Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers: Series I/Volume II/City of God/Book XII/Chapter 23

Chapter 23.—Of the Nature of the Human Soul Created in the Image of God.

God, then, made man in His own image.&#160; For He created for him a soul endowed with reason and intelligence, so that he might excel all the creatures of earth, air, and sea, which were not so gifted.&#160; And when He had formed the man out of the dust of the earth, and had willed that his soul should be such as I have said,—whether He had already made it, and now by breathing imparted it to man, or rather made it by breathing, so that that breath which God made by breathing

(for what else is “to breathe” than to make breath?) is the soul, —He made also a wife for him, to aid him in the work of generating his kind, and her He formed of a bone taken out of the man&#8217;s side, working in a divine manner.&#160; For we are not to conceive of this work in a carnal fashion, as if God wrought as we commonly see artisans, who use their hands, and material furnished to them, that by their artistic skill they may fashion some material object.&#160; God&#8217;s hand is God&#8217;s power; and He, working invisibly, effects visible results.&#160; But this seems fabulous rather than true to men, who measure by customary and everyday works the power and wisdom of God, whereby He understands and produces without seeds even seeds themselves; and because they cannot understand the things which at the beginning were created, they are sceptical regarding them—as if the very things which they do know about human propagation, conceptions and births, would seem less incredible if told to those who had no experience of them; though these very things, too, are attributed by many rather to physical and natural causes than to the work of the divine mind.