There are any number of theological questions that manage, at one and the same time, to elicit arguments and yet create no division. These are issues over which both sides, while disagreeing on the issue at hand agree that the issue at hand is both not easy to solve, and not all that important. John Calvin once sagely said about speculative theology, “Where the Lord has determined to be silent I will refrain from inquiry.”
While we affirm that the Bible is clear, we acknowledge that some things are more clear than others. The answer to this question scores pretty low on the clear scale. There are, historically, two perspectives on the issue. The slightly less common view is called traducianism. It holds that the creation of a human soul is as natural as the creation of the human body, that conception itself is the immediate cause of both body and soul. This view has two advantages over its competitor, both of which take us back to the beginning. First, it honors the principle that God has rested from the work of creation. The first six days, Genesis tells us, were morning and evening. The seventh day has no such description, suggesting that in some sense we are still in the seventh day and that God, while ruling actively through His providence, is no longer creating.
Second, it makes the doctrine of original sin just a tad easier to swallow. If souls come about naturally, just as Levi was in the loins of Abraham when he paid a tithe to Melchizedek, so were we all in the loins of Adam at the fall, and so his guilt becoming ours is that much more clear.
The more common view is the creationist view which holds that souls are immediately created by the hand of God. This view affirms a different form of continuity between Adam and the rest of humanity. Instead of future generations branching off Adam, creationism has each of our souls being made by an act of God just as Adam’s was. God breathed life into Adam. He does the same for us. In addition the creationist view better reflects the language of Psalm 139:13, “For You created my innermost parts; You wove me in my mother’s womb.”
I suspect the debates on this question continue for two reasons. First, people interested in such things love to debate. Second, there are implications or tendencies for each view that could conceivably lead someone astray. The former view is stronger in affirming the unity of body and soul, the latter tending a bit more to the error of seeing men as souls in bodies rather than what we truly are, souls and bodies. The latter view is stronger in seeing God active and at work, the former mildly veiling the glory of God’s work in making us.
If we are careful to affirm that God is at work, that all men begin their existence tainted by sin, that God is not guilty over the previous truth, that Jesus is fully God and fully man, like us in every way yet without sin, that all men are stamped with the image of God, then either position is safe and should be seen as such by those adopting the other position. The danger in this debate is less that we will end up embracing some kind of grievous error, more that we will swell up with foolish pride. The solution is to remember that the important truth is that He is our Maker, and for those in Christ, our redeemer and Father.
