That the soul has also been made immortal is something we must know in the Church’s teaching for the refutation and overthrow of idols. We can come to a more direct knowledge of this from what we know about the body and from the soul’s difference from it. For if our argument has shown that the soul is distinct from the body, while the body is by nature mortal, then the soul must be immortal because it is not of the same kind as the body.
Again, if the soul moves the body, as has been shown, and is not itself moved by other things, it follows that the soul is moved by itself and continues to move from itself after the body has been laid in the earth. It is not the soul that dies; rather, the body dies because the soul departs from it. If the soul were moved by the body, it would follow that when what moved it departed, the soul would die. But if the soul moves the body, then all the more it must move itself. And if it moves itself, it necessarily lives after the death of the body.
For the soul’s movement is nothing other than its life, just as we say that the body lives when it moves and that its death occurs when it ceases to move. This becomes still clearer from the soul’s activity while it is in the body. Even while it is joined to the body and bound to it, the soul is not contracted or measured according to the body’s small size. Often, while the body lies on a bed without moving, sleeping as though in death, the soul remains awake by its own power and goes beyond the body’s nature. Remaining in the body yet as though traveling away from it, it imagines and contemplates things above the earth. Often it even meets the saints and angels who are beyond earthly bodies and approaches them, confident in the purity of its mind.
How much more, then, when it is released from the body whenever God who bound it wills, will it have a clearer knowledge of its immortality? For if even while bound to the body it lived a life outside the body, much more will it live after the body’s death and will not cease to live, because God made it this way through His own Word, our Lord Jesus Christ.
This is why the soul thinks about and considers immortal and eternal things: because it is itself immortal. Just as, because the body is mortal, its senses perceive mortal things, so because the soul contemplates and considers immortal things, it too must be immortal and live forever. Thoughts and contemplations of immortality never leave it; they remain within it like kindling that gives assurance of immortality.
For this reason, too, the soul has within itself the thought of contemplating God and becomes its own path, receiving not from outside but from itself the knowledge and comprehension of the Word of God.
That the soul has also been made immortal is something we must know in the Church’s teaching for the refutation and overthrow of idols. We can come to a more direct knowledge of this from what we know about the body and from the soul’s difference from it. For if our argument has shown that the soul is distinct from the body, while the body is by nature mortal, then the soul must be immortal because it is not of the same kind as the body.
Again, if the soul moves the body, as has been shown, and is not itself moved by other things, it follows that the soul is moved by itself and continues to move from itself after the body has been laid in the earth. It is not the soul that dies; rather, the body dies because the soul departs from it. If the soul were moved by the body, it would follow that when what moved it departed, the soul would die. But if the soul moves the body, then all the more it must move itself.
And if it moves itself, it necessarily lives after the death of the body.
For the soul’s movement is nothing other than its life, just as we say that the body lives when it moves and that its death occurs when it ceases to move. This becomes still clearer from the soul’s activity while it is in the body. Even while it is joined to the body and bound to it, the soul is not contracted or measured according to the body’s small size. Often, while the body lies on a bed without moving, sleeping as though in death, the soul remains awake by its own power and goes beyond the body’s nature. Remaining in the body yet as though traveling away from it, it imagines and contemplates things above the earth. Often it even meets the saints and angels who are beyond earthly bodies and approaches them, confident in the purity of its mind.
How much more, then, when it is released from the body whenever God who bound it wills, will it have a clearer knowledge of its immortality? For if even while bound to the body it lived a life outside the body, much more will it live after the body’s death and will not cease to live, because God made it this way through His own Word, our Lord Jesus Christ.
This is why the soul thinks about and considers immortal and eternal things: because it is itself immortal. Just as, because the body is mortal, its senses perceive mortal things, so because the soul contemplates and considers immortal things, it too must be immortal and live forever. Thoughts and contemplations of immortality never leave it; they remain within it like kindling that gives assurance of immortality.
For this reason, too, the soul has within itself the thought of contemplating God and becomes its own path, receiving not from outside but from itself the knowledge and comprehension of the Word of God.