Question

A reader writes:

I consider myself as a convinced catholic but I still make my own research to substantiate my convictions.

Lately, I was wondering why was it important for the Catholic Church to build certain beliefs from Greek philosophy thus teaching, as for example, the soul’s immortality. Although I am a firm believer of after-life, yet I try to uphold beliefs on Sacred Scripture and Tradition, but on this matter I seem to be missing the script.

Can you please help?

I’m not particularly sold that the immortality of the soul is something the Church gets from Greek philosophy. Jesus speaks of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob as “alive to God” in Matthew 22. Obviously, they are not in the body, so he clearly is implying that they have immortal souls. The apostles seem to have assumed something similar, given that when they saw the Risen Christ, they took him for a ghost. Belief in ghosts presumes a belief in something like immortal souls too.