Summary

Portrait of Tertullian Tertullian Ante-Nicene Fathers Vol. III, Apologetic… (1885)

For when we acknowledge that the soul originates in the breath of God, it follows that we attribute a beginning to it. This Plato, indeed, refuses to assign to it, for he will have the soul to be unborn and unmade. [1] We, however, from the very fact of its having had a beginning, as well as from the nature thereof, teach that it had both birth and creation. And when we ascribe both birth and creation to it, we have made no mistake: for being born, indeed, is one thing, and being made is another,—the former being the term which is best suited to living beings.
Source: Wikisource

Portrait of Tertullian Tertullian Ante-Nicene Fathers Vol. III, Apologetic… (1885)

When distinctions, however, have places and times of their own, they occasionally possess also reciprocity of application among themselves. Thus, the being made admits of being taken in the sense of being brought forth; [2] inasmuch as everything which receives being or existence, in any way whatever, is in fact generated. For the maker may really be called the parent of the thing that is made: in this sense Plato also uses the phraseology.
Source: Wikisource

Get perspective with Kwize: daily news enlightened by great literature