The Literal Meaning of Genesis
BOOK TEN n25 ture attests that He did not pay tithes inasmuch as it distinguishes His priesthood from that of Levi on this very ground.
CHAPTER 21
Whatever theory 1s proposed about the origin of the soul of Christ, there cannot be any question of a taint of original sin on His soul.
37. Someone may perhaps say: just as Christ could have been in the loins of Abraham according to the flesh and not have paid tithes, why could He not also have been there according to the soul without paying tithes? The answer is: because the simple substance of the soul does not grow larger when the body grows larger, even in the opinion of those who suppose it to be a body®$ (an opinion held especially by those who think that the soul comes from the parents). Hence, in a corporeal seed there can be an unseen power which acts in an immaterial way to regulate the development of a being.®? This power cannot be seen by the eyes, but only by the intellect, as distinct from the matter perceived by sight and touch. The very size of the human body, which is incomparably greater than the tiny seed, makes it quite evident that some other matter can be taken into it that does not have the seminal force but only bodily substance. It was this bodily substance that was assumed by the power of God to form the body of Christ without any human generation by carnal union. But who would dare to say that the soul has both, namely, the visible matter of the seed and the hidden formative principle of the seed??°
But why should I labor over a theory which I suppose cannot be made convincing by words to anyone except the person who has the kind of penetrating mind that can quickly grasp an attempted explanation without waiting to hear it to the end? Hence, I shall sum up the argument briefly. If the soul of Christ could have come from another soul (and I assume that the reader understood what I said about generation when speaking of the body), the soul of Christ is from the original soul only on the