This week’s post will pose a bit of a question, and throw a cat amongst the pigeons – so to speak. Let’s cut to the chase, after doing some reading lately, my question is this:

Do we, as Catholics and as humans, know when the spiritual soul is infused by the Creator into the resulting matter of our conception, which is the beginning of our body in microscopic form? Is the soul infused at the moment of conception, or at some later point into the zygote, or embryo, or foetus?

Do we know this? It’s a big question, and one that philosophers and theologians have discussed for a long time.

I’ll take it as a given that everyone reading this blog accepts that we as human beings have a spiritual soul, a principle of life that animates and gives form to our body; an inner reality that unifies the lowest to the highest levels of life in us (instinctual, vegetative, sensitive, passional, emotional, imaginative, intellectual, volitional, and personal)…; and allows us to live as one complex person; a soul that isn’t caused by the matter (of the egg and sperm coming together) but a soul that is spiritual and comes from a Spiritual Cause, a First Being, a Creator, a God; a soul that has spiritual faculties of intellect and will in potency (potentiality); a soul that when intimately and substantially united to the matter of our bodies, produces a human person in potency, and gives the possibility of development to grow and become a knowing, understanding, reasoning, choosing, loving, feeling, self-reflecting, self-conscious human person (in act) in the real world, i.e., once the soul is infused, all the ingredients and potential are there, lying dormant, for this tiny globule-of-life to grow and become a human person living a full life. This can all be known through the natural light of the intellect understanding reality properly, through philosophy (i.e., without supernatural Faith).

But the question (a very big question, almost too vast for our discussion) for this post is: when is it given? Has the Church ever defined this? Can we know this from the natural inquiry of the intellect, i.e., through realist philosophy?

This may come as a shock for some people but in fact the Church has never defined the exact moment of when the spiritual soul is infused by the Creator. The Church has used terms like….”Human life must be respected from the first moment of conception” … “The human being must be respected–as a person–from the very first instant of his existence.” (Donum Vitae, Evangelium Vitae, Catechism, Humanae Vitae), but the Church, simply has not taught or defined that the soul is infused at the moment of conception (not yet anyway, if she ever will). It is also something that we cannot know precisely through the natural inquiry of the intellect.

A further question worth considering is this: Can science answer this question for us? Science looks and studies the material, the quantifiable, the divisible, and the measurable, by observing material phenomena and effects and looking for their material causes, material interrelations, and material laws. Can science prove or find a non-material cause in creatures? It can certainly find supporting material evidence that may help add weight to a position to demonstrate a spiritual cause; it can also help show at a material level, at the level of the body (i.e. through biology, microbiology, dna et al), that the essential fundamental matter involved in a zygote doesn’t go through a fundamental change from the moment of conception, through all the stages of development, unto death. But the true answer is that the natural sciences cannot prove to us whether or not that there is a spiritual principle involved. This is vitally important for us grasp, considering the almost tyrannical control that science is exercising over bioethics.

So, the question is, if the soul is not infused at conception (it may well be, but we just don’t know), what animates the life-form of the zygote, embryo, foetus? We know that human beings do not have an evolving soul, i.e., our soul does not evolve from being a vegetative soul (e.g., for plants) to an animal soul (e.g., for a dog) to a spiritual soul (for a human person). The Church and realist philosophy know this because a material soul (vegetative or animal) cannot evolve in a spiritual soul (matter can’t produce spirit).

But we don’t know the answer as to what animates the zygote if the spiritual soul isn’t infused at conception either. However, it would seem plausible that it would be similar to that life-principle that animates the sperm – but obviously the sperm is very different to the resulting life-form of a human conception. So if the infusion of the spiritual soul is not at conception, what is the resulting conception-matter before the infusion of the spiritual soul? If it isn’t yet a human person in potency, what is it?

What we can say, without doubt, and absolute certainty, is that it is a human person in promise, destined to receive a soul by the Creator, ordered to become a fully developed human person, hopefully passing from potentiality into act in this earthly life, in terms of all its powers and faculties and dimensions; and it is ultimately destined to become a child of God through filial adoption and redemption in Jesus Christ. That is the great destiny of our having been created. But, does that mean that we can treat the zygote, embryo, or foetus as if it is just disposable biological matter?

No, of course not! Because it is ordered to receive a spiritual soul, it isn’t just arbitrary animal matter, but this matter has the potential to receive a spiritual soul, which makes it entirely different to any other matter in this world. This should lead us to an even more profound respect for the origins and early stages of human life. We should have even more reverence, admiration, esteem, care, compassion, and love for the tiny life-form-zygote-human-person-in-promise that is a fruit of a conjugal act; and allow it to take its natural course to receive a soul from the Creator; and come into this world to grow and develop into a fully autonomous and loving human person.

Obviously, by the time we have a foetus, the exterior ‘form’ of the foetus is such that we know that we have a human being in development in the womb; so from this exterior we could say that the spiritual soul is most likely present by then, and we have a human person in potency (not in act).

We can also see the fallacy of saying we have to wait until all the spiritual faculties are absolutely externally obvious in a little child, before we say that we have a human person. If we did that we would have to wait until the child is 5-6-7 years old. Some use this as a reason for justifying infanticide. But any decent person, from experience, can see and understand that just because the spiritual faculties aren’t immediately externally obvious in an embryo, foetus, baby, or child, that doesn’t mean that a human person isn’t intended in promise, or isn’t there in potential – and that must be absolutely respected!

We as Catholics often get nervous about this type of indefinite talk regarding the origins of life, because we think that this might be leaving the door slightly ajar for the pro-abortionists, pro-cloners, and pro-embryo-destroyers/experimenters to argue for a stronger case to manipulate and destroy zygotes, embryos, and foetus’, (or even new-borns), but we should never be afraid of the truth – as long as people are open to understanding reality properly.

The fact that we don’t know when the spiritual soul is infused does not give license to these practices, because they still cut short the intended and promised covenant between the Creator and human involvement in procreation. Who are we to kill something destined to receive a spiritual soul by God, and become living breathing human person? If we did, the sin would be all the more greater because we have denied this life-form the infinite gift of receiving a spiritual soul, and the potential of becoming a human person, and the potential of receiving filial adoption and redemption by the Father, through Jesus Christ. To cut this off – a deeply satanic act if there ever was one – is to make oneself ‘like God’. The union of spirit and matter (which is what we are) is something that Satan abhors, and he will do all that can to stop this mystery which is the human person from coming into existence, or into full act; either before we’re given a soul, or after, by cutting us off from developing into persons, and by cutting us off from coming to know Christ.

What do you guys think? It’s a big area.