{"collection":"chr","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/browse/chr/ecf/101/1010253.htm","path":"chr/ecf/101/1010253.htm","source_url":"https://sacred-texts.com/chr/ecf/101/1010253.htm","text":"Chapter XX.\u2014Of the Words, \u201cIn the Beginning,\u201d Variously Understood.\n29. From all these truths, of which they doubt not whose inner eye Thou hast granted to see such things, and who immoveably believe Moses, Thy servant, to have spoken in the spirit of truth; from all these, then, he taketh one who saith, \u201cIn the beginning God created the heaven and the earth,\u201d\u2014that is, \u201cIn His Word, co-eternal with Himself, God made the intelligible and the sensible, or the spiritual and corporeal creature.\u201d He taketh another, who saith, \u201cIn the beginning God created the heaven and the earth,\u201d\u2014that is, \u201cIn His Word, co-eternal with Himself, God made the universal mass of this corporeal world, with all those manifest and known natures which it containeth.\u201d He, another, who saith, \u201cIn the beginning God created the heaven and the earth,\u201d that is, \u201cIn His Word, co-eternal with Himself, God made the formless matter of the spiritual 1139 and corporeal creature.\u201d He, another, who saith, \u201cIn the beginning God created the heaven and the earth,\u201d\u2014that is, \u201cIn His Word, co-eternal with Himself, God made the formless matter of the corporeal creature, wherein heaven and earth lay as yet confused, which being now distinguished and formed, we, at this day, see in the mass of this world.\u201d He, another, who saith, \u201cIn the beginning God created heaven and earth,\u201d\u2014that is, \u201cIn the very beginning of creating and working, God made that formless matter confusedly containing heaven and earth, out of which, being formed, they now stand out, and are manifest, with all the things that are in them.\u201d\nAugustin, in his letter to Jerome (Ep. clxvi. 4) on \u201cThe origin of the human soul,\u201d says: \u201cThe soul, whether it be termed material or immaterial, has a certain nature of its own, created from a substance superior to the elements of this world.\u201d And in his De Gen. ad Lit. vii. 10, he speaks of the soul being formed from a certain \u201cspiritual matter,\u201d even as flesh was formed from the earth. It should be observed that at one time Augustin held to the theory that the souls of infants were created by God out of nothing at each fresh birth, and only rejected this view for that of its being generated by the parents with the body under the pressure of the Pelagian controversy. The first doctrine was generally held by the Schoolmen; and William of Conches maintained this belief on the authority of Augustin,\u2014apparently being unaware of any modification in his opinion: \u201cCum Augustino,\u201d he says (Victor Cousin, Ouvrages ined. d\u2019Abelard, p. 673), \u201ccredo et sentio quotidie novas animas nom ex traduce non ex aliqua substantia, sed ex nihilo, solo jussu creatoris creari.\u201d Those who held the first-named belief were called Creatiani; those who held the second, Truduciani. It may be noted as to the word \u201cTraduciani,\u201d that Tertullian, in his De Anima, chaps. 24\u201327, etc., frequently uses the word tradux in this connection. Augustin, in his Retractations, ii. 45, refers to his letter to Jerome, and urges that if so obscure a matter is to be discussed at all, that solution only should be received: \u201cQu\u00e6 contraria non sit apertissimis rebus quas de originati peccato fides catholica novit in parvulis, nisi regenerentur in Christo, sine dubitatione damnandis.\u201d On Tertullian\u2019s views, see Bishop Kays, p. 178, etc.","title":"Nicene and Post Nicene-Fathers, Vol. I: The Confessions: ...","type":"page"}