The Literal Meaning of Genesis
BOOK SEVEN 5 very word that is used it is quite clear that this is not the case. For when man breathes forth, his soul certainly moves the body, which is subject to it, and makes the breath from the body, not from itself. Our critics are surely not so unperceptive as to fail to see that when we wish to breathe forth, our breath is produced by the natural inhalation and exhalation of the air that surrounds us. And even on the supposition that in breathing out we breathed forth something which was not from the surrounding air which we inhale and exhale but from our own body, nevertheless body and soul are different by nature, and to this fact our opponents agree.
Hence, it is also true that the soul, which" governs and moves the body, is substantially different from the breath, which the soul regulates and causes when it produces it from the body subject to it and not from its own substance, to which the body is subject. If we are permitted a comparison of two things vastly different, we may say that as the soul rules the body, God rules His creatures. Why, then, can we not understand that God made the soul from a creature subject to Him, in view of the fact that He is said to have breathed it forth? For although the soul does not rule its body as God does the universe which He made, nevertheless it produces breath by its motion and does not make it out of its own substance.
5. We might say that the breath of God is not the soul of man but that God by breathing forth made the soul of man. But we must not think that the creatures He made by a word are better than what He made by a breath, in view of the fact that a word is better than a breath in us. Nevertheless, according to the account I have given above, there is no reason to hesitate to call the soul the breath of God, so long as we understand that it is not God's nature and substance, but simply that to breathe forth is to produce a breath, and that to produce a breath is to produce the soul.
What God says through Isaiah agrees with this explanation: For My spirit goes forth from Me, and I have made every breath. That
He is not speaking of any corporeal breath is clear from the words that follow. For when He had said, [ have made every breath, He added, And because of sin I afflicted him for a time and