7. See below, 17,30,31.
BookX 405 after all, to give more support to the view according to which souls are believed to come into bodies from above, and not to be propagated from a single one. But all the same, what is the meaning of "l obtained a good soul by lot"? As if in that reservoir of souls (ifthere is such a thing) there are some good souls, some not so good, and they emerge from it by a kind of lottery which decides which should be allotted to which person; or else as if at the moment when people are being conceived or born God makes some good souls, some not so good, from which each individual draws whatever falls to him or her by the turn of the wheel.
It would be surprising anyhow if this did help the case of those who believe that souls are made elsewhere and dispatched singly by God into every single human body, and not rather those people who say that souls are sent into bodies according to what they have deserved by actions committed before the body. How, after all, can some be supposed to be already good, some not good, when they come into bodies, except according to their works? It cannot, l mean, be according to their natures, in which they are being made by the one who makes all natures good. But perish the thought that we should contradict the apostle, who says that those not yet born have done nothing either good or bad (Rom 9:11). He says this by way ofconfirming that it was not as a result ofworks but of God's calling that the answer was given to Rebecca's question about the twins still confined in her womb: The elder shall be slave to the younger (Gn 25:23). So then, let us put aside for the moment this testimony from the book ofWisdom. Those people, you see, are not to be ignored, whether they are wrong or whether they have hit upon the truth, who think that this was said specially and uniquely about the soul of the mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus (1 Tm 2:5). lf necessary, we shall consider this later on,7 so that if the text cannot in fact fit Christ, we may go on to ask how we ought to take it, without challenging the apostle's faith and assuming that souls deserve anything for works done before they begin to live in bodies.
8, 13. Now let us see what the bearing on our subject is of the text: You will take away their spirit, and they willfail and turn back into their dust. You will sendforth your spirit and they will be created; andyou will renovate theface of the earth (Ps 104:29-30). Well, this does seem to chime in with the idea of those who reckon that souls are created, like bodies, from parents, when it is under stood as follows: that the reason he called it "their spirit" was because human beings had received it from human beings; and when they died, it could not be given back to them by human beings for them to rise again, because it is not then derived once more from parents as it was when they were born, but from God, who will give it back when he raises the dead. And thus he called one and the same spirit theirs when they die, God's when they rise again.
7. See below, 17,30,31.