nor does it grasp or eat, or drink, or emit semen or engage in intercourse; it neither reflects nor loves nor hates, neither desires nor grows angry.

Yet once the soul is joined to it, its conditions change and its attributes are transformed: it becomes a sentient being that moves of its own volition. How, then, can anyone describe a mixture like that of soul and body as one single human being, each fused to the other, while insisting that the soul has undergone no change or transformation from its essence—so that it remains a soul recognizable by its own operations—and that the body, too, has experienced no alteration in its condition or functions?

Would any rational person who grasps what he is saying claim that the body’s state and activities while the soul is absent are identical to its state and activities when the soul is mingled with it?

And would any intelligent person assert that the body, after death and the departure of the soul, is in the very same state and performs the very same acts as when the soul was interwoven with it—when, once dead, it is like an inanimate object: it neither hears nor sees, neither speaks nor grasps nor walks; its blood has congealed and blackened, no longer fluid; its facial features and color have altered; and the body’s change from life to death and from death back to life is among the greatest of transformations?

The same applies to the soul: when it is connected to the body, it savors the body’s pleasures and suffers its pains. Thus, when the body eats and drinks, mates and smells, the soul is delighted; and when the body is beaten and slapped, humiliated, crowned with thorns, and spat upon, the soul experiences pain accordingly.

So when they liken the union of the Lord with the Messiah to the union of the soul with the body, while they—