Tertullian — On the Soul 11

But that I may call the soul spirit, the reason of the present question compels, because breathing is ascribed to another substance. This while we claim for the soul, which we acknowledge uniform and simple, we must call spirit on a certain condition — not by the name of status but of act, not by the title of substance but of work — because it breathes, not because it is properly spirit. For to blow is also to breathe. So the soul, which we defend as breath by property, we now pronounce spirit by necessity; but against Hermogenes, who contends it from matter not from God's breath, we properly defend breath. For he, against the faith of Scripture itself, turns breath into spirit so that, while it is incredible that God's spirit come into offense and soon into judgment, the soul may rather be believed from matter than from God's spirit.

Therefore we both there defend it as breath, not spirit, according to Scripture and the distinction of spirit, and here we pronounce spirit after a fashion according to the sharing of breathing and blowing. There the question is of substance; for to breathe is an act of substance. No longer on this except because of heretics who thrust I know not what spiritual seed into the soul conferred from the Mother Sophia's hidden liberality without the Maker's knowledge — when the Scripture conscious of its Maker God promulgated nothing more than God breathing into man's face the breath of life and man made into a living soul, by which thereafter he both lives and breathes — the difference of spirit and soul well declared in the following instruments, God himself pronouncing: the spirit went forth from me, and every breath I made. For the soul too is breath made from spirit. And again: who gave breath to the people on the earth and spirit to those who tread it. First the soul, that is breath, to the people walking on earth — that is, acting carnally in flesh — afterward spirit to those who tread the earth — that is, who subject the works of the flesh — because the apostle also: not first what is spiritual, but what is animal, afterward what is spiritual. For even if Adam at once prophesied that great sacrament toward Christ and the church, he suffered an accident of spirit: for ecstasy fell upon him, the Holy Spirit's force working prophecy. For an evil spirit too is an accidental thing. Finally God's spirit afterward turned Saul into another man — into a prophet — and an evil spirit afterward turned him into another man — into an apostate. Judas also, reckoned for a while with the elect even to the office of the bags, though already a thief yet not yet a betrayer — afterward the devil entered. Therefore if neither God's nor the devil's spirit is sown into the soul from birth, it is agreed the soul alone stands before the event of either spirit; if alone, also simple and uniform in the name of substance, and so breathing from nowhere else than from the lot of its own substance.