“”At Genesis 1:26–27, God created the beginning of Man. But Man (man), at this point, is discarnate. I interpret this to mean that man is, at this point, pure soul.””
Be careful,dear sister,you are wandering into gnostic idea’s because this turns God into a successive creator
That Creation is not Successive by Thomas Aquinas -Jacques Maritain
http://www2.nd.edu/Departments//Maritain/etext/gc2_19.htm
Succession is proper to movement. But creation is not movement. Therefore there is in it no succession.
2. In every successive movement there is some medium between the extremes. But between being and not-being, which are the extremes in creation, there can be no medium, and therefore no succession.
3. In every making, in which there is succession, the process of being made is before the state of achieved completion. But this cannot happen in creation, because, for the process of being made to precede the achieved completion of the creature, there would be required some subject in which the process might take place. Such a subject cannot be the creature itself, of whose creation we are speaking, because that creature is not till the state of its achieved completion is realised. Nor can it be the Maker, because to be in movement is an actuality, not of mover, but of moved. And as for the process of being made having for its subject any pre-existing material, that is against the very idea of creation. Thus succession is impossible in the act of creation.
5. Successive stages in the making of things become necessary, owing to defect of the matter, which is not sufficiently disposed from the first for the reception of the form. Hence, when the matter is already perfectly disposed for the form, it receives it in an instant. Thus because a transparent medium is always in final disposition for light, it lights up at once in the presence of any actually shining thing. Now in creation nothing is prerequisite on the part of the matter, nor is anything wanting to the agent for action. It follows that creation takes place in an instant: a thing is at once in the act of being created and is created, as light is at once being shed and is shining.
and...
That the Human Soul is brought into Being by a Creative Act of God
http://www2.nd.edu/Departments//Maritain/etext/gc2_87.htm
Everything that is brought into being is either generated or created. But the human soul is not generated, either by way of composition of parts or by the generation of the body (Chap. LXXXVI); and yet it comes new into existence, being neither eternal nor pre-existent (Chapp. LXXXIII, LXXXIV): therefore it comes into being by creation. Now, as has been shown above, God alone can create (Chap. XXI).
2. Whatever has existence as subsistent being, is also made in the way that a subsistent being is made: while whatever has no existence as a subsistent being, but is attached to something else, is not made separately, but only under condition of that having been made to which it is attached. But the soul has this peculiarity to distinguish it from other forms, that it is a subsistent being; and the existence which is proper to it communicates to the body. The soul then is made as a subsistent being is made: it is the subject of a making-process all its own, unlike other forms, which are made incidentally in the making of the compounds to which hey belong. But as the soul has no material part, it cannot be made out of any subject-matter: consequently it must be made out of nothing, and so created.
5. The end of a thing answers to its beginning. Now the end of the human soul and its final perfection is, by knowledge and love to transcend the whole order of created things, and attain to its first principle and beginning, which is God. Therefore from God it has properly its first origin.
Holy Scripture seems to insinuate this conclusion: for whereas, speaking of the origin of other animals, it scribes their souls to other causes, as when it says: Let the waters produce the creeping thing of living soul (Gen. i, 20): coming to man, it shows that his soul is created by God, saying: God formed man from the slime of the earth, and breathed into his face the breath of life (Gen. ii, 7).
I don't see it that way, dear brother in Christ.
The way I see it is: God can never be "a successor creator." He is the uncaused cause of the Creation, its very BEGINNING, Who creates ex nihilio. He Creates by His creative Word, His Logos, His Son — Who is called Alpha and Omega, the First and the Last. There is nothing "before" God to be a first creator (i.e., to be the creator or "cause" of God), for Him to succeed ("successor creator"). He is — in Aristotelian language — the "prime mover," the unmoved mover, the uncaused cause of everything, the First Cause.
Moreover, there is nothing until God makes it. But before He can make anything in particular, He has to make the "stuff" out of which its made. That would be space and time for openers. He made one single Creation embracing heaven and earth, in the Beginning, by His Holy Word — Who also turns out to be our Lord Jesus Christ — Who God our Father made plainly manifest in the Revelation of His Son, Jesus Christ, Who is not only our Truth (Logos) but our Savior and Redeemer.
To speak of "succession" at all, one must invoke Time. But God is not bound by this rule — He is not IN Time; only we are. Our "eternity" is His "all at once" — just to indicate the enormity of the "distance" between God and man.
I love Jacques Maritain. At the links, he is referencing Thomas Aquinas. From whom I took a page to clarify my own thinking on these points.
Indeed, the very title That Creation is not Successive is my very understanding of Genesis 1. Only its manifestation (i.e., Genesis 2) is successive; but even that not until after the Fall of Adam.
To put it very crudely (and may God forgive me), but He made the "whole ball of wax" out of nothing but His Will and Desire, towards His divine Purpose; He did all this out of nothing, for He hadn't created anything yet; He did it "all at once," in the Beginning; and He did it by His Holy Word, our Lord Jesus Christ, Logos.
I get the feeling, dear brother in Christ, that we agree more than we disagree about such matters. May God ever bless you and your dear ones!
Pax Christi