Annotatio XXIX
”He breathed into him the breath of life.” — Genesis 2:7
Francis George [Francesco Giorgio Veneto], in volume 1, Problem 27, in explaining this passage, brings a hard and unwonted discourse about the creation and animation of man,1 asserting first that man was first created in the universal and specifically — that is, as specific or common: like a certain mass of masculine and feminine power, whence every male and female would receive life; but then, when he was wrapped about with a corporeal garment, then he was made a particular man; and that into this particular man the breath of life was breathed by God. In the second place, he affirms that that breath, which God breathed into man, is a certain light which shows God to man, and always exhorts him to good and dissuades him from evil, and provides him strength for working well: of which light, when the damned are deprived, they can neither know God nor work good. By which words indeed he intimates that that breath is not the substance of the rational soul, but rather a certain light superadded to the soul. Which error Alphonsus of Castro, in book 2 against heresies, under [the entry] “Philastrius, Bishop of Brescia,” condemns.
Footnotes
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Left margin: Whether man was created first in the species than in the individual, as Francesco Giorgio held. (An homo creatus sit prius in specie quam in individuo, ut sensit Franciscus Georgius.) ↩