harmonia, applied to the construction of the human body. So 1 feel at liberty, indeed
422 The Literal Meaning of Genesis growth. Now in the body's seed35 there can be an invisible energy which regu lates the numbers36 and is to be distinguished by the intelligence, not the eyes, from the bodily mass that is perceived by sight and touch. And the very size of the human body, so incomparably bigger, to be sure, than the tiny quantity of the seed, makes it abundantly clear that something can be taken from the seed which does not have that seminal energy, but only the bodily substance which was taken and formed into the flesh of Christ from above by God and not by sexual reproduction. Is there anyone, though, who would be capable of affirming about the soul that it has each ofthese things, both the manifest material ofseed and the hidden formula of seed?
But why should I slave away at a matter which cannot be put across to anybody in words, except to someone so stupendously clever that he can fly ahead of the speaker' s efforts and not have to wait till the end of the talk to grasp the whole thing? And so let me put it all in a nutshell. If this could happen with the soul too (what was possibly understood when we were saying it about the flesh), then the soul of Christ comes from such transmission in such a way that it has not dragged along with it the blemish of the original transgression; but if it could not come from that source without this liability, then it did not come from that source.
As for the way all other souls arrive, whether out of their parents or from above, let those win the argument who can. l am still hesitating between the two parties, and inclining sometimes this way, sometimes that—with this firm proviso at least, that I do not believe the soul to be either a body or any bodily quality or interlock,37 if that is the right way to put what the Greeks call harmonia; and l trust that God will help me to stay in my right mind and never believe anyone who babbles such rubbish.
A textfrom the gospel: John 3:6
22, 38 There is another text that should not be overlooked, which those who think souls come from above can present as evidence in their favor; something the Lord himself says: What is born oftheflesh isflesh, and what is born of the spirit is spirit (Jn 3:6). "What," they say, "could be more definite than this state
35. As distinct from the soul's. 1n the traducianist view, at least as Augustine is presenting it, there is a soul seed by which parents reproduce souls as well as the body seed by which they generate bodies—presumably the two act in tandem. 36. See that verse, Wis 1 1 :20: You have disposed all things in measure and number and weight. 37. Coaptatio, a word which, according to Lewis & Short, Augustine invents to render the Greek harmonia, applied to the construction of the human body. So 1 feel at liberty, indeed constrained, to invent a word too—the same word, however, as 1 invented in the translation of The Trinity 1V,2,4; see note 1 2 there. See also The City of God XX11.24,4.