The Literal Meaning of Genesis
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 a spiritual creature, did it act in any way on bodies in the universe, whether heavenly or earthly? Or was it free of any such activity>? as it existed in that spiritual creature before man was created in his own proper nature, just as in man himself, when he is duly constituted in his own proper life, there is present in a hidden and dormant state the causal principle of generation, which does not operate except through intercourse and conception? And what of that spiritual creature in which this causal reason lay hidden? Was it performing no function of its own? Why, then, had it been created? Was it in order to hold the causal reason of the future human soul or souls, as if they could not exist in themselves but only in some creature living its own life, just as the causal reason of generation cannot exist except in beings already existing and complete?
Some spiritual creature, therefore, was made to beget the soul, and in this creature was the causal reason of the future soul. That soul, then, does not come to be until God makes it to be breathed into man. In human procreation it is only God who creates and forms the new life, whether in the seed or in the infant already conceived, through His Wisdom that reaches everywhere because of Its purity, so that nothing defiled gains entrance into It,°° while It reaches from end to end mightily and governs all graciously.®! But I have difficulty understanding how for this one purpose some spiritual creature was made which was not mentioned in the works God created on the six days, although God is said to have created man on the sixth day. On that sixth day He did not yet make man in his own proper nature, but (according to our supposition) He made him in the causal reason placed in that creature which has not been mentioned in Scripture. There was a graver reason why that creature ought to have been mentioned: it was so perfected that it did not have to wait to be made according to its prior causal reason.