Scotus Academicus, Tomus quintus: De Creaturarum Corporalium et de Homine

So great and so divine is the dignity and excellence of the rational soul that, as Tertullian relates in his book De anima, chapter 24, Plato all but made it equal to God: For he makes it innate... and adds that it is immortal, incorruptible, incorporal, because this he believed even of God: invisible, without figure, uniform, principal, rational, intellectual. What more could he proclaim of the soul if he were to name it God. But you, from whom nothing is taken away from God, we reckon by this very thing to be far beneath God at the least, because we acknowledge it to be born, and therefore of a more diluted divinity, of a more slender felicity, etc. — And although it is far inferior to God in dignity, yet its nature and excellence seem almost as unknown as God's own. The same thing, indeed, can easily be said of it, saith Cassiodorus in lib. De anima, cap. 1, because through it we know not how to explain innumerable things. For the eye, which reaches even to the stars, is not able to see itself: and our palate, though it perceive a diversity of tastes, knows not of what savor itself may be. The nostrils also draw in the various odors of fragrant bodies, but what they themselves smell they do not perceive. Finally our brain, though it hands over sensation to the other members, is nevertheless read to have no sensation of its own. Hence it is no wonder if the Philosophers erred so greatly in uncovering and assigning the dignity and nature of the rational soul; for some of them, saith Saint Justin Martyr, in Exhortation 1. to the Greeks, asserted the soul to be fire, others air, others wind, others motion, others an exhalation, and not a few a power flowing down from the stars; some, a number possessing the power of moving: others generative water: and as Tertullian relates in the book cited above, cap. 3. Rational souls, through the philosophical doctrines of men, mixing water with wine: some deny the soul to be immortal: others affirm it more than immortal: some dispute about its substance, some about its form: some about each and every disposition. These derive its state from one source, those hide away its end in another: according as the honor of Plato, or the rigor of Zeno, or the tenor of Aristotle, or the stupor of Epicurus, or the lament of Heraclitus, or the fury of Empedocles persuaded them. Whence that dark Heraclitus, as he had premised, observing the gloomier mists and the more wearisome subtleties of the soul's questions, pronounced that the soul had by no means found, in walking along every way, its boundaries. Wherefore he admonishes in the same place, cap. 1. If anything concerning the soul is to be examined, it must be directed according to the rules of God: Certainly he points out no better teacher of the soul than God its author... For who has reported what God said? etc. Therefore from the divine Eloquia themselves must the dignity and nature of the soul be investigated, which is done in this Article by resolving three Questions; whereof the First will demonstrate the nature and substance of the rational soul: the Second, that the soul is to the image of God: the Third will open wherein the account of this image is to be placed.

Three things above all come to be determined in the present Question: First, whether the rational soul is a substance wholly spiritual and devoid of matter: Second, whether it is incorruptible and immortal: Third, whether it is from traduction, that is, whether as the human body is formed from a particle cut off from the body of the parents, so also the soul of the child is handed down to posterity by the continuous propagation of the parent's soul.

Note 1. Not only did the Gentile Philosophers err in designating the substance of the soul, which all of them, as has just been said, affirmed to be something corporeal; but also certain defenders of Christian truth. For above all Tertullian, lib. De anima, cap. 5. to 11. proves the rational soul to be corporeal, or at least to be overlaid with a body of its own kind. Since, he saith in cap. 8. we assert the body of the soul to be of its own quality, and of its own kind: this condition of property has already proclaimed the other accidents to be corpulent, so that we not only show these things to exist as body, but also by its own pro-corporeal property of its own kind, that even if they are not present, this property is not absent from the body of the soul, as also from other bodies in which they are present. And although Saint Augustine, lib. 10. De Genesi ad litteram, in the last two chapters, judges that the soul can be explained as incorporeal, where he says: Tertullian, because he believed the soul to be corporeal, for no other reason than that he could not think it incorporeal: and therefore he feared that it would be nothing if it were not a body: who indeed, although acute, is at times surpassed in the truth against his own opinion; nevertheless Tertullian truly judged the soul to be truly corporeal, and overlaid with matter, though more subtle: which he certainly proves not only by various texts of Scripture, and likewise by philosophical reasons to be proposed and resolved below; but also by a certain prophetic revelation which he expounds thus in cap. 9. There is today among us a sister who has received the gift of revelations, which she suffers in the Church amid the Sunday solemnities by ecstasy in the spirit: she converses with Angels, and at times even with the Lord; and she sees and hears the mysteries, and discerns the hearts of certain ones, and submits remedies to those who desire them. Now, just as the Scriptures are read, or the Psalms are sung, or addresses are delivered, or petitions are offered: so from these matter is supplied to her visions. Perhaps we had been discussing something of the Soul, when that Sister was in the spirit. After the solemnities were completed and the people dismissed, as is customary she reported to us what she had seen; for these things are most diligently recorded, that they may also be tested: Among other things, she said, the Soul was shown to me corporally, and the spirit seemed to be a body; yet not empty and void of quality, but one that would even promise to be held, tender, and luminous, and of airy color, and in form throughout human: This is the vision: God is witness, and the Apostle fit sponsor of the charisms of things to come in the Church, etc. Therefore Tertullian seems to have been led astray to that absurdity concerning a soul of airy and luminous color by certain false revelations of a certain Montanist woman — not indeed Prisca or Maximilla, who had long before perished by hanging — but of a certain Disciple of theirs, deceived by a demon.

Note 2. That the opinion concerning the incorruption and immortality of the rational soul was various among the ancient Philosophers; for the most part they said it was altogether mortal, with the Epicureans and Atheists, to whom must be numbered all who affirmed it to be composed, dissoluble, and divisible: For if it is structile, that is composed, saith Tertullian in cap. 11. of the same book De Anima, and dissoluble: if dissoluble, it is already not immortal... For to be divided is to be dissolved, and to be dissolved is to die. But it is divided into parts, now into two by Plato, now into three by Zeno, now into five and six by Galen, and into seven by Soranus, even into eight according to Chrysippus, even into nine besides Apollophanes, but also into ten according to certain Stoics. What Aristotle thought here, however, is sufficiently ambiguous, because he speaks variously and obscurely: nevertheless in lib. 2. De ortu animalium, cap. 3. he says plainly that mind alone enters the body from without, and that mind alone is divine: since its operation shares nothing with the corporeal operation. And since he teaches that the other souls are ingenerated in matter by the force of the seed, because all their operation depends upon the body, he gathers that the human soul is not born by the force of the seed, but comes from without, because it does not depend upon the body; and so he seems to think it to be incorporeal and immaterial.

Note 3. From the Seraphic Doctor, lib. 2. d. 18. q. 2. a. 2. 3., as regards the formation of the soul there are chiefly three opinions: for certain Philosophers said it is formed by an Intelligence; so that as the celestial body concurs in the production of the human body, so the Intelligence in the production of the soul: in which manner the author of the book De Causis seems to have thought, Propositions 11. and 16. The second opinion was that the production of souls takes place by traduction, so that soul is traduced from soul, as flesh from flesh: and as many candles are lit from one candle, so from one soul, by its communication without diminution, many bodies are vivified... Concerning which Saint Augustine hesitated, in doubt even unto death, as will appear in Concl. 3. — The third opinion is that souls are not sown, but are created by God when the bodies are formed, so that they are infused in creating, and produced in infusing.

First Conclusion. — The rational soul is truly spiritual according to substance, and altogether devoid of every body and of matter.

This is of faith. Proof 1. From Ecclus. 12. Let the dust return into its earth, and the spirit to God. 1. Corinth. cap. 2. What man knoweth the things of a man, but the spirit of a man which is in him? And this was sanctioned under anathema in the Council of Lateran, under Innocent III., where it is defined that the Soul of which man is constituted is spiritual. Likewise in the sixth Synod of Constantinople, Action 11. it is decreed that the divine Word assumed flesh, and an incorporeal rational soul.

Therefore this proposition is of faith, held by almost all the holy Fathers, especially Saint Augustine, lib. De Civitate Dei, cap. 9. and lib. De Genesi, cap. 21. and following, where he refutes the aforesaid error of Tertullian. Now the spirituality of the soul is urged by many reasons. First indeed: operation follows upon being: but the soul elicits spiritual operations: therefore it is spiritual. The major is evident: for operation depends upon the substance and entity of the thing operating: therefore if the entity be material, the operations will likewise be material; and consequently where spiritual operations are, there is likewise a spiritual substance. The minor is proved: that which is borne into the object, abstracted and freed from all concretion of matter, is also immaterial and spiritual: but the operations of our soul are of this kind: therefore, etc. The Doctor proves the minor in 1. dist. 13. qu. 2. n. 10: Our intellect contemplates in Metaphysics things most abstracted from matter, singulars and universals; negatives and positives; possibles and impossibles; existent and non-existent things; sensible and insensible; it attains material and spiritual things: therefore by a spiritual operation and faculty; for no corporeal faculty perceives spiritual objects. — Cassiodorus expends and confirms this reason thus, lib. De anima, cap. 1. Although, he saith, the soul is weighed down by the mass of its body, yet it weighs the operations of things with solicitous curiosity, thinks profoundly on celestial things, tracks natural things with subtle investigation, and desires to know something even of its own Maker. But if it were corporeal, it certainly would not discern spiritual things in its thoughts, nor see them. Let suspicion of its corporeality therefore cease: since it renders itself alien in every way from the definition of body, and seeks out such causes as only a sublime spirit strives to reach. Hence it is that by the sounding Scriptures it is most justly admonished to contemn all the visible things of this world, because it itself is incorporeal: that it may deservedly tend toward spiritual things, by which it knows itself to have been formed like unto them. — It is confirmed from the author of the book De Spiritu et anima found among the works of Saint Augustine, tom. 3. who says: The mind is invisible, for otherwise it will not be able to discern invisible things. It sees visible things through the body, invisible things through itself: and it sees itself in itself; what it sees in itself as visible, it nevertheless seems to see in the body through the body, as the sense remains in the letter, and is seen through the letter. The mind, the ruler, governor, and dweller of the body, sees itself through itself. It seeks not the aid of bodily eyes, but rather withdraws itself to itself from all the bodily senses as hindering and clamoring, that it may see itself in itself, that it may know itself from itself, and when it wills to know God, it raises itself above itself by the keenness of mind. For God is not such a thing as the mind is; yet He cannot be seen except by the mind, nor so seen as the mind can be seen. For truth is unchangeable, without defect of substance; such is not the mind: but it fails and prospers, it is harmed and is ignorant, it remembers and forgets: now it wills, now it wills not, and diffused in thoughts and counsels it wanders hither and thither, etc. — He urges this same truth in cap. 19. Invisible, he saith, and incorporeal is the soul: for if it were visible, it would be corporeal; and if corporeal, it would be partible, and would have parts, nor could it be wholly at once in one place. For no body can either be touched whole at once, or touch whole at once. But the soul, in whatever of its motions or acts, is wholly present at once: it sees wholly, and remembers wholly the things seen: it hears wholly, and recalls wholly the sounds: it smells wholly, and recollects wholly the odors: it wholly tastes and discerns savors by tongue and palate: it wholly touches both hard and soft things: it wholly approves or disapproves at once: but it wholly discerns hot or cold things with the tip of a finger alone.

It is wholly sight, wholly hearing, it wholly remembers: and since it wholly remembers, it is wholly memory: since it wholly wills, it is wholly will: since it wholly thinks, it is wholly thought; since it wholly loves, it is wholly love. Therefore it is not corporeal; since body is divisible into parts, nor can so diverse things be wrought by one power. — Saint Augustine confirms the same, Epist. 27. to Saint Jerome, where he says: Moreover, if body is nothing but what is set or moved through the space of a place with some length, breadth, height, so that with its greater part it occupies a greater place, with its lesser a lesser, and is less in the part than in the whole: the soul is not a body: for through the whole body which it animates it is extended not by local diffusion, but by a certain vital intension: for it is wholly present at once through all its particles, not less in the lesser and greater in the greater: but in some place more intense, in some more remiss, and whole in all, and whole in each: for otherwise, that which senses in even a part of the body, yet senses wholly..... Therefore it could not be wholly present at once both in all and in the single particles of its body, if it were diffused through them as we see bodies diffused through the space of places occupy less with their lesser parts and more with their greater: wherefore if the soul must be called a body, it would not be a body such as the earthly is, nor such as the humid or airy or aethereal, for all those are greater in greater places and lesser in lesser, and none of them is whole present in any part of itself: but as parts of places are, so they are occupied by parts of bodies. And although here he does not plainly pronounce the soul to be altogether devoid of matter; yet he expresses the same distinctly elsewhere, especially in the Treatise on Ps. 145. For always the body, he saith, because it is body, is beneath the mind; and thou askest, O soul, by what most excellent body thou art found to be more excellent. Again in the same Treatise: The nature, he saith, of the soul is more excellent than the nature of the body: it excels greatly, it is a spiritual thing, an incorporeal thing: it is near to the substance of God. The same he teaches also in book twelve De Genesi ad litteram, cap. 32. and 33. and in book 8. De Civit. Dei, cap. 16.

You will object. 1. From sacred Scripture it is urged that the soul is corporeal: therefore it must be so judged. Tertullian proves the antecedent in the book De anima, cap. 1. The corporeality of the soul, he saith, shines forth in Paradise itself; for the soul of a certain one grieves in hell, and is punished in flame, and tortured in the tongue, and implores from the finger of the happier soul the solace of a drop of water. You think that the departure of the poor man exulting and the rich man mourning is an image! But what is the name of Lazarus there, if it is not the thing in truth? and even if the image is to be believed, it will be a testimony of the truth: for if the soul had not a body, the image of the soul would not take on the image of a body, nor would Scripture lie about bodily members; if they were not. He concludes: Therefore if the soul perceived any torment, or solace, in the prison, or inn of hell, in the fire, or in the bosom of Abraham, the corporeality of the soul will be proved: for incorporality suffers nothing, having nothing through which it can suffer: or if it has this, it will be body; inasmuch as every corporeal thing is passible: in so far as it is passible, it is corporeal.

I answer 1. It can be said with Saint Augustine that Tertullian believed the soul corporeal because he could not think it incorporeal; and therefore he feared it would be nothing if it were not a body: for Tertullian himself says in the same place: For it is nothing if not body... By a like reason these words of Saint Hilary can be explained, Comment. on cap. 5. of Saint Matthew: There is nothing which in its substance and creation is corporeal, and the elements of all things, whether in heaven or in earth, whether visible or invisible, were formed. For even the species of souls, whether of those possessing bodies or of those exiled from bodies, nevertheless receive a corporeal substance of their nature: because everything created must be in something. Even thus, or otherwise, must that be restricted which John bishop of Thessalonica says, in the Synod of Nicaea II. at the beginning of Action V. concerning the Angels and archangels and their powers, to which I join also our own souls: the catholic Church itself here holds them to be indeed intelligible, but not altogether devoid of body, endowed with a thin body of things, air, or fire, etc. Afterwards indeed he would call either angels, or demons, or souls incorporeal. Nor are those words of John rejected by the others who were present at the Synod. These things, I say, are to be taken in the same sense as the aforesaid words of Tertullian, namely that corporeal is said of that which has a solid entity, not indeed a fictitious or chimerical one, as we have said more fully already in treating of the immateriality of God; nor can the contrary be evinced from those words of Saint Luke which Tertullian adduces; for from them it is not licit to conclude that the soul is corporeal, as Saint Augustine at length deduces, lib. 1. De anima et eius origine, to Vincentius Victor, who lay in the same error as Tertullian. Claudian proves the same, lib. 3. De statu animae, cap. 3. contra Faustum, asserting likewise that these members of the soul are to be interpreted not corporally, but spiritually and metaphorically; so that Christ the Lord willed by those wrappings of the parable to delineate the bitterness of inward punishments.

You will say 2. From the same Tertullian in the same place cap. 5. the passions of corporeal and incorporeal things do not communicate with one another: But the soul suffers with the body, when it aches at its being stricken by blows, wounds, ulcers: and the body shrinks at the soul's being afflicted by care, anguish, love, through the loss of its vigor, whose shame and dread it testifies by blushing and pallor. Therefore the soul is a body, from the communication of the passions of corporeal things. — I distinguish the major: spiritual things do not communicate in passions with corporeal things, as to entity and effect, I concede; as to conjunction and affection, I deny: for since incorporeal things are united to corporeal things as forms informing them, that they may make one something, as the rational soul is united to the body with which it integrates and constitutes man, it is necessary that a mutual communication of passions take place, so that the soul grieve while the body suffers; not indeed by the reception of corporeal pain, but by the affection with which it pursues its own body, as its own companion and its native dwelling. — I confess, however, that Tertullian can scarcely be excused from the error of those who judge the soul to consist of a most subtle body, by reason of which it is visible at least in ecstasy. The same Tertullian produces examples of this kind, lib. De anima; but this opinion of his must be reckoned among those which are reproved by the Church.

Second Conclusion. — The rational soul is truly immortal and incorruptible.

This is of faith. It is proved by innumerable texts of sacred Scripture, to be drawn both from the Old and from the New Testament. Especially indeed from that of Wisdom 3. The souls of the just are in the hand of God, and their reward is with the Most High, and the torment of death shall not touch them: in the eyes of the foolish they seemed to die; but they are in peace. And if they have been placed in torments before men, their hope is full of immortality. He calls them foolish who think that souls die and are dissolved together with bodies. Hence in the same place cap. 5. he introduces those fools doing penance too late in hell, and groaning through anguish of spirit at the sight of the happy lot of souls, bursting forth into these words: These are they whom we sometime had in derision, and for a parable of reproach. We fools esteemed their life madness, and their end without honor: behold how they are numbered among the children of God, and their lot is among the Saints: from which they infer this wonderful and most certain consequence; Therefore we have erred from the way of truth and justice, the light hath not shone unto us, and the sun of understanding hath not risen upon us. What more openly for establishing the immortality of souls? what more efficaciously for reproving the blindness and impudence of the wicked? — We should never finish if I strove here to copy out all the authorities and sayings which in the New Testament establish the immortality of our souls: for no page occurs in it to be read which does not treat of the rewards or punishments of eternal life, of the recompense or the punishment promised to the wicked after death. I bring forward one alone, namely that oracle of Christ the Lord, Matth. 10. by which He sweetly consoles us with blandishment, and warns that the destruction of the body is not to be feared; Fear ye not, he saith, them that kill the body, and are not able to kill the soul. As if He would say, saith Saint Jerome: Fear not the malediction of bodily death, which is dissolved temporally. Fear the malediction of spiritual death, by which the soul is crucified eternally with its body. Man cannot kill thy soul; it reaches even to the body: do not thou serve thy soul: the presence of thy soul is snatched: he can cast out the present one, but not kill thy soul.

I pass over the sayings of all the holy Fathers on this matter, who all together with Saint Clement, lib. 6. Constitut. Apost., cap. 11. burst forth into these words: We firmly maintain the soul to be incorporeal and immortal, nor that it perishes as bodies do, but that by a perpetual gift it is endowed as a partaker of reason and liberty. Here I do not recount the opinions of the ancient Philosophers on this matter: for it is evident that the wiser among them professed the immortality of souls, as is gathered from Cicero, lib. De Amicitia: The authority, he saith, of the ancients, or of our forefathers, weighs more with me. who bestowed so religious rights upon the dead, which they would not have done if they had judged the soul to perish together with the body.

This same is urged by Physical and Moral reason; of which the first is drawn from the spirituality of the soul. Every spiritual being is immortal and incorruptible: but the soul is spiritual, as was proved in the preceding Conclusion: therefore, etc. The major, in which there might be difficulty, is proved: First, because matter is called the principle of corruption: but that which is spiritual does not involve matter: therefore neither the principle of corruption. Second, because a spiritual being, if it could be corrupted, would be corrupted either by itself, or by nothing, or by another. Not by nothing, because a real being is not corrupted except by that which is real; for of nothing nothing is made. Nor yet by itself, because nothing desires the ceasing of itself; rather, with natural desire stimulating, all things covet the perpetual conservation of themselves. If by another, it is corrupted either by another of inferior virtue, or of equal, or of superior. Not the first, because that which is inferior in virtue cannot corrupt that which is more excellent in virtue; otherwise a drop of water could extinguish a burning torch, and a spark could heat and burn the whole Ocean. Nor yet the second: for that which corrupts another overcomes its resistive virtue, and has over it a dominion of activity: for equal has not power over equal, nor does like act upon like. Finally not the third, because God alone possesses a virtue superior to souls: but God, although He can, yet with equity ought not to annihilate rational souls together with the body. — The moral reason is drawn from the providence of God. By natural light it is evident that God provides for all things; whence among all nations, even barbarous ones, there has always existed the cult, observance, and religion of some deity: and whether they will or no, the Atheists must confess that God is, and that human affairs are cared for, since in sudden and urgent peril by natural instinct they cry out for God to be propitious to them: but the providence of God would be of little account if souls were mortal. It is proved: that the dispensation of the divine providence may be worthy and equitable, it ought to decree rewards to the good and punishments to the wicked: but this does not happen in this mortal life; for that I may speak with the words of Saint Chrysostom, Homil. 1. De Providentia: Many, he saith, impious in mortal life, who more often lead a prosperous life, abound in riches, rejoice in health: but the good and studious patiently bear adversities: therefore there would not seem to be an equitable distribution, nor a providence worthy of God, unless there were another life, in which the wicked pay the merited punishments and the just receive worthy rewards: but if there be another life, in which God justly recompenses the good and the evil, the soul will be a survivor after the body, and immortal.

They will reply, that the good are rewarded in this life, and the wicked tormented: For virtue, saith Seneca, is a reward unto itself: but sin its own punishment, according to that of Saint Augustine, lib. 1. Confessionum, c. 12. Thou hast commanded, O Lord, and so it is, that every sinner be a punishment to himself: so that sin itself may be the punishment of sin, as the Doctor adds in 1. dist. 1. quaest. 2. n. 27. — Against this, 1. This being posited, all men would have to be permitted to live as each one pleases, and the criminal let go, who would be more wretched in his crime than under tortures and punishments — which no one even of the least reason would admit. Second, those would have to be condemned as mad who met a glorious death for the sake of their Country, or their Parent, or virtue, or even of God Himself, if beyond present virtue there remained no reward of it. Why do we extol with encomia and celebrate with praises those who were less devoted to the comforts and pleasures of this life even unto death, if after death there remains to them no felicity to be hoped for? God could be judged unjust if He should bestow no rewards after life upon those who offered themselves to torments and an ignominious death for defending His religion, worship, and glory: and should allow their murderers, usurpers of goods, subverters of commonwealths, blasphemers, adulterers, homicides, to go immune and glorying in their crimes? Saint Peter used this argument; who, as Saint Clement his disciple relates, lib. 3. Recognitionum, testifies that he heard these words from him often: If God is just, the rational soul is immortal.

You will object. 1. From Ecclesiastes cap. 3. The death of men and of beasts is alike, and the condition of both is one rest: but while beasts die their souls perish: therefore, etc. — I answer that these words were uttered in the person of the impious, who, that they may gorge themselves more freely with every bodily pleasure after the manner of beasts, pronounce their soul mortal. Whence Wisdom 2. has it thus: The impious said among themselves, thinking not aright: Small is our time and tedious, and there is no refreshment at the end of man: and there is none who has been known to return from hell, because we are born of nothing; and after this we shall be as if we had not been: and shortly after they added: Come therefore, let us enjoy the good things that are present, etc.

You will say 2. God alone is said to be immortal, ad Timoth. 6. in these words: He is King of kings, and Lord of lords, who alone hath immortality: therefore the rational soul does not rejoice in immortality.

I answer: that a twofold immortality can be distinguished, whereof the first denies every corruptive power, both from without and from within, and this belongs to God alone, because since He exists necessarily of Himself it cannot be implied that He could be annihilated by another. The second denies the principle of corruption from within, namely matter: but it can be corrupted from without, namely by the divine power, which since it formed all things out of nothing, can by the same reduce them again into nothing. Of the former immortality speaks the Apostle, we indeed of the latter. In that sense the holy Fathers must be understood who say the soul and Angels are immortal by grace, not by nature. Thus Saint Damascene lib. 2. cap. 3. De Angelis: Immortal, he saith, is the Angel, not by nature, but by grace, for whatever has had a beginning can also cease by its own nature. And against the heresy of the Manichaeans: Everything, he saith, that has a beginning has also an end by its own nature: and what has an end has also a beginning. Wherefore the Angels have a beginning, and have also an end of their nature, although by divine grace they again begin to be, and are renewed. — Sophronius of Jerusalem expounds the same beautifully in the Epistle found in the acts of the sixth Synod, action 11. where he conveniently opens also the distinction between sensible and spiritual creatures thus: God, he saith, willed indeed that those things which fall under sense end in time, but He willed to honor intelligible and invisible things with greater honor than these. Therefore they die in no way, nor are corrupted, as happens to sensible things, which are placed in flux and easily pass away. Yet neither are they immortal by nature, as if they had made a passage to incorrupt substance; but grace indulged them, which vindicates them from corruption and destruction. So do the souls of men remain devoid of corruption. So did the Angels pre-exist immortal, not because they have a truly incorrupt nature, as we said, or consist of a properly immortal substance: but because they obtained by divine gift a grace bestowing immortality and procuring incorruptibility. — Hence mortal and immortal names are used threefold among the holy Fathers, for that which is mutable, and affected now one way now another, is called mortal, even though it never dies; For mutability itself, saith Saint Augustine 2. De Trinit., cap. 6. is not unfittingly called mortality, according to which the soul also is said to die, not because it is changed and converted into body, or into some other substance: but in its very substance whatever is otherwise now, or was, according to that whereby it ceases to be what it was, is apprehended in mortality. By which reason only that is called immortal which is altogether immutable. Second, that is called mortal which by divine power can be reduced into nothing; thus both soul and Angels can be called even mortals, because since they were created by God out of nothing, so by Him they can pass into nothing. Third finally, that is called immortal which lacks an intrinsic principle of corruption and defectibility; and thus both Angels and rational souls, since they are wholly spiritual, are truly immortal.

You will say 3. That soul whose every operation and function depends upon a bodily organ cannot subsist separately from the body: but the rational soul is such: therefore it cannot subsist separated, and so perishes together with the body. The major is Aristotle's, lib. 1. De Anima, cap. 1. text 13. and is made manifest by reason; for since being is for the sake of operation, in that state in which the soul cannot have operation, it cannot have being either: for that being would be frustraneous, deprived of its end; but God and nature do nothing in vain. But the minor is proved, namely that every function of the rational soul depends upon the body: First, because it is evident that we cannot understand anything, nor judge about a thing understood, unless at the same time we fashion and imagine in the mind some corporeal similitude of it, so much so that we cannot conceive even spiritual and divine things otherwise; whence Aristotle lib. 3. De Anima, cap. 13. text 39. when the mind contemplates, he saith, it is necessary at the same time to contemplate some phantasm. Second, because experience shows that when the passages of the animal spirits are intercepted, as happens in syncope and apoplexy, man is suddenly deprived of all use of reason, which is a sign that the use of reason depends upon the spirits and the disposition of the brain.

I answer with Lessius, lib. 2. De procidentia Numinis, num. 23., as to the major, that the operation of the soul depends upon a bodily organ in two ways: first per se and immediately; second medially and per accidens. If it depended in the first way, I concede the major, namely that such a soul cannot exist separate from the body, such as are the souls of brute animals. But if the soul depends on the body only per accidens, I deny the major, because that which belongs per accidens, and only through another, can fail. Now the operations of the rational soul depend on the body only per accidens, which is evident from many signs. First, for the function of the intellect consists chiefly in judging; yet for judging, phantasy and that corporeal similitude help in no way; but rather impede, and furnish occasion of error: whence the intellect ought not follow the conception of phantasy, nor judge according to its mode and species; but correct it by its own light, that it may attain truth itself. But if so great is the force of the intellect that it corrects the crudeness and errors of phantasy, and attains liquid truth placed far above the grasp of phantasy, it is evident that it does not depend on phantasy per se according to its substance. Second, because we desire above all to understand spiritual things, which do not fall under phantasy. Third, because, as was said in the preceding Conclusion, we know many things abstracted from matter, as God, universal natures, etc.

Third Conclusion. — THE RATIONAL SOUL IS NOT PRODUCED BY PROPAGATION; NOR IS IT MADE BY TRADUCTION: BUT IS INFUSED INTO THE ORGANIZED BODY BY GOD IN CREATING, AND IS CREATED IN INFUSING.

This is against Apollinarius, and Tertullian, who in the book De Anima, cap. 27. affirms that the soul of the child is sown and produced from the parent's soul in generation, as body from body.

It is proved first by the authority of the holy Fathers, especially Lactantius lib. De Opificio Dei, cap. 10. That question, he saith, can come into dispute, whether the soul is generated from the father, or rather from the mother, or truly from both: but I am within my right, away from the doubtful judgment. Nothing indeed of these three is certain, because neither from both nor from one or other are souls sown to bodies altogether. For body can be born of bodies, since something from each is conferred: but the soul cannot of these least things, because nothing can be derived from a thing thin and incomprehensible. Therefore the account of souls to be sown is subject to God alone. For of mortal things nothing but mortal can be generated. Nor must he be thought a father who transfuses, or breathes of his own; (directly against Tertullian's paradox) in no way did he sense it, nor if he senses when or how it is done does he comprehend it in mind. From which it appears that souls are given not by parents, but by the one and same fatherly God of all, who alone constituted the law and reason of being born, since indeed He alone effects it. — And although Saint Augustine pronounces this question most difficult of explanation in several places, especially Epist. 120. ad Honoratum, cap. 11. saying: Who would dare rashly precipitate himself into this opinion, since the reason concerning the advent or exit of the soul lies hidden in so great a depth of nature, that it is better to seek it always while we are in this life than to presume it sometimes found? For which cause, desiring to be instructed on this matter, he consults Saint Jerome, Epist. 28., addressing him thus: Teach, I beseech, what thou teachest, teach what thou holdest, and tell me whether souls are made one by one in each single one born, wherein they persist in little ones, that stricken they need in the sacrament of Christ remission, sinning in Adam, from whom their propagation of sin is derived. Or if they do not pray, by what justice are creatures bound by another's sin so, when grafted as dead members propagated from Adam, that damnation follows them, unless through the Church aid has been brought, since it is not in his power that the grace of baptism can come to their aid. • • And Epist. 29. to the same, Therefore, he saith, it must be thought to be sought, lest perchance we hold any unshaken one of those opinions of the incarnation of the soul which contradicts the soul of the little one being utterly freed, denying him to be in this evil. This therefore most firmly retained, that the little soul of the infant must be freed from the guilt of sin, nor can be freed in any other way except by the grace of God through Jesus Christ — if we can know the cause and origin of that evil itself, more reasonably we resist disputants rather than litigants, readier and more instructed. But if we cannot, because the beginning of mercy lies hidden, the office of mercy ought not grow sluggish. Therefore we know those only who laugh at themselves knowing what they know not to be safer in this, that we are not ignorant of this our ignorance. Whence in Epist. 157. which is to Optatus, near the end, he affirms the question of the origin of souls cannot be known without stain of faith: wherefore at the beginning of the same Epistle addressing Optatus himself, who had consulted him whether, namely, souls are born by the propagation of body, and are from that one created for the first man: or the omnipotent Creator, who surely works even until now, makes new ones proper to individuals without any propagation: he responds: Concerning which matter before I advise anything, I will that thy sincerity know that in so many of my little works I was never bold to bring forth a defined opinion on this question, and impudently report in letters to inform others what has not been explained by me. • But he hesitated, as it seems, in this doubt concerning the origin of the soul even unto death; for although he taught most constantly that it is immortal and spiritual, nevertheless what its origin might be, and whether it is created by God alone, or truly as the bodies of Adam's posterity are sown from his body, so souls too would be made from his soul, as many lamps are lit from one without diminution of its light — he willed to settle and define nothing certainly. In which matter he had as pertinacious predecessors certain holy Doctors: Gregory of Nyssa, lib. 2. De Anima, cap. 11.: Eucherius in the Commentary on cap. 2. of the Canticle; Gregory the Great, lib. 7. epistolarum, Epist. to Secundinus, where he writes: On the origin of the soul a question has been much discussed among the holy Fathers: but whether they descend together with the body, or certainly is given to each one, it has remained uncertain, and they confessed this question to be insoluble in this part. This is the question of that thing, nor can it be comprehended by man: because if it is born with Adam, the substance of the soul dies with flesh; but if it is not born with flesh, why in that flesh which came forth from Adam is it held bound by sins? But although this be uncertain, this is not uncertain: because unless man has been reborn by the grace of sacred Baptism, every soul is bound by the bonds of original sin. Whence in the aforesaid epistle to Optatus, admonishing the same, he says: if you find what I advised you to seek, which I confess I myself have not found, defend it as much as you can, and that such is the newness of infant souls that they are not drawn by any propagation; and share with us in fraternal charity what you find. But if you find not wherefore, or how the souls of infants become sinners, having nothing of malice in themselves, are compelled to draw from Adam whence they are damned, since you believe them propagated not from that first sinful one, but new and innocent, unstained by the flesh of sin — let not your assent rashly deflect to the other opinion, that you believe they are traduced by propagating from that one; lest perhaps another may find what you yourself cannot, or you may someday find what now you cannot. Nor indeed those who assert that souls are propagated from the one which God gave to the first man, and so say they are drawn from parents — if they follow Tertullian's opinion — contend that they are not spirits but bodies, and arise from corpulent seeds. What more perverse can be said? — Hence lib. 1. De Anima et eius origine, cap. 19. he permits indeed that everyone maintain as he pleases the opinion of the daily creation of new souls, provided he guard against four errors contrary to faith. Whoever, he saith, wish to defend that souls, as they say, are breathed anew into those being born, not drawn from parents, let them take care absolutely of something of those four, that is: let them not say that souls are made sinful by God through original sin from elsewhere. Let them not say that little ones who expire without Baptism can attain eternal life and the kingdom of heaven, original sin being resolved by anything else whatsoever. Let them not say that souls perished somewhere before flesh, and were deservedly thrust down into sinful flesh for this. Let them not say that sins which are not found in them, nay rather are proscribed, were deservedly punished. Saying nothing therefore of these four, since anyone of them is false and impious: let them find the authority of the Scriptures, most certain testimonies on this matter, and let them defend this opinion of theirs, not only with me not forbidding, but with things themselves witnessing and giving thanks. But if they find not most certain authority of the divine Eloquia on this matter, and are compelled by impossibility to say something of those four, let them restrain themselves, lest they be compelled to say through this very thing that the souls of little ones have not original sin, according to the Pelagian heresy once damnable, and most recently condemned. — Nevertheless now common is the opinion of Theologians that the rational soul is not produced by traduction, but is created by God, and infused into bodies furnished with prepared organs. Which truth

our Alensis proves, qu. 60. membr. 3. art. 8. First indeed from Hugh of Saint Victor, lib. 1. De Sacramentis, parte 1. cap. 30. and this from lib. Exodi 12. Let the dust return into the earth, from which it was taken, and the spirit return to God who gave it: by which, he saith, it is plainly shown that spirit is not traduced materially from spirit, but flesh from flesh; for although our bodies are not formed immediately from earth, nevertheless not unfittingly are they said to be taken from earth: since from it was figured the body of the first man, from which our bodies have been sown and propagated.

Some answer, according to Saint Augustine, Epist. 157. around the middle: Body into the earth, from which was made the body of the first man, and spirit to God, from whom was made the soul of the first man. For as our body, they say, although propagated from that first body, returns nevertheless thither whence that first body was made: so our soul, although propagated from that soul, returns not into nothing, because it is immortal, but to Him from whom that first soul was made. And concerning this, that which is written of the spirit of each man, that it return to God who gave it, does not solve that most obscure question, because whether from that one, or from no other, God surely gave it.

But our Alensis answers that as in the first man the body is read to be taken from the earth, but the spirit given by God, so also reason demands that in subsequent men too flesh indeed descend from flesh; but the spirit be believed to come to the Lord.

Proof 2. From the same in the same place, by that of Exodi 21. If anyone strike a pregnant woman, and she bring forth an abortive child, if it be not formed, he shall be fined a price; but if it have been formed, he shall render soul for soul: it is plainly declared, because while flesh is sown from flesh, soul likewise is not drawn from soul. For if soul is sown together with flesh, why would soul for soul not be rendered in the unformed abortive child? Since therefore in the abortive one formed only is soul for soul commanded to be rendered, what else is shown but that in that which is not yet formed there is not yet a soul? so that evidently, as in the first man we read the body first formed, then the soul sewn in: so also in all subsequent ones let us believe that first in the womb the human body is formed, then the soul infused. But if it perhaps seems marvelous to anyone how paternal seed in the womb can before animation grow, or vegetate, or even advance to the figure of a human body: let him see how shrubs, plants, and all sprouts of this kind, not possessing a rational soul, vegetate and grow by greenness alone, and by their motion are produced into the form fitting their own kind. By these and similar reasons therefore it has been made probable that souls are not from traduction, but newly created out of nothing, infused daily into new bodies formed in the womb from paternal seed, unto vivification.

Saint Bonaventure proves third, in 2. dist. 18. quaest. 2.: If the rational soul, since it is a subsisting substance per se and incorruptible, has matter and form: then since it is produced, it is produced either from pre-existing matter, or its matter is produced together with it. If its matter is produced together with it, therefore it is necessary that it be produced out of nothing: therefore by God alone. If it is produced from pre-existing matter, I ask about that matter: it is either corporeal or spiritual. If corporeal, from it a soul cannot be made. If spiritual, it either has form or not: if not, how can it be in the nature of things without form, since all being is from form? If it has: therefore it will be either an Angel or a Soul. Not an Angel, it is agreed; therefore a soul: but from the same numerically the same is not made: therefore from it a soul cannot be made. It is confirmed: Souls are not sown, but are created by God when the bodies are formed, and infused in creating, and produced in infusing: for God ought to reserve to Himself alone the creation of souls, both on account of their dignity, and on account of their immortality. On account of the dignity of souls, because since the soul is the image of God, and born to be borne immediately into God, and beatified in Him, loving Him with the whole heart, it ought to have its whole being immediately from Him, that it might be held to love Him with the whole heart. He owed this also on account of the immortality of souls; for since God alone is He who has life in Himself, and unfailing life, He alone is He who can produce the principle of perpetual life. Since therefore an incorruptible thing cannot be substantiated in mutable matter, and the operation of a creature is upon mutable matter, it is impossible that any creature produce the rational soul, and therefore God ought to reserve its production to Himself alone. Therefore the reasons proving that rational souls are not from traduction but from the Creator must be conceded. — Yet in all these things, saith Hugh of Saint Victor cited above, no reason or authority ever prevailed so far as to remove the uncertainty of the question; excepting that alone, that the Catholic Faith chose rather to believe that souls, to be joined daily to bodies to be vivified, are made out of nothing, than that according to the nature of the body and the property of human flesh they are propagated by traduction. But if souls were said to be from traduce, there would not be so great a question; because justice would be more manifest in that original sin is said to pass from fathers into sons. But although we cannot comprehend by reason the hidden judgments of God, yet for resolving doubts we ought not assert false things.

You will object 1. Saint Augustine in the aforesaid Epistle: Those who with inconsiderate temerity defend the lineage of souls, among other testimonies which they judge to further their cause, can bring forward none, as it were, more manifest and express for themselves than that which is written in Genesis: and all the souls that went in with Jacob into Egypt, who came out of his thighs. For by this as it were most evident testimony they can be believed that souls are propagated into sons from parents, since it seems said plainly enough that souls also went out of the loins of Jacob, not the bodies of sons alone; so that in that way he wishes even that understood a parte totum which Adam said, when his woman was shown to him: This now is bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh. For he said not, and soul of my soul: but it can happen that... whether it be understood, but here he wished to remember the soul, and intended the derivation of body into sons. — Saint Augustine answers that the pronomen prefixed can be joined to the words by equal usage, either in the feminine or masculine gender, namely quae, or qui, namely that it signify either the souls quae, or the men qui went out: but neither way favors the opposed opinion. Because, he saith, also with the name body alone can be signified, as indeed the mode of speech shows, by which that is signified through that which contains it which is contained: as is that whence they are crowned therewith, when wine vessels are crowned; for wine is contained, and vessel contains. Therefore as we call the Basilica basilica because it contains the people who is truly called Church: that by the name Church added as proper, we might signify by the contained the place which contains: so they who are contained by bodies can be understood, the bodies of sons through the named souls. For thus slightly is taken that which there he says is defiled in him who has entered over a dead soul. Numer. 1.

He answers 2. if, as I said, the feminine gender had been placed: quae exierunt de femoribus Iacob: that is, which souls; not that the masculine gender had been placed, idest qui exierunt de femoribus Iacob: which he might prefer not so to understand, for all were they who had gone out of his loins, that is, the souls of men: yet even if they can be understood to have gone out of the loins of the Father only according to the body, whose were those souls, through whose number so many men are understood?

You will object 2. That of Ephesians 2. cap. We are all by nature children of wrath: but we are not children of wrath on the part of flesh, but on the part of soul: nor are we children of wrath unless because we are sons of Adam: therefore our soul proceeds from the soul of Adam. — The Seraphic Doctor answers in the place cited, that we are by nature children of wrath therefore, because the soul, when it is united to infected flesh, is straightway infected, and contracts original guilt: not because it itself is traduced, but because the flesh to which it is united is traduced. How however this can be done, will be determined below, when original sin is treated.

You will object 3. The generative power principally resides in the soul: therefore if man generates man, since generation consists in like production, he produces soul more principally than flesh: therefore if flesh is from flesh, much more strongly is soul from traduction. It is confirmed: there is equally great or greater congruence of man to man, than of brute to brute: and the generative power is more perfect in man, than in any brute animal: if therefore a brute can produce a brute totally, both as to soul and as to body, and it is not necessary that the soul of brutes be created: much more strongly does it seem that the rational soul can be traduced, and terminated by coition. — The same Seraphic Doctor answers [Responfet] that although the generative power principally regards the soul by way of mover and agent: nevertheless it principally regards the body as that from which it produces: and since decision can be made from the body, not from the soul, hence it is ordered to the production of the human body, not to the production of the rational soul. It is confirmed that there is no parity, because the soul of the brute, since it is form only, and corruptible form, can be educed from the potency of matter: but the rational soul, since it is hoc aliquid incorruptible, neither is educed from pre-existing matter; it is necessary that it be educed out of nothing, and so be created. That moreover it cannot be produced from pre-existing matter Augustine shows manifoldly super Genesim ad litteram, lib. 1., namely that that pre-existing matter can neither be corporeal nor spiritual.

You will object 1. Either the rational soul is by propagation, or by creation. If by propagation, I have my point, namely that it is from traduce: if by creation, since creation belongs to God alone, it will follow that, creating the soul and infusing it into a body begotten by adultery, He will approve that adulterous coition; since it would be compared to Him. — I deny the sequella; for God creating it, and infusing it into a body begotten adulterously, acts not as particular and moral cause: but as universal and physical cause, to which the defect of the erring creature is not to be attributed. — Saint Jerome weighs this very reason, and from him Saint Augustine, Epist. 28. to the same Jerome around the middle, saying: But this which you put in the book against Rufinus, that certain ones calumniate this opinion, that it seems unworthy that God give souls to adulterous conceptions: whence they feign that souls, as it were, by merits wrought before the life of the flesh can justly be led to such straits, moves me not, pondering many things by which this calumny could be refuted: And what you yourself answered, that the fault is not in the seed of the wheat, which is said to be stolen away, but in him who stole the foundations, nor therefore ought the earth not to have been filled with seed in its bosom because the unclean sower cast it with that hand — is a most elegant similitude; and even before I read it, that objection concerning adulterous fates made me no straits in this question, viewing generally, that God bears well many things even from our evils and our sins: but the creation of any animal whatsoever, if it has a pious and prudent considerer, stirs up ineffable praise to the Creator; how much more the creation not of any animal whatever, but of man? But if the cause of creating is asked, nothing is answered sooner and better, except that every creature of God is good, and what more worthily ever should a good God make good, which no one can make except God?

Note 1. From the Seraphic Doctor in 2. dist. 16. art. 1. qu. 1., there are four kinds of likeness among things: The first is by an agreement of every sort in nature: and thus one Person in the Trinity is like another. The second, by participation of some universal nature: as man and ass are assimilated in animal. The third indeed, according to proportion, as a Pilot and a Charioteer agree by comparison with those things which they govern. The fourth is a likeness by agreement of order, as the exemplified is assimilated to the exemplar. Now it is certain that by the two prior modes no creature can be assimilated to God: but it can be made like Him by the two posterior modes; and that either imperfectly and remissly, and so it is a vestige; or proximately and perfectly, and so it is an image.

Note 2. That this is the difference between the notion of Image and of likeness: that an image, says the Doctor in 1. dist. 3. qu. 4. num. 2., is representative of the whole: but a vestige is representative only of a part: For if, he says, the whole body were impressed upon dust, as the foot is impressed, there would be left there the image of the whole, as a footprint is the image of the foot, and the vestige of the whole. Yet that expressive conformity of the whole does not suffice for the notion of image, but imitation is required, because according to Augustine book 83. questions q. 74., whichever two things are alike, one is not the image of the other, because it is not born to imitate it: and likewise it is required that the image be born to imitate that of which it is the image. Therefore it is necessary that something be truly said to be the image of another when it bears in itself that thing's likeness expressed from that very thing; I say likeness, either according to species, as the image of a King is in his son: or certainly according to some accident proper to that species: especially indeed according to figure, as the image of a King is said to be either depicted on a tablet, or expressed in silver, or any other matter whatever. But the likeness of species ought to be regarded according to the last grade and difference of the thing. Things therefore destitute of reason and intelligence can indeed be assimilated to God according to existence, life, and the lowest mode of knowing, which is through the senses: but they in no wise attain the supreme grade of mind and intelligence, in which grade nevertheless the notion of the likeness between God and man properly consists.

Note 3. Those words of Genesis chapter one: Let us make man to our own image and likeness, according to the genuine signification of the Hebrew tongue designate a shadowy likeness, that is, a deficient and passing likeness: for the words Selem and Demuth, which the Hebrews use to signify the notion of image and likeness, also signify shadow and defect. Therefore God willed by these words to signify that man was made like unto God, as great a likeness as there can be between a craftsman and such a work: but because God is of infinite perfection, therefore it was necessary that the likeness of God which is in man be by infinite degrees inferior in beauty and excellence to the divine Archetype. Even as a shadow is indeed a likeness and image of the body whose shadow it is, yet obscure and imperfect. Whence man in Sacred Scripture is said to vanish away after the manner of a shadow. Thus Psalm 38: Surely man passeth in the image, that is, quickly passes away after the manner of a shadow swiftly vanishing: and that place of Psalm 101: My days are declined like a shadow, and I am withered like grass: and that of Psalm 108: I am taken away as with a shadow when it declineth.

These things premised, two things are to be resolved in the present Question: First indeed, that the rational soul was formed to the image and likeness of God: Second, it must be opened up whether, and what be the difference between the notion of the image and of the likeness of God.

First Conclusion. — TRULY MAN IS FORMED TO THE IMAGE AND LIKENESS OF GOD. This truth is most constant in Sacred Scripture, in which nothing is handed down more often than that man was formed to the image and likeness of God: especially indeed in the first and second chapters of the book of Genesis.

The Seraphic Doctor praised in the first place cited proves this conclusion, from the twofold agreement, namely of order and of proportion, which man has with God. — First indeed, concerning the agreement of order he thus speaks: God wrought all things for His own sake, in such wise that, since He made all things for His praise: since He is the highest light, He made all things for His manifestation: since He is the highest goodness, He made all things for His communication. But praise is not perfect unless he who approves be present: neither is manifestation perfect unless he who understands be present: nor the communication of goods perfect unless he who can use them be present. And since to approve praise, to know truth, to assume gifts into use belongs to none but the rational creature alone, therefore the irrational creatures themselves have not to be ordered immediately to God, but through the medium of the rational creature. But the rational creature itself, because of itself it is born to praise, and to know, and to assume other things into the faculty of the will, is likewise born to be ordered into God immediately. Moreover, since the more immediately anything is ordered to anything, the more it agrees with it in the agreement of order; therefore the rational soul, and any rational creature whatsoever, because it is capable of God and can be a partaker of Him, is ordered immediately into Him, and agrees most of all with Him in the agreement of order. And furthermore, because the greater the agreement, the more expressive is the likeness: hence it is that with respect to this genus of likeness, the rational creature is the expressed likeness of God; and therefore it is an image. And this is what St. Augustine says in book 11. De Trinitate, So far is the soul the image of God, as it is capable of Him, and can be a partaker of Him; for because it is ordered to Him immediately, therefore it is capable of Him, or conversely: because it is capable, it is born to be conformed to Him; and therefore it bears in itself from its origin the light of the divine countenance; and therefore with respect to the likeness, which is attended to with respect to the agreement of order, it is perfectly called the image of God, because in this it is assimilated to Him expressly. — Second, the same proves it concerning the agreement of proportion; for the agreement of proportion, he says, is attended to according to a like manner of being disposed; but to be similarly disposed can come about in a twofold way: either in comparison with extrinsics: or in comparison with intrinsics. Then is the likeness expressed, when there is not only a like mode of being disposed in comparison with extrinsics; but also in comparison with intrinsics; but the irrational creature is compared to God only extrinsically, namely by comparison of effect to cause from which it is produced: but the rational creature is compared also with respect to intrinsics, namely with respect to spirituality in entity, the power of understanding and of willing in faculty, etc.; and therefore it has a greater proportion with God, and so is His image.

But why God brought forth man to His own image and likeness, various moral reasons are adduced by various Authors; which Pererius gathers together and explains expressly lib. 1. in Genesim quaest. 8. Of these the First is, that it might be evident how great is the interval between the goodness and benignity of God and the malice and envy of man. For if a man excel in some respect, as riches, power, nobility, honors, and wisdom, no one would wish any other men to be equal to him in that respect, or even similar: but the goodness of God is so great, and so utterly devoid of envy, that in those things wherein He excels He made man himself capable and partaker of them, and in whatsoever ways man could be like unto God, in all these He made man like unto Himself: for He made him like unto Himself according to nature, advancing him to the highest grade of nature in which He Himself is, namely by giving him a partaker of reason. Then secondly as to supernatural and divine goods, by making him by His grace, wisdom, and felicity a partaker and consorter. Finally by joining the nature of man to the Word in the unity of the divine person: so that not only is man like unto God, but God is even named and is.

Second cause: that all bodily things might reverence man, as bearing in himself so illustrious and express an image of God, the Maker and Dominator of all: thus God said Genes. 9.: Your fear and dread shall be upon all the beasts of the earth, and upon all the fowls of the air, etc. Lest Heaven and the stars should disdain to serve man, or even the Angels to minister to him. Finally lest the demons should dare to injure man, and lest all creatures should rise up against him on account of man's rebellion against God, God willed to mark and adorn man with His own image. The figure of this thing was that which is read in the book of Genesis cap. 4., that God set a sign upon Cain, lest anyone finding him should see the sign of God in him and dare to kill him. And as the Egyptians honored, nay worshipped Joseph the Patriarch, and the Persians and Medes Mardocheus the Jew, because the one bore the insignia of the kings of Egypt, and the other of the Persians and Medes, so all creatures worship and reverence man marked and adorned with the effigy of God.

Third cause: God had given all things to man, yet He willed man Himself nonetheless to belong to the divine right and possession: wherefore that it might be acknowledged that man is something proper and peculiar to God, He sealed him with the seal of His own image so deeply and throughout his whole course, that without prejudice to the nature of man that signet could by no means be taken away. Even as that most noble Phidias is said to have made the Shield of Minerva, and to have enclosed his own effigy in it with such art, that it could not be taken out while the Shield remained whole. Man therefore bears the image of God as the son of his Father, to whom he owes love and piety: as the bondslave of his Lord, whom he ought to fear and revere: as the soldier of his Leader and emperor, to whom he ought to render faith and obedience: finally as the minister and dispenser of the goods of his heir and lord, to whom he ought to exhibit the right use of the creatures which are committed to his dispensation.

Fourth cause: even as, because no animal was found like unto Adam with which he could have society, friendship, and familiarity, God created Eve as his companion; so, all bodily things having been created, none of which was like unto God, and with which God could enter into society and familiarity, He made man like unto Himself, that he might be one whom God would love, and by whom He would in turn be loved with the love of friendship. And indeed concerning other things, when God discerned them made by Himself, He is said to have approved them; God saw, says Scripture, all the things that He had made, and they were very good: but of man God spoke far otherwise by Solomon Proverbs 8., saying: My delights were with the sons of men. Therefore God praised and approved the rest as good; but the unique man He willed to love as a friend, and as it were to hold familiarity with him, and to be his consorter in His own felicity. Therefore deservedly Job cap. 7., admiring so great a benevolence and benignity of God toward man, exclaimed: What is man, that thou dost magnify him, and again settest thy heart toward him? Thou visitest him early in the morning, etc. That visiting denotes the society, conversation, and familiarity of God with man: but that setting thy heart toward him signifies the love of friendship whereby God deigns to embrace man. Truly we can rightly answer Job's admiration, that God visits man, and sets His heart toward him, because God made man to His own image and likeness: for likeness conciliates love, and glues together friendship.

Fifth cause: all things created by God and contained within the compass of the world lead man contemplating them as is fitting, to the knowledge of God their maker. For the invisible things of God, as Paul testifies, from the creation of the world are seen, being understood by the things that are made, His eternal power also and divinity. But lest man should be compelled to seek and ask the knowledge of God outside himself and from afar, God placed within man, in his very mind, the most beautiful effigy and image of Himself, which alone would declare more expressively than all other things together the power and nature of God. Man therefore contemplating within himself this image of God, knows through it what manner of being God is; for because the mind of man is like unto God, such as the mind is imperfectly, such one ought to judge God to be perfectly, with imperfection removed. And therefore as our mind is, so is God intelligent, endued with free will, full of virtue, grace, and wisdom, preserving, ruling, and containing the world, even as the mind its own body.

Sixth cause: therefore was man made to the image of God, that man might in a manner be capable as it were of eternity, infinity, and Divinity: and never should there be so great a good that man would not dare to ask it of God, and hope that he should obtain it from Him; for we can confidently say to God: Lord, fill with Thy goods the boundless capacity of our mind and will, which Thou hast given us: for if Thou sufferest not anything to be empty in nature, but willest all places to be occupied and filled with bodies, how much less is it to be thought that Thou wouldest have anything empty in our mind? Do Thou therefore who alone canst fulfill our desire with good things, fill our will, which nothing besides Thee alone can fulfill and satisfy. Therefore even as a vessel endowed with round figure cannot be filled on every side except by a body similarly rounded, so neither can the mind of man fashioned to the image of God be filled and satisfied except by God alone, to whom it is like.

Seventh cause: even as a King, when a city has been founded by him, places his image in a celebrated spot in the midst thereof, wrought out of some choice and precious material, that it may be manifest to all beholding it who was the founder of that city: so God, when the world had been fabricated by Him, placed His effigy in the midst of this, that is, man, who is a certain medium between the things created by God, that from the aspect and contemplation of him it may lie open and manifest to all what manner of maker and craftsman the fabricator of this world was. And as Apelles, overtaken by death, could not finish the statue of Venus which he had begun, nor afterward was any painter found who could succeed to the work according to the prescribed lineaments; for the beauty of the face took away the hope of imitating the rest of the body, as Cicero relates in the exordium of book 3. De Officiis, and Pliny book 35. c. 10.; in like manner God gave to man His own image by creation, but imperfect, which nevertheless no other thing besides God, not even man himself, nor even an Angel, could polish and finish. For this is proper to God, who polishes and adorns that image which He began by creation, through justification, and finishes and consummates it through glorification. Therefore as he would be held guilty of lèse-majesté, and worthy of the extreme penalty, who should cast down and injuriously treat the king's image placed in a public and celebrated spot: so he who by crimes defiles and stains the image of God placed and expressed in himself, and destroys and blots it out as far as lies in him, merits most grievous punishments as it were injurious and contumelious toward God. — Here St. Chrysostom lucidly weighs all things homil. 42. on caput. 22. Matth., where weighing those words: Render therefore to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, he says: The image of God is not depicted in gold, but figured in men. The coin of Caesar is gold: the coin of God is man. Wherefore let us always render our image unblemished to God. Not swollen with the pride of haughtiness, not enfeebled with the fury of anger, not inflamed with the blasts of avarice, not devoted to the allurements of gluttony, not contracted with the duplicity of hypocrisy, not contaminated with the filth of luxury, not fierce with the extension of elation, not maddened by the trumpet of envy, not bereft of mutual charity by discord, not pestiferous with the bitingness of detraction, not vain with the emptiness of much speaking: but preeminent in charity, most sure in faith and hope, most strong in the virtue of patience, tranquil in humility, purpled in chastity, sober in frugality, pleasing in tranquillity, adorned with hospitality. He adds: As he who renders to Caesar an adulterine image is commanded to be scourged by torturers and subjected to atrocious punishments: so God omnipotent will deliver the corruptors of His image to perpetual death, and commands infernal punishments to be paid. Whoever therefore desires to avoid horrendous destructions, let him study to preserve incorrupt the image of his maker: so that when God shall require His image which He formed, seeing it sated and immune from the infestations of the enemy, He may place him in His bosom, mingling him with the choirs of Angels, and make him enjoy the everlasting joys of heaven.

You will object 1. Wherever there is an image, there is likeness; and wherever there is likeness, there is some identity: but wherever there is identity, there is agreement in some third thing; therefore if God and creature do not agree in some third thing, the creature cannot be the likeness of God, and so neither the image. — The Seraphic Doctor answers, that the likeness which is in an image is not attended to through identity, or participation of the same nature, but through agreement in order and proportion: which likeness does not require communication in a third, because in the agreement of order one is the likeness of the other; but in the agreement of proportion there is not likeness in one, but in two comparisons.

You will object 2. Whatever is an image is a figuration: for an image is attended to in figure: but the divine essence is by no means figurable: therefore it is by no means representable by any image: therefore no creature is the image of God. — The same Seraphic Doctor answers, that figure is twofold: one proper and corporeal; another spiritual and metaphorical: whence as a corporeal image requires corporeal configuration, so a spiritual one is accomplished by spiritual configuration. This, he says, consists not in quantity of bulk, but in quantity of virtue, namely in the powers: so that as the triangular figure has three termini and three lines, so likewise in the spiritual image the powers correspond to the motion of termini, and the emanation of one from another, as to act, corresponds to the motion of the connecting line.

You will object 3. In this an image differs from a vestige, that a vestige represents according to part; but an image according to the whole: therefore since God is infinite, and every creature finite, no creature can be the image of God. — The same Seraphic Doctor answers, that the Major is true of the image which has perfection of every kind, and thus only the Son is the image of the Father: but not of that which represents the whole simply, but only according to the notion of whole: whence as the rational creature and intellect is in a manner all things, and all things are born to be written and impressed therein, and likenesses of all things to be depicted: therefore as the whole Universe represents God in a certain sensible totality, so the rational creature represents Him in a certain spiritual totality: but every other irrational creature represents Him only in part, because according to itself only, since it is not born to contain other things spiritually in itself, so that there is nothing which it is not born to know: this I say on account of the sensitive soul, which although it knows some things, is nevertheless not born to know all things.

Second Conclusion. — THE NOTION OF IMAGE CHIEFLY RESPECTS THE SUBSTANCE AND FACULTIES OF THE SOUL: BUT THE NOTION OF LIKENESS SEEMS PLACED IN THE GRATUITOUS GIFTS WHEREBY MAN EXPRESSES THE DIVINE SANCTITY. The holy Fathers establish and express this distinction of likeness and image. First of all St. Basil, who Homilia 10. in Genesim, says: Through the image impressed upon my soul I obtained the use of reason; but being made Christian I am certainly made like unto God. And St. Jerome on Ezechiel 28.: Thou art the seal of likeness, thus speaks: It must be noted that the image was then made in creation only; the likeness is completed in baptism. And St. Chrysostom Homilia 9. in Genesim: The image, he said, on account of the reason of principality; the likeness that so far as human powers allow we may become like unto God in mildness, lenity, etc., which Christ also said: Be ye like your Father who is in heaven. St. Bernard Serm. 1. De Annuntiatione adds: for the image may burn in hell, yet not be consumed; it may glow, but not be erased. Not so the likeness; but it either remains in good, or if the soul sin, it is miserably changed, made like to the senseless cattle. — The same think St. Ambrose lib. 6. in Hexameron cap. 7. and 8., St. Nyssenus in the Homily on the creation of man, and many others, who are all of this sentiment, that man was made to the image of God according to natural gifts, I say mind, will, memory, and free will, and that this is the natural image of God commonly expressed in all men, whereby we excel the beasts, and which by no sin can be erased and lost: for this does not hang upon us, but hangs wholly upon God. But the likeness of God to which man is said to be made, they think is regarded in gratuitous and supernatural gifts, such as justice, sanctity, innocence: and this image depends not only upon God, but exacts also our study, endeavor, and cultivation; herein good men differ from and excel the reprobate.

But St. Augustine in the book of Questions upon Deuteronomy quaest. 4., treating those words, Lest perhaps deceived ye make to yourselves a likeness or sculptured image, attacks this distinction of image and likeness, writing: What is the difference between likeness and image is wont to be asked: but here I do not see what difference he wished there to be, unless perchance one thing were signified by those two words.... Thence that which in Genesis cap. 1. is written, God made man to the image of God, is manifestly so said, that the image which was made is not of the same substance: for if it were of the same substance, it would be called begotten, not made. But that He adds, and likeness, when above it had been said, Let us make man to our image and likeness, means that the likeness of the same thing is somewhat more than the image; which was reserved for man afterwards, in being refashioned through the grace of Christ. Hence moreover, if He did not afterwards will to commemorate the image alone, because where there is image, straightway there is also likeness. Whence here Moses related both likeness and image as made, according perhaps to that reason which we mentioned. — The sentiment of St. Augustine is confirmed herein, First, because as man is said in this place to be made to the image and likeness of God, so likewise below cap. 5. it is read that Adam begat his son Seth to his image and likeness. Where, since those two words, image and likeness, are posited, nevertheless the distinction handed down by the aforementioned Authors finds no place between them. — Next, Paul more than once usurps the word of image for the likeness which consists chiefly in gratuitous and supernatural gifts, since in the former Epistle to the Corinthians, cap. 15.: As we have borne, he says, the image of the earthly, let us bear also the image of the heavenly. And to the Colossians 3.: Stripping yourselves of the old man with his deeds, and putting on the new, which is renewed unto the knowledge of God, according to the image of Him that created him. — Finally Scripture sometimes puts both names, image and likeness, in the same case, as here: Let us make man, to our image and likeness. Sometimes it puts both names, but in different cases, as in the second chapter of the book of Wisdom: God created man incorruptible: He made him the image of His own likeness. But sometimes the name of likeness is omitted, only the word of image being posited: so shortly after is read cap. 9 For man was made to the image of God. And in the book of Ecclesiasticus, cap. 17.: God created man of the earth, and made him according to His own image. Therefore it is manifest from what we have said, that these words, image and likeness, have the same force and signification; and that in this place they are posited to declare the same thing more significantly, more expressively, and more illustriously.

THE PRESENT question is difficult, and distracted by various opinions into several parts; which St. Epiphanius pursues at large haeresi 70., which is that of the Aulians, and in the Ancoratus, where he enumerates, weighs, and refutes almost all the sentiments concerning the matter: asserting that it is placed neither in the body, nor in the soul, nor in baptism or any other thing known to us. Wherefore this one thing is established by faith and tradition, that man was made to the image of God: yet no part is defined in which such a notion of image is to be situated. What nevertheless may be thought truer, and inferred from the doctrine of the holy Fathers and of the Subtle Doctor, that it may appear more evidently,

Note 1. First of all must be cast out that most detestable and utterly foolish sentiment of theirs of former days and of the Anthropomorphites, who, having been persuaded that God was corporeal and endued with human form and figure, in which namely He appeared to the Patriarchs and Prophets, as handed down in Sacred Scripture; affirmed also that man as to his body was formed to the image of God. Whom Melito thus impugned in Theodoret lib. 20. in Genesim: if God is therefore judged to have a body such as man has, because Scripture describes Him as furnished and endowed with human members, by like reasoning it would be concluded that man is not like unto God, nor made to His image and likeness. For indeed Zacharias cap. 1. describes God as having seven eyes, whereas we have but two; and Psalm 90. God is brought in as having pinions and wings, of which we are destitute; and many other things Scripture attributes to God metaphorically, which if they were taken properly and according to truth would make God enormous and monstrous, and most unlike to man. Therefore not, says Melito, in the body of man is the image of God to be sought, but in the mind, which, even as God, is itself possessed of and capable of reason, counsel, and wisdom.

Note 2. Neither ought that sentiment of Origen and of certain others be likewise admitted, who thought that "to our image" ought properly to be referred to the Son of God, whom Paul ad Coloss. 1. calls the image of the invisible God, and ad Hebraeos 1. the figure of the substance of the Father: for the name of image is assigned by Theologians properly to the Son alone among the divine Persons. These men therefore think that man was made like unto the Son of God, even as Paul ad Rom. 8. affirms that God predestinated the Elect to be made conformable to the image of His Son. But that particle "our" refutes this opinion. For if man had been made only to the likeness of the Son of God, God the Father speaking with His own Son would not have said: Let us make man to our image, but to thy image. Add, that man could not be made like unto the Son of God except according to natural or supernatural gifts: but according to either he is like unto the whole Trinity: for both are effected and given to man by the whole Trinity equally and indifferently. Whence St. Aug. in the imperfect book De Genesi ad litter. cap. 16. says: Not to the image of the Father alone, or of the Son alone, or of the Holy Spirit alone, but to the image of the very Trinity was man made: which Trinity is so a Trinity, that it is one God: it is so one God, that it is Trine. For speaking to the Son He does not say: Let us make man to thy image, or to my image, but He speaks plurally: to our image and likeness, from which plurality who would dare to separate the Holy Spirit? Which plurality, since there are not three gods, but one God, therefore it is to be understood that Scripture afterwards introduced the singular and said: And God made man to the image of God, lest it be taken as though God the Father were said to be to the image of God, that is, of His own Son: Otherwise how is true what was said, to our image, if man was made to the image of the Son alone?

Note 3. Neither ought that opinion of Eugubinus in Cosmopeia be likewise admitted, who thinks that God, that He might create man and could hold speech and colloquy with him after human manner and mode, put on human form, and therefore said: Let us make man to our image and likeness. The Son and Word of God, he says, came to the creation of man in human form, image, and habit, bearing the most beautiful and most divine form, and a beauty surpassing all things human and most pleasing. But this sentiment seems absurd: Both because St. Dionysius the Areopagite affirms all the divine apparitions which we read in Sacred Scripture to have been made by the benefit and ministry of Angels: And because either that human nature which God assumed at the beginning of the world was a true nature, and truly assumed into unity of person, in which case they would be compelled to confess that the incarnation of God took place twice, once at the end of the ages, and earlier at the beginning; and then indeed the whole Trinity would have been incarnate: for otherwise it would not truly be said, Let us make man to our image, since that "our" pertains not to one divine Person alone, but equally to all: or that nature was not a true human nature which God assumed from the beginning, but was only a certain shadow, specter, and likeness of human nature, even as we read the Angels often assumed human bodies. But if this be said, that will not be true, to our image: for that likeness of human nature was not the image of God, since nothing of it pertained to God Himself; nor would it be truly said that Adam, who was a true and perfect man, was made to the image of God; if through image, as we said, we understand not the true nature of man, but only a certain shadow and likeness of him.

First Conclusion. — THE DIVERSE SENTIMENT OF THE HOLY FATHERS CONCERNING THE NOTION AND SEAT OF THE DIVINE IMAGE IN MAN IS CHIEFLY FIVEFOLD.

For first some assimilate man to God chiefly in intelligence and knowledge. Thus Diadochus cap. 77. De perfectione spirituali, where he says: We are to the image of God according to the reason of the soul pertaining to the mind. To which is akin what Clement of Alexandria writes in 6. Stromaton: that man was made to the image of God, not on account of the figure of his structure; but because as God works all things by reason, so man, who is endowed with perfect knowledge, executes good and honest actions from rational faculty. But Clement seems to speak chiefly not of natural knowledge; but of that which befits a Christian, and him holy and perfect.

Second, some seem to place the property of this divine image in free will, as Tertullian lib. 2. contra Marcionem, cap. 5.: Free, he says, and of its own arbitrement, and of its own power, discerning no greater image and likeness of God in man than the form of such a state, God instituted man by ingenium of free and self-possessed arbitrement. For neither by face and bodily lineaments, so various in the human kind, is he expressed to uniform God: but in that substance which he drew from God Himself, that is, the mind, responding to the form of God, he is marked with the liberty and power of his own arbitrement. Then cap. following: There ought therefore to be instituted an image and likeness of God of free arbitrement and of its own power, in which this very thing should be deputed the image and likeness of God, namely the liberty and power of arbitrement: for which thing that substance is accommodated to man, which belongs to such a state, toward the state of God, certainly free, and of its own power. — St. Jerome agrees with these in Epistola 116.: God alone, he says, is He into whom sin falls not; for the rest, since they are of free arbitrement, by right, seeing man also was made to the image and likeness of God, can bend their will toward either part. St. Bernard subscribes in the treatise De libero arbitrio: for when he had distinguished in man a threefold liberty, one of arbitrement, another of counsel, a third of complacency; he concludes that in these three the image of God consists, writing thus: I think that in these three liberties is contained that very image and likeness of the Creator unto which we were created, and indeed the image in the liberty of arbitrement, but in the other two a certain bipartite beatitude follows. Hence perhaps it is that free will alone suffers no defect or diminution of itself whatever, in which chiefly a certain image of the eternal and unchangeable substance of the Divinity seems impressed: for although it has had a beginning, yet it knows no setting, nor takes increase from justice or glory, nor detriment from sin, or mercy: what more like to eternity, which is not eternity? Moreover in the other two liberties, since they can be diminished not only in part, but lost entirely, a rather accidental likeness of divine wisdom and power is recognized superducted upon their image.

Third, there are those who place the divine image and likeness in Virtue. Thus Gelasius in Actis Nicenae Synodi parte 2. cap. 16.: Good, he says, God by His nature indidit into the intelligent substance of man that, to His own image and likeness, namely goodness, simplicity, sanctity, purity, etc. Severianus subscribes Oratione 5. De mundi opificio: What is it, he says, according to the image? God is holy; if we are holy, we are to the image of God. For Be ye holy, he says, because I am holy. God is just, if we pursue justice, we are the image of God, etc. Ambrose also elegantly in the book De Bono Mortis, capite 5.: Let us flee therefore these evils, and transform our soul to that image of God and likeness. The flight of evils is the likeness of God, and by virtues the image of God is acquired: therefore He who painted us painted us as it were as author with the colors of virtues.

Fourth, some prefer the image of God placed in eternity, or immortality. Thus Faustus of Riez libr. 1. De libero arbitrio, cap. 1.: But what else, he says, is to be understood even in that very image of God in which man was created, except the badge of perpetuity? Which perpetuity you acknowledge repaired not only in the soul not taken away, but even in the body by the virtue of resurrection. And Maximus Martyr, Centuria 3. De Char., cap. 25., distinguishing image from likeness, says: On this account also man is said to be fabricated to the image of God, and to the likeness: to the image indeed, as being of Him that exists, existing, and of Him that ever exists ever existing, so that although such be not without beginning, yet it be without end; but to the likeness, as good of the good, and wise of the wise: of Him to whom by nature that is, for him to whom it is by grace. Furthermore to the image are absolutely all men; but to the likeness only the good and wise.

Fifth, the rest place this notion of image in the empire and dominion which God constituted over living creatures and the whole orb of lands for humankind, which words of Scripture seem to declare. Let us make man to our image and likeness, and let him have dominion over the fishes of the sea, and the fowls of the air, and the beasts, and the whole earth, and every creeping creature that moveth upon the earth. Of this sentiment was John Chrysostom hom. 10. in Genesim weighing those words, And let him have dominion over the fishes, etc. Therefore, he says, man was made to the image of dominion, not as anything else: for God created man prince over all things that are on the earth: neither is anything on earth greater than he, since all things are under his power. Gregory of Nyssa subscribes to him lib. De hominis opificio: As rightly the craftsman, he says, shapes his instrument to the form which is apt for use: so the most excellent fabricating artifex designed our nature as a certain thing apt for the administration of the Kingdom: and both with the gifts of the soul and with the very figure of the body so shaped man, that he might be most apt for kingship. Marius Victor agrees in lib. 1. writing:

Now let us make man, he says, who shall reign in the world, And be the image of God: like ought he to be to his creator Free in arbitrement, who enjoys the created by mind.

Finally not a few will that this image was constituted in this, that man contains the supreme grade of being, namely of a spiritual substance powerful in reason and wisdom, no otherwise than does God: for this grade of intelligent nature, says Pererius lib. 1. in Gen. quaest. 1., has six excellent and admirable properties naturally and necessarily conjoined with itself, all of which may be discerned in our mind. One is that our mind is incorporeal and individual: Another, that it is immortal: Third, that it is endowed with intellect, will, and memory: Fourth, that it possesses free will: Fifth, that it is capable of wisdom, virtue, divine grace, and eternal felicity, which is placed in the clear vision of God: Sixth, that it excels all living creatures not only in dignity but also rules them by power. Therefore on account of this grade of intelligent nature and the aforesaid six properties, which follow upon the grade naturally and accompany it perpetually, it is most truly said, That man was made to the image and likeness of God. You will read more similar things besides these in Pererius libr. 2. De Opificio hominis. But since this notion of image, of whatsoever sort it be, rather shadows forth the unity of Deity than the Trinity of the divine majesty: therefore, that the exact notion of this divine image may be had, let

Second Conclusion. — THE NOTION OF THE DIVINE IMAGE OF MAN CONSISTS IN THIS, THAT OUR SOUL, ILLUMINED WITH THREE FACULTIES, NAMELY INTELLECT, WILL, AND MEMORY, SHADOWS FORTH THE DIVINE TRINITY OF PERSONS CONSISTING IN UNITY OF ESSENCE. Thus St. Augustine in many places, especially indeed lib. 9. De Trinitate, cap. 1. and the following, where he takes those three things which in the soul answer to so many divine Persons, such that they are mind, love, and its knowledge: or, as he says in the same place capite 11., memory, intelligence, will. St. Ambrose elegantly declares this truth in lib. 1. De dignitate conditionis humanae, cap. 11., where having premised: As God is one, always everywhere whole, vivifying, moving, and governing all things: so the soul in its body flourishes whole everywhere, vivifying, moving it, and governing it. Next, that as God is, lives, and is wise, so the soul according to its own mode is, lives, and is wise.

Then he subjoins that which more nearly touches the Trinity: Although that [soul] is of one nature, nevertheless it has three dignities in itself, namely, intellect, will, and memory. Which same thing, though designated in the Gospel in other words, when it is said: Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with thy whole heart, and with thy whole soul, and with thy whole mind: that is, with the whole intellect, and with the whole will, and with the whole memory. Is it not as the Son is generated from the Father, and the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son: so will is generated from intellect, and again from both of these proceeds memory, etc. And as God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit is; nevertheless there are not three gods, but one God, having three persons: so also the soul-intellect, the soul-will, the soul-memory, yet not three souls in one body, but one soul having three dignities, and in these three our interior man bears wondrously His image in its nature. — St. Gregory of Nyssa weighs this notion otherwise in the question concerning the image of God, affirming that our soul shadows forth the divine Trinity through the faculties of concupiscence, ratiocination, and irascibility: that through the faculty of concupiscence indeed it be joined with God in charity: but through the faculty of ratiocination it receive from Him science and wisdom: finally through the force of irascibility it be able to withstand the spirits of wickedness; and in these three it shadows forth and expresses also that, to the image of God.

For in three ways God in the Trinity administers and governs three parts, namely the heavenly and earthly and subterranean, with a certain virtue of Creator, by His providence, and with the authority of Judge: since all things which God executes He accomplishes by one of these three modes; either as Founder, or as Providing, or as Chastising. But this explication is rather metaphorical and mystical than literal and accommodated to the genuine sense of Sacred Scripture. It must be said therefore that our soul bears the image of the divine Trinity in this, that since it is a spiritual, incorruptible, and immortal substance, it expresses the divine essence equally spiritual and immortal. But by its three faculties, namely intellect, will, and memory, it reflects the Trinity of Persons. Not indeed quatenus those faculties of the soul pre-exist; because, says the Doctor in 2. distinct. 16. quaest. unica num. 20., those faculties are distinguished from the soul, quoad they are its faculties, not really but only formally; and therefore as such cannot express three divine Persons really distinct from one another; but those divine persons they express and shadow forth only quatenus namely those faculties themselves are under the acts of understanding, willing, and remembering. So that the very same soul, as it is the productive principle of intellection, represents the Father; and as it understands, and has in itself the word produced, represents the Son; and finally as it has love produced, represents the Holy Spirit: because as the Holy Spirit presupposes the Father and the Son, without whom He cannot be, and from whom He is really distinguished: so love cannot be without cognition, and the productive principle of cognition, which is the fecund memory, namely the intellect with the object present to itself.

You will object 1. The image representing the three Persons of the Trinity ought to be perpetual in the soul: but the faculties of the soul are not perpetually under their acts really distinct: therefore they do not represent three divine Persons, quatenus they are under those acts: therefore they represent them only quatenus they are faculties. — I distinguish the major, says the Doctor in the same place num. 21.: The image ought to be perpetual, quatenus considered formally, I deny: quatenus considered fundamentally and radically, I concede: For the image of the Trinity, he says, is not complete in the soul considered absolutely with its powers, except in root: but as it is under its acts, by community of its essence, it represents the Trinity: and thus the image consists in three really distinct things, but not in powers, which are not really distinguished.

You will object 2. If the image of the Trinity did not consist in powers really distinct, chiefly because the powers would not be really distinct: but so they are: therefore, etc. The minor is proved: if they were not so distinct, but really identified, it could be said that intellect is will: but this is inconvenient; because otherwise it could be said that we understand through will, and will through intellect, which is absurd. — He answers there the Doctor by denying the minor together with the major of proof: for although of really identified things it could be said that one is really the other; nevertheless it cannot be said that one is the other absolutely, especially if the one and the other be posited abstractly; whence although animality be identified with man, and be of his essence, nevertheless it cannot be said, man is animality: therefore since intellect is something abstract not concerning will formally, and will is something abstract not concerning intellect, it cannot be said, intellect is will.

You ask: Is there any difference between being the image and being to the image of God?

I answer, this to be the sentiment of certain holy Fathers, that only the divine Son is to be called the perfect and substantial image of God: But man is to the image, such that that "to" signifies a certain access of man to God, from whom nevertheless he stands at an infinite interval. Thus St. Ambrose in caput 22. Lucae writes: Christ alone is the full image of God, on account of the express unity in Himself of paternal splendor: But the just man is to the image of God, if on account of imitating the likeness of divine conversation he despise this world through the knowledge of God. Clement of Alexandria subscribes: The image of God, he says, is His Word, and the germane Son of the mind, the divine Word, the light of the archetypal light: but the image of the Word is man, and indeed the mind which is in man; who therefore is said to be made to the image and likeness of God, as one who by potency of heart has been assimilated to the divine Word, and thenceforward rational. — This same sentiment St. Augustine had taught in lib. 83. quaestionum quaest. 51. But he corrected it afterward in lib. 1. Retractationum c. 26. For he had read in St. Paul, of the former Epistle ad Corinth. cap. 11., that man is called the image of God; which he lucidly expounds lib. 1. De Trinitate cap. 6.: There are, he says, those who so distinguish, that they wish the Son to be the image; but man not the image; both of which the Apostle refutes in us, saying, a man indeed ought not to veil his head, since he is the image and glory of God; he does not say to the image, but image; which image nevertheless, although elsewhere it be said to the image, is not said quasi to the Son, because the image is equal to the Father; Otherwise he would not say to the image, ours, how so ours, when the Son alone is the image of the Father? But on account of the unequal, as we said, likeness, man is said to be to the image: and therefore ours, that man might be the image of the Trinity: not equal to the Trinity, as the Son is to the Father: but approaching, as was said, with a certain likeness, even as in things distant a certain nearness is signified, not of place, but of a certain imitation.