When it comes to the origin of the world, all Christians are creationists. After all, nothing in Scripture is more basic than the teaching that God created the entire universe (“the heavens and the earth”). But what if I told you there is another sense in which not all Christians are creationists? Well, it’s true. When it comes to the particular question of the origin of human souls after Adam, creationism refers to a distinct view that is opposed to another view called traducianism. Proponents of both views are creationists with respect to the broader question of the origin of the world, but they disagree about the origin of individual human souls. If people are composed (at least) of a body and a soul, where do their souls come from?
You may be starting to think this all sounds very confusing. Indeed, the question of the origin of souls is a difficult one that requires precise definitions and carefully delineated categories of thought. It is also a question that Scripture does not address directly, which leaves some to wonder why the issue really matters at all. It’s a fair point, but we are wise to remember that Scripture can pressure us to ask questions it doesn’t clearly raise by speaking to issues that are closely related to those questions. That is, even if an issue is not addressed directly in Scripture, it may be addressed indirectly so that people seeking to understand sound doctrine according to Scripture will need to wrestle with it. Such is the case with the question of the origin of human souls after Adam. It is good for us to be attentive to Scripture, and it is Scripture that is pressuring us to give an account of the origin of souls.
The goal of this essay is to define creationism and traducianism, give a bit of a historical overview of the proponents of the respective positions, and then help readers sort through the biblical and theological issues that impact or are impacted by one’s view to this question. The final section of the essay will consider the most pressing doctrinal issue related to the origin of human souls: the doctrine of original sin.
Definitions and Historical Considerations
Concerning the origin of the soul, there are two opposing views held by Christian theologians throughout church history—traducianism and creationism.[1]
1. Some patristic and medieval writers (e.g., Augustine, Jerome, and Aquinas) identify four possible views on the origin of human souls: (1) pre-existence of souls in heaven prior to their embodiment; (2) souls derived from the very substance of God rather than being created; (3) creationism; and (4) traducianism. The first two were recognized as heretical early on. Hence, through most of church history, creationism and traducianism are regarded as the only viable options for the Christian.
Traducianism is the view that a soul is made from the soul(s) of one or both parents simultaneous with the material body’s formation at conception, such that the entire composite human nature of each person (i.e., both the body and the soul) since Adam and Eve is propagated (Latin, traducem) by the parents.
Creationism is the view that each soul is immediately created by God ex nihilo (out of nothing) at the moment of conception[2] and combined with the material body to form the composite human nature of each individual person.
2. See Jeff Beaupre’s recent Christ Over All article for an argument that the soul (and the image of God) is given at the moment of conception.
From the outset, it is important to note that both views affirm that God created Adam’s soul ex nihilo in the beginning.[3] The debate is only about the souls of Adam’s descendants. It should also be observed that both views affirm that God is the Creator of all souls. The question is whether God creates post-Adamic souls immediately and ex nihilo or mediately and the from the substance of parental souls.
3. Darwinian evolutionists who wish to claim Christianity may hold to a kind of traducianism that denies the original creation of the human soul ex nihilo. Bound up with this view is the denial of the real, personal existence of an historical Adam. Such a view is Christian in name only. It is so diametrically opposed to the entire message of Scripture that it does not merit attention in this essay. My focus here is on views that are within the bounds of basic Christian orthodoxy, which necessarily includes a literal Adam who experienced an historical fall.
Historically, the creationist view is the majority position across various Christian theological traditions, including the Reformed tradition. It has not, however, risen to the level of confessional consensus in the ecumenical creeds nor in the Reformed confessions. The majority of the church fathers who addressed the question argued for creationism, but many had nothing to say on the matter. Most cite Tertullian as the first Christian theologian to argue explicitly for traducianism in his Treatise on the Soul.[4] Early in his career, Augustine seems to have seen the question of the origin of the soul as bearing only minimal theological significance.[5] Once the Pelagian controversy heated up, however, he was inclined to the traducian view as the one that best accounted for the transmission of original sin. In the end, however, Augustine remained undecided on the issue.[6] The vast majority of medieval theologians held to the creationist view (see, e.g., Thomas Aquinas[7]). After the Reformation, the Lutheran tradition tended to favor the traducian position (see, e.g., Johann Gerhard[8]) while the majority of Reformed thinkers were convinced creationists (e.g., Turretin,[9] C. Hodge,[10] Bavinck,[11] and Berkhof[12]). Traducianism, however, is not without its advocates in the Reformed tradition (e.g., A. H. Strong,[13] William G. T. Shedd,[14] and Gordon Clark[15]).
4. See Tertullian, “A Treatise on the Soul” in Ante-Nicene Fathers, ed. and trans. Philip Schaff, Vol 3: Latin Christianity: Its Founder, Tertullian.
5. Augustine wrote De Libero Abritrio (385–395 A.D.) in which he outlines several possible philosophical options for the origin of souls. His point is simply to say that none of them rules out the facts of the soul’s immortality and immateriality, nor does any of the views exonerate man from his own guilt in sin. He would later say that he had no interest in resolving the question at the time of writing this work.
6. In Letter 166 to Jerome (415 A.D.), Augustine asks Jerome to defend a creationist position, for Augustine himself claims ignorance on the matter and a desire to be instructed. In the letter, Augustine advances multiple arguments for traducianism and requests that Jerome refute them and show him why the creationist view is correct. While it is clear that Augustine was inclined toward the traducian view, there is no evidence that he ever firmly embraced either position. See Augustine, “Letter 166” in The Works of Saint Augustine: Letters 156–210, ed. and trans. Ronald Teske, S. J. (Hyde Park, NY: New City Press, 2004), 77–93.
7. See Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, Shapcote, I. 90. A.2.
8. See Johann Gerhard, Theological Commonplaces, ed. Benjamin T. G. Mayes and Joshua Hayes, trans. Richard J. Dinda (St. Louis: Concordia, 2013) Vol 1: On Creation and Predestination.
9. See Francis Turretin, Institutes of Elenctic Theology, 3 vols., trans. George Musgrave Giger, ed. James T. Dennison, Jr. [Philipsburg, NJ: P&R, 1992], Vol 1: 477–482.
10. See Charles Hodge, Systematic Theology (Grand Rapids: Hendrickson, 1981), Vol 2: 70–72.
11. See Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, 4 vols., ed. John Bolt, trans. John Vriend (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2004), Vol 2: God and Creation: 580–88.
12. See Louis Berkhof, Systematic Theology, 2nd Ed. (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 2021), 196–202.
13. See Augustus H. Strong, Systematic Theology, 3 vols. (Philadelphia: American Baptist Publication Society), Vol. 2: 488–497.
14. See William G. T. Shedd, Dogmatic Theology, 4 vols., 2nd ed. (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1980)Vol 2: 3–94.
15. See Gordon Clark, “Traducianism,” The Trinity Review, 1982.
Theological Methodology for a Philosophical Question
The question of the origin of souls is a philosophical one for which no clear answer is given in Scripture. This accounts for the lack of definitive consensus among Christian thinkers through the ages and should give us a sense of humility and charity as we approach the issue. But if this is so, why has such focused attention been given to this issue historically and why would we trouble ourselves with it today? Several observations are in order.
First, Christians should not despise explicitly philosophical questions. Rather, we should be willing and eager to gain understanding of the world God has made insofar as reason and available data permit. The Scriptures tell us that the one true God made the world and everything in it (Gen 1:1), and they further tell us that God has made mankind in his image and commanded him to take dominion over creation (Gen. 1:28). Philosophy is the disciplined use of reason to gain understanding of the world God has made, and it is one of the principal ways that rational creatures take dominion over creation.
Second, we should note that Scripture itself pressures us to elevate some philosophical considerations over others. The degree to which philosophical questions should be elevated in importance for the Christian is determined by the proximity the question has to the clear teaching of Scripture. At the highest level, the disciplined use of our reason and the appropriation of terms from precise philosophical schools of thought is a matter of articulating the very teaching of the words of Scripture itself. False teachers or merely confused readers may ascribe a meaning to the biblical language that is contrary to the meaning actually conveyed by the words. In such cases, extra-biblical terminology is useful for the safeguarding of biblical truth. Often, it is terms whose precision has been finely honed in philosophical discourse that prove adequate for the task. As an example, look no further than the consistent and confessional use of philosophically precise and readily available terms like nature, being, substance, and subsistence in the doctrine of the Trinity. At a secondary level, there are cases in which Scripture does not address a philosophical question directly in its own terms, but it does directly address matters that are closely related to the question. In such cases, clearly revealed biblical truth regulates our philosophical reasoning by setting fixed boundaries and commending the plausibility of a possible solution according to its coherence with the truth of Scripture.
The question of the origin of souls belongs to this secondary level of philosophical reasoning. Whether one is a creationist or traducianist is not itself a test for orthodoxy. How one construes a creationist or traducianist account, however, is still important because how one answers this question will have implications for other clearly revealed doctrines. In the next section, I will address several key biblical and theological points that must be navigated in thinking through the origin of souls, suggesting ways that advocates of either position might articulate their view so as not to transgress clear doctrinal boundaries set down by Scripture. In the final section, I will give more sustained attention to how this debate relates to the most significant doctrine adjacent to it—the doctrine of original sin.
Theological Significance of the Origin of Souls
Significance of the Completion of Creation and God’s Rest
The opening line of the creation week narrative is among the most widely recognized sentences in all of Scripture: “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth” (Gen. 1:1). Creation week concludes with the words,
Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them. And on the seventh day God finished his work that he had done, and he rested on the seventh day from all his work that he had done. So God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it God rested from all his work that he had done in creation (Gen. 2:1–3).
The correspondence of key words and phrases in these opening and closing sections form an inclusio indicating the unity of the account. In Gen. 1:1, we have the phrase, “God created” (bārāʾ ʾᵉlōhim). At the end of 2:3, we see the exact same Hebrew expression (bārāʾ ʾᵉlōhim) though the translation into English masks the exact repetition. Also repeated is the phrase “the heavens and the earth” (Gen. 1:1, 2:1). In addition to the repetition of these phrases, there is an important contrast to be observed. Genesis 1:1 uses the phrase “in the beginning” to signal the start of God’s creative work, while Genesis 2:1–3 uses the word “finished” twice to describe the end of God’s creative activity. Thus, God’s rest is not to be understood as a period of divine recuperation from hard labor—he does not grow tired or weary after all—but as the cessation (rest) from his work of special creation. This text is the principal basis for the theological distinction between God’s acts of providence (his ongoing work in the world he has made) and creation (his work to bring into being the world and all that it contains).
Traducianists allege that the creationist view of the origin of souls undermines the significance of the completion of God’s act of creation and his entering into his rest. If God continually creates a new soul at every moment of conception, then has he really ceased from his work of special creation? Both sides agree that creating new individuals of already existing kinds belongs to the category of providence, rather than creation, properly speaking. Nevertheless, the creationist contends that every single human soul since Adam was brought into being out of nothing, just as the souls of Adam and Eve were during the week of creation. Thus, to the traducianist, the clear biblical teaching that God’s special work of creation is completed at the end of creation week is undermined by the creationist position.[16]
16. In protest against the creationist view, traducianist Augustus H. Strong asserts, “Only once is breathed into man’s nostrils the breath of life (2:7, cf. 22; 1 Cor. 11:8. Gen. 4:1; 5:3; 46:26; cf. Acts 17:21–26; Heb. 7:10), and after man’s formation God ceases from his work of creation (Gen. 2:2)” (Strong, Systematic Theology, Vol 2: 494).
Creationists reply that the completion of special creation and God’s entering his rest means that he no longer brings into existence the kind of thing that had no previous existence. Thus, while each soul is created ex nihilo, each soul does not represent a new kind of substance, only a new individual instance of the already-created kind. Thus, the creationist maintains that, in their position, the biblically demanded distinction between creation and providence is preserved.[17]
17. Creationist Francis Turretin avers, “Now the souls which he creates every day are new individuals of species already created” (Turretin, Institutes, Vol 1: 481).
Relation of Adam’s Creation to the Creation of His Posterity
Moses tells us, “The Lord God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature” (Gen. 2:7). Most Christians throughout history have identified God’s act of breathing into Adam as the creation of his immaterial soul. Adam’s body is made from pre-existent matter, namely dust, and his soul is created directly by God. For creationists, this text sets the paradigm for the formation of every individual human soul. Just as the nuptial union of the first man and woman at the end of the chapter sets the paradigm for every subsequent marriage (Gen. 2:24), so the creation of the body and soul of Adam sets the paradigm for the formation of every subsequent human person.[18]
18. Turretin makes this argument and refers to it as “the law of creation” (Institutes, Vol 1: 477–78).
The traducianist replies that the creation of Adam from the dust of the ground represents a unique mode of activity in the creation of a human body. Only Adam was formed from dust. All others were formed from the substance of their parents. Since the creation of Adam’s body is universally recognized to be unique in some way, why shouldn’t the creation of Adam’s soul be unique to him as the first human being created? Thus, traducianists agree with creationists that Adam’s soul was specially created ex nihilo, but they contest the claim that this is paradigmatic for the rest of humanity.
Whether the creation of Adam’s soul is paradigmatic for other human souls informs how another key biblical text is understood. In Ecclesiastes 12:7, Solomon describes death in the present age: “[T]he dust returns to the earth as it was, and the spirit returns to God who gave it.” In this text, Solomon is saying that death represents a return of each part of one’s nature to the “place” of its origin. The spirit, which most understand as a reference to the immaterial soul, returns to God because it is directly given by God. This has long been seen as a classic prooftext for the creationist view.
The traducianist contends that this verse is not, in fact teaching the creationist view of the soul.[19] He contends that Solomon is alluding to the creation of Adam in his declaration that the respective destinies of body and soul immediately after death correspond to their origins. After all, it is only Adam’s body that is directly created from the earth. Thus, the reference to the spirit being given by God likely also has Adam in view. While the words refer to human death generally, it is only in view of the creation of Adam that Solomon’s poetic description of death can be properly applied to others. Subsequent human bodies have their origin in the earth indirectly because the first man has his origin in the earth directly. The soul’s return to God is understood in the same way. Individual, post-Adamic souls return to God, not the earth, because Adam’s soul, from whom all souls are descended, is directly from God.
19. Somewhat humorously, Augustine relieves Jerome of the burden of citing this text as a prooftext for creationism since Augustine sees it as teaching nothing of the sort. After giving his own interpretation of the verse, Augustine says, “I only thought that I should warn Your Prudence not to try to rescue me from these difficulties by such testimonies” (“Letter 166,” 91–92).
Immateriality of the Human Soul
Another important issue regulating the creationist-traducianist debate is the immateriality of the soul. The Scriptures teach that human nature is a composite of material and immaterial substance. The material substance is the body while the soul is immaterial. We have already seen the distinct way in which God formed the body of Adam compared with how he formed his soul (Gen. 2:7). The body, being made of pre-existent material (dust), is material. The soul, on the other hand, had to be created ex nihilo by God because it is an immaterial rational substance designed for union with the physical part of human nature. As immaterial, Adam’s soul could not have been created out of any material, and since there was as yet no immaterial substance out of which it could be made, Adam’s soul must have been created ex nihilo. In Scripture, the non-bodily part of human nature is called “the inner man” (2 Cor. 4:16), “the heart” (Prov. 17:22; Matt. 12:34; etc.), “the hidden person of the heart” (1 Pet. 3:4), and “the mind” (Rom. 7:22–25). These designations suggest immateriality by the imagery of being internal to the body and constituting the principle of rationality. Another designation for this part of human nature is “spirit” (Rom. 1:9; 1. Cor 2:11). This term clearly names an immaterial reality in Scripture. When the risen Jesus appeared to his followers, they believed they were seeing a mere spirit, but Jesus said, “See my hands and my feet, that it is I myself. Touch me, and see. For a spirit does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have” (Luke 24:39, emphasis added). Spirit is a term used to designate both God (John 4:24) and angels (Heb. 1:14), who are explicitly identified as invisible (and thus immaterial) in Scripture (1 Tim. 1:17 and Col. 1:16, respectively). Perhaps the strongest testimony to the reality of an immaterial part of human nature is the biblical teaching regarding the intermediate state between death in the present age and resurrection in the age to come. When people die, they will be immediately in the presence of Christ if redeemed or in torment if still in their sin, all while the material body returns to dust (Eccl. 12:7; Phil. 1:23; 2 Cor. 5:6–8; Luke 16:22–23).
The clarity with which Scripture teaches the duality of the material and the immaterial in human nature is demonstrated by the pervasiveness of this belief among Christians throughout history from all major traditions.[20] The duality of human nature finds explicit articulation in the Definition of Chalcedon (450 A.D.), the Athanasian Creed (6th Century A.D.), and many more confessions besides.[21] Nevertheless, the conceptual coherence of the relationship between the body and the soul remains a debate. It is to that discussion that we now turn.
20. I do not mean to rule out a trichotomist position on human nature here. Trichotomists also believe in the duality of material and immaterial in human nature. They add the further distinction that there are two immaterial parts of human nature.
21. The Definition of Chalcedon and the Athanasian Creed both state that the Son of God assumed a truly human nature. Such a true human nature, the ecumenical formulations tell us, includes both a physical body and a rational soul.
Creationists often lean into the challenge of the material/spiritual connection to argue for their view. If a soul is immaterial, then it is indivisible, since only material things are divisible (division just is the separation of some material from other material, like taking a chunk of bread from a whole loaf). An indivisible soul, they say, cannot propagate another distinct soul from its own substance. In order for this to happen, the soul would have to produce some seed from itself capable of becoming another soul. But this would require divisibility, which requires materiality. This kind of argumentation has led some creationists to accuse traducianists of believing the soul to be a material substance.[22]
22. Bavinck and Turretin both contend that consistent traducianism results in materialism. See Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, Vol 2: 581 and Turretin, Institutes of Elenctic Theology, Vol 1: 481.
The force of this argument is not lost on traducianists. They can reply, however, that explaining how the soul is propagated is not a burden their position bears. Anyone who holds to the material/spiritual duality of human nature, the creationist included, faces similar conundrums. For example, how can the immaterial soul interface with the human body at all? The soul is widely believed to be the seat of rationality, but we know that the exercise of one’s rational capacity is affected by the brain. What is the nature of this interrelationship? How can an immaterial substance produce a material effect? No one can know, because immaterial realities are unobservable. Still, Christians have not abandoned their position regarding the immateriality of the soul in the face of this difficulty because Scripture is so clear regarding the material/spiritual duality of human nature. Similarly, the traducianist can feel fully justified in holding his view in spite of his inability to account for how it might work, so long as his position on the propagation of souls makes the most sense of the revealed data.
Original Sin and the Origin of Souls
Arguably the most important biblically revealed doctrine that must regulate the creationist-traducianist debate is the doctrine of original sin. Simply put, original sin refers to the effect of Adam’s first sin (the primal sin) on his posterity. Scripture speaks of Adam’s sin affecting the rest of humanity in two distinct ways. First, all are regarded as guilty in Adam on account of his first sin (Rom. 5:18). Secondly, all people born after the fall are born corrupt in both body and soul (Rom. 5:12).[23]
23. Garry Williams rightly identifies three aspects of the doctrine of original sin: (1) primal sin is Adam’s transgression in the garden; (2) imputed sin is the “reckoning of Adam’s act” to us (i.e., guilt); (3) birth sin is the depravity of the heart that results from Adam’s sin (i.e., corruption). See Garry Williams, “Total Depravity and God’s Covenant with Adam (2): The Imputation of Adam’s Sin” in Ruined Sinners to Reclaim, ed. David Gibson and Jonathan Gibson (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2024), 592–632.
There have been various views concerning how original sin is transmitted from Adam to others. Generally speaking, there are two major positions: seminal transmission and federalism. On the seminal view, the entirety of original sin is transmitted by the “seed” of the father to the child. This was Augustine’s understanding of the transmission of original sin, as became clear in his anti-Pelagian writings. This remained the dominant understanding in Western Christianity for many centuries following Augustine. However, the seminal view has biblical and theological deficiencies which would not be broadly recognized and corrected until the Reformation. The seminal view is still the standard view in Roman Catholicism today.
Seminal Transmission
The seminal view of the transmission of original sin presents a peculiar challenge to the creationist understanding of the origin of souls. If every person is corrupt in both body and soul from the very beginning of his existence, then the creationist must explain how this does not implicate God as directly creating something that is corrupt and thereby sinful. Scripture is clear that everything God creates is very good and that sin, as a privation of divinely given goodness, is the direct result of creaturely rebellion: “God saw everything he had made, and behold, it was very good” (Gen. 1:31). It was this very difficulty that caused Augustine to waiver in his commitment to the creationist view and consider the traducian position.
Federalism
The federalist position can help the creationist with this conundrum to a point. In the Reformation and afterward, Protestant Christians, the Reformed in particular, began to recognize the fundamentally covenantal (federal) structure of Scripture’s teaching regarding all divine-human relationships, especially pertaining to sin and salvation. Scripture teaches that a person’s guilt in Adam bears a certain correspondence to his righteousness in Christ through justification (see Rom. 5:12–19 and 1 Cor. 15:20–23). Since no one is a descendant of Christ in the seminal sense (Christ has no biological children), his righteousness must be made ours in a different way. The Apostle Paul speaks of Christ’s righteousness as something “counted” (or imputed) to the sinner through faith in Christ. Like Abraham before us, our faith is counted as righteousness (Rom. 4:1–5). This transaction, which Scripture calls justification, is covenantal (federal) in nature. As the head of the New Covenant, the Lord Jesus Christ acts on behalf of all his covenant people so that his acts of obedience count for them.[24] In other words, the righteousness of Christ is not seminally transmitted to believers; it is federally imputed to them as a legal declaration made by God. The federalism inherent to the biblical doctrine of justification helps us understand the transmission of Adam’s guilt in federalist terms as well. Adam was in a covenant with God in which he was the representative of the rest of humanity. When Adam sinned, his sin counted for the rest of us such that his guilt was imputed to all. All humans, by federal representation, are “in Adam” unless and until they believe in the Lord Jesus and are “in Christ.”
24. Belgic Confession, Article 15, “Original Sin.”
In terms of the guilt of Adam’s sin, therefore, the federalist creationist does not face the same problem as the seminalist creationist. Because Adam’s guilt is federally imputed rather than seminally infused, the direct acting responsibility for the guilt of subsequent souls is laid at the feet of Adam, not God. However, the creationist’s difficulty with the doctrine of original sin is not entirely resolved by a carefully articulated Reformed federalism because original sin involves both guilt and corruption. The corruption of human nature from conception onward is not only a federal imputation of guilt, but a very real and actual sinfulness that manifests itself in brokenness and the inevitability of ongoing acts of personal transgression. Even the innate desires of the heart are sinful from the start (Jer. 17:9; Ps 51:5). Since original sin involves a real, sinful corruption of the person in body and soul, the federalist creationist is still left with the peculiar challenge of denying that God created something that is corrupt and sinful, namely the soul of fallen man.
While major Reformed confessions speak of the guilt of Adam’s sin as federally imputed, they recognize that the corruption of Adam’s sin is organic, more analogous to hereditary illness or the relationship between root and fruit. Consider the Belgic Confession of Faith (1560):
We believe that through the disobedience of Adam original sin is extended to all mankind, which is a corruption of the whole nature and an hereditary disease, wherewith infants themselves are infected even in their mother’s womb, and which produceth in man all sorts of sin, being in him as a root thereof.[25]
25. Belgic Confession, Article 15, “Original Sin.”
The Synod of Dort (1619) speaks in a similar manner:
Man after the fall begat children in his own likeness. A corrupt stock produced a corrupt offspring. Hence all the posterity of Adam, Christ only excepted, have derived corruption from their original parent, not by imitation, as the Pelagians of old asserted, but by the propagation of a vicious nature.[26]
26. The Canons of the Synod of Dort, Second Head of Doctrine, Article 2.
Even later Reformed confessions with a more developed account of federalism speak of the transmission of guilt and corruption in notably distinct ways. Consider the Second London Baptist Confession of Faith (1689):
[Adam and Eve] being the root, and by God’s appointment, standing in the room, and stead of all mankind; the guilt of the Sin was imputed, and corrupted nature conveyed, to all their posterity descending from them by ordinary generation.[27]
27. 2LCF, VI. 3, emphasis added. Though the wording is slightly different, the Westminster Confession of Faith makes the same distinction in very similar terms (see WCF, VI.3).
The transmission of original sin’s corruption (and not just the guilt) fits quite naturally within a traducianist framework and is probably the most significant point of doctrine that prevents traducianists from siding with the majority view of creationism.[28] So, what is the creationist to do? It seems to me that a creationist can avoid the implication that God is the creator of sinful souls by suggesting that the original corruption of each soul is owing to the union of the soul with the material body. The material body, being procreated from the substance of parents, is corrupt by seminal transmission from the parents. The soul, though created by God without any corruption is immediately corrupted by its union with the body. Thus, the corruption is from Adam by way of parents, not directly from God. Whether one finds this explanation satisfactory will likely depend on other philosophical commitments, especially one’s understanding of the soul-body relation.[29] Nevertheless, the creationist can successfully maintain the inherent goodness of all that God directly creates by accounting for the original corruption of the soul in this way.
28. While I have avoided making a case for one position over another, choosing instead to help readers choose a position in light of clearly revealed truth, I am inclined to the traducianist view for this very reason.
29. If one holds to a Christian hylomorphism, in which the soul is the form of the body, this account may be less satisfactory since it seems to demand that the soul is somehow formed by the body rather than the other way around.
Conclusion
The question of the origin of human souls is a difficult one indeed. It is not a matter Scripture addresses directly, which accounts for the lack of consensus in most Christian traditions. Nonetheless, Scripture pressures its readers to consider the question by means of its teaching of the doctrine of creation, the doctrine of mankind’s solidarity with Adam, and the doctrine of the immateriality of human souls. Christians who are convinced that Scripture speaks coherently as God’s word will feel the pressure to give an account of the origin of human souls. Furthermore, this account must be consistent with other clearly taught biblical doctrines, the chief of which is the doctrine of original sin. While some accounts of creationism and traducianism fail to give adequate consideration to adjacent Christian doctrines, both accounts can be articulated in a responsible way that does not entail an undermining of clearly revealed truth.
