Annotatio XXVI
”God formed man of the mud of the earth.” — Genesis 2:7
Francis George [Francesco Giorgio Veneto], in the first volume of the Problems, twists the exposition of this passage to the opinion of those who think that the soul alone is man, the body being the garment of the soul, and the soul itself created in heaven long before the body.1 For he writes thus, in Problem 26: “God formed man, dust, from the earth — that is, he clothed him with an earthy garment, namely the earthly body. For first God decreed to make man; then he created him in heaven; thirdly he formed his body, as a garment.” And he confirms this same thing in Problem 27, where he says that man was wrapped about by God with a corporeal garment; and in Problem 159 of the same volume, when he says that man was clothed with dust in the field of Damascus. These things seem partly to allude to Origen’s dogma of souls created before their bodies, partly to the tenet of those who deny that the soul is the form of the body.2 But both were condemned in the Council of Vienne by Clement V, as the title On the Supreme Trinity, at the beginning of the Clementines, is witness.