Tertullian, On the Flesh of Christ 12

Let the soul now be displayed through the flesh, if it has been established that it was supposed to be shown in some way — that is, unknown both to itself and to us. The distinction drawn here is empty; it acts as though we exist apart from the soul, when in fact the soul is the whole of what we are. In the end, without the soul we are nothing — not even human, just a corpse's name. So if we are ignorant of the soul, the soul itself is ignorant. The only thing left, then, is to examine whether the soul has been ignorant of itself here, so that it might become known in some way. I hold that the soul's nature is sensual; indeed, nothing animal exists without sense, and nothing sensual exists without soul. To put it more forcefully: sense is the soul of the soul. Since the soul supplies perception to everything, and itself perceives all the senses — even the qualities, which is likely — how could it not have possessed the sense of itself from the beginning? Otherwise, how would it know, from the necessity of natural things, what it sometimes needs, if it does not know its own quality, the very thing for which something is necessary? This self-knowledge is to be recognized in every soul; I mean the knowledge of itself, without which no soul could have taken care of itself. I think, however, that man — the only rational animal — has been endowed with a soul that makes him rational, and that soul is rational above all. How could it be rational, making man a rational animal, if it does not know its own reason, being ignorant of itself? Yet it does not ignore itself so completely; it knows its author, its judge, and its state. Without yet learning about God, it names God; without yet admitting its judgment, it says it commends itself to God. Hearing nothing more than that there is no hope after death, it curses each one who has died, both well and badly. This is pursued more fully in the booklet we wrote on the Testimony of the Soul. Otherwise, if the soul was ignorant of itself from the beginning, it would not have known anything from Christ except what sort of thing it was. Now, however, it does not learn its own image from Christ, but salvation. Therefore the Son of God descended and subjected the soul — not so that the soul might know itself in Christ, but that it might know Christ in itself; for it is not endangered by ignorance of itself regarding salvation, but by the Word of God. "Life has been made manifest," he says; "not the soul," etc. (1 John 1:2). "I came," he says, "to save the soul"; he did not say, "to show it." We were indeed ignorant of the soul — even though invisible — being born and dying, unless it was exhibited bodily. We were completely ignorant that it would rise again with the flesh. This is what Christ has made manifest. But even this manifestation occurs in the soul no differently than in some Lazarus, whose flesh was not animal, so neither was his soul carnal. What, then, has become more known to us about the soul's previously unknown disposition? What invisible thing of the soul desired visibility through the flesh?