The Literal Meaning of Genesis
BOOK SEVEN 29
CHAPTER 28
Summary of problems regarding creation. How God has both finished and begun His works. Summary of what is certain and uncertain about the soul.
40. If anyone is unwilling to concede that the soul was made before it was breathed into the formed body of man, let him consider what his reply will be when he is asked what it is made from.7! On the one hand, he may say that God did make or does make something out of nothing after finishing the works of His creation. He then must see how he will explain the fact that man was made on the sixth day to the image of God, which cannot be rightly understood except in reference to the soul, and he must decide in what being God made the causal reason of the soul not yet existing. On the other hand, he may say that the soul was made not from nothing but from some being already existing. He will be hard pressed to find out what that being is, whether corporeal or spiritual, and to answer the questions I have proposed above. It will still be a problem to decide in what one of the created substances originally made in the six days God made the causal reason of the soul which He had not yet made either from nothing or from something.
41. If my critic wishes to avoid these difficulties by saying that man was made from the slime of the earth on the sixth day but that this fact is stated later simply as a recapitulation,'? he must consider what he will say about the woman, since Scripture says, Male and female He made them, and He blessed them.7% And if he replies that she also was made on the sixth day from the rib of man, he must decide in what sense he can assert that on the sixth day the birds were made which were brought to Adam, for Scripture declares that every kind of bird was created from the waters on the fifth day. And he must also explain how the trees planted in Paradise can be said to have been made on the sixth day, for Scripture has assigned the creation of trees to the third day. Let him also ponder the meaning of the words, And again from the earth He made to grow every tree that 1s pleasant to the sight and good for food.'* He surely cannot say that what the