After Death We Can Live Again
A mystic/occult approach to the afterlife differs from traditional Catholic views. But that's OK! We can still be friends and creative partners!
Check out the previous installments in
, , and my dialogue about abortion, war, life, and death. And if any of our readers or other contributors would like to offer their views on these subjects then please join in! Part of the mission of GOTD Books is to bring together faith-based people to dialogue about our traditions and speculations about the spiritual realms. Please email me your thoughts or sound off in the comments.David: What If 'Lesser of Two Evils' Voting Is Just a Sign Politics Itself Is Evil?
Sally: We Are Not Sacred Vessels
David: Yes, There Are Times When It Is Moral to Kill an Innocent Human Being
Dear Alec,
Thank you for your patience as I’ve stumbled in continuing our dialogue about the morality surrounding life and death. We’re almost all the way unpacked in our new apartment - I just got done setting up the new mattress today - and it should only be a few more trips back to the RV to finish moving the last of our stuff. I’m hoping to get most of it later today.
Anyway, perhaps it’s better that I was delayed in responding to your last installment, as your most recent piece got GOTD, while not part of this series, is also worth discussion. So I’ll respond to it first and then return to your last installment in our series, writing about it in the context of what I lay out regarding this piece here:
Let’s start in your faith’s territory, what the Catechism claims:
The Catechism asserts that we are not merely spirits inhabiting an expendable body. On the contrary, our body is part of a profound unity of body and soul that forms a single nature. (Catechism, 365). In other words, your physical body is just as important a component to your being as your soul because they are not two natures but one.
You titled your post “Did You Know that Your Body and Soul are One?” and here claim that the Catechism asserts that body and soul are the same nature.
Now, far be it from me to suggest that you might be misinterpreting your own theology here, but when I looked up Catechism 365, in my view it didn’t seem to say that. Here’s what it claims:
The unity of soul and body is so profound that one has to consider the soul to be the "form" of the body: 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.
Now by my reading of this sentence, it is not asserting that body and soul are one or that they have the same nature. It is saying that body and soul are two different things, but when they come together in the body then “their union forms a single nature.”
There’s the body, there’s the soul, and when they come together they create something new - “a single nature.” In this way, when someone is alive, it is nigh impossible to determine where their higher nature - their soul - ends and where their lower nature - their body - begins. They are certainly a “union.” But the metaphor I see here is more akin to a marriage. When a man and woman are married they are still their own individual people. But now that they have come together they have created a third thing: the marriage itself, which one could say “forms a single nature.”
So while I agree that when body and soul come together they are “a single nature,” I do not agree at all that body and soul are the same or somehow of equal importance. Our bodies are not eternal - they will return from the dust in which they were created. One’s soul is much more important than their body.
Now let’s get into the bigger theological disagreement we have here:
It seems to be common mistake today to think that the physical body is not important to our makeup, or that somehow the soul, which actually forms the body, can be mistakenly placed in the wrong body.
I very much understand the broader political/cultural context you’re arguing here. You’re aiming to address the claim of many transgender individuals that they believe they are a “male soul” trapped in a female body or a “female soul” trapped in a male body.
I agree with you that this concept is misguided, especially when someone believes it so sincerely that they choose to start making irreversible changes to their body. However, I agree for reasons very different than what you believe and argue. I do think that reincarnation is part of our spiritual experience, however I don’t think a soul is ever “mistakenly” put in a new body. Why? Because the soul is the one who chooses what body to inhabit next, what life they want to live. So if a soul is more “female” in its nature and ends up in a male body why might that be? The answer is pretty simple: because each life is an opportunity to learn new things, and even if a soul prefers female bodies then a life as a male is a chance to see humanity from a different perspective and to learn more.
So, are transgender people a soul of the other gender in a body where they feel alien? Or is it a mental health illness, gender dysphoria? I think it most cases it’s going to be the latter but I wouldn’t always rule out the former. However, even if a soul is “female” in nature - and I don’t yet buy the idea that someone’s soul is inherently male or female - then that really isn’t a good argument to change one’s gender through painful surgery. After all, none of this spiritual talk is empirically verifiable. We can’t really know for certain that we A) even have a soul or B) if it’s male or female or C) if we only live once and then spend eternity in heaven or hell, or D) if we truly live multiple lives. We’re all just guessing based on shards of evidence! Hence what “faith” is all about!
Now, just as I interpret that sentence from the Catechism differently than you, there’s something else where we’re divergent on also, and it’s for a similar reason where we’ve bumped heads before.
Again we have a disagreement over scriptural interpretation, apparently primarily because I have a strong resistance to just reading a single verse alone. I believe passionately - dare I say fanatically - that we really need to read a verse in the broader context of the whole chapter, the whole book, the whole Bible, and in light of the historical period in which it was written. Just as I previously disagreed with your scripture citation of Matthew 10 at the start of the dialogue, I do not agree with you that this verse you cite is compelling evidence that reincarnation is incompatible with Biblical faith:
We do not get multiple lives in different bodies in this world, rather, as the author of Hebrews states, “Just as it is appointed that human beings die once, and after this the judgment…” (Hebrews 9:27).
Alec, you’re not even quoting the whole sentence here. 9:27 cuts off in the middle of the thought. Here’s the whole thing:
Just as people are destined to die once, and after that to face judgment, 28 so Christ was sacrificed once to take away the sins of many; and he will appear a second time, not to bear sin, but to bring salvation to those who are waiting for him.
Then read the whole chapter. Is this a chapter about reincarnation? It isn’t at all. It’s about how the death of Christ acts as a replacement for the animal sacrifices done in the temple. It tells us little about life after death. Let’s start at 9:16 and then read the whole concept in context:
16 In the case of a will,[d] it is necessary to prove the death of the one who made it, 17 because a will is in force only when somebody has died; it never takes effect while the one who made it is living. 18 This is why even the first covenant was not put into effect without blood. 19 When Moses had proclaimed every command of the law to all the people, he took the blood of calves, together with water, scarlet wool and branches of hyssop, and sprinkled the scroll and all the people. 20 He said, “This is the blood of the covenant, which God has commanded you to keep.”[e] 21 In the same way, he sprinkled with the blood both the tabernacle and everything used in its ceremonies. 22 In fact, the law requires that nearly everything be cleansed with blood, and without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness.
23 It was necessary, then, for the copies of the heavenly things to be purified with these sacrifices, but the heavenly things themselves with better sacrifices than these. 24 For Christ did not enter a sanctuary made with human hands that was only a copy of the true one; he entered heaven itself, now to appear for us in God’s presence. 25 Nor did he enter heaven to offer himself again and again, the way the high priest enters the Most Holy Place every year with blood that is not his own. 26 Otherwise Christ would have had to suffer many times since the creation of the world. But he has appeared once for all at the culmination of the ages to do away with sin by the sacrifice of himself. 27 Just as people are destined to die once, and after that to face judgment, 28 so Christ was sacrificed once to take away the sins of many; and he will appear a second time, not to bear sin, but to bring salvation to those who are waiting for him.
It’s also worth remembering: this is a letter to the Hebrews, it is an answer to the theology that was common among the Israelites of that time. It is not about theological concepts which would not have been understood by the specific people of that specific time and that specific place. (And I’ll just reference but not wade into the huge controversy about whether Paul actually wrote Hebrews…)
So all this to say: we’re coming from different theological places regarding life and death and therefore the morality surrounding when it’s morally justifiable to kill someone. If one life is all anyone gets, and the soul and body are one and the same, then abortion is in one context even more immoral than killing an adult human. At least the murdered human had the chance to live! But the fetus killed in an abortion never got to learn or experience anything in life and now all they have is heaven. Of course in this context, abortion can be understood as a greater evil than just about any other form of killing, a greater evil even than an unjust war like what Vladimir Putin is waging in Ukraine.
And, of course, if you believe that the body and soul are one then abortion at even the earliest stage is an abominable evil. At the very moment that sperm meets egg then surely you must regard then as the moment when the soul and body are joined. Whereas, for those who do not have the theological belief that soul and body are one, it’s a much more open - dare I say unknowable - question about when exactly in human development the soul and body are joined.
So let’s dig in now on the previous official installment in our series.
You began by admitting you did not understand the point I was making regarding your comparison of the pro-life/pro-choice ideologies to someone who either is or is not pregnant:
I admit I don’t quite follow your analogies above, in that our “philosophies/ideologies” should follow the realities of life. If my “pro-life” guiding principles are not in step to what science says about human life and pregnancies, I would need to reevaluate my principles. If I am misreading what you wrote, please let me know.
The point that I was trying to make is that what “pro-life” and “pro-choice” mean is something entirely subjective. The “pro-life” ideology and “pro-choice” ideology are both schools of thought which humans made in their own heads by imagining them into existence. These subjective philosophies are in no way comparable to an objective scientific fact that can be measured with something as simple as a pregnancy test bought at the drug store which uses chemicals to determine “pregnant” or not “pregnant.” I was objecting to this point you wrote previously in trying to counter my claim that I can be both pro-life and pro-choice:
I suggest that you cannot really be both, just as you cannot be both pregnant and not pregnant.
One’s subjective ideological beliefs held in one’s head simply cannot and should not be compared to an objective scientific reality that can be measured with tests and medical instruments.
Further, your next point is also problematic:
If my “pro-life” guiding principles are not in step to what science says about human life and pregnancies, I would need to reevaluate my principles.
I do think you need to reevaluate your principles because “science” doesn’t really say anything like this about human life and pregnancies. Science does not say what you proclaimed in your last post - “Your Body and Soul are One.” According to “science” there is no objective evidence that we even have souls.
And I’ll go a step further: according to “science” there is absolutely nothing morally wrong with aborting a baby at any level of development or even of murdering an adult human. Science is totally silent when it comes to any sort of morals or ethics. Science is only a method for reliably measuring phenomena in the physical world. What we each then do in response to that empirical data is more about our subjective values and not at all “what science says.”
Now, that we differ in how to interpret language further shows itself in each of our subjective understandings of what “pro-choice” and “pro-life” even mean. I found this fascinating that to you Ronald Reagan doesn’t really qualify as pro-life and has views comparable to those who are pro-choice:
As an example, my favorite president, Ronald Reagan, considered himself to be pro-life, but his exceptions for abortion (e.g., rape and incest) could easily put him in the company of self-described pro-choicers who are really only concerned about having just those exceptions.
I’m sorry Alec, but I’ve never met a pro-choicer who is really only concerned about having just those exceptions. In my experience, anyone who only thinks there should be exceptions for rape and incest while all other abortions should be illegal qualifies as a pro-lifer. That you regard such a person as a pro-choicer is somewhat amusing to me.
Here again we see our differences in language:
That said, “absolutist” has been given a negative connotation in our modern times (people far prefer subjectivity), but if dealing with an objective truth, it is the correct view to have. For example, I have an absolutist view on child rape—it is always evil without any exceptions or gray area.
I would say that what you are describing is not at all an “absolutist” view on child rape. Merely judging that an action is “always evil” is not an “absolutist” view. Want to know what I think an “absolutist” view on child rape would be? Someone who advocates that every child rapist needs to be castrated in the public square before being tortured to death draw-and-quartering style like the end of Braveheart.
That, my friend, is an “absolutist” position. Merely regarding an act as “always evil” is far from absolutist.
In the same spirit, by saying you could not be both pro-life and pro-choice, I am asserting that there is an objective and true standard for being pro-life.
And I am asserting there is no “objective” standard for what it means to be “pro-life.” Who has the authority to say what this one correct standard truly is? No one. Your pro-life views are entirely subjective, informed by your own subjective understanding of the Catechism and other principles of your Catholic faith.
Now, all this established about objective-subjective disagreements, we reach something really interesting as you tried to rebut my examples of instances in which killing innocent people was the moral choice to do. You write,
I also believe that each of your examples below do not betray an exception to this rule. Intention is everything
Intention is everything? Really? Then by that standards all the women receiving abortions and doctors performing them are engaged in something that is not at all immoral because their “intentions” are “everything.” When we’re talking about “intention” then we’re inherently talking about something subjective as we’re wading into what’s supposedly going on in a person’s head.
Your claim that the cases I cite in which “the intention is a duty to protect the public and save lives” somehow changes the reality that innocent people die. It doesn’t. With the Vietnam War the intent was the protection of the public and saving lives, but how many innocent people were the victims of atrocities in the name of these goals? Do the intentions really matter in an “objective” sense like you have been insisting on? They do in a “subjective” sense, in that for each of us we can subjectively say if the deaths of innocent people were justified or not. But “objectively” it doesn’t really matter if 30 people are killed in an attack because the bomber hated the victims’ skin color or because the government dropping the bomb was trying to stop terrorists. It’s still 30 bodies buried in the ground.
Further, you base your moral reasoning here on “the Principle of Double Effect,” which derives from Thomas Aquinas. Now, again, I’m not claiming to know more than you do on Catholic philosophy, but I’m suspecting that perhaps here you’re misinterpreting or misapplying the concept.
By all means, feel free to correct me if I’m wrong - Aquinas has never been one of my favorite philosophers - and Wikipedia is certainly not necessarily a reliable source of anything, but do let me know if this is an inaccurate summary of the principle:
This set of criteria states that, if an action has foreseeable harmful effects that are practically inseparable from the good effect, it is justifiable if the following are true:
the nature of the act is itself good, or at least morally neutral;
the agent intends the good effect and does not intend the bad effect, either as a means to the good or as an end in itself;
the good effect outweighs the bad effect in circumstances sufficiently grave to justify causing the bad effect and the agent exercises due diligence to minimize the harm.
Now, this is entirely something subjective here, but in my view the principle of double effect does not at all work here because the first criterion is not met - “the nature of the act is itself good, or at least morally neutral.” The nature of killing innocent people is not “itself good” or even “morally neutral.” At the very least it’s bad.
You then continue to apply this principle toward the other examples I provided, on the subject of war. You write,
Each of our attacks must have the intention to save more lives by winning the war as soon as possible, even though we know that some innocents may die unintentionally by our actions.
But to “save more lives by winning the war” is not what wars are really about. The purpose of a war is to defeat an enemy nation. And that might require ending many, many innocent lives. In a war it’s not just “lives” period that are involved. It’s the lives of one nation vs the lives of another nation. And winning a war - as was done in World War II through dropping the atomic bombs - often means delivering hits against the enemy in which a lot of innocent people on the other side die.
With your principle of double effect you want to try and wipe away the complexities here by claiming that “none of this brings into question whether it’s moral to directly/intentionally kill innocents—it never is.” I was trying to get you to realize that in each of the scenarios I put forward people are “directly” and “intentionally” killing innocent people. They are just morally rationalizing their actions subjectively. The “intention is everything” which you offer cuts both ways. Islamist terrorists use comparable moral reasoning to justify suicide bombings against Israeli civilians. They have “good” intentions don’t they? Is an Islamist terrorist who bombs a dozen children at a pizza parlor “objectively” different than an American plane dropping a bomb that kills two dozen children in an effort to stop Islamist terrorists? These are all entirely subjective in their morality. There’s no “objective” or “scientific” place to stand when it comes to labeling something good or evil.
Next you objected to my “extraordinary circumstances” justify “extraordinary exceptions” point. You wrote in response,
This statement seems to be saying that in an emergency situation, all normal morality goes out the window.
Yes, that’s largely correct, in my view. According to “normal morality,” killing innocent people is never acceptable. But in the types of emergency situations I outlined - crime, war, pandemics - survival trumps “normal morality.”
As an illustration, can you think of an exception that would make rape moral, or child abuse for that matter?
Sure. It’s not that hard. I’ll keep it PG-13 rated. Let’s go to the hostage situation again. If the bomber says, “Alright Alec, you have a choice: either you go into that room and beat up that 10-year-old child until they’re bloody and unconscious, or else I’m going to kill 2 dozen hostages.”
But to state it here again: abortion, a direct and intentional killing of an unborn child, is never necessary to save a mother’s life, nor is it ever morally acceptable. A medical procedure that is aimed at saving the mother’s life where the child may unintentionally die in the process is morally acceptable. This is an important distinction.
I’m sorry, but I don’t see it as an important distinction at all. I see it as semantics and euphemism. “An abortion done to save the mother’s life” and a “medical procedure to save the mother’s life in which the child dies” are functionally the same thing. The only difference is which verbiage makes someone feel comfortable.
Finally, we can conclude where we started - on this whole “lesser of two evils” voting strategy. There’s one last important point to make:
It is simply not a compromise of values to support a candidate who represents more of my values than the other candidate.
It’s worth pointing out here: abortion is not the only issue on the ballot when voting for a politician. Is a politician’s stance on abortion the only thing that should matter in weighing one against the other? If someone is pro-life and supports Vladimir Putin’s war on Ukraine and Iran’s war on Israel do you vote for them over the pro-choicer who opposes Russia’s imperialism and the Islamic regime’s genocidal antisemitism?
warm wishes and appreciations for the dialogue,
David
Hi, I agree with Alec. Body and soul are equally important. My reasoning comes from Christ’s resurrection. He appears with his body, changed, yet able to eat and drink. Yes, he also walks through doors. I agree with Protestant theologian N.T. Wright., to paraphrase: God didn’t make junk. Our bodies, this world, is not to be discarded at the end of time. The body and thus world is to be transformed, glorified, once we step outside of time and space. The Celtic cross surrounded by a circle is that symbol of transformation: God and heaven’s descent into the world.