The Literal Meaning of Genesis (continued)
Virgin; the formative principle of His conception, however, was not from the seed of a man, but it came from above in a far different way. Consequently, in respect of what He received from His mother, He was also in the loins of Abraham.
36. Levi paid tithes, therefore, in Abraham, since he was in Abraham's loins (although it was according to the flesh alone), just as Abraham himself was in his father's loins. In other words, he was born of his father Abraham as Abraham was born of his father, namely, through the law in the members at war with the law of the mind*+ and through an invisible concupiscence,8° although the chaste and honorable rights of marriage do not allow that law of the members to prevail except in so far as they can provide for the continuation of the race through it.
But tithes were not paid through Abraham by Him whose flesh received from that source not a festering wound but the material that would heal. For since this tithing belonged to the foreshadowing of the remedy,®*® tithes were paid in the flesh of Abraham by him who was healed, not by Him who was the source of the healing. For the same flesh not only of Abraham but also of the first and earthly man had both the wound of sin and the remedy for that wound: the wound of sin in the law of the members at war with that of the mind, a law transmitted thence by a seminal reason to all generations of descendants; and at the same time the remedy of the wound in the body taken from the Virgin (from which source alone came the corporeal matter), without the working of concupiscence, but through a divine causal principle of conception and formation, for the purpose of sharing with men the necessity of dying without any taint of sin, and of giving them the hope of resurrection without any fear of disappointment.
Therefore, it is my opinion that even those who defend the traducianist theory agree that the soul of Christ is not an offshoot of the soul of the first man who sinned. For they hold that the seed of the soul is passed on by the seed of the father in intercourse,*"? but the manner of Christ's conception was totally different. They maintain also that if He had been in Abraham according to the soul, He also would have paid tithes. But Scrip-