Is there personality in heaven?

Last updated on: April 21, 2009 at 10:38 am by Kate Cousino

Is there personality in heaven? 2009-04-21T10:38:00-04:00 Kate Cousino

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This is the question I asked on Facebook last night:

“If someone’s personality changes significantly because of brain damage…which personality manifests in heaven? Is there personality in heaven?”

Fortunately for me, the brilliant Therese numbers among my Facebook friends, and answered me thusly:

oooh…. well here’s the Thomas Aquinas version of the answer: personality (likes/dislikes, tendencies, temperament) is a function of individual bodies (which makes a lot of sense, given what we know about the relationship between personality and brain chemistry). But these bodily dispositions eventually shape the soul in a particular way through the habits it develops, so that it tends to think about certain topics and desire certain things more than others. Thus Thomas says that in Heaven, although the soul is able to know anything it wants to, it tends to consider the items of knowledge it most often thought about on earth, and desires to be with the people whose company it most sought. Which is why, despite marriage being dissolved in Heaven, one still has a special bond with one’s [former] spouse there, because their souls are “shaped towards” each other.

So … I guess one’s “separated soul personality” would be restricted in Heaven to these cognitive and affective habits formed on earth, but one’s “resurrected body personality” would include the tendencies and temperament proper to each individual body in their most perfect and well-ordered form.

Of course, this still leaves open the question of what the ‘most perfect and well-ordered form’ of any particular body might be. To this end, fellow blogger Jen (of just jen posits this:

I think one could make a really fun argument that our fallen natures are in fact a form of brain damage–and that none of our brains are completely whole and fully functioning. The fact that all brains are full of unrealized potential and that decay begins from the moment of birth, you can say that none of us enjoy our “personality” in ideal form here on this plane and have a fully restored personality to look forward to in heaven

What do you all think?

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