Genesis 2:7 Douay-Rheims

And the Lord God formed man of the slime of the earth: and breathed into his face the breath of life, and man became a living soul.

Gregory of Nyssa

c. A.D. 335–395 Patristic

Others, on the contrary, marking the order of the making of man as stated by Moses, say that the soul is second to the body in order of time, since God first took dust from the earth and formed man, and then animated the being thus formed by his breath. By this argument they prove that the flesh is more noble than the soul, that which was previously formed [more noble] than that which was afterward infused into it.… Nor again are we in our doctrine to begin by making up man like a clay figure and to say that the soul came into being for the sake of this, for surely in that case the intellectual nature would be shown to be less precious than the clay figure. But as man is one, the being consisting of soul and body, we are to suppose that the beginning of his existence is one, common to both aspects, so that he should not be found to be antecedent and posterior to himself, as if the bodily element were first in point of time and the other were a later addition.

Source details
A.D. 395 · on Gen 2:7 (ON THE MAKING OF MAN 28.1-29.1)

Imported from an open dataset — not yet checked against the printed edition.

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