The Literal Meaning of Genesis (continued)
bodies. On the other hand, the same thing is true if He forms individual souls and sends them into bodies or if He forms them in the bodies into which He has sent them.
However, the text cited above from the Psalm, I believe, refers only to the fact that our souls are renewed and formed by grace to the image of God. Hence St. Paul says, For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing, but tt is God's gift; it is not because of your works, so that no one may glory. For we are His work of art, created in Christ Jesus in good works.'9 We cannot, indeed, understand these words in the sense that our bodies have been created or formed through this grace of faith, but in the sense in which the Psalmist says, Create in me a clean heart, O God.?°
11. In the same sense, I believe, we must understand the text which says, Who formed the spirit of man within bim,?} recognizing that it is one thing to send into a body a soul already made, and another thing to make it in man himself, that is, to remake and renew it. But even if we understand this not as referring to grace, in which we are renewed, but to nature, in which we are born, the text can be interpreted in accordance with either opinion. For in one interpretation God forms in man from the one soul of the first man that which is drawn like a seed of the soul to vivify the body; and in the other interpretation God forms the spirit of life not as the offspring of Adam's soul but infused into the body from elsewhere, and He likewise fashions it in the senses of the mortal body so that man may become a living being.
CHAPTER 7
What theory on the origin of the soul is supported by Wisdom 8.19-20?
12. A more thorough consideration is needed of the text of the Book of Wisdom which says, A good soul fell to my lot; and being good above the common, I came to a body undefiled.2? This does, indeed, seem to support the theory which holds that souls