The Literal Meaning of Genesis
BOOK TEN 103 from His body. But since the world is not united to God in the unity of a person as the body of Christ is united to the Word, the only-begotten Son of God, we cannot say that the soul is from the substance of God as the breath is made from the four winds of the world.'* But I believe that the breath was one thing and that it signified another; and this can be clearly understood in the example of the breath proceeding from the body of our Lord. This interpretation is true even though the prophet Ezekiel in the passage cited foresaw, in a revelation given under figures, not the resurrection of the body as it will be one day, but the unexpected restoration of a people without hope through the Spirit of the Lord who has filled the whole world.'5
CHAPTER 6
Two theories on the origin of the soul examined in the light of Scripture.
9. Let us, then, see which opinion is supported by the testimony of Scripture. Is it the one which asserts that God made one soul and gave it to the first man, later making the others from it, as He makes the other human bodies from the body of the first man? Or is it the one which asserts that He makes an individual soul for each individual man just as He did for Adam, not making the other souls from Adam's?!®
What God says through the mouth of Isaiah, / have made every breath'? (and the words that follow show that He is speaking of the soul), can be explained according to either theory. For whether God makes souls from the one soul of the first man or from some origin beyond our knowledge, there is no doubt that He makes all souls.
10. In the Psalms it is written, Who formed their hearts one by one.18 Now, if by "hearts" we wish to understand "souls," this text does not contradict either of the two theories about which we are perplexed. For, on the one hand, if God forms souls from the one soul which He breathed into the face of the first man, He Himself certainly forms all individual souls just as He forms