In an upcoming article, I will expound on actual, sanctifying, and sacramental graces, and why God made humans to receive that grace which brings us into right relationship with Him and into Heaven. In preparation, I wrote the below article to explain why God did not create nonhuman (nonrational) animals with immortal souls capable of receiving His grace.
Also, about three years ago, Gene Van Son explained why nonrational animals do not go to Heaven in his article Pets in Heaven? Don’t Bet on It. And I wrote an article titled Proving the Immortal Human Soul Exists, in which I provided extrabiblical reasons for the human soul’s continued existence after physical death.
As I just mentioned, the following article will explain why nonrational animals and other earthly creatures (plants and so forth) do not have souls that survive physical death. Before turning to these explanations, however, I would like to define what a soul is and distinguish among the different types of souls. For this, I will turn to St. Thomas Aquinas.
Types of Souls
In his Summa Theologiae, Aquinas generally defines the soul as the unifying and vivifying principle (or form) of living organisms. The soul makes an organism a living thing and unifies the parts to make a whole. We can apply this definition to plants, insects, fish, reptiles, amphibians, and mammals, including humans. But this does not mean that all souls are the same.
Aquinas says vegetive souls inform their matter (e.g., flowers, trees, tomatoes, etc.) to grow and reproduce. Sensitive souls have these powers plus they inform their matter (e.g., dogs, cats, cows, horses, etc.) to use sense powers and to move.
Those species with sensitive souls can also recognize and remember material objects, but they cannot know things beyond the material. According to Aquinas, both vegetive and sensitive souls rely on matter and, therefore, do not survive after the organism’s death (ST I, q. 78).
However, a rational soul (human soul) survives after bodily death because it is spiritual. Rational souls have the aforementioned powers plus the ability to think rationally (i.e., think conceptually about things and their purposes) and to choose morally correct courses of action out of love for the eternal Good.
In other words, the rational soul can know, understand, and choose things beyond the material. Click here and here to read a two-part article by Catholic Answers about the soul.
Human Vs. Animal Powers of Knowing
The human’s intellectual power includes knowing things beyond sense knowledge and imagination. Humans alone can understand themselves (introspection) and everything with which they come into contact (extrospection). We know and understand things beyond the concrete thing.
For instance, when I see a tree, I do not simply see something on which to urinate, like when a dog sees a tree. I understand the tree’s essence and conceptualize a great many purposes for which I can use the tree. I can examine one tree and understand the essence of all trees. Consequently, I can conceptualize the truth about trees and the truth itself. Truth is a concept we cannot detect with our senses. We can only understand it with our intellects.
I can also see a certain beauty in the tree that points to God’s beauty. I can see the need for trees to oxygenate our planet and their uses for a nearly endless number of construction projects. I can see the need to replenish this natural resource lest I create problems for mankind by not properly caring for God’s creation.
Accordingly, I can reflect on my actions before I decide (prospection) what to do with the tree and even evaluate my actions afterward (retrospection). I may want to use trees for a near-endless number of things, but I can also reflect on the imprudence of doing such a thing, something nonrational animals cannot do. In other words, God designed me to understand truths that transcend material creation and to reflect on them.
Also, as God is eternal Truth, and He made me in His image and likeness, He designed me to reflect Him, to understand Him at some level, and to love Him with all my heart, mind, soul, and strength. By love, I simply mean willing what is good for oneself and for others. A thing cannot do this unless it first understands what good is and what is good.
But God did not create nonrational animals to function like this. They can recognize, remember, and even imagine material things, but they cannot understand the essence of things or concepts such as truth, love, beauty, justice, or even themselves. They simply have no ability to understand. And they cannot love what they cannot understand.
(Fact #1: Animals have no conceptual powers to understand things or ideas, and they have no volitional [of the will] powers to choose objects and actions they cannot understand.)
However, God designed humans to love, understand, and know which actions conform to or conflict with truth, love, goodness, reality, etc. Also, He made us understand not only material things but also spiritual realities, including Heaven. Therefore, our intellectual powers know things beyond the material and point to a spiritual soul that God designed for eternity.
What is Heaven?
Heaven is nothing other than the Beatific Vision, the moment we receive God directly into our souls and see Him as He is. St. Paul writes, “For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then, face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall understand fully, even as I have been fully understood” (1 Corinthians 13). So, Heaven is the clear, unimpeded understanding (or clear, spiritual vision) of God. He will give this vision to those whom He designed to understand and who die in a state of grace.
Nonrational animals clearly do not fit this description, which is why we describe them as nonrational. Animals may, and in my opinion, will, live on the new earth described in Revelation 21, but this does not mean that animals in this life will be there. In fact, nothing philosophically or scripturally supports the notion of resurrected animals in the next life.
(Fact #2: God did not make animals to understand Him or to seek the Beatific Vision.)
Humans Know God
Regarding our relationship with God, we have the capacity to know God, to love Him, to understand His purposes for us, and to execute our dominion freely and lovingly over the rest of the world in accordance with His will (ST I, q.96, a. 1, 2). This is something no nonrational animal could ever do.
God did not design animals to understand His purposes for creation or to seek an eternal relationship with Him based on grace, love, and truth. Animals do not even understand, nor will they ever understand, what grace, love, and truth are, not to mention justice, mercy, temperance, fortitude, prudence, and morality.
Like other living organisms (e.g., reptiles, insects, trees, grass, vegetables, etc.) God created, He created animals to serve man, and He gave them temporal purposes. Even though God loves all His creation, His love does not necessitate that everything He creates will survive physical death.
(Fact #3: God eternally loves all creatures, but He did not create all creatures to eternally love Him.)
62 thoughts on “Eight Reasons Why Animals Do Not Have Immortal Souls- Part I”
I think it’s very important to understand that we should respect animals and that originally God didn’t intend for them to die in the sense that humans were originally vegan. When you witness the slaughterhouse you can feel the sorrow of animals being strangled to death, with cries so sad and yells so extreme, they are in deep pain and desperate to cling on to life. I am not a vegan and I can’t financially afford to be vegan and healthy. I am not advocating for this secular or christopretensist religion of equality being promoted as a virtue instead of community. We are not equal to animals as humans and it isn’t prideful to acknowledge our place in the hierarchy and we are also not equal to God. I do not believe animals have souls but I also don’t believe they were meant to die especially animals that are higher up the food chain such as dogs and cats and cattle as opposed to insects and stuff like that which maybe is meant to die because they’re below the critical threshold for what is required for a life form to be meant to live eternally in Paradise Earth when it’s not under the curse of sin. I think some animals are meant to die like bugs even in a perfect creation while others are not, but I do agree with the conclusion that the animals that already died will not be resurrected and that the soul they have is not eternal if they die.
The only disagreement I have is that I do believe animals are capable of loving but the love they have doesn’t compensate the fact that they’re still lower life forms meant to serve man which includes learning to love man because knowing man is the closest they’re capable of getting to knowing God.