Question Two
Whether souls were created at the beginning together with the angels in the Empyrean Heaven
It is asked whether all souls were created at the beginning together with the angels in the Empyrean Heaven, as Origen said.
The answer is that Plato, together with certain philosophers and Manichaeans, and, among our own writers, Origen alone, as is charged against him, said that all souls were created by God before bodies, in the Empyrean Heaven together with the angels - and, according to Plato, in the finite number of the heavenly constellations and stars.
Origen said that in the beginning souls and angels were created equal according to the condition of their specific nature, namely in power, perfection, and duration. Afterwards, however, through free choice, according as they adhered to God more or less, or withdrew from him, they were variously promoted or punished by divine justice, so that some became angels according to the diverse functions of the orders, some became souls according to diverse states, and some became demons in diverse states.
They also said concerning souls that, according to the diversity of their merits or demerits, some had been promoted to the diverse orders of angels. Some were bound to celestial bodies, and hence they asserted that the celestial bodies were ensouled. Others were thrust down into the baser bodies of brute animals. For this reason Pythagoras, as Cicero says in On the Ends of Good Things, and Juvenal in Satire 14,
Abstained from all animals, nor indulged his belly with every kind of legume.
That is, he abstained from beans, either because of their flatulence or because of a worm hidden within them, which he believed to be the soul of some human being and to be undergoing purification there.
Other souls, moreover, in proportion also to the inequality of their estrangement from God, were bound to nobler human bodies or to baser and badly formed ones, such as those of the lame and the blind, so that they might be purified in such bodies. For he maintained that God had created this diversity of corporeal creatures for the punishment and purification of spiritual creatures, and that, after they had been purified in these bodies, they would, according to Plato, be recalled into heaven, to the stars corresponding and comparable to them, as gods or goddesses.
Origen, however, to whom this opinion concerning the co-creation of angels and souls is principally attributed, strengthened it with arguments and an authority. His first argument proceeds as follows. Everything that does not depend upon another with respect to its being can be created by God without that other. But the rational soul does not depend upon the body with respect to its being, as is evident in Book I of On the Soul. Therefore it is not necessary that it be created in the body; rather, it could have been created before the body, together with the angels.
Again, Genesis 1 states that on the seventh day God rested from every work, that is, he ceased. Therefore he did not create souls afterwards, but made them all in the beginning together with the angels. The same is proved by the authority of Ecclesiasticus 18, which says: “He who lives forever created all things together.”
But to the contrary stands the Master of the Sentences in Book II, distinction 28, rejecting as false this opinion of Origen concerning the co-creation of angels and souls, as will be adduced below at the end of this question.
The aforesaid opinion of Origen can also be refuted by two arguments of Avicenna. The first proceeds as follows. It is impossible for numerical diversity to be caused under the same species except from a diversity of matter. For there would never be two instances of whiteness except by reason of the diverse subjects in which they exist as in subject matter. If, therefore, all souls had been created together without bodies, since they themselves do not have matter as a part of themselves, as everyone confesses, it would be necessary either for them to be diverse in species - since diversity of species always follows upon diversity of formal principles - and thus all souls would differ in species, and consequently so would all human beings whose forms those souls are, which is unfitting; or else it would be necessary to say that there was at that time one soul in number, and thus the error of Averroes concerning a single intellect in all human beings would follow. Since, therefore, these two alternatives are unfitting, it remains for us to say, in the Catholic manner, that souls were created not before bodies but together with them.
The second argument proceeds as follows. A proper act exists in its proper potency and matter; but the soul is the proper act of the body, according to Book II of On the Soul. Therefore, as is evident, the soul cannot be created except in the body.
What Gregory says in Book IV of the Dialogues also contributes to this conclusion: almighty God created three kinds of living spirit. One is not covered by flesh, namely the spirit of angels. Another is covered by flesh and dies with the flesh, namely the soul of brute animals. The third is covered by flesh but does not die with the flesh, namely the soul of human beings.
Avicenna answers Origen’s first argument as follows. Although the soul does not depend upon the body with respect to its being or its end, it nevertheless depends upon it with respect to its individual being; and this individual being begins in the body of which the soul is the form. Because this individual being acquired by the soul in the body is an absolute being, neither submerged in nor bound to the body, its individual being therefore remains to it after the corruption of the body.
To the second argument it is said that Scripture states that God ceased from every work on the seventh day in this sense: as Thomas says in Part I, question 73, article 1, in reply to the third objection, nothing made by God afterwards was entirely new without having in some manner preceded among the works of the six days. Some things preceded materially only, as Eve did in Adam’s rib. Some preceded both materially and really, as the individuals now generated preceded in the first individuals of their respective species. Some species also which appear as though new - especially among animals generated from putrefaction - preceded in certain active powers of the stars and elements. A new species which appears to be produced from many also preceded causally in diverse animals according to species, from whose mixture it is generated, such as from a male ass and a mare.
Certain things, however, preceded according to likeness, as do souls which are created anew. This likeness can be considered, first, according to genus and the nature common to souls and angels, namely intellectuality. In this way souls preceded in the work of creation in which all things are said to have been created together, Ecclesiasticus 18: “He who lives forever created all things together.”
Alternatively, this likeness can be considered according to the specific rational nature. In this way souls preceded in the works of the six days, in which Adam’s soul was created united to his body, since the soul is an essential part of human nature and God established the first things in the perfect state of their nature and species.
Or this can be understood according to what Augustine says, not by asserting it but by reporting it, in Book VII of On the Literal Interpretation of Genesis: Adam’s soul was created before his body, perfect and complete in species, with an inclination of the will toward governing the body.
Similarly, the work of the Incarnation also preceded, because, as Philippians 2 says, the Son of God “was made in the likeness of men.” Spiritual glory, too, preceded according to likeness in the angels; bodily glory preceded in heaven, especially the Empyrean, as Thomas says in Part I, question 66, article 3, in the reply. Hence it is said in Ecclesiastes 1: “Nothing under the sun is new. For those things have already preceded in the ages that were before us.”
If it is objected against this from John 5, “My Father works even until now, and I work,” and therefore he did not rest on the seventh day, the answer is that God is said to have rested on the seventh day from establishing new genera and species of things, which had existed in the first works, as has been said; and he is said to work continually by preserving and governing the creature he established.
To the authority which Origen brought forward concerning Ecclesiasticus 18, “He who lives forever,” and so forth, Albert answers in his book On the Four Coevals that this is understood with respect to the knowledge of God, which apprehends all things together; or it is understood with respect to the four coeval things created together, namely the angelic nature, the Empyrean Heaven, time, and the matter of the four elements, in which all things existed, as has been said.
To Origen’s final assertion, that this corporeal nature was created for the punishment of spiritual creatures, Augustine replies in Book XI of The City of God that nothing is more foolish than to say that God created this sun and the other corporeal things not for the ornament of beauty or for the well-being of corporeal things, but for the punishment of sinning souls.
Addition
Lactantius Firmianus, at the end of his work addressed to Demetrianus, explains the origin of the soul and why God gave the tempting spirit. That souls were not created together with the angels at the beginning is affirmed by Saint Athanasius; Alexander, On Various Questions; John Chrysostom, On John; and Bede, On Genesis.
Blessed Gregory also agrees with them, saying, “We believe that not all things were made together.” Augustine, in Book III of On the Literal Interpretation of Genesis, maintains that the angels were created in the upper part of the air and afterwards admitted into heaven, just as Adam was fashioned outside the paradise of pleasure and afterwards led into it. Saint Jerome, writing to Pammachius, also condemns Origen.