Dialogue with Trypho
Chapter 6: Plato and Other Philosophers Were Unaware of These Things
"It doesn’t matter to me," he said, "whether Plato, Pythagoras, or any other person held such opinions. The truth remains; and you would understand it from this. The soul definitely is or has life. If it is life, it would cause something else, and not itself, to live, just as motion would move something other than itself. Now, no one would deny that the soul lives. But if it lives, it lives not as life itself, but as a participant in life; and what participates in something is different from what it participates in. The soul partakes in life because God wills it to live. Thus, it will not partake in life when God does not will it to live. For living is not its inherent property, as it is God's; just as a person does not always live, and the soul is not always joined with the body, since whenever this harmony is disrupted, the soul leaves the body, and the person exists no longer; likewise, whenever the soul must cease to exist, the spirit of life is removed from it, and there is no more soul, but it returns to the place from which it was taken."