According to Catholics were Adam and Eve aware that they possessed immortal souls before Satan told Eve that she would not die?
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As a Catholic, I believe that by virtue of their having been created in God's image, Adam and Eve had immortals souls, and that their physical bodies had also been meant to be immortal. In that sense, the devil was lying to them with the deceitful motive of making them disobey God's commandment. The punishment they got was death of the physical body, not of the soul. To me , the devil does not appear to have discussed the immortality of the soul, even as he was enticing Eve to eat the forbidden fruit. Remember that the issue of death was first mentioned by Eve to the devil, and not vice versa (Gen 3:3).
Upvote:2
Adam and Eve in the state of original innocence possessed preternatural gifts: "bodily immortality, infused knowledge, and immunity from concupiscence."¹
St. Thomas Aquinas addresses the question "Whether the first man knew all things?,"² saying:
…the first man was established by God in such a manner as to have knowledge of all those things for which man has a natural aptitude.
and
The first man had knowledge of all things by divinely infused species.
Thus, Adam knew his soul was immortal.
Also, Pope Leo X (1513-1521) wrote in his bull Regiminis, Session VIII, Dec. 19, 1513, of the 5th Lateran Council that:
…we condemn and reject all who assert that the intellectual soul is mortal…
I understand Flimzy's objection in the comments below that "'all those things for which man has a natural aptitude' is a far cry from 'everything naturally knowable'" to mean that although Adam may have been potentially able to know all things naturally knowable, whether he actually did is unknown. Regarding this, St. Thomas, before the passage I quoted above, wrote:²
In the natural order, perfection comes before imperfection, as actuality precedes potentiality; for whatever is in potentiality is made actual only by something actual. And since God created things not only for their own existence, but also that they might be the principles of other things; so creatures were produced in their perfect state to be the principles as regards others. Now man can be the principle of another man, not only by generation of the body, but also by instruction and government. Hence, as the first man was produced in his perfect state, as regards his body, for the work of generation, so also was his soul established in a perfect state to instruct and govern others.Thus, Adam had actual knowledge of "all those things for which man has a natural aptitude."
References
- Parente, Pietro, Antonio Piolanti, and Salvatore Garofalo. Dictionary of Dogmatic Theology. Milwaukee: Bruce, 1951. p. 228.
- Summa Theologica I q. 94 a. 3 c. & ad 1
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