O duši, Tertullianus

Tertullian's extensive treatise De anima ("On the Soul"; written around 210 AD) is the first surviving treatise on the human soul written from a Christian perspective, and as such is a seminal work of early Christian literature. This remarkable work, which straddles literature, philosophy, theology, and medicine, is not only a polemic against pagan conceptions of the soul, among which Plato, that "grocer who in good faith sold his spices to all heretics," occupies a prominent place, but also formulates its own conception of the "corporeal soul" (corporalitas animae), which is ultimately an "offspring" (tradux) of Adam's soul and is passed on from parents to their offspring through sexual intercourse (so-called traducianism). This adapted Stoic heritage, which is unprecedented in its sophistication in early Christian thought, becomes for Tertullian the most effective weapon against the "heretical" teachings of pre-existence and transmigration of souls influenced by Platonism, which, according to him, undermine the very foundations of the Christian religion.