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Augustine of Hippo, A Treatise On the Soul And Its Origin
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A Treatise on the soul and its origin,
Chapter 3 [III]—The Eloquence of Vincentius, Its Dangers and Its Tolerableness.
Chapter 5 [V.]—Another of Victor’s Errors, that the Soul is Corporeal.
Chapter 8 [VIII.]—Victor’s Erroneous Opinion, that the Soul Deserved to Become Sinful.
Chapter 9.—Victor Utterly Unable to Explain How the Sinless Soul Deserved to Be Made Sinful.
Chapter 16 [XIII.]—Difficulty in the Opinion Which Maintains that Souls are Not by Propagation.
Chapter 18.—By “Breath” Is Signified Sometimes the Holy Spirit.
Chapter 19.—The Meaning of “Breath” In Scripture.
Chapter 20.—Other Ways of Taking the Passage.
Chapter 21.—The Second Passage Quoted by Victor.
Chapter 22.—Victor’s Third Quotation.
Chapter 23.—His Fourth Quotation.
Chapter 26 [XVI.]—The Fifth Passage of Scripture Quoted by Victor.
Chapter 27 [XVII.]—Augustin Did Not Venture to Define Anything About the Propagation of the Soul.
Chapter 28.—A Natural Figure of Speech Must Not Be Literally Pressed.
Chapter 29 [XVIII.]—The Sixth Passage of Scripture Quoted by Victor.
Chapter 30—The Danger of Arguing from Silence.
Chapter 32 [XIX.]—The Self-Contradiction of Victor as to the Origin of the Soul.
Chapter 1 [I.]—Depraved Eloquence an Injurious Accomplishment.
Chapter 2 [II.]—He Asks What the Great Knowledge is that Victor Imparts.
Chapter 3.—The Difference Between the Senses of the Body and Soul.
Chapter 4.—To Believe the Soul is a Part of God is Blasphemy.
Chapter 5 [III.]—In What Sense Created Beings are Out of God.
Chapter 6.—Shall God’s Nature Be Mutable, Sinful, Impious, Even Eternally Damned.
Chapter 7.—To Think the Soul Corporeal an Error.
Chapter 8.—The Thirst of the Rich Man in Hell Does Not Prove the Soul to Be Corporeal.
Chapter 9 [V.]—How Could the Incorporeal God Breathe Out of Himself a Corporeal Substance?
Chapter 10 [VI.]—Children May Be Found of Like or of Unlike Dispositions with Their Parents.
Chapter 11 [VII.]—Victor Implies that the Soul Had a “State” And “Merit” Before Incarnation.
Chapter 12 [VIII.]—How Did the Soul Deserve to Be Incarnated?
Chapter 13 [IX.]—Victor Teaches that God Thwarts His Own Predestination.
Chapter 15 [XI.]—Victor “Decides” That Oblations Should Be Offered Up for Those Who Die Unbaptized.
Chapter 18 [XIII.]—Victor’s Dilemma and Fall.
Chapter 19 [XIV.]—Victor Relies on Ambiguous Scriptures.
Chapter 20.—Victor Quotes Scriptures for Their Silence, and Neglects the Biblical Usage.
Chapter 21 [XV.]—Victor’s Perplexity and Failure.
Chapter 22 [XVI.]—Peter’s Responsibility in the Case of Victor.
Chapter 23 [XVII.]—Who They are that are Not Injured by Reading Injurious Books.
Chapter 1 [I.]—Augustin’s Purpose in Writing.
Chapter 5.—Examination of Victor’s Simile: Does Man Give Out Nothing by Breathing?
Chapter 6.—The Simile Reformed in Accordance with Truth.
Chapter 7 [V.]—Victor Apparently Gives the Creative Breath to Man Also.
Chapter 8 [VI.]—Victor’s Second Error. (See Above in Book I. 26 [XVI.].)
Chapter 9 [VII.]—His Third Error. (See Above in Book II. 11 [VII.].)
Chapter 10.—His Fourth Error. (See Above in Book I. 6 [VI.] and Book II. 11 [VII.].)
Chapter 11 [VIII.]—His Fifth Error. (See Above in Book I. 8 [VIII.] and Book II. 12 [VIII.].)
Chapter 13 [X]—His Seventh Error. (See Above in Book II. 13 [IX.].)
Chapter 14.—His Eighth Error. (See Above in Book II. 13 [IX.].)
Chapter 15 [XI.]—His Ninth Error. (See Above in Book II. 14 [X.].)
Chapter 16.—God Rules Everywhere: and Yet the “Kingdom of Heaven” May Not Be Everywhere.
Chapter 17.—Where the Kingdom of God May Be Understood to Be.
Chapter 18 [XII.]—His Tenth Error. (See Above in Book I. 13 [XI.] and Book II. 15 [XI.]).
Chapter 19 [XIII.]—His Eleventh Error. (See Above in Book I. 15 [XII.] and Book II. 16.)
Chapter 20 [XIV.]—Augustin Calls on Victor to Correct His Errors. (See Above in Book II. 22 [XVI.].)
Chapter 21.—Augustin Compliments Victor’s Talents and Diligence.
Chapter 22 [XV.]—A Summary Recapitulation of the Errors of Victor.
Chapter 23.—Obstinacy Makes the Heretic.
Chapter 1 [I.]—The Personal Character of This Book.
Chapter 2 [II.]—The Points Which Victor Thought Blameworthy in Augustin.
Chapter 3.—How Much Do We Know of the Nature of the Body?
Chapter 4 [III.]—Is the Question of Breath One that Concerns the Soul, or Body, or What?
Chapter 5 [IV.]—God Alone Can Teach Whence Souls Come.
Chapter 8.—We Have No Memory of Our Creation.
Chapter 9 [VII.]—Our Ignorance of Ourselves Illustrated by the Remarkable Memory of One Simplicius.
Chapter 13 [IX.]—In What Sense the Holy Ghost is Said to Make Intercession for Us.
Chapter 15 [XI.]—We Must Not Be Wise Above What is Written.
Chapter 19 [XIII.]—Whether the Soul is a Spirit.
Chapter 20 [XIV.]—The Body Does Not Receive God’s Image.
Chapter 21 [XV.]—Recognition and Form Belong to Souls as Well as Bodies.
Chapter 22.—Names Do Not Imply Corporeity.
Chapter 23 [XVI.]—Figurative Speech Must Not Be Taken Literally.
Chapter 24.—Abraham’s Bosom—What It Means.
Chapter 25 [XVII.]—The Disembodied Soul May Think of Itself Under a Bodily Form.
Chapter 27.—Is the Soul Wounded When the Body is Wounded?
Chapter 28.—Is the Soul Deformed by the Body’s Imperfections?
Chapter 29 [XIX.]—Does the Soul Take the Body’s Clothes Also Away with It?
Chapter 30.—Is Corporeity Necessary for Recognition?
Chapter 31 [XX.]—Modes of Knowledge in the Soul Distinguished.
Chapter 32.—Inconsistency of Giving the Soul All the Parts of Sex and Yet No Sex.
Chapter 33.—The Phenix After Death Coming to Life Again.
Chapter 34 [XXI.]—Prophetic Visions.
Chapter 35.—Do Angels Appear to Men in Real Bodies?
Chapter 36 [XXII.]—He Passes on to the Second Question About the Soul, Whether It is Called Spirit.
Chapter 37 [XXIII.]—Wide and Narrow Sense of the Word “Spirit.”
Chapter 38 [XXIV.]—Victor’s Chief Errors Again Pointed Out.
Wherefore if you take these books, which I have with a sincere and affectionate interest written in answer to your opinions, and read them with a reciprocal love for me; if you attend to what you have yourself declared in the beginning of your first book, and “are anxious not to insist on any opinion of your own, if it be found an improbable one,”182 See above in Book ii. 22 [xvi.]. then I beseech you to beware especially of those eleven errors which I warned you of in the preceding book of this treatise.183 See Book iii., next to last chapter. Do not say, that “the soul is of God in such a sense that He created it not out of no, nor out of another, but out of His own nature;” or that, “as God who gives is Himself ever existent, so is He ever giving souls through infinite time;” or that “the soul lost some merit through the flesh, which it had previous to the flesh;” or that “the soul by means of the flesh repairs its ancient condition, and is born again through the very same flesh, by which it had deserved to be polluted;” or that “the soul deserved to be sinful even prior to sin;” or that “infants who die without the regeneration of baptism, may yet attain to forgiveness of their original sins;” or that “they whom the Lord has predestinated to be baptized can be taken away from His predestination, or die before that has been accomplished in them which the Almighty had predetermined;” or that “it is of those who expire before they are baptized that the Scripture says, ‘Speedily was he taken away, lest wickedness should alter his understanding,’”—with the remainder of the passage to the same effect; or that “there are some mansions outside the kingdom of God, belonging to the ‘many,’ which the Lord said were in His Father’s house;” or that “the sacrifice of the body and blood of Christ ought to be offered in behalf of those who have departed out of the body without being baptized;” or that “any of those persons who die without Christ’s baptism, are received for a while into paradise, and afterwards attain even to the blessedness of the kingdom of heaven.” Above all things, beware of these opinions, my son, and, as you wish to be the vanquisher of error, do not rejoice in the surname of “Vincentius.” And when you are ignorant on any subject, do not think that you know it; but in order to get real knowledge, learn how to be ignorant. For we commit a sin by affecting to be ignorant of nothing among “the secret things of God;” by constructing random theories about unknown things, and taking them for known; and by producing and defending errors as if they were truth. As for my own ignorance on the question whether the souls of men are created afresh at every birth, or are transmitted by the parents (an ignorance which is, however, modified by my belief, which it would be impious to falter in, that they are certainly made by the Divine Creator, though not of His own substance), I think that your loving self will by this time be persuaded that it either ought not to be censured at all, or, if it ought, that it should be done by a man who is capable by his learning of removing it altogether; and so also with respect to my other opinions, that while souls have in them the incorporeal semblances of bodies, they are not themselves bodies; and that, without impairing the natural distinction between soul and spirit, the soul is in a general sense actually designated spirit. If, indeed, I have unfortunately failed to persuade you, I must leave it rather to my readers to determine whether what I have advanced ought not to have convinced you.
CAPUT XXIV.
38. Quamobrem si hos ad te libros impensa dilectione conscriptos, repensa dilectione sumis et legis; si in principio primi tui libri audis et te ipsum, et studes, sicut dixisti: (Supra, lib. 2, n. 22), tuam sententiam non tueri, si improbabilis detegatur: illa praecipue undecim cave, de quibus te in libro 0547 superiore commonui (Supra, lib. 3, nn. 22, 23). Ne «animam sic dicas ex Deo, ut eam non de nulla, nec de alia, sed de sua natura creaverit:» aut «quod per infinitum tempus, atque ita semper animas det, sicut semper est ipse qui dat:» aut «animam meritum aliquod perdidisse per carnem, quod habuerit ante carnem:» aut «animam per carnem reparare habitudinem priscam, perque ipsam carnem renasci, per quam meruerat inquinari:» aut «quod anima ante omne peccatum meruerit esse peccatrix:» aut «infantes sine regeneratione Baptismatis mortuos , ad indulgentiam pervenire originalium peccatorum:» aut «quos Dominus praedestinavit ad Baptismum, praedestinationi ejus eripi posse, et ante defungi quam in eis quod Omnipotens praedestinavit impleri:» aut «de his qui priusquam baptizentur exspirant, dictum esse quod scriptum est, Raptus est ne malitia mutaret illius intellectum» (Sap. IV, 11); atque ad hunc sensum caetera pertinentia: aut «earum aliquas mansiones extra regnum Dei esse, quas multas in domo Patris sui Dominus dixit esse» (Joan. XIV, 2): aut «sacrificium corporis et sanguinis Christi pro his qui non baptizati de corpore exierint offerendum:» aut «aliquos eorum qui sine Christi Baptismate moriuntur, in paradisum interim recipi, ac postmodum et regni coelorum beatitudinem consequi.» Haec praecipue cave, fili, nec cognominari Vincentius delecteris, si vis esse victor erroris. Nec te quando aliquid nescis, existimes scire: sed ut scias, disce nescire. Neque enim aliquid in occultis Dei operibus ignorando, sed temere incognita pro cognitis astruendo, et falsa pro veris proferendo ac defendendo, peccatur. Ignorantiam 0548 vero meam, utrum animae hominum novae fiant, an de parentibus (quas tamen a creatore Deo non de ipsius substantia fieri dubitare fas non est), aut non debere reprehendi, aut ab eo debere, a quo potest docente et auferri: et habere in se animas corporum similitudines incorporeas; ipsas autem non esse corpora: et salva distinctione animae et spiritus, etiam universaliter animam spiritum nuncupari, puto quod persuaserim Charitati tuae. Si autem persuadere non potui, utrum tamen ea dixerim quae persuadere debuerint , qui legent potius judicabunt.