The Literal Meaning of Genesis
BOOK TEN 107 as dust and ashes.3? This is what is meant by the statement, And they will return to their dust. But when they receive the Spirit of God, they say, /t is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me.33 Thus, the face of the earth is renewed by the multitude of the saints through the grace of the New Testament.
CHAPTER 9
What theory on the origin of the soul is supported by Ecclesiastes 12.7?
15. The text in Ecclesiastes,... and before the dust returns to the earth as it was, and the spirit goes back to God who gave it,>4 does not support one theory more than the other but is compatible with either. The advocates of one theory can say that this proves that the soul is given not by the parents but by God, because when the dust, that is, the flesh which was made of dust, has returned to its earth, the spirit will return to God who gave it. Those on the other side reply: "You are certainly right. The spirit returns to God, who gave it to the first man when He breathed into his face, and the dust, that is, the human body, returns to the earth from which it was originally made."55 For the spirit was not destined to return to the parents, even though it may have been created from the one spirit which was given to the first man, any more than the body after death returns to the parents, although it is certainly obvious that it was begotten by them.
Just as the body, therefore, does not return to the human beings by whom it was made but to the earth from which it was formed for the first man, so the spirit does not return to the parents by whom it has been transmitted but to God by whom it was given to the first human body.
16. The text cited above, then, clearly teaches us that God made from nothing the soul which He gave to the first man, and did not form it from some creature already made, as in the case of the body made from the earth. Hence, when the soul returns,