been made, if one can rightly understand it to have been made in those first
342 The Literal Meaning ofGenesis while if it ignored this command it would pay the perfectly just penalty, whether of daily toil and trouble or of eternal fire? Or does this very fact that compliance with God's will is of course a good action rule this idea out of court, because against it will be the fact that "those not yet born have done nothing either good or bad"?
A further question
26, 37. All this being so, we will also have to admit that the soul was not created in that original set of things in such a state as to have foreknowledge of its future behavior, whether just or iniquitous. lt positively defies belief to suppose that it could of its own free will have had an inclination to the life of the body, if it had foreseen that in some people it was going to sin so grievously that it would justly receive the punishment ofperpetual torment. The creator, surely, is rightly to be praised in all things, seeing that he made all things very good (Gn 1:31). I mean, he is notjust to be praised for those to whom he has given foreknowledge, since we are right to praise him too for making the cattle, and human nature is of more value than they are, even in sinners. It is the nature of the man, surely, that derives from God, not the iniquity in which he involved himself by misusing his free will, while if he were not endowed with this, he would lack his pre-eminence in the order of nature. The man can be thought of, surely, as living justly even without foreknowledge of what the future would hold, and on that supposition one should note how his pre-eminence in enjoying free will would not stop him living rightly and pleasing God, because being ignorant of the future he lives byfaith (Rom 1 : 1 7). So then, ifyou are unwilling to allow for this kind of creature among God's works, you are going against God's goodness, while if you are unwilling for it to pay the penalty for its sins, you are the enemy of his equitable justice.
The problem provisionally solved
27, 38. But if the soul is made precisely to be sent into the body, one can ask whether it may be forced to go even if it is unwilling. But it is better to suppose that it wills this by nature, that is to say that it is created with a nature to will this just as we have a natural will to live, while to live badly does not come from nature, but from perversity of will, which is justly followed by punishment.
39. So then it is futile to ask from what sort of material the soul might have been made, if one can rightly understand it to have been made in those first works of creation, when the day was made. Just as those things, after all, were made out of nothing, so too this soul among them.26 But if there was also some
26. A rather free paraphrase of what he puts more enigmatically: "Just as those things, which were not, were made, so too this among them."