Annotatio XXVII

”He breathed into his face the breath of life.” — Genesis 2:7

Chrysostom, expounding this in homily 12, says that that breath is the substance of the rational soul,¹ through which man was made not only a living animal but also partaker of reason. Which assertion Philastrius, Bishop of Brescia, numbers among the heresies in chapter 99 of his Catalogue — no author of the assertion being named, however; and he says that that breath is not the soul itself, but the inspiration of the divine spirit — that is, the grace of the Holy Spirit infused into the soul of Adam, already created and already united to the body, such as [Christ] also gave to the apostles after the resurrection, or such as God bestows on all the just. With Philastrius agrees Cyril, Bishop of Alexandria, who, elucidating this very passage, says: “When it is said in Genesis that God breathed into the face of man the breath of life, that man might become a living soul, we do not call that breath the soul itself; for thus the soul would be unchangeable and would not sin, because it would be of the divine essence: but Moses called it the effusion of the Holy Spirit, placed at the very beginning [as an addition] to the human soul.” St. Augustine, however, in the preface of the book On Heresies to Quodvultdeus, writes that Philastrius numbered among heresies many assertions which are not heresies.² Of which number I would believe this to be one — in which he himself imprudently slipped, while [he condemned] the true and pious [teaching] of Chrysostom and of all the Catholic interpreters [Augustine] condemns the opinion. Likewise also, in the 15th [book] The City of God, chapter 24, he derides those who believe that the breath which God breathed into Adam’s face is a certain grace conferred on Adam’s soul, and not rather the soul itself. But as for what pertains to Cyril, St. Thomas, in the book which he wrote against the errors of the Greeks, chapter 27, says thus: “Cyril’s exposition is against the exposition of Augustine, who posits the human soul by that breath. And [Cyril] shows that it does not follow on this account that [the soul] is of the divine substance; for it is a figurative expression, that [God] is said to have breathed not corporeally, but because he made a spirit — that is, a soul — out of nothing. And what is more, [Cyril’s exposition] seems to be repugnant to the sayings of the Apostle, who in 1 Corinthians 15 says: ‘The first man Adam was made into a living soul, the last Adam into a quickening spirit’;³ but not first what is spiritual, rather what is animal — where he expressly says that that life of the soul is other than the life which is through the Holy Spirit. Whence that inspiration, by which it is said ‘Man was made into a living soul,’ cannot be understood of the grace of the Holy Spirit. Whence it must be said that Cyril’s exposition cannot be literal, but only allegorical.”