that God by puffing made the soul in the man. But then it could possibly be
326 The Literal Meaning of Genesis
And so we have—in incomparably different ways indeed, but still we have the soul ruling its subject the body and God ruling his subject the creation; why then should God not rather be understood to have made the soul from creation his subject when he is said to have puffed, seeing that the soul itself, though not master of its body in the same way as God is of the universe, still makes a puffby moving the body, and not out of its own substance?
5. We could indeed say that it is not even God's puffthat is the man's soul, but that God by puffing made the soul in the man. But then it could possibly be thought that the things he made with a word are better than what he made with a puff, because with us too a word is better than a puff; so for the moment there is no reason, in terms of the aforesaid argument, why we should hesitate to say that God's puff is the soul itself, provided it is understood that it is not God's nature or substance, but that for him to puff is the same as to make a puff, while to make a puff is the same as to make the soul.
This opinion is supported by what God says through Isaiah: For breath will proceedfrom me. and l have made every puff; what follows, you see, teaches us that he does not mean any kind of bodily puff; because after saying / have made every puff, and on account of sin, he goes on, / have saddened him a little and have struck him (ls 57:16-17). So what can he be calling a puff but the soul, which has been struck and saddened on account of sin? What therefore is / have made every puff'but "I have made every soul"?
4, 6. And so ifwe were to say that God is something like the soul of this bodily, material universe, the universe itself being for him like the body of a single animating principle, we would be right in saying that by puffing he only made a bodily material soul for the man out of his own body, from the air at his disposal; but we would be wrong to think that what he gave by puffing he had given from his very self. No, it would be from the air of his own body, entirely at his disposal, as the same sort ofthing all round it is at the soul's disposal, something bodily to make a puff out of, not out of its very self. Now however, because in fact we say that it is not only the bodily part of the universe that is subject to God, but that he is above everything created, whether bodily or spiritual, we are to believe firmly that by puffing he made the soul neither from his very self nor from bodily material elements.
Whether the soul was made out ofnothing, or out ofsome already made spiritual material
5, 7. Whether he made it, though, out of that which quite simply was not, that is out of nothing, or out of some sort of thing which had already been made by him in the spiritual order, but was not yet soul, is a question that can properly be asked. lf, you see, we do not believe that God still goes on creating anything out