“And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.”
Gen. 2:7
“Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was: and the spirit shall return unto God who gave it.”
Ecc. 12:7
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Order of Contents
Creationism
. Early & Medieval 2
. Reformed 6+
. Lutheran 2
. Romanism 1
. Latin 6+
Traducianism
. Early Church
. Reformed 5
. Lutheran 2
Pre-existence 1
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Creationism
Articles
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Early Church
Jerome – bk. 2 in Against the Books of Rufinis in NPNF2, 3:***
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Medieval Church
Aquinas, Thomas – Contra the Gentiles
ch. 86, ‘That the Human Soul is Not Transmitted with the Semen’
ch. 87, ‘That the Human Soul is Brought into Being Through the Creative Action of God’
ch. 88, ‘Arguments Designed to Prove that the Human Soul is Formed from the Semen’
ch. 89, ‘Solution of the Preceding Arguments’
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Reformed
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Articles
1500’s
Vermigli, Peter Martyr – ‘By what means the corruption thereof is derived into the posterity’ in ch. 1, ‘Of Sin, especially Original, & of the Depraving of the Whole Nature of Man’ in The Common Places… (d. 1562; London: Henrie Denham et al., 1583), pt. 2, pp. 231, 239
Beza, Theodore – pp. 32-33 in A Book of Christian Questions & Answers… (London, 1574)
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1600’s
Du Moulin, Pierre – sections 4-18 of ch. 10 of The Anatomy of Arminianism (London, 1620), pp. 65-73
This is one of the best discussions in English.
Voetius, Gisbert – ‘On the Propagation of Original Sin’, pp. 128-59 in Select Theological Disputations, vol. 1, pt. 3 tr. by AI by Onku (Utrecht: Johannes a Waesberg, 1648) Latin
Leigh, Edward – ch. 3. Of the Propagation of Original Sin & Conclusions from it in A System or Body of Divinity… (London, A.M., 1654), bk. 4, pp. 313-15
Turretin, Francis – Institutes of Elenctic Theology, tr. George M. Giger, ed. James Dennison Jr. (1679–1685; P&R, 1992), vol. 1
5th Topic, 13. ‘Are souls created by God, or are they propagated? We affirm the former and deny the latter.’, pp. 477-82
9th Topic, 12. ‘How is original sin propagated from parents to their children?’, pp. 640-44
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1700’s
Venema, Herman – pp. 516-17 in Translation of Hermann Venema’s inedited Institutes of Theology tr. Alexander W. Brown (d. 1787; Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1850), ch. 31, Effects of the Fall
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1800’s
Alexander, Archibald – ‘On Creationism,’ #334-335 in 11. ‘Creation’ in God, Creation & Human Rebellion: Lecture Notes of Archibald Alexander from the Hand of Charles Hodge (1818; RBO, 2023), pp. 138-39
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Book
1600’s
ed. Goclenius, Rudolph – Psychology, i.e. Commentaries & Dispuations on the Perfection & Soul of Man, and on the First Principles of its Rise, from some Theologians & Philosophers of our Age tr. by AI by Onku (Marburg: Paul Egenolph, 1595) 145 pp. Latin
Goclenius (1547–1628) was a German reformed scholastic philosopher who taught at Marburg. He is sometimes credited with coining the term psychology in 1590, though the term had been used by Pier Nicola Castellani and Gerhard Synellius 65 years earlier.
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Dedicatory Epistle 2
1. Hermann Vultejus – On the Philosophical Perfection of Man 4
2. Francis Junius – Whether the Human Soul is Propagated from Parents 19
3-4. Johannes J. Grynaeus – Whether the soul of a man may be from passing over, or is created by God 32
5. Caspar Peucer – On the Essence, Nature & Origin of the Human Soul: a Commentary 73
6. Aegidius Hunnius (Lutheran) – Whether even now are infused to men their souls through inspiration: an Explanation 85
7. Peter Monau – Whether rational souls, like bodies, are propagated through the passing over of semen, or whether rather they are created by God daily, being infused into bodies being begotten 86
8. Rudolph Hospinian – The soul is whole in the whole, and whole in any part of it 124
9. Timothy Bright – Observations on Traducianism 130
10. Johannes Ludovicus Havenreuter – Whether the mind is innate to us from God, or not? It is denied. 138
11. Rudolph Goclenius – On the Origin of the Mind 142
12. Nicolaus Taurellus – “If the seed were animate…” 144
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Quotes
Order of
Twisse
Burgess
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1600’s
William Twisse
The Doctrine of the Synod of Dort and Arles, Reduced to the Practice… (Amsterdam: Thorp, 1631), pt. 1, 1st section, p. 36
“Consider what is the general judgement of infidels… can they digest our Christian doctrine concerning the general condition of all mankind as born in original sin… Especially, in case the soul of the child proceeds not from the parents, but immediately from God, as who by infusing it creates it, and by creating it, infuses it?”
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Anthony Burgess
The True Doctrine of Justification Asserted & Vindicated… (London, 1654), sermon 24, p. 230
“As in the generation of man, though there be organical dispositions and qualifications for the soul, yet they have no causality upon the soul, but that is immediately infused by God.”
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Lutheran
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Confession & Document
Formula of Concord: Epitome
1. Original Sin, Affirmative Note that the language has some ambiguity.
“4. For God created not only the body and soul of Adam and Eve before the Fall, but also our bodies and souls after the Fall, notwithstanding that they are corrupt, which God also still acknowledges as His work, as it is written Job 10:8: Thine hands have made me and fashioned me together round about. Deut. 32:18; Is. 45:9ff; 54:5; 64:8; Acts 17:28; Job 10:8; Ps. 100:3; 139:14; Eccl. 12:1.”
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Formula of Concord: Solid Declaration
1. Original Sin
“34. Moreover, the chief articles of our Christian faith urge and compel us to preserve this distinction [between man as a creature and his sin after the Fall]. For instance, in the first place, in the article of Creation, Scripture testifies that God has created human nature not only before the Fall, but that it is a creature and work of God also since the Fall, Deut. 32:6; Is. 45:11, 54:5, 64:8; Acts 17:25; Rev. 4:11.
35. Thine hands, says Job, have made me and fashioned me together round about; yet Thou dost destroy me. Remember, I beseech Thee, that Thou hast made me as the clay; and wilt Thou bring me into dust again? Hast Thou not poured me out as milk and curdled me as cheese? Thou hast clothed me with skin and flesh, and fenced me with bones and sinews. Thou hast granted me life and favor, and Thy visitation hath preserved my spirit. Job 10:8-12.
36. I will praise Thee, says David, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Marvelous are Thy works, and that my soul knoweth right well. My substance was not hid from Thee when I was made in secret and curiously wrought in the lowest parts of the earth. Thine eyes did see my substance yet being unperfect, and in Thy book all my members were written which in continuance were fashioned, when as yet there was none of them, Ps. 139:14-16.
37. In the Ecclesiastes of Solomon it is written: Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was, and the spirit to God, who gave it, Eccl. 12:7.
38. These passages clearly testify that God even since the Fall is the Creator of man, and creates his body and soul. Therefore corrupt man cannot, without any distinction, be sin itself, otherwise God would be a creator of sin; as also our Small Catechism confesses in the explanation of the First Article, where it is written: I believe that God has made me and all creatures, that He has given me my body and soul, eyes, ears, and all my members, my reason and all my senses, and still preserves them. Likewise in the Large Catechism it is thus written: This is what I believe and mean, that is, that I am a creature of God; that He has given and constantly preserves to me my body, soul, and life, members great and small, and all my senses, mind, and reason.
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51. Also, to avoid strife about words, aequivocationes vocabulorum, that is, words and expressions which are applied and used in various meanings, should be carefully and distinctly explained; as when it is said: God creates the nature of men, there by the term nature the essence, body, and soul of men are understood.”
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Romanists
Article
2000’s
Feser, Edward – pp. 516-19 in Immortal Souls: a Treatise on Human Nature Ref (Editiones Scholastica, 2024), pt. 4, ch. 11, pp. 518-19
“One one version [of traducianism], the soul derives form the bodies of the parents. But it is at best difficult to ee how something incorporeal could arise from something corporeal…
The other way to interpret traducianism is to hold that the oul derives from the souls of the parents… But it faces another problem. Again, for the reasons considered in chapter 8, the soul is simple or without parts. So how can one’s soul come from the souls of one’s parents? That would seem to require that a part of one’s fatehr’s soul and a part of one’s mother’s soul be passed down to their offspring. But, again, souls do not have parts. It would also seem to require that those parts be combined in order to make up the soul of the child. But souls cannot be made up of parts, because, once again, they lack parts.
So it seems that traducianism, on either interpretation, fails. Creationism is the alternative view that… God and the parents together produce the new human being…
…Hence, suppose that the existence of God can be independently established… Suppose it can also be established that only God can create something ex nihilo. And suppose that… it can be established that there is no way in principle for a soul to come into being except by being created ex nihilo. Then the appeal to divine action [in creating the soul] will by no means be either ad hoc or a “God of the gaps” explanation. It will be the only possible explanation. My own view is that it is indeed the only possible explanation.”
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Latin Articles
Early Church
Jerome – bk. 2 in Apologia adversus libros Rufini in PL 23:425–456
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Reformed
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1500’s
Zanchi, Jerome – pt. 3, bk. 2, ch. 5, ‘On the Origin of Souls’ in On the Works of the Six Days in Opera, 3:604–27 Zanchi also has a tract on the topic in the Latin book below.
Coler, Johann Jacob & Rudolph Hospinian – A Theological & Philosophical Question: Whether the Soul may be by Traduction, or is Daily Inspired From God [in Conceived Babies], out of Old & Recent Writings that have been Most Diligently Collected; Two Orations are Appended in the End, One on Whether the Entire Soul is Simultaneously in the Whole Body, or, on the Contrary, in What Part of it, According to the Opinion of Plato [who thought it was confined to the brain]; the Other on the Immortality of the Soul, by the Author, Rudolph Hospinian of Zurich (Zurich, 1586) For the beginning of Hospinian’s orations, see p. 30.
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1600’s
Voet, Gisbert – 53. ‘Of the Propagation of Original Sin’ in Select Theological Disputations (Utrecht: Waesberg, 1648), vol. 1, pp. 1078-1118
Baron, Robert – The Second Exercise, on the Origin of the Soul & the Propagation of Sin, in which the Common View is Explained & Defended, & All the Ways in which Others Explain the Passing Down [Traductionem] of Souls & the Propagation of Sin are Confuted in Philosophy Serving Theology, that is, a Pius & Sober Explication of Philosophical Questions Occurring Occassionally in Theological Disputations (Oxford, 1641) ToC
Baron (1596–1639) was one of the Scottish Aberdeen doctors, in the reformed tradition, and here argues for Creationism.
“Man truly begets man, although the soul is created by God, not because he only bestows him a body, nor because he prepares the body for receiving the soul… but because from the man who begets comes the very action by which the rational soul is substantially united to the body, and begins to inform, inhabit, and fill the whole material of the body. Thus in our opinion, the begetting of man is located in that action by which, through prolific virtue, the soul is joined by an essential bond to the body.” – p. 84
Heidegger, Johann Heinrich – A Theological Disputation on the Origin of the Human Soul (Zurich, 1677) 10 pp.
Heidegger (1633-1698) was a reformed professor of theology at Steinfurt and Zurich.
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Latin Book – Reformed
ed. Goclenius, Rudolph – Psychologia, that is, of the Perfection of Man with Respect to the Soul & the Rise of it in the First Man [or Parents], Commentaries & Disputations of Some Theologians & Philosophers of our Age (Marburg, 1594) ToC This work is a compilation of 12 tracts from Junius, Gryneus, Colerus, Hunnius, Hospinian, Goclenius, et al.
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Traducianism
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On the Early Church
Quote
Lindsey Disney & Larry Poston, ‘When Does Human Life Begin? Conception & Ensoulment’ Anglican Theological Review 92:2 (Spring, 2010), pp. 275-76
“Traducianism. The doctrine of Traducianism teaches that the
‘soul’ is present in both the sperm and the egg when they unite.
The combination forms a new ‘soul’ automatically and immediately… Tertullian (c.160–c.225), for instance, wrote that ‘we allow that life begins with conception, because we contend that the soul also begins from conception; life taking its commencement at the same moment and place that the soul does.’¹
¹ Tertullian, “A Treatise on the Soul,” in The Ante-Nicene Fathers, vol. 3, ed. A. Roberts, J. Donaldson, and A. C. Coxe (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1980), 27.
Clement of Alexandria presented a much more detailed description:
‘The embryo is a living thing; for that the soul entering into the womb after it has been by cleansing prepared for conception, and introduced by one of the angels who preside over generation, and who knows the time for conception, moves the woman to intercourse; and that, on the seed being deposited, the spirit, which is in the seed, is, so to speak, appropriated, and is thus assumed into conjunction in the process of formation.’²
² Clement of Alexandria, “Excerpts of Theodotus,” in Roberts, Ante-Nicene Fathers, 50.
The Traducianist view was also held by Gregory of Nyssa (335 –
c. 394) and Maximus the Confessor (c. 580 – 662). The latter’s argument was based on the example of Christ, who had been pronounced by the Ecumenical Church councils to be fully human and fully divine from the first moment of his conception—implying that he possessed a spiritual soul from that instant. If, as the Bible teaches, Christ was like us (humans) in all things except for sin, then it must be true that all human beings receive a spiritual soul at conception as well.³
³ Cited in David Albert Jones, “The Appeal to the Christian Tradition in the Debate about Embryonic Stem Cell Research,” Islam and Christian–Muslim Relations
(July 2005): 274.”
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Reformed
English
Shedd, William G.T. –
Clark, Gordon –
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Latin
Sohn, George – Exegesin praecipuorum articulorum Augustanae Confessionis in Opera, 3 vols., 2nd ed. (Herborn: Christoph Rab, 1598), 2:564
Georg Sohn (c. 1552–1589)
Peucer, Caspar, “De essentia, natura, et ortu animi hominis” in a collection of treatises by Rodolphus Goclenius, Sr., ΨΥΧΟΛΟΓΙΑ, hoc est, de hominis perfectione, animo, et imprimis ortu hujus (Marburg: Paul Egenolphus, 1597), 242–68
Peucer (1525–1562)
Combach, Johannes – ch. 2, ‘De anima humana: circa animam humanam quatuor potissimum sunt dubia: substantia ejus, ordo ad hominem, ortus et operandi modus’ in Liber de Homine (Marburg: Rodolph Hutwecker, 1620), 19–52
Combach (1585–1651)
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Lutheran
English
Gerhard, Johann – Theological Common Places: On Creation & Angels…On the image of God in Man before the Fall (St. Louis, Mo.: Concordia, 2013)
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Latin
Johann Gerhard, Loci theologici (Berlin: B. Schlawitz, 1864), 2:131–2
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That All Souls were Created in Adam, in an Inactive State, till they are Joined to their Bodies & Born
This view is not recommended.
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Articles
1700’s
Witherspoon, John – pp. 127-28 in Lecture 14, ‘Of the Covenant of Works…’ in The Works of John Witherspoon... (d. 1794; Edinburgh: 1805), vol. 8
Witherspoon (1723-1794) was a Scottish-American presbyterian minister, educator, farmer and a founding father of the United States.
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1800’s
Green, Ashbel – pp. 267-69 in Lectures on the Shorter Catechism… Addressed to Youth (Philadelphia: Presbyterian Board of Education), vol. 1, Lecture 16 Green block quotes John Witherspoon’s article above.
Green (1762–1848) was an American, northern presbyterian minister and academic, who had studied under John Witherspoon at the College of New Jersey (later Princeton University).
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