From One We Can Judge The Rest

View that the soul* of a new infant is generated from the souls of its parents. Many prefer this view to creationism* because they feel that it helps to account for transmission of sin from parents to offspring (see also Sin, Original).

The propagation, or origination of the human soul, has been explained by three theories, viz: Preexistence: Creationism: Traducianism.

The theory of Preexistence was maintained by Plato, who dwelt upon a seemingly dim recollection of a former condition, anamneesis. It went over from Plato through Philo, to Origen, but never met with general acceptance in the Church, and was expressly condemned in the Council of Constantinople in 543. In recent times, it has been defended by Kant, who thinks, in his work "Religion within the bounds of Pure Reason," that to the explanation of the radical evil in man is required the intelligible fact of a decision made by him at some former time. Schelling has maintained the same view in his "Philosophical Investigation, in regard to the Essence of Freedom," 1809.

It has also been most ably defended by Julius Mueller, in his great work "On Sin" (4th Ed., 1858), (translated into English, Clark's For. Libr.,) who employs it to solve the problem of Original Sin. Nowhere,however, has the theory been put more beautifully, than in the lines of one of our great English poets, Wordsworth, in his "Intimations of Immortality,from the Recollections of Childhood." In that poem he makes this noble statement of the Platonic theory:

"Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting;
The soul that rises with us, our life's star,
Hath had elsewhere its setting,
And cometh from afar.
Not in entire forgetfulness,
And not in utter nakedness,
But, trailing clouds of glory, do we come,
From Heaven, which is our home."

But beautiful as is this theory, and not without speciousness, it will not bear the test of logic, nor of the witness of Scripture. It only cuts the knot; it simply throws back the question, puts it out of sight, and does not answer it. It is an obvious subterfuge to get rid of a perplexity, and is like the hopeless cosmography of the Hindoos, except that it stops at the elephant. It is opposed to the great fact of our human experience, as to the similarity between the soul of the parent and child, and is contradicted by the general drift of Scripture, and specially by Gen. iii. and the whole argument in Rom. v. 12, seq. It in truth involves simply an undeveloped metempsychosis, a transmigration of the soul. Its latest defender is an American, Dr. Edward Beecher, who lays this theory as part of the basis of what he claims to be the solution of the "Conflict of Ages." (1854.) The theory of Preexistence in another form asserts simply that all souls were created at the beginning, by the word of God, and are united, at conception, with the human organism.

Immediate Creationism maintains that there is a direct creation of the soul by God, and that about the fortieth day after conception it is united with the embryo. The passages of Scripture which have been appealed to sustain this view are Jer. xxxviii. 16; Isa. Ivii. 16; Zach. xii. 1; Acts xvii. 28; Ps. cxix. 73; Job x. 12; Do. xxxiii. 4; Numb. xvi. 22; Do. xxvii. 16; Heb. xii. 9, and in the Apocryphal books, 2 Mace. vii. 22. Jerome asserts that this was the view of the Church, but this is an overstatement of the fact, although it certainly was the view of a number of the Fathers. Clemens Alexandrinus says: "Our soul is sent from Heaven." Lactantius says: "Soul cannot be born of souls." It is the predominant view of the Roman Church. Most of the Reformed (Calvinistic) theologians maintain it, and usually with the theory that by the union of the soul with the body the soul becomes sinful.

But this theory is really untenable. The strongest of the Scripture passages quoted to sustain it, imply no more than that the spirit of man has higher attributes than his body, is preeminent as God's work, and the chief seat of his image, without at all implying that His creation of the soul is a direct one. It would be quite as easy, not only to show from other passages, but to show from a number of these, that the body of man is the direct creation of God, which, nevertheless, no one will maintain.

To Pelagians, and the Pelagianizing Romanists, this theory indeed is not encumbered with the great moral difficulty arising from the acknowledgment of Original Sin, but to all others, this view involves, at its root, unconscious Gnosticism. It makes matter capable of sin and of imparting sinfulness. It represents the parents of a child as really but the parents of a mere material organism, within which the nobler part, all. That elevates it, all that loves and is loved, is in no respect really their child. On this theory, no man could call his child really his own. He has no more relation, as a parent, to its soul, which is the child, than any other man in the world, and is as really the father of that which constitutes a human being, to every other person's children as he is to his own. Moreover, with all the explanations and ingenious resorts which have been found necessary in retaining this theory, there is no escaping the inference, that it makes God the author of Sin. According to this theory, God creates a perfect, spotless, holy soul, and then places it in a polluted body; that is, He takes what is absolutely innocent, and places it, where it inevitably, not by choice, but of necessity, is tainted with sin, justly subject to damnation, and in a great majority of cases actually reaches eternal damnation. We do not hesitate to say, that though the doctrine has been held by good men, who have guarded with great care against obvious abuse, it could be pressed until it would assume almost the character of a "Doctrine of Devils."

The third view is that of Traducianism, or mediate Creationism: the theory that both body and soul are derived from the parents. This theory corresponds with the prevailing and clear statements of the Holy Scriptures, as, e. g. Gen. v. 3; Acts xvii. 24-26. It is a doctrine absolutely demanded by the existence of original sin, and the doctrine that God is not the author of sin. This view is defended, among the Fathers, especially by Tertullian, Athanasius, Gregory of Nissen, and many others. Augustine remained undecided, confessing his ignorance, yet leaning strongly to the Traducian View. The Lutheran Divines, with very few exceptions, are Traducian. The expressions in the Symbolical Books, such as in the Catechism, "I believe that God has created me," and in the Formula of Concord, "God has created our souls and bodies after the fall," are meant of the mediate creation, not of the direct.

The true theory of Traducianism is, that it is a creation by God, of which the parents are the divinely ordained organ. The soul of the child is related mysteriously, yet as closely, to the soul of the parent as its body is to theirs, and the inscrutable mystery of the eternal generation of God's Son from the absolute Spirit, mirrors itself in the origin of the human soul.
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