‘Those philosophers then know nothing about these things, for they cannot even tell us what sort of thing the soul is.’
‘It does not seem so.’
‘And assuredly one may not speak of it as immortal. Because if it is immortal it plainly is also unbegotten.’
‘It is both unbegotten and immortal according to some Platonists, as they are called.’
‘Do you then speak of the world as unbegotten?’
‘There are some who say so, yet I myself do not agree with them. ’
‘Rightly so. For what reason has one to suppose that a body so hard, and resisting, and compound, and altering, and perishing, and coming into being every day has not had its being from a beginning of some sort? But if the world is begotten, it follows necessarily that souls have come into being, and perhaps may cease to be; for they come into being for the sake of men and the other living creatures, if you will admit without reserve that they have come into being by themselves, and not with the bodies that they each possess.’
‘This appears to be right.’
‘They are not then immortal.’
‘No, since even the world, as we saw, was begotten.’
‘But, certainly, I personally do not say that all the souls die. For that would in truth be a piece of luck for the bad. What do I say? That the souls of the pious dwell in some better place, but the unrighteous and wicked in a worse, awaiting then the time of judgement. Thus the one sort, as plainly worthy of God, die not any more; but the others are punished, as long as God wills them both to exist and to be punished.’
‘Is then your meaning much as Plato intimates about the world in his Timaeus when he says that it is corruptible inasmuch as it has come into being, but, because of the will of God, will not be dissolved nor meet with that fate, death? Does this precise doctrine seem to you to be taught also about the soul, and, in short, about all things? For he means that what things soever are after God, or ever will be, have a corruptible nature, and can disappear and be no more. For God alone is unbegotten and incorrupt, and is for this reason God, but all else after Him is begotten and corruptible.
For this reason the souls both die and are punished, since, if they were unbegotten, they would neither sin at all nor be filled full of folly, nor be cowardly and then again courageous, nor would they of their own accord ever go off into swine and serpents and dogs. Neither assuredly would it be even right to compel them to do so, if, that is to say, they are unbegotten. For the unbegotten is like the Unbegotten, and equal, and the same, and one may not be preferred to the other in power or dignity.
Hence the things that are unbegotten are not many. For if there were any difference in them, you could not by examination find any cause for this difference, but, if you send back your thought for ever to infinity you will sooner or later stay exhausted upon one thing that was unbegotten, and this you will say was the cause of all. Did all this, I say, escape the notice of such sages as Plato and Pythagoras, who became for us a very wall and bulwark of philosophy?’