(This article also includes a podcast discussion. Click the play button below, or subscribe and listen on your Apple or Google podcast app.)
This final option for where the soul comes from will sound odd, even by Christian standards.
Instead of God being an active participant, either creating the soul or grabbing one from His “soul bank,” this option believes that God uses the birds and the bees to accomplish His goal. It argues that God uses human reproduction to create not only new bodies, but new souls as well. Stick with this until the end, then decide if it sounds like a legitimate option or just a theory cooked up in Las Vegas.
When two sinners love each other very much
Despite not being well-known in modern Christianity, what we’re about to discuss has been taught since 200 AD (most popularly by Tertullian). The fancy word for this view is “Traducianism,” (click here to hear it pronounced) and isn’t nearly as complicated as the word makes it sound.
Just as a man and woman are responsible for half of their child’s physical DNA, they are also each responsible for half of their child’s spiritual DNA. In other words, the sperm and egg have a spiritual component attached to them. Thus when a physical body is formed, the soul is likewise formed by this act of reproduction.
Support for Traducianism
Interestingly, the same Bible verses that support creationism are also used to argue for Traducianism. Let’s look at some specific areas of the Bible, then examine some important things that this view answers.
One-time soul creation
God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. (Genesis 1:27)
Then the Lord God formed man of dust from the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being. (Genesis 2:7)
It’s clear that God hand-crafted Adam and Eve on the sixth day of creation, giving them their souls. God rested from His creation on the seventh day. From that point on, there’s never any indication that God performs another act of creation. God made Adam “in His own image,” but we never see God make a creature in His own image again.
We know that humans are unique in that they are the only creation that is both physical and spiritual, with each aspect working together to make us who we are. We aren’t just a collection of biological material, nor are we simply spirits riding around in a vehicle made of flesh and bone. A full and complete human being is both body and soul.
We also know that God created things to reproduce after their own kind, perfectly setting His creation to be self-sufficient in its reproduction (though still being dependent on Christ to sustain everything). By God’s design, two squirrels reproduce to make a complete squirrel and two humans reproduce to make a full human. Thus it makes sense that our souls, one-half of who we are, would also be part of our reproduction of smaller humans.
This is further supported when Adam and Eve have children.
When Adam had lived one hundred and thirty years, he became the father of a son in his own likeness, according to his image, and named him Seth. (Genesis 5:3)
Notice that the language here mirrors Adam’s own creation. Yet instead of God creating man in His own image, Adam’s image is formed in his son.
Born cursed
Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, And in sin my mother conceived me. (Psalm 51:5)
The biggest flaw with soul creationism (God creating souls and putting them in bodies) is that it makes this verse support an old heresy called Gnosticism. You may remember that this heresy believes that spiritual things are pure and good, while physical ones are evil and corrupt. We discussed how creationism requires that God create a perfect soul that gets ruined when it enters a physical body. It’s a difficult issue for that view to handle.
However, Traducianism cleanly answers this by explaining why we are born with the curse of sin upon us. Just as we inherit a parent’s physical traits, we also inherit their spiritual ones. Parents may notice that their children seem to inherit their sinful qualities, with things like anger or lying seeming to last for generations in a family. Above all, this would explain where we get our sin nature.
It makes sense that we are born with the guilt of sin if we inherit it from our parents. We may not have originally disobeyed God, but the taint of sin has attached itself to our spiritual DNA, and is thus passed on to each generation. This combats the idea that our souls are pure and good by showing that sin’s devastating effects reach everything.
In our ancestors’ loins
And, so to speak, through Abraham even Levi, who received tithes, paid tithes, for he was still in the loins of his father when Melchizedek met him. (Hebrews 7:9-10)
Here we see the idea that, although we don’t exist before our birth, we are still represented by our ancestors. In the ancient writer’s limited understanding of science, God may have inspired these words as an understanding of how our spiritual DNA can be traced back to previous generations just as easily as our physical DNA.
(Some have also used the “sins of the father” idea from Exodus 20:5 to show that sinful traits are passed down to generations. The context of the verse may not support this, but it’s worth considering that a parent’s sinful decision to abuse their children or give in to addictions can create a pattern in their family unless Christ’s saving power intervenes).
Christ’s virgin birth explained
A mystery we may never understand is why Christ was born of a virgin. God certainly didn’t make the decision flippantly – in His perfect will and understanding, God entered the world in that specific way for a very specific reason. Traducianism may explain why.
For as through the one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners, even so through the obedience of the One the many will be made righteous. (Romans 5:18)
Although we’re responsible for our individual sins, the father is often a representative of his family. We are considered guilty of Adam’s sin because he represented all of us, and because of his choice we are all under the curse and guilt of sin. We need a savior from our personal sin, but our personal sin exists because of our inherited sin nature.
The reason Christ can fully pay for the sins of His people is because He was debt-free. Christ could take our punishment because He had no punishment of His own to pay for. If Christ carried the guilt of any of His own sins, then He would be an imperfect savior because the Father would have to punish Christ’s sin, leaving us to pay for our own.
However, Christ didn’t have personal sin, nor did He have a sin nature inherited from Adam. He had a human nature, but one that was perfect and uncorrupted. If God views the father as the head of a family, then it would make sense that our sin nature is an inheritance from our physical fathers. Thus if Christ had a human mother, although she was still a sinner like all of us, He wouldn’t inherit the original sin of Adam because Jesus didn’t have the DNA of an earthly father.
In other words, Christ had to be born of a virgin so that a human father couldn’t pass on the guilt of Adam’s original sin. By being completely sinless, He could take on our sins and pay for them in our place.
(As a side note, this may also explain why Satan had to tempt Adam, Eve, and Jesus directly. By not having sin natures, they required an exterior force to make sin appealing to them. Where Adam and Eve failed to honor God in all things, Christ obeyed perfectly.)
Weaknesses of Traducianism
Like all things not clearly taught in the Bible, there are some weaknesses to this understanding of the soul.
Eve’s soul
Although God gave Adam his soul when He breathed into him, we must ask where Eve got her soul. We only see evidence of God breathing into Adam and setting creation up to continue His design of reproduction. Eve was formed from Adam, yet we don’t see that she was given a soul.
Does the ability to form a soul exist specifically in the reproductive organs, or does Eve’s creation from a rib mean that we carry this ability everywhere? Are souls only formed through reproduction because it’s the only act we’re capable of that forms a new being from our DNA, while God formed Eve using DNA from another part? This isn’t an outright denial of Traducianism but does present questions worth asking.
Can souls be divided?
Although beyond the scope of this article, there’s a historical understanding that the soul is “simple,” as opposed to being composed of several parts. In other words, a soul is a single thing that cannot be divided. If the soul is a mixture of a mother’s and father’s own spiritual DNA, then it’s only reasonable that the soul could be divided as easily as a DNA molecule can be dismantled and seen for its individual parts. Although this view can still allow for souls to be “simple,” it makes more sense that a soul made from two sources would, at the very least, be a mixture of two different things.
Nature vs nurture
One piece of evidence people point to is that children seem to carry their parent’s traits. Whether it’s sin like anger and addiction, or good qualities like compassion and patience, children seem to carry some spiritual similarities to their parents.
However, this brings up the classic debate on whether a person is formed by their life experiences or whether they are destined to be the way they are. In other words, is a child angry because they are born that way, or are they angry because they’ve learned to behave that way from parents, friends, and other things they’ve experienced? Under a Traducian understanding of the soul, it’s difficult to argue against us choosing our sins if we inherit them from our father.
An unfair inheritance
The previous weakness gets especially tricky when we start asking questions about our own guilt before God. Do we really inherit Adam’s actual guilt, or are we just prone to sin because of him? In other words, is it fair that God holds us responsible for something we never did?
The creationism view allows us to be guilty of our own sins. Even Psalm 51:5 can be explained away, making us stand guilty only for those specific acts we do when we’re mature enough to understand right and wrong.
(This may also bring up questions about what happens to babies who die. If they are guilty of Adam’s sin, does God hold that against them? You can read a thorough discussion of that subject by clicking here.)
Final thoughts on Traducianism and the soul in general
There’s no perfect theory for the soul’s origin. The only two that seek to get their truth from the Bible are creationism and Traducianism. Both are believed by Christians who want to honor God by making God’s word their highest authority, and both beliefs have wonderful strengths and weaknesses.
As you ponder your own beliefs, make it your goal to hold the belief that stays true to the Bible. Don’t hold to creationism because it’s a comfortable, easy, or more popular understanding. Likewise, don’t believe in Traducianism because for its novelty or because it feeds our culture’s desire to go against popular beliefs. I hope you’ll be a good student of God’s word and study both views for yourself, being open to both as you seek to honor Christ above all else.
Yet whatever our belief about the soul, one thing always remains clear: we all desperately need a savior. In that way, what we believe about the soul is a secondary issue. It’s an interesting discussion, and either belief will impact how we interpret other areas of the Bible. However, this will never be a topic that should hurt our unity as we all seek to tell others about the only savior for their soul, Jesus Christ.
Check out part 1 and part 2 of this series
[Originally published 1-3-20]
