The Process of Creation

THE PROCESS OF CREATION
Sec. HI.

If we compare the narrative of the creation of man in Gen. i. with the narrative in Gen. ii. 4 et seq., the latter seems to place man on a lower level than does the former. For the account of chap. i. raises man above all other orders of being whose creation precedes his, by distinguishing him before them all, as made after the image of God. The account of chap. ii. 4, however, has no other designation for what man became, as the result of the more closely detailed creative process, than that which in chap. ii. 19, i. 20, 24, is equally appropriated to the fishes, birds, and quadrupeds, rWI t?M. The Targums have sought to remedy this, by translating or paraphrasing n*n C^;W by nvi— "speaking, i.e. reasonable spirit"—Xoymbv wevfia; but this paraphrase is an arbitrary substitution. Moreover, we do not need such a remedy. Between the two accounts there subsists, on closer consideration, no contradiction, but a hidden similarity. For the remark that we made on the appellation Sec. II., is equally true of the appellation njn B'S3. It is not characteristic of man, that he is in the form of God; but that, being in the form of God, he should also be D"iK, or, what is in a certain

¹ Thus v. Rudloff, Lehre vom Menschen, p. 95.

* So also Keil, Gcnezut, p. 28.

measure the same, njn t?'W. If, accordingly, the two names designate man from the side of that which is common to him with the lower living beings, the two accounts will be in perfect accordance, if the more closely detailed mode of man's creation in chap. ii. corresponds to the formation in the likeness of God, which according to chap. i. makes the earthlyman the closing link of all creation. And it is so: the process of man's creation is essentially distinct from that of the brute creation. "JehovahElohira," relates chap. ii. 7, "formed man dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils breath of life; and thus man became a living soul." If the conclusion were to be drawn from the fact, that that which was thus produced is called njn C5M no otherwise than is the case in the creation of brutes—that therefore in the manner of human creation, thus and thus expressed, nothing peculiar is to be affirmed—it would be a conclusion just as false as to argue, from the fact that man is called D"1K, that even his likeness to God established in him no essential distinction from the brutes: for the creation of man after God's image (chap, i.), and the manner of creation recorded (chap, ii.), stand, as we shall now show, in the closest parallelism—in a relation of reciprocal modification.

We must not represent to ourselves the process of creation in so anthropomorphic a manner as it is usually pictured.¹ Scripture gives us no justification in assuming that God formed a clod of earth with His hands into a human form, and standing near it, breathed into it, from without, the breath of life. Mythology may thus present to itself its Prometheus forming man in the likeness of gods, from water and earth (Ovid, Metam. i. 78-83: finxit in effigiem moderantum cuncta Deorum): with Jehovah-Elohim it is a different matter; and texts such as Job x. 8 and 2 Cor. v. 1 would only be foolishly quoted for the contrary: for, in the former passage, that external mechanical view is of itself excluded, since Job is speaking of his own coming into being in his mother's womb; and in the latter passage, the glorified body, as a " house not made with hands,"

¹ "Neque enim," we say with Augustine, de civ. xii. 23, "hsec carnali consuetudine cogitanda sunt, ut videre solemus opifices ex materia quacunque terrena corporalibus membris quod artis industria potuerint fabricantes. Manus Dei potentia Dei est, qui etiam visibilia invisibiliter operator."

is contrasted not with the body of Adam, but with other habitations erected by the hands of man.¹ Man thus came into existence, as did also the other creatures, as a work of divine omnipotence, operating invisibly, and only appreciable in its results. And, moreover, man has it in common with the other creatures, that his endowment with spirit originates with the divine breath: for the creator of all beings is God; and the reason of the origination of everything that actually exists is His word, and the primal source of all life is His Spirit. But herein is distinguished the creation of man, that all other creatures of whom mention is made (chap, i.) were called into being by the divine command of power; whereas, in the creation of man, no such mighty command goes forth, but a solemn word of self-determination precedes. This distinction is important. The divine words of might go forth into the chaos, brooded over by the Spirit, but still for the time involved in an unreconciled struggle of powers.² In the Spirit the creative principle of actual life is present, and in the chaos the general substratum of material capable of being formed; and the divine words of power are the forces which bring this material, and the life that proceeds from the creative Spirit, into tranquillity, and distributes them to such and such appropriated natures. Thus, in the creation of the land animals that came into existence in the first half of the sixth day, the divine word goes forth to the earth. Spirit and material are already present; and the manifold creatures which arise, are the several combinations of those two existing conditions of animal constitution, perfected by the significant divine summons. How totally different is the origination of man! The mode of his appearance on the stage of existence corresponds to the personality of his nature, as that of the brutes to the impersonality of theirs. For while, in respect of his corporeity, man comes into being, like the brutes, by means of a distribution of existing materials, still it is not on a command of God's power, but by an

¹ See v. Hofmann, Schri/ibeweis, iii. 468, who thence draws the conclusion, that in general the human body is not to be understood of either the one or the other habitation.

^J Conip. Keerl, Schopfimgsgeschichte, p. 324, where it is justly observed, the Spirit of God has to liberate and to appease the disturbed and agitated germs and powers of life from their state of conflict and tension.

act of immediate formation by God; and in respect of his internal nature, his origination is absolutely and wholly not by means of the distribution of the entire natural life already existing, but by a direct act of God's breathing. He comes forth in a twofold relation, since the divine fiat took the form of an utterance of God in the presence of Himself and His Spirit, in words of self-determination,¹ by means of a directly personal self-assurance of God, by which, on both sides of his natural condition, man is constituted² a priori in a moral relation of personal kinship with God, and fellowship with God. For, assuredly, heaven and earth, and all creatures, were made by the intervention of the divine Logos (Heb. i. 2; John i. 3), which is the agent of the realization of the world-idea; and they did not come into being without the divine word (prjfia, Ps. xxxiii. 6; Heb. xi. 3; 2 Pet. iii. 5), which is the seed of all things; but, nevertheless, every created thing was not created, without exception, in one and the same manner. All created natures are God's thoughts become actual; constituted out of their ideal being into a real existence, and therein maintained by the divine word of might, prjfia, which is the application of the divine will as referred to the world, and the medium of the creating and maintaining operation of God through His Logos.³ But none the less, on that account, there was a difference between the manner in which the chaotic original matter came into being, and that in which the world of bodies formed from it came forth; and man was created otherwise than the living beings inferior to him, and the super-terrene spiritual beings, otherwise than the spirit-embodied man. And, generally, the idea of creation has no other essential characteristics than those of conditionality and temporal origination, as distinguished from the absolute and the eternal.

It is impossible to attain to the profundity of Gen. ii. 7; for this one verse is of such deep significance that interpretation can never exhaust it: it is the foundation of all true anthropology and psychology. If we first of all consider the origin of

¹ Rightly, says my Elberfeld critic, the creation of liviDg beings is not at all to be conceived of without a fiat.

² See the pertinent remarks in v. Zezschwitz, Profangracitiit und bibl. Sprachgeist, p. 34.

³ See my commentary on Heb. i., sec. iii. p. 12.

the human body, the result is of the utmost importance. 1. The body of man came into existence prior to the soul. The view that the body is the soul's own formation, is thus contrary to Scripture: it is suggested in the unscriptnral endeavours to exalt the original dualism of the condition of man's nature into an original unity.¹ And although v. Rudloff² maintains that "the first man had a soul already before the divine inbreathing of the spirit," we maintain, in contradiction to this assertion, that Scripture says the contrary; and we decline to enter any further upon the consequences flowing from premises that are opposed to Scripture. Still v. Rudloff himself confesses that he can only adduce in defence of his view one proof text, and that an apocryphal one, scil. Wisd. xv. 11; but this one proof text attests the direct contrary of what he has gathered from it. For it designates God as Him who inspired into man (not, as v. Rudloff interprets, poured into him) an operative soul, and breathed into him a spirit of life (rbv efiirvevaama avrw yfrv^tjv ivepyovaav Kai ifitf>va^aavra irvevfia fariKov). How can this passage sustain the representation that the soul of man had been created before the inbreathing of the spirit? The denial of that unscriptural view cannot be more definitely formulated than in these very words of the book of Wisdom. But, moreover, as a reproof of J. P. Lange,⁸ when he says that it is a trifling bondage to the letter, to regard the narrative of Gen. ii. 7 as implying successive acts, we reply with a downright "It is written!" For when he maintains that the soul was created at the same moment with the body, and even goes beyond v. Rudloff, in the fact that he regards the formation of the body, origination of the soul, and inspiration of the spirit, as actually contemporary impulses of one act of creation,—it may be philosophical, but it

¹ God did not permit the soul to be present at the formation of the body, says Antiochos of Ptolemais (Maji Collect. Vatic, i. 3, p. 81), that it might not glory at having been a fellow-worker with God.

² Die Lehre vom Menschen, p. 14, against which Schobcrlein (Stud. u. Krit. 1860, p. 153): "In Gen. ii. 7, the relation of causal conditionality of the soul upon the spirit is clearly declared."

³ Deutsch Zeitschrift, 1859, p. 31. Moreover, Schbberlein, I.e., declares himself against the "subsequent to one another in time;" and the like is true of Kurtz (Bibel und Astronomic, iv. sec. xi.), according to whom the two constituent elements of man are indeed toto caelo diverse, but brought together uno momento.

is not biblical. Not as though it only contradicted the fundamental passage (Gen. ii. 7): it contradicts the entire Scripture, it contradicts its representation of man's natural condition—of his life, his destiny, and his history; for everywhere the Scripture assumes that man is a nature which came into being first of all, according to his earthly corporeity, composite, and on that account a limited and mortal nature.¹ As the six days' work is an ascending, gradual progression, so also is the being of man: it begins with the earthly basis of his existence, in order that man may not forget that he is H??"!? (Ps. x. 18), a mortal man who has the earth as his ancestor. But, moreover, for the reason that man, in order to become lord of the earth-world, must become, even in his coming into existence, closely associated with it,'he is constituted with it, and it with him, in absolute connection: the being of man plants its foot on the earth, and the being of the earth culminates in man, for both are destined to a fellowship in one history. 2. The body of man, in order to unite all elements into itself, is formed from the earth, the most composite of the elementary forms, and indeed, in accordance with the delicacy of its organization, out of 1Sy, therefore of the finest portions of the earthly material, and, what is not less worthy of note, out of moist red earth: moist, for a cloud had just ascended, and had watered it; red, for the earth is called as irvppd, according to the

unexceptionable testimony of the ancients (Joseph. Theodoret, qucest. 60, etc.). The earth was watered, because man was to be a microcosm, an image and copy of the Kosmos, baptized and drawn from the waters; as also actually the elementary conditions of the human body are united with such a mass of water, that the quantity of water in the human body amounts to more than three-quarters of its entire weight. The earth was red, for red on white, nv, is the normal colour of man, the fundamental colour of beauty (Cant. v. 10; Lam. iv. 7). And it was earth of Eden, the land of delight, and thus of the same source and ground from which sprang the trees of paradise, and whence the beasts of paradise were formed. Eden was the

¹ Thus the interpretation of the mythos of Cupid and Psyche in Fulgentius' Mythologicun, lib. iii., is: Psyche of the three sisters, Caro, Libcrtas {Mens), and Anima the youngest; and, because it combines in itself caro and libertas, the fairest also.

central land whence the whole earth was to become Eden-like; and as the delight of Eden was concentrated in Paradise, so once more the body of the first-created man was the highest concentration of all the possibilities of glorification contained in Eden. "VVe say possibilities, for the beginning of the creature was the alliance of wrath with love—the possibility of glorification; and its end was to be a complete abolition of wrath in love—the reality of glorification. 3. The body of man was formed by God, not merely externally and mechanically, like a massive statue formed man-like in its outline, but in its inward parts inarticulated. There is, moreover, no trace of consciousness or presentiment in us, that the spirit in us had co-operated at any time or in any way in the organization of our body; but it knows and feels itself to have been associated, without its own participation, with the organized body. Consequently, in the formation of the human body, the same forces must already have been at work which complete the entire life of nature in their mutual action, but in such a way that these forces first of all had their unity only in the operator who made use of them. The general prior conditions of life were present, but were not yet combined into a living unity. The human body was material penetrated with power, articulated, organically combined, but still not an organic individuality, not an organism living of itself.¹

This it first became when Jehovah-Elohim breathed into it the breath of life. This breathing, says Hamaun,² is the end

¹ It cannot be otherwise, for the thesis that pervades the whole of the later physics, and is developed in the clearest and most elementary manner by Dubois-Reymond, in the introduction to his remarks on animal electricity,—that matter is force, and force is matter, i.e. that there is no matter without force, and no force without matter,—maintains also, in the coherence of the biblical representation of the world, its irrefragable truth, without leading to the consequences deduced therefrom by Vogt, Moleschott, Biichner, and others. Physics and chemistry have to do with forces, whose operation they know and are able to turn aside, and teach how to turn to account; but will both ever be able to produce or to reproduce any living thing? The power of life, that inconvenient and yet indispensable conception of exact investigation, is something exalted above the physical forces of attraction and repulsion: how much rather, then, is the conscious soul, and still more the self-conscious spirit! Force, life, soul, spirit, form an ascending climax.

* Works, i. 65.

of the whole creation, which, in respect of the creation of man, seems to be an opus tumultuarium. It is called riDEb, a designation which later in Scripture only occurs especially, perhaps exclusively, of the breath of life; and the significant word for the creative act of inbreathing is nS>], LXX. eve^vo-rjaev.¹ It is not said that God, externally to Himself, created a breath, and conveyed it into man, as the ancients believe they are obliged to assume, in order to establish the created character of the human spirit. No: God breathes, He breathes forth into the bodily form; and he who breathes, breathes forth from himself.² Was it, then, an externally present mevfia, such as the risen Lord breathed upon the disciples, evefyvirrjoev, and said, XajSe're irvevfia ayiov? (John xx. 22.) He breathed out of the fulness of His nature, and so also Jehovah-Elohim breathed out of the fulness of His nature. But there is a difference between the two actions: for the Redeemer gives to the disciples a communication of the absolute Spirit of His divine-human person delivered from the restraints of the flesh; but God the Creator endows the human body with the relative spirit which henceforth is to belong to man's own nature. Nevertheless both acts are similar to one another in this respect, that theyproceed from within outwards. God the Creator creates out of Himself that which man was to have in spirit in common with Himself; de vitali fonte spiritus sui qui est perennis, as Lactantius says; combines it into an individual life, and thus creates the human spirit. This is as far from being God as a breath of man is from being man. ^u Nec tu enim," says Tertullian (adv. Marc. ii. 8), " si in tibiam flaveris hominem tibiam

¹ This verbal observation is old. Reuchlin, in his Rudimenta, p. 839 (the first edition, 1506), remarks: "Hoc vocabulum secundum rabi Abraham Aben-Ezra de Boio homine dictum invenitur." There were some, as AbenEzra remarks, who derived nntW from D'Df', and interpreted it "the heavenlies." Only Gen. vii. 22 is doubtful. But probably even here tho words, "all in whose nostrils were the breath of life," are a periphrasis for the preceding "all men." When v. Hofmann (i. 286) pronounces this "impossible," this at least is an assertion which goes too far: for, 1st, the expression refers to chap. ii. 7; 2d, this would be the only place where nDS'J is attri

T T:

buted to the brute. At any rate, DDtM usually means (as even Keil, Gen. p. 39, admits) the human spirit, or the spiritual human soul.

J It is a talmudic maxim of incontestable truth, nSj iDVjJD riSit? *D.

feceris, quanquam de anima tua flaveris, sicut et Deus de spi' ritu suo." And the human spirit is similarly none the less a created thing: for it is a nature which came into being in time, and is conditioned by a temporal beginning; came into being by a free, but, in distinction from all other earthly natures, by an immediate personal, operation of God. The spirit of man is an immediate¹ inspiration from God, the personal transmitted into the bodily form, and by that very means constituting it a person. It did not emanate from God, if with emanation we associate those characteristics of natural necessity and passivity which conflict with the pure conception of creation; but if these characteristics be omitted, it may be said to have emanated.² Thus teaches Scripture. For the word of Aratos, rov Kox yevo? iafiev, which Paul appropriates, Acts xvii. 28, is true of men, not of the brutes. It is true of man precisely on account of that special act of divine efiirvevais, of which Elihu speaks, Job xxxiii. 4. And the Gentile consciousness testifies to the same truth in myths. The Babylonish mythos makes man originate from drops of divine blood mingled with earth; and the Phoenician mythos makes him the son of KoX-ma and Bdav, i.e. of the divine breath infused into matter. Bdav is W3 = Vi3 (the solid mass without life or consciousness) of the biblical narra

¹ Since the human soul, says Anastasios Sinaiticus (in Origenis Philocalia, ed. Tarinus, p. 606), did not originate from earth, nor from air, nor from water, nor from fire, nor from any other substance 'whatever, nor any created visible nor conceivable nature, but from the undimmed, and infinite, and incomprehensible, and unspeakable, and invisible, and illimitable, and immortal, and untransitory, and impalpable, and unwithering, and incorporeal being of God Himself; this our soul—the God-formed, the Godgiven, the God-related and God-created—is Being, and manifestation of being and source of life by the power of that divine inspiration. Thence it proceeded, as life and life-giving, as from a fountain of life, a little light from the treasury of light, a breath as from an abyss of infinite fragrance.

^a Substantially thus, moreover, Oehler, Veterit T. Seutentia de rebus post mortem futuris, p. 11; Auberlen, art. "Geist" in Herzog's R.E.; Fronmiiller, art. "Mensch " in H. Zcller's Biblischer Worterbuch; against which H. A. Hahn, Veleris T. Sententia de natura hominis, p. 10, revives the pre-existence view, that God in the beginning created a store of spirit, from which He infused spirit into individual beings. No. "Notre ame," we say with Avrillon in his Sentimens sur la Dignite de I'Ame, 1773, "sort du cceur, de l'esprit et de la bouchc de Dieu; nous avous tous e'te forme's dans ce cceur exhales de cet esprit, et nous sommes sortis de sa bouche adorable."

tive of creation, Gen. i. 2; and KoXiria is rrB (breathing sound, i.e. communication of breath): the root-word is !?B, a similar root to nw, whence nBn (he breathed), Gen. ii. 7.

As the breath of life proceeding from God, or the spirit of life, is now associated with the bod)', which is pervaded by' living powers as yet without unity, man becomes ,^n B*SJ, a living soul, i.e. a soul-enlivened nature. Let the suggestive distinction be here primarily considered between the modes of expression D"n noBo and n»n VB3. In the designation of PIoEO, D^n is a substantive, standing to the former in the relation of a dependent genitive; in the appellation of on the other hand, njn is not a substantive (as which it is only used in poetical style), but an adjective, in opposition to which it can neither be urged that it sometimes has the article (i. 21, ix. 16, whereupon see Gesenius, iii. 2), nor that it sometimes is construed as a masculine (e.g. ii. 19, which never occurs except ad sensum). The nsus loquendi in this respect is altogether established and appropriate. On the one hand, Djn noso or n»n nv i is never and nowhere said (for in n»nn m"i, Ezek. i. 20, x. 17, njnn is a genitive substantive); on the other hand, nowhere and never D^n t^W. And even the LXX. in this matter is exact and strict: it always says irvorj or irvevfia nowhere irvotj ^waa, irvevfia

£wv; always yfrv^r j ?«3aa, nowhere ^v^rj £<uj}s. Paul also says, with just consideration, 1 Cor. xv. 45, tjZsaa; and John, in the Apoc. xvi. 3, hardly wrote iraaa ^v^r j 5<»^?, as xi. 11, 'n'vevfia £o>%. The oldest authorities here waver between iraaa i^^vX'7 ^^{aa aR}d iraaa ^v^r j £<»77?- The Cod. Alex, and Ephr. give fto^?; the Vat. and Sin.,¹ on the other hand, £&3aa; and thus also read Andreas and Aretas, the two expositors of the Apocalypse.² In the German, moreover, Geist has the signification of a stronger, and Seele the signification of a weaker, moving principle;³ and when we speak of the breath of life,

¹ The text of the Cod. Sinaiticus runs, as Teschendorf informs us, m« i^/vxn l^wa, tnriQavt» in m; daXcuwyit;.

² The text of Andreas in Cod. Coisl. 224, collated by Teschendorf, has only ieaoa yfmxi, and even Primasius drops viveni (vitse). In favour of ir'Suia. 'tyvxii, also, without addition, are many cursive Mss., and two MSS. of the Slavonic translation, of which one includes with it the commentary of Andreas. The Andreas collated by me, however, of the Cod. Mayhingensis reads: waoa \pvxi) ^utra dvrifaiitp i» rji tahicari.

³ See the quotation of R. v. Raumer in the Appendix to this division.

the spirit of life, we never say the soul of life. It is the true reciprocal relation between spirit and soul which is reflected in this involuntary strictness of terminology apparent in the use of language. The spirit in man is the source of life. The commonly received passage, To irvevfiA eari To ^ccoitolovv, John vi. 63, comp. 1 Cor. xv. 45, is anticipated in the collocation D^n riovz. The soul, it is true, is also living in itself, but not by itself: it is that which lives in a derived and conditioned manner. How deeply language is conscious of this, is seen in the fact that, although nri (see the word, Gen. iii. 8) and (from DW, related to 3t?3, ^J), as well as (see Isa. iii. 20, and comp. ni, to breathe forth again, respirare), revert to the verbal fundamental meaning of breathing (irveeiv and yfrv^ew), still nowhere is D^n E'S3 said. As D^n nDEO is referred to God the Inspirer, the God of the spirits of all flesh (Num. xvi. 22, xxvii. 16), so n;n t?W is referred to D»n nDe?.

Thus, when the narrative of creation says that God breathed into man's nostrils the breath of life, and that, in consequence thereof, man became njn tTW, this certainly has in this place the . metonymic meaning of a being njn (i. 30); as when

men, because they had in them flesh and blood, were freely named aap% Kox alfia (D"]J"iE'a). But without doubt it will therefore be said that man was endowed with soul by means of that inbreathing of the breath of life; that thus through that inspiration, not alone, as v. Rudloff teaches, was awakened the actuality of life, slumbering till then, of the soul that had been created in us with the body; but that thereby the living soul now for the first time came into existence, in virtue of which man is a being with a living soul. We have here two erroneous views to controvert. (1.) It is erroneous to regard the breath of life as being the creative spirit itself, entering into individually operative immanence in the man that is coming into being, so that thus the designation of the created immaterial inward nature rises into n»n B'W. According to this view, the soul is certainly related in a subordinate manner to the spirit, but it is to the Divine Spirit.¹ It has come into being

¹ Thus, for example, Engelliardt (Zeitschrift ftlr Protest. 1856, p. 252), who concludes from Gen. ii. 7 as we do, but not in the same sense: The soul is thus not a free supposition of the spirit, but a consequence of the communication of the spirit. Just so Schbberlein (Jahrbb. 1861, p. 18):

through the Spirit of God, and subsists by the fact that that Spirit is immanent in it, and is spiritual because it is immanent in it, and so far as it is allowed to rule in it. Kindred to this also is the theosophic view, to which we shall return in Div. iv. Sec. viii., that the soul was contained as a potentiality in the bodily form; that through God's breath it became a living soul; and that this has first to realize the spirit forth from itself, by allowing the spiritual type (the Idea) manifest in itself to attain to itself Form.¹ This is an ethical process, whose reality we do not here pause to question. But the denial associated with it, of the fact that the breath of God became the spirit of man, we pronounce arbitrary, even although it take the form, that through God's breath the human soul was first of all brought to life and set in movement only with tlre capacity to receive spirit, and the power to appropriate to itself spirit. That which is designated by a later representative of tliis view²—after the example of Beck—the fundamental error of the modern socalled biblical psychology, to wit, " that man received a selfsubsisting spirit," is, in truth, the fundamental assumption of the Holy Scripture. For, in harmony with passages such as Isa. ii. 22, xlii. 5, Job xxvii. 3, D"? riDBO will be understood of the created breath of life of man; and of God it is not less said that He made the human TOCO, than that He nb'y, made, the human E*W, Jer. xxxviii. 16, Isa. lvii. 16, and formed the spirit, Wi, or the heart, 3?!, of man in his inward parts, Zech. xii. 1, Ps. xxxiii. 15. The TOEO, spirit-soul, of man is called in Prov. xx. 27 a candle illumined by God; and Paul expressly distinguishes this self-conscious spirit of man (1 Cor. ii. 11) from the self-conscious Spirit of God. But the fact that TOt?³.

God pours by inspiration His creative Spirit into the body of earth, and, as the result of this influeuce, goes forth the soul, the living!

¹ Thus my Elberfeld critic. The spiritual endowment is brought about first by the inward birth of the idea, not without man's own agency.

^s Th. v. Thramer, in his Grundzilgen einer Schriftgemassen Seelenlchre, in the second part of the treatises of the Evangelical School Union, 1858, and equally Zockler, Naturtheologie, i. (1860) 749. Man in himself, and as such, is soul, while he has a body and is to become spirit. The defenders of this view, indeed, say also that man has a spirit, but as a gift (Beck), or as a principle and completion of his being (Zockler), or as an endowment accessorium (v. Rudloff), who, indeed, goes so far as to distinguish tho spirit as an accident, from the soul as the subject.

and rn" i of man are freely called divine in other places, has, as we have pointed out, its reason in the special mode Of the spirit's origination: it comes into being by means of divine inspiration; so, indeed, that as life of itself, it is none the less a made, a formed life immediately constituted by God, as the soul is constituted mediately: for the created breath of life is the power of man's life appointed by God; and the soul is the life which proceeds from this power of life, and is thus the life mediately constituted, but not in such a way as (2) that, as many of the ancients say, the creative breath of life conferred upon man would be a spiritual and physical principle of life in inseparable unity.¹ The endowment with soul, indeed, appears as the result of the endowment with spirit; and spirit and soul are therefore, in Scripture, even actually distinguished. For that reason we cannot say that the created irvevfia entering into man was psychically individualized, or, to express it otherwise, that the spiritual substance took to itself the form of soul, so that spirit and soul are distinguished as the general basis and the individual special manifestation. The -ty-vxfj must be more than the form of existence, the. individuation of the spirit; for the Scripture certainly appropriates to the spirit and to the soul distinct functions, and often speaks of the two in juxtaposition. They must be distinguished even otherwise than as general and special, for the general certainly only actually exists in form of the special. A man would then not be able to speak of his spirit specially, and of his soul specially. Eather might spirit and soul be apprehended as only two distinct sides of the one principle of life: so that it might be said that this iiDEO was named nri, irvevfia, as immaterial in relation to the supersensual; t?W, -^vyfj, as organically associated with the material corporeity in relation to this, and determined by this. But even this distinction is far from being sufficient for the case in question. The spirit is certainly called D"n nDEO and D^n: the latter, not from without, but from within, of the plural number, indicates the life as the summary of the mutual agencies of the powers and the phenomena of life: the spirit also bears the former name as a principle of life absolutely in

¹ So, for example, Calovius on Gen. ii. 7: "Spiraculum vitas non est Spiritns S., sed ipsa anima rationales, quae in homine simul est vegetativa et sensitiva, ex qua oritur respiratio et exspiratio, unde $vxv et t?W dicta."

all relations of life; and the soul cannot be the spirit itself in the latter or the former relation. No; it is the bearer and the agent of the life that proceeds from the spirit. It proceeded from the spirit, in that the spirit unites the corporeity personally with itself, without the spirit having gone forth in it. The spirit is superior to the soul. The soul is its product,¹ or, what is most expressive, its manifestation.² Even the soul of the brutes, as all life, and every living soul, is a manifestation of the spirit; but only the soul of man is a manifestation of a spiritus vitce, appropriated to him, and breathed into him immediately from God, the personal God.

But how, then, does the inbreathing of the breath of life serve us for the communication of the created spirit? It is indeed breathed into man's nostrils (^f^a, in nares ejus), and man has it in his nostrils, Gen. vii. 22, Job xxvii. 3, Isa. ii. 22 (iSKa, in naso suo). Those parallel passages in which *]K is interchanged with D]SK, show that D'SK is not meant here in the general signification of "the countenance" (LXX., Vulg.). It means the nostrils (Trgg. Lth.), as the avenue of the process of breathing, and as the organ of the sense of smell, closely associated therewith. All the less do we seem called upon to regard the breath of life as the thinking spirit

¹ "Of all the attempts," says v. Radowitz in the second vol. of his Fragments, "to approach more closely to the perception of the active impulses in man, the mode of explanation has always appeared to mo the most suggestive, that, by the inbreathing of the Spirit of God into the matter of the body, the soul has been begotten in the body; the soul, which is appointed and equipped thence to become a product of the spirit in the body, and to bring about the efficiency of both in man." Exactly thus is the priority described, Gen. ii. 7.

² Thus, in a purely scientific interest, Damerow expresses himself, when he says, for example (AUgem. Zeitschrift fur Psychiatr. 1860, p. 438): "We know that the spirit in man, although, in order to be able to be in reciprocal action with the material world, in order to appear as soul, it is united to the brain, operates through this organ, and acts as soul, yet still transcends the soul: we know this not only from our own inner experience, but also from our daily experience in errors, and in diseases of the soul." On the other band, Schoberlein says (Studien und Kritiken, 1860, p. 159): "The soul is not independent existence, but only spirit appearing through the body." But is not, then, the effect the manifestation of the cause? Is not that which conditions revealed in that which is conditioned? And is not the soul also, in a certain measure, the embodiment of the spirit, in so far as it is the manifestation of the spirit conformed to the corporeity?

in man. But (1) it is still plainly intelligible, that what God breathes into man cannot be the air which man inspires and expires; for this is not itself that which breathes in man, but only that which is breathed. (2.) Thus D^n nptT3, referred to the breath, is the same thing in man which is the subject of the capability of breathing, since with the inbreathing the life of man takes its first beginning; the same thing in man which is the subject of life absolutely in every relation, irvevfia Qhtikov, as the book of Wisdom says (xv. 11), and therefore at the same time "tyvyfj ivepyovaa :^l for the breath of the Almighty is not only the primal cause of human bodily life, but also of human spiritual life, Drin nB' ropBo (Job xxxii. 8). And as (3) man is not a living soul until the breath of life enters into him, the latter must needs stand to the former, if not in the relation of a temporal prius and posterius, yet in the relation of the principium to the principiatum; and we find ourselves thus thrown back upon the identity of the breath of life with the spirit, as distinguished from the soul (ⁿoB*3 or rm, as distinguished from B'W). The inbreathing into the nostrils, therefore, can only be meant to affirm that God, by means of His breath, brought forth and united with the bodily form that same principle of life which became the source of all the life of man, and announced its existence thenceforth by the breath passing into and out of the nostrils. When Ezekiel in the vision (xxxvii. 1-14) is called upon to summon the wind (PBPI) from all the four quarters of the wind (ninm), that it might breathe upon the bones of the dead (3 nSj) and make them live, the representation there is still more phenomenal. The wind is a form of the Spirit; for in ver. 14 Jehovah says, in interpretation of the vision, "I will put my Spirit into you." It is the created spirit of God which is given back to the dead of Israel, so that they arise from their graves. The wind symbolizes it, because breath is the external naturally necessary manifestation of spiritually embodied life. Moreover, language could not indicate spirit and wind by one and the same word, and the wind (e.g. the thawing wind, Ps. cxlvii. 18), especially that which is raised up for the purpose of special demonstra

¹ See Grimm, in loco. The book of Wisdom does not here agree with Philo, who distinguishes the anima vitalis (^urixti) and rationalis (Xoy/*^) as a lower (brutal) and higher (specifically human) principle of life.

tions of power (as Ex. xv. 8, 10; Num. xi. 31; 1 Kings xviii. 12; 2. Kings ii. 16), could not be called 'n nn, if the wind were not the elementary phenomenon which most corresponds to the nature of the spirit, and if the breath were not a sensible analogue of the supersensuous spiritual life.

We may now at length form to ourselves an entire conception of the process of the creation of man. It begins with the constitution of the body, as the regeneration (Palingenesia) of man shall one day end with the reconstitution of the body. God first formed the human body, introducing the formative powers of entire nature into the moist earth taken from the soil of Eden, and placing them in co-operation; whereon He then breathed into this form the creature spirit, which, because it originated after the manner of breathing, may just as well be called His spirit as man's spirit, because it is His breath made into the spirit of man. This spirit, entering into the form of the body, did not remain hidden in itself, but revealed itself, by virtue of its likeness to God, as soul, which corresponds to the glory of the Godhead; and by means of the soul subjected to itself the corporeity, by combining the interoperating powers of its material in proportion to the natural life in the unity of its self-vitality. As Ezekiel beholds Jehovah, surrounded by His rainbow-like glory, enthroned upon the Mercaba (chariot); so the spirit, surrounded by the soul which originates from it, is enthroned within the body: for the soul, as Tertullian says, is the body of the spirit, and the flesh is the body of the soul.¹

¹ Similarly the English physician, George Moore, The Power of the Soul over the Body (translated into German by Susemihl, 1850), S. xxv.: "As the dust was formed by immediate contact of Jehovah's finger, the human figure took the impression of the Godhead. But that this figure of earthly form and heavenly meaning might not remain like a temple without its indwelling glory, God breathed into the body of man the continuing spirit of separate life, and this enlightened it with the moral reflection of the divine character."