6. See Wis 1:7.
BookX 403
The idea ofsouls being createdfrom some spiritual, angelic, matter aired and dismissed
5, 8. So then, the idea that God creates souls from the angels as their parents, so to say, has no authority in the canonical books that l can think of; much less, therefore, that it is from the corporeal elements of the world—unless maybe what inclines you to this is the passage from the prophet Ezekiel in which the resurrection of the dead is being indicated, and once the corpses have been reas sembled the spirit is summoned from the four winds of heaven, so that when it blows upon them they are brought to life and rise up. This, you see, is how the passage goes: And the Lord said to me: Prophesy over the spirit, son of man, prophesy andsay: Thus says the Lord: Comefrom thefour quarters of the winds ofheaven and breathe into these dead, and let them live. And lprophesied as the Lord commanded me, and the spirit of life entered them, and they came to life again and stood upon their feet, a very great gathering (Ez 37:9-10). Here it seems to me that what was being prophetically signified is that human beings were going to rise again not just from that plain, where the event was being demonstrated, but from the entire globe, and that this was represented by the breath coming from the four quarters of the world.
I mean to say, not even that breath from the Lord's body was the very substance of the Holy Spirit, that time when he breathed and said, Receive the Holy Spirit (Jn 20:22); but it was certainly signified in this way that the Holy Spirit proceeds also from him, just as the breath proceeded from his body. But the world, after all, is not attached to God to make one person with him in the same way as that flesh was to his only-begotten Son; so we cannot say that the soul comes from the substance of God in the same way as that breath from the four winds was made from the nature of the world. But still l reckon that what it was is one thing, what it signified another, which can be rightly understood from the example of the breath proceeding from the Lord's body. And this I maintain is so, even if what the prophet Ezekiel foresaw there by that symbolic revelation was not the resurrection of the flesh as it is really going to take place, but the totally unexpected restoration of a despairing people through the Spirit of the Lord, which has filled the entire globe.6
6. See Wis 1:7.
404 The Literal Meaning ofGenesis
The three positions to be tested against the evidence scattered through the scriptures
6, 9. So then, what we must now look at is which opinion wins the most support from the multiple evidence of the divine witness; is it the one which says that God made one soul and gave it to the first man, to make the others from it as he makes the bodies of the rest of mankind from that man's body, or the one which says that he makes each individual soul for each individual person as he made that one for that man, and does not make the rest from that one? You see, what he says through lsaiah: / made every breath (Is 57:16), the verses that follow show clearly enough that he is saying it about the soul, can be taken either way, because whether it is from the one soul of the first man, or from some secret store of his own, there is no doubt at all that he makes all souls himself.
1 0. Then there is the text: Whofashioned their hearts one by one (Ps 33: 15); if by "hearts" we wish to understand souls, this too does not run counter to either of the two opinions we are now arguing about. After all, it is he himself of course who is fashioning them one by one,just as he does with bodies, whether it is from that single one which he puffed into the face of the first man; or whether he is fashioning and dispatching them one by one, or fashioning them actually in the persons to whom he dispatches them. This latter, however, does not seem to me actually to be said anywhere, except with reference to our souls being renewed through grace and formed to the image of God; about this the apostle says: For by grace you have been saved throughfaith, and this notfrom yourselves, but it is the gift of God; notfrom works, lestperhaps any should exalt themselves. For we are hisfashioning, created in Christ Jesus in good works (Eph 2:8-10). We cannot, after all, understand it as meaning that our bodies have been created or fashioned through this grace of faith, but as it says in the psalm: A clean heart create in me, O God (Ps 51:10).
1 1 . This is also, I presume, where that other text comes in: whofashioned the spirit of man in him (Zee 12;1); as though it were one thing to dispatch a soul already made, another to make it in an actual human being, that is, to remake and renew it. But even if we are to understand this to be about the nature with which we are born, not about the grace with which we are renewed, it can still fit either opinion; either God fashions in a person something like the seed of a soul drawn from that single one of the first man, to give life to the body, or else he likewise fashions the spirit of life through the mortal senses of the flesh, not from that kind of "slip," but poured into the body from somewhere else, so that the person may be made into a living soul.
7, 12. Certainly a more thorough examination is called for of that text from the book of Wisdom, where he says: / obtained a good soul by lot, and since l was good rather more, l came into an undefiled body (Wis 8: 19-20). It does seem,