On the Soul and Its Origin 1.1–1.17

Your sincerity toward us, dearest brother Renatus, and your brotherly goodwill and the affection of our mutual love, we already held as proven before; but now your friendly care has proved them still more to us, in that last summer you sent me two books of a man who was wholly unknown to me, though not for that reason to be despised, Vincentius Victor (for that is the name I found written at their head), although, because I had been away, they were delivered to me only at the end of autumn. For how could you, my dearest friend, or how ought you to fail to bring to my knowledge any writing of any man whatever, even though he was writing to someone else, once it had come into your hands, when my name was mentioned and read in it, so that words of mine which I had published in certain small works were contradicted? You have therefore done what you, my most sincere and most beloved friend, ought to have done.

But this grieves me a little: that I am still less known to your holiness than I should wish, since you thought I would take it as though you had done me an injury by making known what another had done. How far this is from my mind, see: I do not complain that I have suffered an injury even from him. For since he held certain views different from mine, ought he to have kept silent? So I ought to be grateful that he did not keep silent, and in such a way that we can even read it. Someone might say that he ought to have written to me rather than to another about me; but since I was unknown to him, he did not dare to thrust himself upon me in refuting what I had said. Nor did he think I needed to be consulted on a matter in which he believes he holds an opinion not at all to be doubted, but plainly known and certain. He obeyed, moreover, a friend of his, by whom he says he was compelled to write. And if in the course of the argument he expressed anything that would reflect insult on me, I would believe that he did it not with the will of one who reviles, but from the necessity of one who thinks differently. For where a man’s mind toward me is unknown and uncertain, I judge it better to think the better of him than to blame what has not been examined. Perhaps he did it out of love for me, knowing that what he wrote could reach me, since he does not want me to err in matters in which he thinks it is rather he who does not err. And so I ought even to be grateful for the goodwill of a man whose opinion I must reject. For this reason, in the things in which he thinks wrongly, he seems to me as yet to be corrected gently, not harshly abhorred, especially since, as I hear, he has lately become a catholic, on which he is to be congratulated. For he has left the division and error of the Donatists, or rather the Rogatists, by which he was formerly held—provided that he understands catholic truth as he ought, so that we may truly rejoice at his conversion.

For he has eloquence by which he can set out what he thinks. So we must deal with him and pray for him that he may think rightly, so that he may not make useless things delightful, nor seem to have spoken truly what he has spoken eloquently—although even in his eloquence itself he has much to amend and to restrain from excessive overflow, which displeased you too in him, as a serious man, as your own writings show. But this is either easily corrected or, without harm to the faith, is loved by light minds and tolerated by serious ones; for we already have some who are frothy in speech but sound in faith. So we need not despair that even this in him, although it would be tolerable if it remained, can nevertheless be purged and tempered and either brought or recalled to a sound and solid measure; especially since he is said to be young, so that diligence may supply what experience lacks, and the maturity of age may boil down what the rawness of talkativeness belches out. What is troublesome and dangerous, or rather pernicious, is if, while eloquence is praised, folly is instilled, and a pestilent drink is drunk from a precious cup.

To begin now to show what above all is to be avoided in his argument: he says that the soul was indeed made by God and is not a part or nature of God, which is entirely true. But since he will not admit that it was made from nothing, and mentions no other creature from which it was made, and so gives it God as its author in such a way that God is believed to have made it neither from things non-existent, that is, from nothing, nor from anything that is not what God is, but from himself, he does not realize that he is turning back to the very thing he thinks he has avoided: namely, that the soul is nothing other than the nature of God, and consequently that something is made out of the nature of God by the same God, the material from which he makes it being the very one who makes it; and so that the nature of God is changeable, and that the nature of this same God, when changed for the worse, is condemned by this same God. How far this is from being something to be held, and how it must be shut out of a catholic heart and fled far away, you see by your faithful understanding. For the soul was either made from the breath or was itself made the breath of God in such a way that it is not from him, but created by him from nothing. For we must not think of God as we think of a man, who, when he blows, cannot make breath from nothing but gives back what he draws from this air—as if some breezes were already spread around God, a tiny particle of which he drew in by breathing and poured out by breathing back when he breathed into the man’s face and so made a soul for him. Even if that were so, what he breathed would not be from himself even then, but from some underlying breathable thing. But far be it from us to deny that the Almighty could make from nothing the breath of life by which man became a living soul, and to be pushed into such straits that we either suppose there already was something which he himself was not, from which he made the breath, or believe that he made from himself what we see was made changeable. For what is from him must be of the same nature as he is, and therefore also unchangeable; but the soul, as all admit, is changeable: therefore it is not from him, because it is not unchangeable as he is. And if it was made from no other thing, then it was undoubtedly made from nothing, but by him.

And as for his contending that the soul is not a spirit but a body, what else does he wish to bring about than that we consist not of soul and body but of two, or even three, bodies? For when he says that we consist of spirit, soul, and body, and asserts that all three are bodies, he certainly thinks we are compacted of three bodies. How great an absurdity follows him in this opinion I think should be shown to him rather than to you. But this is a tolerable error in a man who has not yet learned that there is something which, though it is not a body, can yet bear a certain likeness of a body.

But who could bear what he says in his second book, when he was trying to solve the most difficult question about original sin—how far it concerns body and soul, if the soul is not derived from the parents but is newly breathed in by God? Straining to untie this so troublesome and so deep question, he says: “Deservedly it regains through the flesh the ancient condition which it had seemed to lose for a little while through the flesh, so that it begins to be reborn through that by which it had deserved to be defiled.” You see, surely, that the man, daring to undertake what exceeds his strength, has fallen into so enormous a precipice that he said the soul deserved to be defiled through the flesh, when he can in no way say whence it drew this desert before the flesh. For if it begins to have the desert of sin from the flesh, let him say, if he can, whence before its own sin it deserved to be defiled by the flesh. For this desert, by which it was sent into sinful flesh to be defiled by it, it certainly had either from itself or—which is much further from the truth—from God. From the flesh it could not have, before the flesh, a desert for which it was sent into the flesh to be defiled. If, then, it had this desert from itself, how did it have it, when before the flesh it had done no evil? But if it is said to have had this desert from God, who would listen to that, who would bear it, who would let it be said with impunity? For the question here is not what it deserved so as to be judged worthy of condemnation after the flesh, but what it deserved before the flesh so as to be condemned to be sent into the flesh to be defiled. Let him explain this, if he can, who dared to say that the soul deserved to be defiled through the flesh.

Again in another place, when he put forward as if to be unravelled the same question in which he had entangled himself, he says, as if in the person of his opponents: “Why, they say, did God punish the soul with so unjust a penalty as to be willing to banish it into a body of sin, when by fellowship with the flesh it begins to be sinful, which could not have been sinful?” In this rocky whirlpool, as it were, of a question he ought to have taken care to avoid shipwreck, and not to commit himself to a place from which he could not get out by going across, but perhaps only by going back, that is, by repenting. For he tries to free himself by the foreknowledge of God, but in vain. For the foreknowledge of God foreknows the sinners whom he will heal; it does not make them. For if he frees from sin those souls which, innocent and clean, he himself entangled in sin, he heals a wound that he inflicted on us, not one that he found in us. God forbid, and far be it from us to say, that when God cleanses the souls of little children by the washing of regeneration, he is then correcting his own evils, which he himself did to them when he mingled them, having no sin, with sinful flesh, to be contaminated by its original sin. Yet this man, accusing them, says that they deserved to be defiled through the flesh, and cannot say how they deserved so great an evil before the flesh.

Thinking in vain, then, that he can dissolve this question by the foreknowledge of God, he entangles himself further and says: “If the soul deserved to be sinful, which could not have been sinful, yet it did not remain in sin, because, prefigured in Christ, it ought not to be in sin, just as it could not be.” What does he mean by “could not have been sinful” or “could not be in sin”, except, I suppose, if it had not come into the flesh? For it could not be sinful by original sin, or in any way be in original sin, except through the flesh, if it is not derived from a parent. We see, then, that it is freed from sin by grace, but we do not see how it deserved to cling to sin. What does he mean, then, by saying, “If it deserved to be sinful, yet it did not remain in sin”? For if I ask him why it did not remain in sin, he will answer quite rightly: because the grace of Christ freed it. So then, just as he says how the soul of the little child was freed when sinful, let him also say how it deserved to be sinful.

But what does he say, to whom what he said beforehand has happened? For, in order to put this question to himself, he says: “Other reproaches are laid beneath us by the complaining murmurs of those who bark against us, and, shaken out as if by a whirlwind, we are dashed again and again among enormous rocks”—if I said this of him he might perhaps be angry; these are his own words. Having said this beforehand, he put forward the question in which he was to show the very rocks against which he was dashed and shipwrecked. For he has been brought to this point, and has been borne on, driven against, and fixed upon such dreadful crags, that he cannot get himself out at all except by amending what he said, since he cannot show by what desert the soul was made sinful, which he was not afraid to say deserved to be made sinful before any sin of its own. Who deserves so enormous a punishment without sin as that, conceived in another’s iniquity, it is not without sin even before it comes out of its mother’s womb? From this punishment grace freely frees the souls of little children who are reborn in Christ, with no merits of theirs going before; otherwise grace is no longer grace. So let this very intelligent man, who is displeased by our hesitation in so great a depth—not learned, perhaps, but cautious—say, if he can, by what desert the soul came into this punishment from which grace frees it without desert; let him say, so that he may defend with some reason, if he is able, what he has said. For I would not demand this if he had not said that the soul deserved to be sinful. Let him say whether its desert was good or bad. If good, by what good desert did it come into evil? If bad, whence is there any bad desert before all sin? I say again: if good, then grace frees it not freely but according to what is owed, since a good desert went before, and so grace will no longer be grace; but if bad, I ask what it is. Is it that it came into the flesh, into which it would not have come unless he, with whom there is no iniquity, had himself sent it? He will never, then, contrive to establish this opinion of his, in which he said that the soul deserved to be sinful, except by throwing himself headlong into worse. And concerning those little children whose original sin is washed away in baptism, he found something or other to say: that by the foreknowledge of God it could do no harm to those predestined to eternal life to cling for a little while to another’s sin. This could be said tolerably if he were not entangled in his own words, saying that the soul deserved to be sinful. From this he does not free himself at all, unless he repents of having said it.

But concerning those little children who are overtaken by death before they are baptized in Christ, when he wished to answer, he dared to promise them not only paradise but even the kingdom of heaven, finding no way out so as not to be forced to say that God condemns to eternal death innocent souls which, with no desert of sin going before, he inserts into sinful flesh. But sensing in some way what an evil thing he had said—that the souls of little children are redeemed into eternal life and the kingdom of heaven without any grace of Christ, and that original sin can be loosed in them without the baptism of Christ, in which the remission of sins takes place—seeing, then, into what a depth of shipwrecking whirlpool he had thrown himself, he says: “Certainly I hold that constant offerings and the sacrifices of holy priests should continually be offered for them.” Here is another thing from which he will never get out unless he repents of having said it. For who would offer the body of Christ except for those who are members of Christ? And since he said, “Unless one has been reborn of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God”, and in another place, “Whoever loses his life for my sake will find it”, no one becomes a member of Christ except either by baptism in Christ or by death for Christ.

Hence also that thief, who was not a follower of the Lord before the cross but a confessor on the cross—from whom a precedent is sometimes sought, or attempted, against the sacrament of baptism—is counted by the holy Cyprian among the martyrs, who are baptized in their own blood, as has happened to many who were not baptized when persecution was raging. For so great a weight was given to it, and it counted for so much with him who knows how to weigh such things, that he confessed the crucified Lord, as much as if he had been crucified for the Lord. For his faith flowered from the tree at the moment when that of the disciples withered, unless it revived at the resurrection of him through the terror of whose death it had withered. They despaired of him as he was dying; he hoped in him who was dying with him. They fled the author of life; he asked the partner of his punishment. They grieved at his death as at a man’s; he believed he would reign after death. They deserted the guarantor of salvation; he honoured the companion of his cross. The measure of a martyr was found in him, who then believed in Christ when those who were to be martyrs failed. And this indeed was clear to the eyes of the Lord, who at once bestowed such great happiness on one unbaptized, as if washed by the blood of martyrdom. But which of us too would not consider with how great faith, how great hope, how great love he could have undergone death for the living Christ, who sought life in him as he was dying? Add to this that it is said, not incredibly, that the thief who then believed, crucified beside the Lord, was drenched, as if by a most holy baptism, with that water which gushed from the wound in his side—not to mention that no one of us knows, no one can prove, that he had not been baptized before he was condemned. But let each take these things as he will, provided that no rule is laid down about baptism against the Saviour’s command on the example of this thief, and that no one promises to unbaptized little children, between damnation and the kingdom of heaven, a sort of middle place of rest or happiness of whatever kind and wherever. For even the Pelagian heresy promised them this, since it neither fears damnation for little children, whom it thinks have no original sin, nor hopes for the kingdom of heaven for them if they do not come to the sacrament of baptism. But this man, though he confesses that little children are bound by original sin, has dared to promise them even the kingdom of heaven without baptism, which even those did not dare who assert that they are wholly without any sin. See in what snares of presumption he entangles himself, unless he repents of having written such things!

As for Dinocrates, the brother of Saint Perpetua, that writing itself is not canonical, nor did she—or whoever wrote it—write in such a way as to say that the boy, who died at seven years of age, died without baptism; she is believed to have been heard for him, when martyrdom was imminent, so that he was transferred from punishment to rest. For boys of that age can already lie and speak the truth, confess and deny. And so, when they are baptized, they already recite the creed and answer for themselves the questions put to them. Who knows, then, whether that boy, after baptism, in a time of persecution, was estranged from Christ by an impious father through idolatry, for which reason he died and went into condemnation, and came out of it only as a gift to the prayers of his sister who was about to die for Christ?

But even if this were granted him—which, with the catholic faith and the rule of the church kept safe, can by no means be granted—that the sacrifice of the body and blood of Christ may be offered for unbaptized people of any age, as though by such devotion of their own people they were helped to reach the kingdom of heaven, what will he answer about the many thousands of infants who are born of the ungodly and do not come into the hands of the godly by any compassion, divine or human, and depart from this life at that most tender age without the washing of regeneration? Let him say, if he can, how these souls deserved to be made so sinful that they are not freed from sin even afterward. For if I ask why they deserve to be condemned if they are not baptized, the right answer is given me: because of original sin. Likewise, if I ask whence they contracted original sin, he will answer: from sinful flesh, of course. If, then, I ask how they deserved to be condemned into sinful flesh, having done no evil before the flesh—let him find here what to answer—and to be condemned to undergo the contagion of others’ sins in such a way that neither does baptism regenerate those who were badly generated, nor do sacrifices expiate those who were defiled (for these little children were born, or are still being born, in such a place and of such people that no such help can come to their aid), here certainly all argument fails. For we are not asking how souls deserved to be condemned after their fellowship with sinful flesh, but how souls deserved to be condemned to undergo fellowship with sinful flesh when they had no sin before that fellowship. It is no use saying: the contagion of another’s sin, shared for a little while, did them no harm, since redemption had been prepared for them in the foreknowledge of God. For we are now speaking of those to whom no redemption comes to aid, since they leave the body before baptism. It is no use saying: those whom baptism has not washed, frequent sacrifices offered for them will cleanse, because God, foreknowing this, willed them to cling for a little while to others’ sins without any ruin of eternal damnation and with hope of eternal happiness. For we are now speaking of those whose birth among the ungodly and of the ungodly can find no such protections. And even if these could be applied, they could undoubtedly not profit the unbaptized, just as the sacrifices offered for dead sinners which he cited from the book of Maccabees would have profited them nothing if they had not been circumcised.

Let him find, then, if he can, what to say when he is asked what a soul without any sin, whether original or its own, deserved, to be condemned to undergo another’s original sin in such a way that it cannot be freed from it; and let him see which of two things he chooses: whether he will say that even those souls of dying little children who depart from here without the washing of regeneration, and for whom no sacrifice of the Lord’s body is offered, are released from the bond of original sin—when the apostle teaches that from one man all go into condemnation, namely all whom grace has not aided so that through one man they may be rescued into redemption—or whether he will say that souls which have no sin whatever, either their own or original, and are in every way innocent, simple, and pure, are punished with eternal damnation by a just God, when he himself inserts them into sinful flesh not to be freed.

I affirm that neither of these two is to be said; nor that third thing, that souls sinned elsewhere before the flesh, so that they deserved to be condemned into the flesh—for the apostle most plainly laid down that those not yet born in the flesh had done nothing good or bad; hence it is established that little children, if they need remission of sins, have contracted only original sin—nor that fourth thing, that the souls of little children who are to die without baptism are banished into sinful flesh and condemned by a just God because he foreknew that, if they had reached the age at which they would use free choice, they would have lived badly. For not even this man dared to say that, placed as he was in such great straits; indeed, he has already spoken clearly and briefly enough against this vanity, when he says that God would have been unjust if he had wished to judge a man not yet born, when the works of his own will had not been done. For this is how he answered when he dealt with the question against those who say, “Why did God make a man whom, being foreknowing, he knew would not be good?” For he would be judging him unborn if he had refused to create him because he foreknew that he would not be good. And certainly, as this man too thought, he ought to judge a man by his completed works, not by works foreknown and never permitted to take place. For if sins which a man would have committed if he had lived are condemned in the dead man even though they were not committed, then no benefit was conferred on him who was snatched away lest wickedness should alter his understanding, since he will be judged according to the wickedness that would have been in him, not according to the innocence that was found in him; and there could be no security about any baptized person who has died, because even after baptism people can not only sin in some way but even apostatize. What then? If one who was baptized and snatched away from here would have become an apostate had he lived, shall we think no benefit was conferred on him in being snatched away lest wickedness should alter his understanding, and shall we hold that because of God’s foreknowledge he is to be judged not as a faithful member of Christ but as an apostate? How much better, if sins not yet done, not yet thought, but foreknown and future are punished, would it have been for those two to be cast out of paradise before the sin, so that sin should not be committed in so holy and blessed a place! And what of the fact that foreknowledge itself is emptied altogether if what is foreknown will not be? For how is something rightly said to be foreknown as future which is not future? How, then, are sins punished which are no sins at all, that is, which were neither committed before the flesh, when this life had not yet begun, nor after the flesh, since death came first?

This middle period, then, from the time the soul was sent into the flesh until it should be released from the flesh, since it is the soul of a little child and has not lived through the age of free choice, finds nothing for which it should be condemned, if baptism has not been received, except original sin. We do not deny that the soul is justly condemned for this sin, because a just law has appointed punishment for sin; but we ask why it was condemned to undergo this sin, if it is not derived from that one soul which sinned in the first father of the human race. Therefore, if God does not condemn the innocent, nor make guilty those whom he sees to be innocent; and if nothing frees souls from either original or personal sins except the baptism of Christ in the church of Christ; and if souls had no sin at all before the flesh; and if sins cannot be condemned by a just law before they are committed, much less those that are never committed—let this man say none of these four things, and let him explain, if he can, by what desert the souls of little children who depart without baptism and are sent into damnation were sent, having committed no sin, into sinful flesh, to find sin there, for which they would be deservedly condemned. Moreover, if, avoiding these four things, which sound doctrine condemns—that is, if not daring to say either that souls existing without any sin are made sinful by God, or that original sin is loosed in them without the sacrament of Christ, or that they sinned somewhere before they were sent into the flesh, or that sins they never had are condemned in them—if, unwilling to say these things, since they certainly ought not to be said, he says that little children do not contract original sin and have nothing for which to be condemned if they depart from here without receiving the sacrament of regeneration, he will run, deserving condemnation himself, into the Pelagian heresy, which is beyond doubt to be condemned. So that this may not befall him, how much better it would be for him to hold my hesitation about the origin of the soul, and not dare to affirm what he neither grasps by human reason nor defends by divine authority, lest he be compelled to profess folly while he fears to confess ignorance!

Here perhaps he may say that his opinion is defended by divine authority, since he thinks he proves by testimonies of the holy Scriptures that souls are made by God not by propagation, but are breathed in new into each person. Let him prove it, if he can, and I will confess that I have learned from him what I was seeking with great effort. But let him search, in case he may find other texts; for by these testimonies which he has already set down he has not proved it. For everything he has adduced here is certain for some point, but for the question about the origin of the soul it is shown to be ambiguous. For it is certain that God has given breath and spirit to men, as the prophet says: “Thus says the Lord, who made heaven and founded the earth and the things that are in it, who gives breath to the people upon it and spirit to those who tread on it.” This testimony he wants taken in the sense he defends, so that when it says, “he gives breath to the people”, it is believed that he does not make souls for the people by propagation but breathes in new ones. Let him dare, then, to say that God did not give us flesh, because the origin of the flesh was derived from the parents; and, where the apostle says of a grain of wheat, “God gives it a body as he wills”, let him deny, if he dares, that wheat is born of wheat and its plant from the seed according to its kind. But if he does not dare deny this, how then does he know in what way it was said, “he gives breath to the people”—whether by deriving it from the parents or by breathing it in new?