The Literal Meaning of Genesis (continued)
BOOK SEVEN 23
But I have given enough attention to this part of our study about what could be called the material from which the soul was made.
CHAPTER 22
Did God create a causal reason of man's soul on the sixth day?
32. If the soul was in no sense existing, we must ask how it can be explained that its causal reason was said to have existed in the works which God made on the first six days when He made man to His image.°® Man's creation according to the image of God, of course, can be rightly understood only in respect of his soul.
When we say that, when God created all things simultaneously, He created not the things and substances themselves that were to be, but rather the causal reasons of those things, we must be on our guard lest we seem to be talking nonsense. For what are these causal reasons according to which it could be said that God made in His image the man whose body He had not yet formed from the slime of the earth and into whom He had not yet breathed a soul? And even if the human body had a hidden causal reason by virtue of which it was one day to be formed, there existed the material out of which it would be formed, that is, the earth, in which it is clear that the causal reason lay hidden after the manner of a seed. But what causal reason was originally hidden away in the created world for the soul that was to be made, that is, the breath that was to be made which would be the soul of man, when God said, Let Us make mankind to Our image and l1keness°' (which cannot be rightly understood except in reference to the soul), if there was no substance in which it could be hidden away?
33. Now if this reason-principle was in God and not in creation, it was not yet created. How, then, was it said, God made man to His image?>* But if it was already in creation, that is, in the things which God had made all together, in what creature was it? In a spiritual creature? A corporeal creature? If it was in