Dist. 17, Art. 1, Q. 1
by St. Bonaventure
Source text: Public Domain Mark 1.0. English translation/apparatus/encoding: CC BY-NC 4.0, Wroot Press.
https://bonaventure.wrootpress.com/browse/2/d/17/q/bon-sent-II-d17-a1-q1
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### Article I. *On the production of man with regard to the soul.*
### Question I. *Whether the human soul is from the substance of God.*

Concerning the first [question] one proceeds thus, and it is shown that the human soul is from the substance of God:

**To the opposite [side]:**

1. *First*, by authority, Genesis chapter two: *He breathed into his face the breath of life*; but inspiration is by the going-forth of something from within: therefore just as the Holy Spirit, who is of the same nature with the one breathing forth, so the human spirit, which was breathed into [man] by God, is of the divine nature. If you say that an in-breathing or inspiration can belong to a thing of a different nature; the objection is raised, because the Gloss says on that text of John: *He breathed on them and said to them: Receive* etc.: Augustine says there that in this he shows that the Holy Spirit proceeds from himself: if therefore God breathed into the face of man the breath of life, it seems that he produced the spirit of man from himself.

2. *Likewise*, the last [chapter] of Ecclesiastes: *Until the dust return to the earth, whence it was, and the spirit return to God who gave it*: if therefore the spirit returns to God just as the dust returns to the earth, just as man with respect to his flesh is of the earth, so it seems that with respect to his spirit he is of the substance of God.

3. *Likewise*, Acts chapter seventeen: *For we are of the race of God, as also certain of your poets have said*; but things which are of the same race (genus) are of the same nature: therefore we and God are of the same nature. But not with respect to the body; therefore with respect to the soul: therefore the soul is of the substance of God.

4. *Likewise*, it seems by reason. All corporeal things are produced from some matter, which is one in all corporeal things: therefore by parity of reasoning spiritual things are produced from some spiritual nature, which is one in all spirits; but a spiritual substance, found in all things by identity, is none other than the divine: therefore the soul has been made from the substance of God.

5. *Likewise*, God alone is immortal by nature; therefore immortality by nature befits nothing save what is either God or from God; but nothing befits being the image of God except what befits being immortal by nature — «for it would not be an image, as Augustine says, if it were enclosed by the boundary of death» — if therefore the rational soul is naturally an image, it is therefore naturally immortal: therefore it was produced from the substance of God.

6. *Likewise*, God is a spiritual light, who is the fount of all spiritual illumination, just as the sun is the fount of corporeal illumination; but luminous bodies are of the same nature with light and with the sun: therefore by parity of reasoning naturally luminous spirits are of the same nature with the fount of spiritual light. But whatever is of the same nature with God is either God or from God: therefore etc.

**On the contrary:**

*Foundations.*

1. Genesis chapter one: *Let us make man to our image and likeness*; this is not said with respect to the body, therefore with respect to the soul: therefore the soul of man is made; and making or change does not fall upon the divine nature: therefore it is not from the nature or substance of God.

2. *Likewise*, if the soul is from the nature of God, since the soul is a part of man, the nature of God comes into the constitution of man; but a part is less noble than the whole: therefore God is less noble than man. But this is false and impious: therefore etc.

3. *Likewise*, if the soul is from the divine nature, either it has some form superinduced upon that nature from which it is, or none. If none: therefore it appears not to be made nor distinct from God. If some: therefore the divine nature is the matter of the soul itself. But that which is the material principle of something is less complete and imperfect: therefore God is incomplete and imperfect by nature; which is blasphemy.

4. *Likewise*, if the soul is from the substance of God; and the soul is depraved: therefore it happens that the divine substance is depraved; and if it happens that the substance of God is depraved, God is not the highest good. Since therefore the rational spirit can sin, as is plain, the rational spirit is not from God.

5. *Likewise*, if the soul is from God, then either by *generation*, or by *spiration*. If in the first way, then the soul is nothing other than the Word; if in the second, then the soul is nothing other than the Holy Spirit: therefore every man would be God.

6. *Likewise*, if the soul of man were from God, either from *all* of God, or from a *part*. If from a part: therefore God is composite and has part and part; which is wholly false. If from the whole; but God is immense and infinite: therefore the soul of any man is immense and infinite. And if this, then any man is omnipotent; which no one doubts to be false.

### Conclusion.

> The human soul is not produced from the substance of God.

**I respond:** It must be said that the position of some was, *Opinion 1.* that the human intellect was nothing other than the divine intellect; but the divine intellect was so called insofar as it was considered in itself, the human, insofar as it perfected some body. — *It is refuted.* But since God is the constitutive part of nothing on account of his highest perfection and absoluteness, this position was foolish and erroneous.

There is also another position no less foolish and impious, *Opinion 2.* namely of the Manichaeans, that the rational spirit is of the substance and nature of God. For they say that in man there is a double soul, as Augustine recounts in the book *On the Two Souls*, of which one inclines to the good, and the other inclines to evils; and that which does good can never do evil; and that which does evil can never do good; and that which inclines toward doing good is of the nature of God. — *It is refuted.* But this position is in many ways foreign to the truth. First, because it posits that God is of the same nature with the creature and that he is the matter of some creature, when it posits that the creature is made from the substance of God. And from this position there follow innumerable incongruities, and this is chief, that it implies in itself two opposites, when it posits that the soul is made by God, and that it is of the divine substance. — It also deviates from the truth in this, that it posits two souls in us; but the refutation of this is better treated below.

And therefore the third position is true and catholic: *Catholic opinion and conclusion.* the soul is not produced from the substance of God. For God is related to creatures in the character of *efficient* and *formal* and *final* [cause]; but in no way can he be related in the character of *material*, however noble the creature be. And therefore the reasons proving this are to be conceded.

**Solution of the opposing [arguments].**

1. *To that* which is objected on the contrary, that *he breathed into his face* etc.; it must be said that *to inspire* is the same here as to make a spirit and to infuse what is made into a body; similarly *to breathe in* is to make the breath of man and to infuse what is made into the body. Hence just as, when God produced things *by speaking*, there was no material voice there, so, when he *breathed in*, it was not by means of jaws and corporeal instruments. And therefore that similarity drawn from John chapter twenty does not hold, where literally: *he breathed*, and that breathing-in was a signification and showing of the procession of the Holy Spirit.

2. *To that* which is objected from Ecclesiastes: *And the spirit return to God* etc.; it must be said that just as the resolution of the body stops when it has come to the earth, so the mutability of the soul finally stops when it is joined to him according to whom it was made. For in God alone does it find perfect rest. And therefore the Wise Man does not mean that the spirit returns to God by corruption, as the body to the earth; but the likeness is with respect to coming-to-rest.

3. *To that* which is objected, that *we are of the race of God*; it must be said that *race* (*genus*) can be taken in two ways: *Genus twofold.* in one way *properly*; and so some things are said to agree in genus, which agree in some common form and nature. In another way it is taken *broadly*; and so some things are said to agree in genus in which there is some special agreement according to the disposition of analogy. And so Augustine says in the twelfth [book] *On the Trinity* that the soul *Note on created light.* «knows in a certain light of its own kind»; and he calls that light an *uncreated light*, which he says is *of its own kind* on this account, that it is spiritual, just as the soul is. And so the word of the Apostle is to be understood.

4. *To that* which is objected, that corporeal things are from some one [thing]; it must be answered that this does not conclude that rational spirits come into being from God: for that one [thing], from which corporeal things come into being, is *being in potency* with respect to them; but God can be in potency with respect to nothing; and therefore from this it does not follow that spiritual substances are produced from the divine nature.

5. *To that* which is objected, that God alone is immortal by nature; it must be said, so far as suffices for the present — since immortality will be treated below — that immortality by nature, said of God, is understood by the privation of all grace, whether grace mean something superadded to nature, or whether it mean the gratuitous influence by which nature is conserved; because God remains by himself, but the soul, although by its own nature it is fit to remain, nevertheless would never remain unless it were conserved by the gratuitous influence of God.

6. *To that* which is objected, that God is a spiritual light etc.; it must be said that the case is not entirely alike *Corporeal light differs from spiritual.* concerning *spiritual* and *corporeal* light. For the *spiritual* light which God is, since it is most simple, cannot be the perfection of things of diverse natures. But since it is most omnipotent, it can produce and make a created light in some way conformed to itself; which nevertheless does not suffice for itself, even after it has been produced, unless the influence of the highest light be present to it. And so it must be understood in the human soul, that it has its *own light*, namely a created one, by which it is completed, which from the eternal light is both produced and conserved. But corporeal light can be found in diverse bodies as a perfection, since it is not a wholly simple form, but is born to be joined to matter.