The Literal Meaning of Genesis (continued)
BOOK TEN 129 the utmost perfection, having His own proper nature surpassing all other bodies—but a body none the less.
CHAPTER 25
Tertullian's view of the soul. Visual images representing immaterial reality.
41. Tertullian thought the soul was corporeal simply because he was unable to think of it as incorporeal, and hence he feared that it would be nothing if it were not a body.!°! He also was unable to think of God in any but material terms.!°? But since he was intelligent, he sometimes saw the truth and rose above his ordinary way of thinking. For what could have been truer than what he says in one of his works, "Every corporeal being is capable of suffering"'?!°3 Consequently, he had to change the opinion that he had previously adopted when he said that even God was a body. Indeed, I do not think that he was so out of his mind as to believe that God was capable of suffering, so that Christ not in body only, or in body and soul, but in the Word through whom all things were made would be thought of as capable of suffering and subject to change. May such thoughts be far from the mind of a Christian!
Furthermore, when Tertullian gave the soul a color like air and light,!°* he turned to the senses and tried to furnish the soul with the various sense organs as if it were a body. He said: "This [the soul molded into the shape of the body] is the interior man, the other is exterior. They are two, but they form one being. The interior man also has his eyes and ears by which the people must have heard and seen the Lord. He also has the other members which he uses in his thoughts and employs in his dreams."'10>
42. Notice the kind of ears and eyes with which the people had to hear and see God and which the soul employs in dreams. And yet, if anyone were to see Tertullian himself in a dream, he would never say that Tertullian had seen him and that they had conversed together, since Tertullian in his dreams had not seen him. Finally, if the soul sees itself in dreams while the body lies in one place and the soul wanders through various images seen by it, who has ever seen it with color like air and light in his dreams, except perhaps along with the other objects seen with an equally false appearance? For the soul can see images like this, but God forbid that when it awakes it should believe that it is like what it saw in the dream. Otherwise, when it sees itself as different, which is more often the case, either the soul will have been changed or what is seen then in the dream is not the soul but an incorporeal image of the soul which is formed in a mysterious way, as when it gathers images in the imagination. }0
What Ethiopian does not normally see himself as black in dreams? Or if he sees himself in another color, has he not wondered if he has an accurate memory of the dream? But I do not know if anyone ever saw himself with color like air and light if he had never read Tertullian or heard about his opinion.
43, What are we to say about those who have been influenced by such visions and want to teach us from Scripture not about the soul but about God, saying that He is a being such as has been made present graphically to the imagination of the saints and has been described in allegorical language? These visions certainly are similar to the descriptions in allegorical passages. Hence, these interpreters are in error when they set up in their hearts the empty idols of their thoughts, not understanding that the saints judged their own visions as they would judge if they read or heard such things described by divine inspiration in figurative language. Thus, the seven ears and the seven cows are seven years;!°? and the object like a linen cloth held by four strings, looking like a dish full of different animals, is the whole world with all the nations;'°8 and so of the rest, especially the immaterial things that are represented not by corporeal things but by images of them.