perhaps a side swipe at various pagan myths about the origin of the soul.
340 The Literal Meaning of Genesis human being too, after all, it is none but God who creates the offspring, whether in the seed or in the already formed fetus, through Wisdom reaching everywhere because of her purity, such that nothing defiled may gain entry into her (Wis 7:24-25), while she stretches mightilyfrom end to end, and disposes all things sweetly (Wis 8:1).
But I really do not know how one can understand heaven knows what sort of spiritual creature to have been created, which is not mentioned among those works of God made during those six days, in which God is said to have made the man on the sixth day, the man he had not yet made in his proper nature, but still only by a causal formula in that creature which has not been mentioned. lt ought particularly to have been mentioned, after all, as something that had been finished in such a way that it was not itself still due to be made according to its own preceding causal formula.24
23. 34. Or when God made the man on the sixth day to his image, did he perhaps insert this causal formula for making the soul in the nature of that day which he established at the beginning, if that day is rightly taken as being intelli gent spirit, thus fixing in advance the cause and formula on which he would make him after those seven days? On this showing he may be supposed to have created the causal formula of the man's body in the nature of earth, that of his soul in the nature of that first day. But when you say this, what else are you saying but that angelic spirit is the quasi-parent of the human soul, if the pre-established formula for creating the human soul is in it, just as that of future offspring is in a human being? The result of this will be that while human beings are indeed the parents of human bodies, angels are the parents of human souls. God of course will be the creator of both bodies and souls, but of bodies out of human beings, of souls out of angels ; or of the first body out of earth and the first soul out of the angelic nature, where he had fixed their causal formulae in advance when he originally made the man among the things which he created all together simultaneously; but from then on he is creating human beings now from human beings, body from body, soul from soul.
lf you find it hard to swallow this idea of calling the soul the daughter of an angel, or of angels, that of its springing from the bodily heaven will be much harder; so how much more so from sea and earth!25 Much less therefore was the causal formula of the soul pre-established in any bodily creature when God made the man to his image, before he animated him with a puff, after forming
24. Reading secundum suae causae praecedentem rationem facienda with the Maurists. The CSEL text omits causae; but 1 think this must be only a printer's error, as there is no reference to the point in the apparatus criticus. 25. An oblique allusion here, 1 suppose, to the second, third, fourth, and fifth days of creation; and perhaps a side swipe at various pagan myths about the origin of the soul.
Book VII 341 him in his proper time from mud, if it is absurd to suppose that the soul was caus ally established in the angelic nature.
The possibility considered of the human soul having been created in itsfull actuality at the original simultaneous creation of all things
24. 35 . So let us see then whether this could possibly be true (it certainly seems to me that ordinary human opinion will find it more tolerable), that among those first works in which God created all things simultaneously he also created the human soul, which in its own time he would breathe into the limbs of the body formed out of mud, while of this body he causally created, among those things simultaneously set up at the beginning, the formula to which the human body would be made when it was due to be made. You see, we can only correctly understand the words to his image with reference to the soul, and the words male andfemale (Gn 1:27) as having reference to the body.
So let it be supposed then, if there is no scriptural authority or evident argu ment of reason against it, that the man was made on the sixth day in such wise that while the causal formula of the human body was created in the elements of the world, the soul was itself createdjust as the original day was established, and once created was stored away among the works of God until in due time he chose to insert it by puffing, that is by breathing it into the body formed out of mud.
A problem raised by this idea
25. 36. But here again a problem arises that cannotjust be shrugged off. lf, you see, the soul had already been made and was being stored away, where could it possibly be better off than there? So what cause was there for tbe soul, living there in all innocence, to be inserted into the life of this flesh, in which it would offend by sinning against the one who created it, and as a result be deservedly overtaken by misery and toil and the torment of damnation? Or must it be said that it had a natural inclination of its own will to administer the body; and since life in the body can be lived both justly and iniquitously, it would have there whatever it chose, either reward for justice or punishment for iniquity? ln this way one would avoid going against the apostle'sjudgment in which he says that those not yet born have done nothing either good or bad (Rom 9:11). That incli nation of the will toward the body, to be sure, is not yet an act of eitherjustice or iniquity for which account has to be rendered at the judgment of God, at which all are going to receive according to what they have carried out in the body, whether good or evil (2 Cor 5:10).
So why then may we not now also suppose that the soul at a signal from God came to the body where, if it was willing to act in accordance with his command, it would receive the reward of eternal life and the companionship of angels.