secundam scientes, virtuti enim non datur* (ibid., 752 sgg.). This agnosticism is perhaps more apparent than real: these writers wish to emphasize the, so to speak, existential aspect of blessed i., which is a personal goal to be attained, and not a destiny that concerns the soul as a cosmic principle.

Among the Greeks, St Justin, more deeply versed in classical philosophy, knows how to sift the positive from the negative. In the *Cohortatio ad Graecos* he asserts that Plato read Moses and defended the i., though he obscured it by affirming in the *Phaedrus* (245 C) that every soul is immortal: πᾶσα ψυχὴ ἀθάνατος. But Aristotle, by making the soul an “act” of the body (ἐντελέχεια), rendered it mortal (PG 6, 253). What strikes one in these writers is the serenity and certainty of their possession of revealed truth, which enables them to judge at once the value of classical culture and to uncover its deficiencies.

Characteristic is the position of Tertullian, who, despite attributing materiality to the soul, resolutely defends its i. and then expressly appeals to Scripture to reject the Platonic theory of pre-existence. His definition of the soul reflects this strange syncretism: *Definimus animam, Dei flatu natam, immortalem, corporalem, effigiatam, substantia simplicem, de suo patiem ten, varie procedentem, liberam arbitrii, accidentiis obnoxiam, per ingenia mutabilem, rationalem, dominatricem, ex una redundantem* (De anima, 22).

The great Alexandrian school and the Fathers of the 4th–5th centuries, having a thorough knowledge of Greek philosophy, could incorporate it into their elaboration of revealed truth, and it is to Plato and the Neoplatonists that they turn in preference; whereas Aristotle, probably because of the materialist aberrations of his school, remains a suspect source. Yet this did harm to doctrinal progress, both because of the intrinsic dangers of Platonism—from whose abuse nearly all Trinitarian and Christological heresies sprang—and because Aristotle, who had more energetically than Plato affirmed the i. of the human *nous*, had also elaborated with his doctrine of the actualization of the act and with his theory of knowledge—in function of absolute immateriality—the most proper concept of spirit as an absolutely original sphere of being.

Nevertheless, when the Fathers take the terms of the problem from Plato, they develop the concepts within the spiritual climate of Christianity; just as some of them (e.g., the Alexandrian school) made extensive use also of doctrinal elements of the then dominant Stoic philosophy. The most outstanding example of this superior syncretism is the work of St Augustine (cf. *Soliloquia*, bk. II, and *De immortalitate animae*).

Christian medieval thought up to the 13th century lived on the patristic legacy (especially of Augustine and Pseudo-Dionysius) and thus inclined toward Platonism with strong accents on Neoplatonic doctrines (School of Chartres, Eriugena). In the second half of the 13th century, the unresolved task of classical philosophy reappeared in the controversy over Averroism (v.), which, by proclaiming the unity of the intellect for the entire human species, annihilated the person and the entire Christian moral edifice, according to the strong accusation of St. Thomas: *«Subtracta enim ab hominibus diversitate intellectus, qui solus inter animae partes incorruptibilis et immortalis apparet, sequitur post mortem nihil de animabus hominum remanere nisi unicam intellectus substantiam; et sic tollitur retributio praemium et poenarum et diversitas eorumdem»* (De unitate intellectus contra averroistas, ed. J. L. Perrier, in Opuscula omnia, I, Paris 1949, p. 72). As for the demonstrability of the immortality of the soul, while St. Thomas found the arguments of reason sufficient, most scholastics, especially those of Augustinian orientation (and later Scotus and the Scotists), denied the probative value of the same and clung to faith as the sole support against the corrosive action of philosophical reason (cf. R. Messner, Schaunedes und begriffliches Erkennen nach Duns Scotus, Freiburg in Br. 1942, p. 334). This dualism burst forth in the Renaissance, giving rise to bitter struggles between Averroists and Alexandrists and to endless disputes, of which the immense literature, largely unpublished and lying in libraries, bears witness: an eloquent document of deep spiritual interest, but also a sign of methodological ineptitude. Suffice it to mention the most sensational episode of Pomponazzi: his intent in *De immortalitate animae* (1516), as in the *Apologia* (1517) and the *Defensorium* (1519), was to *«follow Aristotle and show that it is faith, not reason, that teaches the truth of the immortality of the soul.»* Thus, in the conclusion of the *Defensorium*, Pomponazzi protests: *«First, we have expounded the Aristotelian mind as we believe. Second, since in all our treatises we condemn blasphemy and detest the mortality of the soul, not indeed are we moved to this by any natural reason, but solely because the sacred canons so determine. For I believe the Gospel because the Church believes...: therefore it is solely from simple and sincere faith that the soul must be believed immortal»* (Opera, Venice 1525, fol. 1087). Nor was Porzio less explicit: *«Therefore, that the soul had a beginning of its origin and does not perish is not a physical decree nor proven by the Peripatetic philosopher»* (Simone Porzio, *Disp. de mente humana*, Florence 1551, p. 90; cf. pp. 94 ff.). The Latin Averroists (Siger of Brabant, John of Jandun, etc.) likewise held that individual immortality is a doctrine of faith, not of reason: both positions, Alexandrism as much as Averroism, were retrograde because they froze the life of thought in one of its historical moments, albeit among the most distinguished, such as that attributed to Aristotle. Even Cardinal Cajetan stumbled on this rock, for in his old age he wrote: *«Just as I do not know the mystery of the Trinity, just as I do not know the immortal soul, just as I do not know that the Word became flesh, and similar things which, however, I believe... just as the other mysteries of faith. This ignorance quiets my intellect»* (Comm. in ep. s. Pauli, Paris 1542, pp. 66-67). It is known that at the Fifth Lateran Council (1513), Cajetan opposed the condemnation of Averroism and Alexandrism on this point. The Dominican B. Spina therefore did not hesitate in his *Propugnaculum Aristotelis de immortalitate animae contra Thomam Cajetanum* (Venice 1519) to accuse his illustrious confrere of having paved the way for Pomponazzi (cf. E. Cassirer-P. O. Kristeller-J. H. Randall, *The Renaissance Philosophy of Man*, Chicago 1948, p. 271). The most distinguished monument in defense of the immortality of the soul is Ficino’s *Theologia platonica de immortalitate animarum*, composed just half a century before these heated controversies; in it, Christian philosophy, illuminated by faith, knows how to draw partial sparks of truth from the entire corpus of classical and Christian antiquity. Among the demonstrative arguments advanced by Ficino, those certainly inspired by Thomism are the 7th (quia esse suum habet a sua essentia), the 8th (quia esse proprium habet et numquam a sua forma discedit), the 9th (quia sibi per se convenit esse), and even the 13th (quia esse a Deo accipit sine medio), where Ficino departs from Plotinus, Proclus, and other Neoplatonists who upheld “mediate creation” to defend, with Pseudo-Dionysius, Origen, and St. Augustine, immediate creation (Theol. plat., V, seq.; in Opera, I, Basel 1561, fol. 140 seq.). In his more mature *Quaestiones de mente* (Epistolae, I. II; loc. cit., fol. 675 seq.), Ficino bases the immortality of the soul solely on the natural appetite for happiness, which can be satisfied only in the other life, and explicitly appeals to Aristotelian metaphysics (cf. fol. 677) in expounding the argument that is perhaps the first and last in this controversy over human destiny (St. Thomas expressly touches on the argument in *C. Gent.*, II, 84).

III. Modern Philosophy

Strauss precisely sees the essence of modern thought on the immortality of the soul above all in the direction imparted by Spinoza, in the conception that makes of immortality not “something future but something grasped as the present quality of the spirit, as its inner universality, its power to rise above every finite reality toward the idea.” And this applies not only to the position of philosophical pantheism of the Hegelian type, but also to the theological subjectivism of Schleiermacher himself, who assigns to man the task of “identifying himself in finitude with the infinite and being eternal in the moment” (*D. F. Strauss, Die christliche Glaubenslehre*, II, Tübingen-Stuttgart 1841, pp. 737 ff.). The Hegelian conception provoked, among other things, the reaction of Goethe himself: the poet affirmed the independence and superiority of religion over philosophy and held as decisive proof of the immortality of the soul that drawn from “activity” (*Tätigkeit*), that is, from the incompleteness that man experiences in this life, the unrest that must be satisfied in another form of existence” (J. P. Eckermann, *Gespräche mit Goethe*, ed. L. Geiger, Leipzig 1902, p. 245). The implicit Hegelian negation of the immortality of the soul would become the starting point for Feuerbach’s (v.) critique of religion. In contemporary philosophies that affirm the identity of being and time, such as left-wing existentialism and Marxism, every personal immortality is devoid of meaning and considered pure mythology or fantastic projection of a vain subjective desire.

III. THE I. IN THE OLD TESTAMENT

Although veiled in mystery, life after death is affirmed even in the oldest texts of the Old Testament.

This is what the scholar would expect, considering the universality of such a belief, especially among all the ancient Semites (E. Dhorme, in Revue biblique, 16 [1907], p. 59). In Babylon, this second life is pale, diminished, but no less real and lasting. In the “great land” (kigallu), where all descend at death, there is a true kingdom, with officials, governing bodies, etc. Nergal and Ereškigal, king and queen, have their palace; a secretary, Namtaru; a scribe, a governor, etc. Justice is in the hands of the Anunnaki, infernal deities who have thrones of gold (E. Dhorme, ibid., pp. 71 ff.).

The same ideas and expressions are found in the Old Testament regarding the great abode to which all descend (v. SEPOLCRO), excluding, of course, myths and deities, for the one Jahweh is present even there (Ps. 139:7 ff.; Job 26:6). Moreover, the Bible formally affirms this survival in the ancient phrases used to denote death: “to descend into šē'ōl”; “to be gathered to one’s people”; “to return to one’s fathers” (Gen. 15:15; 25:8; 17:35; 29:40; 29:32; Num. 20:24; 26:27; 13:31; 2:13; Deut. 31:16; 32:50; etc.); these clearly imply that something remains and survives the dissolution of the body (v. ANIMA).

“The souls, considered the most vital part of man, something that survived the dissolution of the body, a kind of reduction of the human being but which retained its personality intact (cf. 1 Sam. 28:8-20), all these souls descended into šē'ōl, where their fate was not determined by any judgment” (M.-J. Lagrange, Le judaïsme [see bibliography], p. 345). It is impossible, in fact, to understand the ancient biblical phrases about descent into the family tomb otherwise; both because of the analogy and identity with Babylonian expressions and because such a meaning is often formally excluded by the text itself. Gen. 37:35: “I shall go down mourning to my son into šē'ōl,” says Jacob, certain that Joseph has been devoured by a beast! Num. 16:30: the earth opens and swallows the guilty who “descend alive into šē'ōl”; cf. Judg. 2:10. David, Omri, Manasseh “were gathered to their fathers,” but were not buried in the family tomb (1 Kgs. 2:10; 16:28; 2 Kgs. 21:18); the same applies to Abraham, Ishmael, Aaron, and Moses.

The Old Testament is very restrained on this point. And this, first of all, because of the danger of polytheism. Traces of this are found in the prohibition of certain funeral rites (Lev. 20:27 ff.; Deut. 14:1), in the prohibition of necromancy (Deut. 18:11; 26:14); cf. especially 1 Sam. 28:8-20 on the evocation of Samuel, where, besides the spread of necromancy in popular religion, the explicit belief in life after death with the preservation of personality is evident. Life after death is sketched briefly here, also because of the actual conditions then existing: heaven was closed, for no beatitude is possible outside of Christ (Heb. 6:20); only at the dawn of the Resurrection did the just, with the glorification of Christ, receive the expected reward and the wicked their deserved punishment (Dan. 12:1 ff.; 13; Heb. 11:39 ff.; cf. A. Feuillet [see bibliography]; F. Spadafora [see bibliography]).

Thus is explained the inert life (Eccl. 9:5 ff., 10), likened to sleep (Job 10:20 ff.; 17:16; 20:11, etc.), in darkness (Ps. 49:20; 88:7, 13; etc.), of souls in šē'ōl, where they cannot praise Jahweh (Ps. 6:6; 115:17; Is. 38:18); and their name of répha’im (“the weak”), “feeble ones.”

The hope for the future is clearly expressed in Ps. 16:11; 49:16; 73:23 ff. and often in the Book of Wisdom, which speaks of immortality (ἀφθαρσία), of incorruptibility (ἀφθαρσία) (Wis. 3:4; 4:1; 8:17; 15:3), and contrasts the lot of the just (ibid. 3:1-4; 5:15) with that of the wicked (ibid. 1:16; 2:21-25; 5:6-13), always in messianic or eschatological contexts. For such hope was on the point of being fulfilled.

The doctrine of the i. of the a. is common in the apocrypha and rabbinic books, with analogies to that of the sapiential books regarding the different fate of the just and the wicked, but very confused and indistinct (J. Bonsirven [see bibliography], I, pp. 322-49; M.-J. Lagrange, Le judaïsme [see bibliography], pp. 353-63).

Only in the New Testament does the doctrine of the i. of the a. receive its full formulation: Matt. (and parallel passages) 5:12, 29; 10:28; 16:26; 18:9; 22:32 ff.; 1 Cor. 3:15; Heb. 13:14; 2 Cor. 5:1-10; Phil. 1:18-26 and passim.

IV. THE I. ACCORDING TO CHRISTIAN PHILOSOPHY

Faced with the unceasing spectacle of the inevitability of bodily death, man has always sought to secure for himself a possibility of salvation against the loss of being: agitated by the desire for perfect and endless happiness, which he cannot obtain in mortal life, man has turned to religion, philosophy, poetry, art, and even to practical action and the achievements of science and technology in order to master the corrosive power of time and death. The fundamental difficulty of the problem of the self arises from the lack of any sensible evidence of the self itself. On the other hand, to satisfy the fundamental exigence of a self in the proper sense, corresponding to the aspiration of human consciousness, the survival of being must possess a twofold character: it must be primarily spiritual in nature and have a personal structure. An impersonal self, in which the peculiarity of human nature and life is dissolved, as an actualization of knowledge and love; or a self reserved for a few privileged individuals (heroes, philosophers, sages, etc.); or, finally, a universal self, pertaining to humanity as such or to reason in general—none of these conceptions satisfies the problem.

The universal aspiration to immortality has its roots, on the one hand, in the longing for infinite happiness that man feels and vainly seeks to satisfy in both bodily and spiritual goods attainable in this life; on the other hand, immortality springs from the profound exigence of a perfect order of justice in which the injustices evident and inevitable in earthly life are repaired, with the reward of the good and the punishment of the wicked in a future life. This eschatological character lies at the root of the almost universal conviction of immortality and contains and fulfills the preceding considerations regarding the personal and spiritual character of survival.

Since man’s being implies a twofold relationship—one intrinsic and constitutive between soul and body, and one extrinsic and final between man and God—so too the orientation on the problem of immortality becomes twofold. In the first relationship, if the soul does not maintain a truly substantial union with the body but only a contingent one, as a mere principle of life, then the immortality of the soul may be preserved, but the ontological unity of man seems to be prejudiced; if, on the other hand, the soul is said to be the true substantial form of the body, then it is difficult to understand how it can survive alone once separated from the body. In the second relationship, one may think that the human soul is a principle belonging to an ontological order akin to the Divinity and thus participating in the eternity and necessity of God Himself; but then the origin and death of the soul are not explained; or the soul is posited as a contingent and created reality in time by God, and then it is not seen how something that begins should not also end. These are the main obstacles to the immortality of the soul on the theoretical plane, which prevented classical thought from arriving at a consistent position on this most decisive point of human being, and which would be clarified only with the advent of Christianity.

The most complete solution is that of St. Thomas Aquinas, according to whom the human soul has a nature entirely special, intermediate between purely corporeal forms and angelic natures; it is indeed the substantial form of the body, but at the same time it transcends the being of the body through its spiritual functions and is therefore a spirit. The soul is created by God in time, but although it has had a beginning it does not know an end because it is endowed (a parte post) with an intrinsic necessity to exist; it is a spiritual form, and yet every human individual is born with his own soul, which makes him a “person” endowed with rational dignity, free choice, and capax Dei, because it is through the spiritual and immortal soul that man is said to be “in the image of God” (Summa Theologiae, I, q. 93, a. 6). The Thomistic demonstration has an apodictic character, inasmuch as it proceeds from the knowledge of real properties to the determination of essence and unfolds in two stages: 1) the human soul is a form subsisting in itself, i.e., spiritual, inasmuch as it is endowed with operations in which the body does not properly participate (spiritual functions); 2) a subsistent form, i.e., spiritual, which operates “in itself,” also has being in itself and not in dependence on the body, which in fact receives its being from the soul. Existence therefore belongs to the human soul inseparably, and thus after death it preserves its being and remains incorruptible. And “a sign” of its indestructible nature the soul bears in the horror that man feels at death and in the longing to live forever (Summa Theologiae, I, q. 75, a. 2 and 6).

This reflection leads the Angelic Doctor to outline a second metaphysical argument for immortality, inspired by the Augustinian conception of “eternal truths,” which can well satisfy the legitimate exigences of the so-called “philosophy of life” or of action and of the new Christian spiritualism. The fact that knowledge attains eternal and unchangeable truths does not prove the eternity of the knowing subject, but of the object known and of the ultimate foundation of such truths, which is the “First Truth,” God Himself, who draws the soul to Himself as to its ultimate end: “Ex fine autem argumentum accipere possumus de rei duratione, sicut et de initio rei argumentari possumus per causam agentem: quod enim est ordinatum ad finem sempiternum, oportet esse capax perpetuae durationis. Unde potest probari ex aeternitate veritas intelligibilis immortalitas animae” (Summa Contra Gentiles, II, 84).

V. IMMORTALITY ACCORDING TO CATHOLIC DOCTRINE.

In the most complete description of the afterlife in the classical world, left by Virgil (Aeneid, VI, 739-55), we have a synthesis of the Platonic myth with the more mature Stoic conception: it is affirmed that the destiny of souls after death varies according to the life led on earth. Those who have died stained with guilt must be purified by proportionate punishments and then pass to the Elysian Fields for final purification (the bath in the river Lethe), and from there, after a period of a thousand years, life resumes in bodies. In this Virgilian description, which seems to derive especially from the Stoic Posidonius, early Latin Christian literature saw an anticipation of Christian doctrine: even though the eternity of punishments and of the blessed life is still lacking, the sense of personality, of expiation, and of purification is clear even for souls that have not sinned (an anticipation of the Christian “Limbo”; cf. L. Radermacher, Das Jenseits im Mythos der Hellenen, Bonn 1903, pp. 13 ff.).

The doctrine of personal immortality is contained in the Apostles’ Creed itself in the articles on the “resurrection of the flesh” and “life everlasting,” since the body is raised to be reunited with the soul, which retains its being, and to share in its life. Moreover, the fact that Holy Scripture presents the bodily immortality of Adam as a gratuitous gift of God, which the first man lost through sin, implies that after death human life is limited to those activities possible for the soul when separated from the body.

The condemnation of the Fifth Lateran Council (19 December 1513) directly strikes at the denial of personal immortality by Alexandrinism and Averroism: “We condemn and reject all who assert that the intellective soul is mortal or is one and the same in all men, and those who cast doubt upon these truths.” The conciliar decree appeals directly to Mt 10:28 (“And do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul”) and Jn 12:25 (“Whoever hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life”). On the meaning and theological scope of the decree, even Luther himself is in agreement, as is acknowledged by Protestant scholars (P. Althaus, *Luthers Stellung zur Unsterblichkeit*, in *Die letzten Dinge*, 3rd ed., Gütersloh 1926, p. 280).

The conciliar text goes on to show that the truth of immortality is the foundation of Christianity and that reason cannot prove the contrary: “Otherwise the Incarnation and other mysteries of Christ would have profited us little, the resurrection would not be awaited, and, according to the Apostle, the saints and the just would be more to be pitied than all men” (omitted in Denz-U).

For Calvin, it is moral conscience that gives decisive testimony to immortality: “Certainly conscience, which discerns between good and evil and answers to the judgment of God, is an indubitable sign of the immortal spirit” (*Institutes*, I, 15, 2). Although the Council does not directly pronounce on the rational demonstrability of immortality, it does condemn the theory of “double truth”: “And since truth cannot contradict truth, we define that every assertion contrary to the truth enlightened by faith is entirely false; and we strictly forbid anyone to teach otherwise” (Denz-U, 738).

The conciliar condemnation has both a negative and a positive sense: reason cannot prove the mortality of the soul or its unity in the entire human species, and faith cannot teach what is absurd (in philosophy). That personal immortality, however, belongs to the preambles of faith and is thus accessible to reason alone is the doctrine of St Thomas Aquinas and is commonly accepted by theologians. The immortality of the body, which man lost through original sin, will be restored only at the final resurrection of the flesh, but this is a miracle of God’s power and surpasses every capacity of the human intellect (*Summa Theologiae*, IIIa, Suppl., q. 75, a. 3).

Nevertheless, the resurrection of the body, though not natural, satisfies man’s natural desire for the integrity of his person, especially when one accepts, with St Thomas, the Aristotelian notion that the soul is the substantial form of the body, so that the whole man exists in the operative harmony of his principles. The same Angelic Doctor admits that the philosophers of antiquity did not attain the perfect clarity that can be achieved after Christian Revelation: “In this it is sufficiently clear how much narrowness their brilliant minds suffered; from these narrownesses we shall be freed if we posit that man can attain true happiness after this life, the soul being immortal” (*Contra Gentiles*, III, 48, near the end).

To this unshakable certainty, faith gives the definitive confirmation.

From the historical-critical standpoint: A. Stöckl, *Die spekulative Lehre vom Menschen und ihre Geschichte*, 2 vols., Würzburg 1859, especially vol. II, pp. 148 ff. (antipatheticism of the early Fathers). Fundamental for classical beliefs about the afterlife: E. Rohde, *Psyche: Seelenkult und Unsterblichkeitsglaube der Griechen*, Tübingen 1893; 10th ed., ibid. 1925 (for a retrospective critical discussion of the work, see W. Jaeger, *The Theology of the Early Greek Philosophers*, Oxford 1948, pp. 73 ff.). Also: G. Runze, *Unsterblichkeit und Auferstehung*, part 1: *Die Psychologie des Unsterblichkeitsglaubens und der Unsterblichkeitsregelung*, Berlin 1894; W. James, *Human Immortality*, Boston and New York 1898; J. Royce, *The Conception of Immortality*, ibid. 1900; H. Graf Keyserling, *Unsterblichkeit*, Munich 1907; L. Friedländer, *Darstellungen aus der Sittengeschichte Roms*, vol. VIII, Leipzig 1910, pp. 359–98; C. Pascal, *Le credenze di oltretomba*, 2 vols., Catania 1912; H. Scholz, *Der Unsterblichkeitsglaube als philosophisches Problem*, 2nd ed., Tübingen 1922; C. Stange, *Die Unsterblichkeit der Seele*, Gütersloh 1925; K. Fahion, *Gott, Freiheit, Unsterblichkeit*, Leipzig 1926; Th. Mainage, *Immortalität*, Paris 1926; H. Lungwitz, *Über Unsterblichkeit*, in *Annalen der Philosophie*, 6 (1927), pp. 116–27; W. Gotzmann, *Die Unsterblichkeitsbeweise*, Karlsruhe 1927 (historical exposition from Plato to Giles of Rome).

On the denial of immortality by the left-wing Hegelians, see C. Fr. Goschel, *Von den Beweisen für die Unsterblichkeit der menschlichen Seele im Lichte der spekulativen Philosophie*, Berlin 1834; Chr. H. Weisse, *Die philosophische Geheimlehre von der Unsterblichkeit des menschlichen Individuums*, Dresden 1835; I. H. Fichte, *Die Seelenfortdauer und die Weltstellung des Menschen*, Leipzig 1867; D. F. Strauss, *Der alte und der neue Glaube*, 9th ed. by E. Zeller, Bonn 1877, pp. 81 ff.; id., *Die Unsterblichkeitslehre der modernen Reflexion*, in *Die christliche Glaubenslehre*, II, Tübingen and Stuttgart 1841, pp. 697 ff.; E. Hirsch, *Die idealistische Philosophie und das Christentum*, Gütersloh 1926 (important for the study of Fichte, p. 172); W. Stahlcr, *Zur Unsterblichkeitsproblematik in Hegels Nachfolge*, Münster 1928; K. Leese, *Philosophie und Theologie im Spätidealismus*, Berlin 1929 (especially pp. 224 ff., where he sets out Weiss’s position).

From the systematic-critical standpoint: K. Groos, *Die Unsterblichkeitsfrage*, Berlin 1922; G. Heidingsfelder, *Die Unsterblichkeit der Seele*, Munich 1930; id., *Zum Unsterblichkeitsfrage in der Renaissance*, in *Aus der Geisteswelt des Mittelalters: Mélanges Grabmann*, Münster in W. 1935, pp. 1265–86; G. van der Leeuw, *Phänomenologie der Religion*, 45th ed., Tübingen 1933, pp. 293 ff.; French trans., Paris 1948, pp. 307 ff.; S. Vanni Rovighi, *L’idéal* nei maestri francescani del sec. XIII, Milan 1936; various authors, *Il problema dell’ideale*, in *Archivio di filosofia*, Rome 1945; E. Frank, *Philosophy and the Understanding of Religious Truth*, London 1945, pp. 68 ff., 132 ff.; E. S. Brightman, *A Philosophy of Religion*, New York 1946, pp. 387–410; J. Endres, *Die Unsterblichkeit der Menschenseele*, in *Divus Thomas* (Freiburg), 22 (1944), pp. 75–94; A. Bremond, *Le syllogisme de l’immortalité*, in *Rev. philos. de Louvain*, 46 (1948), p. 161 ff.; F. Heiler, *Unsterblichkeitsglaube in jenseitsoffnung*, Munich 1950 (with extensive bibliography).

New studies on classical antiquity: M. P. Nilsson, *The Immortality of the Soul in Greek Religion*, in *Eranos Jahrbuch*, 39 (1941), pp. 63 ff.; Fr. Cumont, *Lux perpetua*, Paris 1949, pp. 117 ff. Cornelio Fabro

IMMUNITY, in a biological sense: see MICROBIOLOGY.