14. See Lk 23:43.
78 On Genesis: A Refutation of the Manichees remained merely "ensouled" and "soulish." And that is why all of us who have been born of him after that sin first act out the "soulish" man, until we gain the spiritual, "enspirited" Adam, that is, our Lord Jesus Christ who did not commit any sin ( 1 Pt 2:22), and why on being created anew and brought to life by him we are restored to Paradise, where that thief earned the right to be with him, on the very day he finished this life.14 This after all is what the apostle says: But notfirst what is "enspirited" or spiritual, but what is "ensouled" or "soulish. " For the first Adam was made into a living soul, the last Adam into a life-giving spirit ( 1
Cor 15:46).
1 1 . So that then is how we ought to understand this passage. We are certainly not to suppose that because it said, He blew into him the spirit of life and the man was made into a living soul, something like a part of God's nature was turned into the man's soul, and so be obliged to say that God's nature is subject to change—the error about which the truth presses hardest on these Manichees. Pride, you see, being the mother of all heretics, these have had the nerve to say that the soul is identical with God's nature. And on this point they are harried by us, when we say to them, "Therefore God's nature goes astray, and is wretched, and is riddled with vices, and commits sin, or even, as you yourselves say, is defiled by contamination with the filth of an opposing nature—and other such things, which it is impious to believe about the nature of God."
That the soul, you see, was made by the all-powerful God, and that accord ingly it is not a part of God or identical with his nature, is stated quite plainly in another passage of scripture, where the prophet says: And the one whofashioned the spiritfor them all, he it is that knows all things (Ps 33: 15), and in another place: whofashioned the spirit of man within him (Zech 12: 1 ). So then, that the spirit of the man was made is definitively proved by these texts. But the scrip tures give the name of "the spirit of man" to the soul's power of reason, which distinguishes him from the animals and gives him mastery over them by natural law. It is about this spirit that the apostle says: Nobody knows what a man has except the spirit of the man which is in him (1 Cor 2:1 1).
I quote this in case there might still be people who say that while these texts prove that the soul was made, the spirit of the man was not made, and who insist that this spirit is identical with God's nature, and say that a part of God was turned into the man's spirit when God did that blowing. This also is utterly rejected by sound teaching, because the spirit of man too sometimes errs and sometimes has the right ideas, and so declares itself to be changeable, which in no way whatsoever is it lawful to suppose about the nature of God. Now there surely cannot be a surer sign of pride than for a human soul to claim to be what God is, when it is still groaning under such a huge pile of vices and miseries.
14. See Lk 23:43.