Topic:  What happens to a human being's soul when he/she dies?

Source of this posting: Moderator response to emailed question

Date originally posted: March 12, 2002

Moderator who originally posted this source: J. Ruffo

Question: While reading other religious literature i came upon this statement: God did not breathe an immortal soul into man, but rather, as a result of the union of the body and the breath of life, man became a soul.  Hence, when man dies, the soul dies, for man is the soul or living being.  There is no such thing as an immortal soul. This theory is purely an invention of misguided human wisdom.  The expression immortal soul does not appear anywhere in the Bible.  In essence what they have stated is that once man dies, he sleeps in death, unconscious, no spirit to be placed in Hell or Purgatory etc., until he is awakened by Christ God.  As a catholic this is contrary to what I believe.  As per Catholic Theology- What happens to Man's Soul and body when man dies?  Paul

Answer: 

Dear Paul,

 Our belief is that the soul is that spiritual principle which informs or enlivens the body.  Our language about spiritual realities is always limited.  The biblical words for “soul” have a broad range of meaning.  In the Old Testament “soul” can refer to the breath of life (Gen 2:7), individual persons (Gen. 46:18), or the seat of desire or emotion (Ps. 42:1).  Likewise in the New Testament “soul” describes life (Mt 2:20) and persons (Acts 3:23), as well as what survives after death (Lk 9:25; 12:4; 21:19; 1 Pt 1:19).  In St. Paul’s writings the soul is sometimes contrasted with both the body and the spirit as an aspect of the person not yet fully under God’s grace.  The early Jewish and New Testament writers generally looked forward to the resurrection of the whole person and not just the immortality of the soul.   

I’ll now give you an excerpt from Rev. William C. McFadden’s succinct explanation of life after death from “The Modern Catholic Encyclopedia”.  I agree with him and he says it so well.   

“On what transpires after death, which remains always beyond our experience, the Church speaks very soberly, affirming only what is necessary to be faithful to the revelation it has received.  The Church cannot teach the view of Plato, which identifies the soul as the essence of the self and understands the death of the body as liberating the soul from a supposedly unworthy association with matter.  On the other hand, the Church cannot teach that the dead remain in some suspended state until the general raising of the dead at the second coming of Christ.  According to Church teaching, in fidelity to the picture presented in the Bible, a human being must be understood as a unitary reality, a fusing together of a spiritual element and a material element.  At death the spiritual element, which is endowed with consciousness and will, survives and begins the new life of intimacy with God, or of eternal separation from God, or else undergoes a process of purification prior to entering fully into communion with God.  This spiritual element has been traditionally referred to as the soul, but in Christian faith it must be understood as essentially incomplete unless it is joined to a resurrected or glorified body.”

 There’s a lot of nonsense out there, Paul.  Be careful what you use your earth time reading.

 Father John