http://www.orthodoxytoday.org/articles5/ReardonSoul.shtml

Loss of the Soul
Fr. Patrick Reardon
If there is a single question most appropriate to the beginning of Lent, I suggest it is the query "What shall it profit a man, if he gain the whole world, and suffer the loss of his soul? Or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul?" This is not a fun question. It scarcely lends itself to frivolity. It is the most serious question posed to the human mind.

I suggest there are three things especially to be said about the loss of the soul.

First, it is difficult to pose this question today, because ours is the first age in which there is widespread disbelief in the very existence of the soul. People now demand some form of proof for the existence of the soul.

We must say that this is a strange situation, because in prior times the existence of the soul was considered a self-evident truth. If there is widespread doubt about the existence of the soul these days, it is not because the truth of it is less clear, but because men's minds are sorely distracted by weird theories of materialism.

Because many modern men have been misdirected to believe that everything is material, they have lost contact with their spirits, not sure they even have spirits. Such folk imagine that human thought is simply a mechanical process of the brain. They fancy that human choice is determined solely by emotional impulses. They no longer think of human beings as chiefly distinguished by the ability of critical thought and free will. They no longer see that thinking and choosing are spiritual activities, possible only for those with an immortal soul.

The Gothic writer Howard Phillips Lovecraft explored this modern phenomenon explicitly in a series of short stories called "Herbert West - Reanimator." In those tales Lovecraft described the efforts of a purely materialistic doctor, someone with no belief in the immortal soul, to restore vitality to dead bodies, a thing accomplished with various kinds of animating fluids of his own creation. After a very strange career, Dr. West came to a very bad end. All his efforts could produce was a series of monsters that eventually banded together to put him out of his misery.

Literature of this kind points to a real problem of modern life, that is to say, the monstrosities that man creates by assuming a purely materialist view of human experience.

Let us at least assert this much about a man's loss of his soul -- namely, he is most likely to end up losing his soul who starts by denying that he has one.

Second, there are many other people these days who, while not exactly losing their soul, tend to lose track of it. Even though they theoretically admit the existence of the soul, thy have had almost no experience of themselves as spiritual beings, because they are so completely distracted by various kinds of noises--both external and internal noises--that they never, or almost never, make contact with their inner selves. Their heads are so full of useless garbage that they walk around clueless about who they are, where they came from, and where they're going.

In all honesty we must say that contemporary culture, including much of contemporary education, actually discourages us from finding our souls. In this respect we have in large measure lost the traditional meaning of education. There was a time--nor was it so very long ago--when music, art, and literature served as normal paths in the discovery of the soul. In former days our teachers taught us the nature and structure of our souls by introducing us to the likes of Mozart, Rafael, and Jane Austen.

It sounds old-fashioned to say such things, but there really is a reliable canon of standard texts that have served the test of time in the discovery of the soul, and only at great peril do we abandon that canon. We lose track of who we are, where we came from, and where, by God's design, we are supposed to go.

Third, to find our souls we must exercise discipline. We must close our eyes and go within, to discover the height and depth, the length and breadth of our spirit. We must purge our inner recesses from passions and distractions.

By this question-"What shall it profit a man, if he gain the whole world, and suffer the loss of his soul? Or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul?"-Jesus our Teacher gives the back of His hand to all that is trivial, transient, and frivolous.

When we beat our breasts in prayer, one of the important things we are trying to do, I think, is to summon the attention of our inner selves. We pound on our hearts as though to inquire "Is anybody in there? Is anybody home?" Lent is the proper time to knock on that door, in the hope of not losing our souls.

Fr. Patrick Henry Reardon is an Orthodox priest in the Antiochian Archdiocese of America and serves on the editorial board Touchstone magazine.

Posted 29-Mar-05

http://www.orthodoxytoday.org/articles5/HassertEthics.shtml

Brain, Mind, and Person: Why we need to affirm human nature in medical ethics
Derrick L. Hassert

Americans have heard a great deal of talk about "quality of life" in recent weeks with the prominence of the Terri Schiavo case in the national media. For fifteen years Terri Schiavo existed in what some physicians have labeled a persistent vegetative state--others say she may have been in a state of minimal consciousness. Her husband (now living in a common law relationship with another woman) won the right to have her feeding and hydration removed, arguing that years ago she verbally conveyed her wishes not to be kept alive in such a state. Terri's parents fought to keep her alive. The courts and public opinion weighed heavily against the parents and in the end Terri was deprived of hydration and nutrition. Many commentators on the tragic battle over her life suggested that she was "brain dead" and a lost cause, that her intellectual abilities would never be what they once were, and that this was a partial argument for why she should be "allowed to die." According to such accounts Terri, as an individual, had ceased to be fifteen years prior to the final legal conflict. You might even say that about a decade and a half ago Terri Schiavo "lost her soul." Since Terri as a person was really gone, her body should be allowed to die.

You won't hear much "soul talk" in theology and ethics these days. The linguistic spotlight on humans has been refocused squarely in the physical realm, and in this refocusing many physicalists, functionalists, and monists[1] insist that they are keeping closer to what the foundational Hebrew and Christian texts really teach, in comparison to those who cling to talk of souls as ghostly things that manipulate the fleshy machine of the body. While these approaches may sound more affirming of the embodiment of human existence, they leave us in places of far greater ethical difficulty than do most forms of Aristotelian or Thomistic dualism.[2] In some physicalist corners the concept of soul is morphed into a concept of "soulish properties"[3]--the ability to have personal relationships, to pray, to voluntarily make moral decisions--a list that could be inexhaustible. In this line of thought "soul" is a set of functions that emerges from neurological functioning, rather than a human nature or essence that provides the foundation for the emergence of distinctly human neurological functioning: First you have the neurons, the neurons start working, and "the soul" emerges.[4] This equating of the "soul" with a set of functions or processes--what cognitive psychologists might refer to as "mind"--is the same faux paux Descartes made, but one that Aristotle and Aquinas did not: In Aristotle the mind is a subset of abilities defined by the essential nature of the creature (the soul).[5] The soul precedes all else. We are humans first by nature, not by function.

Things get confusing when "soul" is rejected in a traditional sense by physicalists but accepted as a set of properties. We may first be told that "we are souls; we don't have souls" only to be told later that the soul is nothing more than "soulish properties."[6] This seems to lead back to being able to say "we have souls" by virtue of having these properties, negating the previous assertion that "we are souls" and "don't have souls." So if the "soul" is to be defined as a set of functions, what about human beings that lack these functions or processes--perhaps due to brain damage or developmental disability--do they lack "souls" or "personhood" if they lack whatever abilities the physicalists have linked with these terms? In the Schiavo case many in the media seemed to be making this claim: "Her quality of life will never be the same and we should be let her go" or "She's not there anymore." Her husband made the claim that his wife "died fifteen years ago." From a Thomistic standpoint such statements are illogical; if you are a living human being you have a human soul. If you lacked a soul, that which provides the nature of your very existence, you'd be a human corpse. Terri Schiavo was not in the process of dying, at least no more than any other human being, nor was she brain dead as many in the media alleged. Despite profound cortical damage, all of Terri's basic physiological systems were functioning normally under the control of surviving brain structures. Biological death was far from imminent. From a physicalist position, however, it would seem that you could still be a living human being but lack your "soul." This seems to be the popular analysis of what to make of people suffering from severe neurological impairments, people such as Mrs. Schiavo or perhaps President Reagan in the last stages of Alzheimer's disease: They lose their souls.

The Anglican theologian Lindsay Dewar commented that "To prevent something good from developing is morally hardly distinguishable from destroying the end product when it has come into being."[7] This conclusion is based upon an element of Aristotelian thought usually worked out in scholastic moral theory, that the worth of a thing is dependent not upon the actualization of potential, but upon the potential itself that rests within the nature or essence of a thing.[8] Knowledge of and concern for the human nervous system is in no way foreign to this line of thought--indeed the theistic or humanistic physician would of course wish to know how best to foster and maintain the health of the brain during all stages of development and how to avoid or prevent damage to this very delicate arrangement of cells and chemicals. We know that proper cognitive functioning depends on a properly functioning nervous system, and that accidents and brain damage can rob people of basic abilities. Indeed, the process of biological aging will do this to some extent. Even if these abilities are diminished by disease, aging, or external trauma, we should still view these individuals as persons because they are indeed still living human beings.

Those who believe in the underlying reality of human nature, in the concept of soul in the Aristotelian or Thomist sense, do indeed believe that a properly functioning brain is irrevocably linked to our proper cognitive functioning as human beings. However, where the Thomists part company with the physicalists is the assumed dependence of the nature of a human being, and hence the human being's worth and classification as a person, on some criteria of optimal neurological functioning. Physicalism tends too much towards adopting a moral theology of imparted worth, a worth decided upon by external functional evaluation (and who does the evaluating?). Thomists hold to a view of inherent worth, of intrinsic dignity according to the nature of the organism.

What we've lost in our common discourse is a foundation of Christian humanism[9]--acknowledging the inherent worth of human beings as persons simply because they are human and created imago Dei. Without this affirmation our society will continue to embrace the equation of the "soul" and personhood with certain cognitive functions while simultaneously suggesting that these functions don't spring from an underlying nature. In the Terri Schiavo case we are observing where such an approach can lead: Trying to weigh the value of a life upon its level of awareness or its behavioral ability--regardless of the species being considered. We are increasingly evaluating people and their worth on "quality of life" and not the kind of living creature that they are. We need to reclaim our human souls.

Notes

[1] In psychology and the philosophy of mind, physicalism refers to the belief that mental states are identical with some type of physical/brain state; non-reductive physicalism emphasizes that mental states might arise from complex brain states, but can't be reduced to these brain states. Neither type of physicalism seeks to deny mental/cognitive states. However, Christian physicalism differs from these approaches by changing "mind-talk" into "soul-talk," arguing that spiritual qualities can be identified with brain states. A recent collection of essays in favor of Christian physicalism is entitled From Cells to Souls, illustrating the pervasive assumption that "soul" arises from "cells." Functionalists examine psychological and neurological processes in terms of the functions or behaviors performed by the organism; monists are those who teach there is only "one substance" in the world.

[2] The soul is the first and most basic principle of life and unity for a living thing; it is "conjoined with the body, not as two separate and independent entities but as principles, body and soul constitute a living thing with the soul as its principle of life," quoted from James B. Reichmann, Philosophy of the Human Person (Chicago: Loyola, 1985) 233.

[3] See Warren S. Brown, "Neurobiological Embodiment of Spirituality and Soul," in From Cells to Souls, 58-76; also Warren S. Brown, "Nonreductive physicalism and soul: Finding resonance between theology and neuroscience," American Behavioral Scientist, 45:2 (2002), 1812-1821.

[4] "The soul is the music made by an ensemble of players (the various lower-level cognitive abilities) who perform together to create the capacities for interpersonal dialogue as well as self-awareness and internal self-reflection (intrapersonal experiences). Played out in relationship to God who chooses to be in dialogue with his human creatures, the cognitive capacity for personal relatedness embodies spirituality." From Warren S. Brown and Malcom A. Jeeves, "Portraits of Human Nature: Reconciling Neuroscience and Christian Anthropology," Science and Christian Belief 11:2 (1999): 139-150.

[5] J.P. Moreland and Scott B. Rae, Body and Soul: Human Nature & the Crisis in Bioethics (Downers Grove, Illinois: InterVarsity, 2000), 200.

[6] Brown and Jeeves, "Portraits of Human Nature."

[7] Lindsay Dewar, Outline of Anglican Moral Theology (Oxford: Mowbray, 1968), 84-85.

[8] See F.C. Copleston, Aquinas (London: Penguin, 1955); John F. Crosby, The Selfhood of the Human Person (Washington: Catholic University of America, 1996); For its application in biomedical ethics see Scott B. Rae and Paul M. Cox, Bioethics: A Christian Approach in a Pluralistic Age (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans, 1999).

[9] "For most people, 'human nature' is an expression so familiar that it seems to require no further comment. According to a general way of thinking, humans are unique, possessing a distinctly human nature, and for good theological reasons Christians would agree. But some atheistic existentialists and a good many behaviorists are prepared to defend the opposite view. Humans are not unique. . .and there is no such thing as human nature." From R. William Franklin and Joseph M. Shaw, The Case for Christian Humanism (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans, 1991), 7.

Derrick L. Hassert is an Assistant Professor of Psychology at Trinity Christian College in Palos Heights, Illinois, and an ordained Deacon in the Episcopalian Church.
Posted 03-Apr-05