Marsilio Ficino’s Platonic Theology, Volume II

Thirteenth argument: because it receives its being from God without an intermediary.

1Although Plotinus, Proclus, and certain other Platonists think that the soul is made by an angel, I prefer to follow Dionysius the Areopagite, Origen, and Aurelius Augustine—Platonists of the highest distinction—who hold that the soul is brought forth by God alone. I trust that the following argument can establish this. The soul is a form so simple and so free that it is neither composed of many parts nor drawn from the entrails of matter. Therefore, when it comes to be, it cannot be generated from anything previously existing. Since it has no parts, it is not assembled from diverse things first lying apart and then forced into one; and since it stands above matter, it is not drawn from matter's tinder, first formless and later formed. It therefore comes to be from nothing, and to make something from nothing belongs to God alone. The order of causes is discovered from the order of their works, because an effect is proportioned to its cause. We must accordingly refer proper effects to their proper causes, and whatever is found in common among all proper effects to the common cause of them all. Thus, since being itself is found to be common to all things in addition to the particular conditions proper to each, we must assign particular causes to those particular conditions and qualities.

2But being itself, which is the one feature common to all, requires one cause common to all; and the one cause common to all is God himself. God, therefore, is truly the cause that things are. Other causes besides God account for their being this or that, or being in this mode or that. Thus you have from God alone that you are; from a human parent as well that you are human; and from fire that you are hot. God gives being to works, while causes diverse from one another give diverse modes of being—and do so through God’s power.