THERE was a great deal of consensus in the Early Church about the fate of human beings after death. Those who were saved by the grace of Christ would share in his resurrection when all rise from the dead at the end of time (John 11:23-6 and elsewhere). This was emphatically a bodily resurrection, but the body would be transformed or glorified. It would be, in the paradoxical words of Paul, a ‘spiritual body’ (soma pneumaticon: I Corinthians 15:1.1). “Those who had sinned and had not accepted forgiveness in Christ faced a far grimmer late. They would also be raised in the body (Daniel 12:2; John 5:28-9; Revelation 20:13) but in their case so as to be punished it the body with everlasting torment. Between the death of each individual and the end of the world, the soul would he disembodied, and in this state would await the general resurrection and its final reunion with the body.

    Immediately after death, even before the resurrection, the soul was believed to be subject to judgement and to experience the beginning of its reward or punishment. The immediacy of reward or punishment seemed to be implied by the parable of the rich man and Lazarus (Luke 16:19-31) and also by the words of Christ to the penitent thief on the cross, ‘Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in paradise’ (Luke 23:43). According to Josephus, this pattern of death as the separation of soul and body, followed by a period when the soul existed alone without the body, until the time when soul and body would be reunited in a resurrection, was also the view of the Pharisees (Jewish Wars 2, 154, 163; see Barr 1992, p. 44 n. 32). The same overall scheme was agreed by ancient Christian writers from Justin Martyr (Fragments on the Resurrection), Irenaeus (Against Heresies Book II, c. 34), Athenagoras (On the Resurrection of the Dead) and Tertullian (On the Resurrection of the Flesh) onwards.

    This confident consensus on the fate of the soul after death was in the sharpest contrast to early Christian uncertainty about the origin of the soul before birth. The writings of the New Testament were primarily concerned with human salvation through the person and action of Jesus. The focus was on the message of eternal life in and after this life and not specifically on how human life came to be. Neither did the writings of the Hebrew Scriptures contain clear and unequivocal teaching on the origin of the soul. The question of where, when and how the soul originated was a subject of speculation. The Early Church was divided between those who held that the soul was generated by the parents and those who held that it was given by God front outside, as it were. ‘But with respect to the soul, whether it is derived from the seed by a process of traducianism ... or whether bestowed upon the body from without ... is not distinguished with sufficient clearness in the teaching of the Church’ (Origen, On First Principles Preface 5).

    In assessing these alternatives Christians readily turned to philosophy. Plato’s account of the origin of the soul proved highly influential. In several of his dialogues (Meno, Phaedo, Phaedrus) Plato argued that the soul preexisted the body, so that its original and natural existence was not joined to a body. Its this separate state the soul was able to perceive truth directly without the hindrance of the senses. The soul was depicted mythically as a chariot pulled by winged horses. If it kept a clear vision of the truth it retained its wings and remained free, but if in struggling with other souls it lost hold of this vision it would lose its wings and fall to earth.

Thus when the soul is perfect and winged it journeys on high and controls the whole world, but one that has shed its wings sinks down until it can fasten on something solid, and settling there it takes to itself an earthy body which seems by reason of the soul’s power to move itself. The composite structure of the soul and body is called a living being and is further termed ‘mortal’ [...] (Phaedrus 246c)

    The union of body and soul was thus regarded not as natural or original but rather as the result of some failure on the part of the soul, a failue to follow the gods and see the whole of being. Furthermore, the extent of the failure of the disembodied soul was reflected in the state of life into which the soul was born, whether philosopher, king, statesman, physician, prophet, poet, artisan, sophist or tyrant (Phaedrus 248d-e). It thus helped to explain the cause and natural justice behind the diversity of states of life. The doctrine of the pre-existence of the soul was also used by Plato In his account of learning and of knowledge (Phaedo 74b-d; Meno 85c-86b) and to support his belief in the soul’s immortality.

    Among Greek-speaking Jewish writers in the centuries immediately preceding and subsequent to the birth of Jesus, Philo of Alexandria was by far the most strongly influenced by Plato, as reflected in his interpretation of Jacob’s dream in which angels ascend and descend on a ladder between earth and heaven (Genesis 28:12).

[The air is] like a populous city, it is full of imperishable and immortal citizens, souls equal in number to the stars. Now of these souls some descend upon the earth with a view to be bound up in mortal bodies, those namely which are most nearly connected with the earth, and which are lovers of the body. But some soar upwards, being again distinguished according to the definitions and times which have been appointed by nature. Of these, those which are influenced by a desire for mortal life, and which have been familiarised to it, again return to it. (On Dreams I. XXII, 137-9)

The passage clearly asserts some kind of pre-existence of the soul. More extraordinarily, it also seems to allude to reincarnation: ‘those which are influenced by a desire for mortal life and which have been familiarised to it, again return to it’. The passage goes oil to describe the body, again in the most Platonic terms, as both ‘a prison and a grave’ (On Dreams I. XXII, 139). Nevertheless, if Philo could be regarded as the Jewish Plato, he was far from alone among his Jewish contemporaries in positing some sort of pre-existence of the soul.

    The doctrine also seems to be implied in the hook of Wisdom, a Jewish work written in Greek, again probably in Alexandria, perhaps in the first century BCE. It was commonly included with the Septuagint translation of the Hebrew Scriptures and for this reason came to be included in the Catholic canon of the Old Testament. Here the writer, represented as King Solomon, described himself as entering into an undefiled body.

As a child I was naturally gifted,

and a good soul fell to my lot;

or rather, being good, I entered an undefiled body

(Wisdom 8:19-20)

This verse not only seems to give temporal priority to the soul, but also identifies the not-yet-embodied soul with the person, ‘I entered ...’ Later in the same work the author described the moment of death as when the human beings ‘go to the earth from which all mortals are taken, when the time comes to return the souls that were borrowed.’ (Wisdom 15:8). This echoed a well-known verse from the book of Ecclesiastes, ‘the dust returns to the earth as it was, and the spirit returns to God who gave it’ (Ecclesiastes 12:7). If the soul was said to return to God after death, did this imply that the soul dwelt with God before entering a body? Was it returning to a state in which it existed before birth?

    According to Josephus, the sect of the Essenes (now commonly associated with the community of Qumran by the Dead Sea) also believed in the pre-existence of souls: ‘Emanating from the finest ether, these souls become entangled, as it were, in the prison house of the body, to which they are dragged down by a sort of natural spell’ (Jewish Wars 2:151). The language here is unmistakeably Platonic, but Josephus may have been presenting the views of the Essenes in a way familiar to Greek-speakers.

    The Dead Sea Scrolls, if indeed these were Essene writings, do not contain any clear reference to the pre-existence of souls. However, in several places (especially in the Hymns of Thanksgiving) they do show a pronounced emphasis on God’s foreknowledge and predestination. The link between a strong doctrine of divine foreknowledge and a concept of pre-existence can be seen in Jewish apocalyptic works of the same period. In one example, God shows Abraham a picture of the divine plan in which everything that will come to exist already has existence. When Abraham asks about one group of people in the picture he is told, ‘these are the ones I have prepared to be born of you and to be called my people’  (Apocalypse of Abraham 22.5). Another allusion to the pre-existence, again closely associated with divine foreknowledge, occurs in the Book of Enoch, ‘Sit and write all the souls of mankind, however many of them are born, and the places prepared for them to eternity; for all souls are prepared to eternity, before the formation of the world’ (Slavonic Book of Enoch 23:2). In these passages the primary theological point is that God foreknows those who will he born. However, the imagery easily suggests that the souls of future people somehow already exist.

    In certain writings of the Talmud there are clear references to the real pre-existence of souls waiting to be born. One passage described Arabot, the last of the seven heavens, as holding ‘the spirits and the souls which are yet to be born’ (Chagiga 12b). In another passage it was said that the Messiah would not come till all the souls in the guf (literally ‘the body’) had been born on earth (Avodah Zarah 5a, see also Nedarim 13b, Tevamot 62a). These passages imply that all the souls who will be born are created at the beginning of time and are kept sate in a treasury called Arabot or the guf. When all the souls that will be born have been born the Messiah will come and bring the world to an end. In another Talmudic passage it is stated explicitly that all souls were created in the first six days of creation and that God calls each soul to enter a body at conception.

Each and every soul which shall be from Adam until the end of the would, was formed during the six days of Creation and was in paradise ... At the time of conception God commands the angel who is the guardian of the spirits, saying: ‘Bring Me such a spirit which is in paradise and has such a name and such a form’... God says to the soul, ‘the world into which you enter is more beautiful than this; and when I made you I intended you only for this drop of seed.’ (Midrash Tahuma Pekude 3, see Ginzberg 1909-38)

There are great similarities between this passage and a fragment preserved by, or appended to the works of, Clement of Alexandria from an earlier Christian writer: ‘The soul entering into the womb after it has been by cleansing prepared for conception [is] introduced by one of the angels who preside over generation’ (Excerpts from Theodotus [also called Prophetic Eclogues] 50).

    It is improbable that belief in the pre-existence of the soul was universal among Jews at this period. Josephus and the New Testament bear clear witness that not even on the question of life after death was there universal agreement (divergent views being held by Pharisees, Saducees and Essenes). Nevertheless, the books of Wisdom, Enoch, the Apocalypse of Abraham and various passages from the Talmud do comprise a coherent strand of thought favouring a form of pre-existence of the soul. According to this perspective, souls were created before bodies and were later united to bodies in what was a single and unified plan of God. Indeed, within ancient Judaism it was precisely the eternal plan of God that seems to have encouraged the idea of the pre-existence of souls. A related concern, introduced in the Midrash Tanhuma Pekude, was the interpretation of Genesis 2:1-2, in which it was said that the work of creation was complete on the sixth day.

    If we move from Enoch and the Talmud to Philo and the Essenes (at least according to the account Josephus gave of them) we see a quite different role for pre-existence. Philo regarded the entrance of the soul into the body as a fall, due to some failure on the part of the particular soul. The soul was not called by God into a particular body for its good and in accordance to the divine plan (as symbolized by the involvement of a ministering angel). It was imprisoned in a body as a result of its own morbid desires. Philo’s conception of the pre-existence of the soul was at once much more Platonic and, from a theological point of view, more problematic than that envisioned in the Talmud.

    At least one Christian theologian seems to have followed Philo in this regard. Origen of Alexandria was writing against Gnostic Christians who believed in a variety of creators and a variety of souls, distinguishing different human beings as material, animal or spiritual in nature. (A detailed outline of such a Gnostic system is given by Irenaeus in his Against Heresies book I.) In opposition to this, Origen stressed the unity and justice of the Creator, and the free will of all rational agents. No one could be damned simply for possessing a material soul, nor saved merely for possessing a spiritual soul. God punished and rewarded people according to their merits. It was this overriding concern for God’s justice that led Origen to suggest that the soul pre-existed the body. In his view, God’s justice demanded that all rational creatures were created equal. The reason that some were angels, others demons and others human beings, and that human beings varied in character and in state of life, was wholly due to free will. ‘ [T]his freedom of will incited each one either to progress by imitation of God, or to fail through negligence. And this, as we have already stated, is the cause of the diversity among rational creatures’ (On First Principles II, 9.6). Origen, like Plato, used the idea of a pre-existent soul to explain the entrance of the soul into the body. However, there were also significant differences between Origen’s vision and that of Plato. The entrance of the soul into the body was not simply due to a kind of spiritual gravity, an attraction to the flesh, it was rather the result of divine judgement (On First Principles II, 9.8). Origen was aware that the Church had no clear teaching on the origin of the soul (On First Principles Preface 5) and therefore, put forward his views tentatively as the speculations of a theologian. Nevertheless, he pointed out that it was necessary for Christians to believe that the devil was an angel who had fallen (On First Principles I, 4.2), and if it was merit that was the cause of the differentiation of angels and demons, perhaps merit determined the diversity between human beings, angels and demons, and also the diversity among human beings. Furthermore, the choice of Jacob over Esau in the womb ‘not on grounds of justice and according to their deserts; but undeservedly’ (On First Principles I, 7.) seemed to Origen to contradict the scriptural truth that ‘God shows no partiality’ (Romans 2:11).

    Origen’s ideas on the pre-existence of souls were chiefly put forward in one book: On First Principles. This book was unusual among his writing. He was better known at the time for having produced a parallel text of six different versions of the Old Testament: the Hebrew text in Hebrew characters, the Hebrew text transliterated into Greek, and four different Greek translations, including the Septuagint. He was the most renowned of all interpreters of Scripture and was read and appreciated by most of the later Church Fathers. This helps to explain the enduring influence of Origen, and also shows why it is misleading to take certain of his speculations as though these were the centre of his thought. Origen was highly regarded for his work on the Scriptures but his account of a pre-existent fall of souls was accepted only by the most ardent of his disciples (Evagrius, Didymus the Blind, and perhaps Rufinus). Other writers, including the most significant theologians of their generation, wrote vigorously against the teachings contained in On First Principles, for example Augustine of Hippo (City of God XI, 23), Jerome (Apology against Rufinus and elsewhere) and, not least, Gregory of Nyssa (On the Making of Man 28).

    Gregory of Nyssa was a great admirer of Origen, but he rejected outright the theory of the pre-existence of the soul. This seemed to Gregory altogether too close to the ‘fabulous doctrines of the heathen’ concerning reincarnation. If the soul was originally separate from the body and fell into a body on account of its desires, then why could it not transmigrate from body to body, as Plato thought? Origen did not explicitly espouse reincarnation. In fact, in another work, written many years after On First Principles, Origen explicitly repudiated reincarnation (Commentary on Matthew 17:10-13). Nevertheless, the idea of a pre-existent fall of souls into bodies as put forward by Origen in On First Principles and by Philo in On Dreams, naturally tended in the direction of reincarnation, to cycles of ascending and descending states without limit. ‘Thus this doctrine of theirs, which maintains that souls have a life by themselves before their life in the flesh, and that they are by reason of wickedness bound to their bodies, is shown to have neither beginning nor conclusion’ (On the Making of Man 28.7).

An account of the pre-existence of the soul that implied a fall of the soul into a body, was thus widely rejected by the subsequent Christian tradition. This rejection culminated in the sixth century, at the fifth ecumenical council of the Church: the Second Council of Constantinople (CE 553). Though the Council was primarily concerned with the nature of Christ and not with the pre-existence of souls, it also contained a condemnation of Origen and his ‘impious writings’ (canon 11). A list of erroneous statements taken from the works of Origen had previously been drawn up by the Emperor Justinian, who convoked the Council, and a slightly longer list was promulgated at a later occasion, perhaps, though this is not clear, at the Council itself. The first of fifteen condemned propositions concerned the pre-existence of the soul: If anyone asserts the fabulous pre-existence of souls ... let him be anathema.’

    In his preface to On First Principles Origen mentioned two possible sources of the soul: that it was generated by the parents; or that it was bestowed upon the body from outside. However, he only discussed the latter possibility. The former view was developed by another important Christian theologian writing in Latin North Africa a generation or so earlier than Origen. Tertullian, in his work On the Soul, endorsed a qualified Stoic view of the soul according to which the soul was corporeal (On the Soul 5). Tertullian saw this as confirmed by the gospels, and in particular, the story of the rich man and Lazarus (Luke 16:19-31). There the souls of the rich man and Lazarus were both described in corporeal terms, for the rich man asked for a drop of water to cool his tongue (On the Soul 7). However, Tertullian strongly opposed the Stoic (and Platonic) idea that the soul was received from outside with the first breath and departed with the last breath (On the Soul 25).

    Tertullian maintained that the soul was generated from the parents, and that the seed of the soul was given with, and at the same time as, the seed of the body. As evidence for this he cited the way that not only physical features but also intellectual and spiritual features could be passed front parent to child (On the Soul 25). The dominant metaphor in Tertullian’s thought was the seed: the seed that contained the plant within it, and so contained the future plants that would spring from it, not as though the plants were actually in existence already, but because of the power that was in it. In the seed lies the promise and earnest of the crop’ (On the Soul 27). For this reason it could be said that the whole human race was produced from that one human being, or that every soul had been produced from one (ibid.). In this scheme the woman was reduced to the ‘appointed seed-plot’ (ibid.) fertilized by the male. The seed of the soul was thus drawn from the soul of its (male) parent, as the seed of the body was drawn from the body. ‘The soul-producing seed ... arises at once from the out-drip of the soul, just as that fluid is the body-producing seed which proceeds from the drainage of the flesh’ (ibid.).

    Tertullian’s strong rejection of Platonic ideas of pre-existence and reincarnation, and his own reading of the Scriptures, led him to regard the soul as immortal and as a gift of God, but at the same time to see this gift as originally given to Adam and then passed on by propagation. ‘The soul, then, we define to be sprung from the breath of God, immortal ... rational, supreme, endued with an instinct of presentiment, evolved out of one (archetypal soul)’ (On the Soul 22). Gregory of Nyssa, having criticized Origen’s account, followed Tertullian in tracing the soul back to the generating seed. In the same way, he appealed to the potential found in the seed of a plant, ‘in wheat, or in any other grain, the whole form of the plant is potentially included’ (On the Making of Man 29.3). Similarly, he applied this to the case of human generation, ‘the human germ possesses the potentiality of its nature, sown with it at the first start of its existence’ (ibid.). Again, like Tertullian, Gregory considered the (male) seed to contain potentially both the body and the soul of the new human being, ‘of the part which belongs to the soul, the elements of rationality, and desire, and anger, and all the powers of the soul are not yet visible [in the seed]; yet we assert that they have their place in it’ (On the Making of Man 29.6).

By the late fourth century it was possible to delineate at least five theories as to the origin of the soul. These were listed in one of Jerome’s letters:

In regard to the origin of the soul: (1) does it descend from heaven, as the philosopher Pythagoras and all the Platonists and Origen think? (2) or is it part of the essence of the Deity, as the Stoics, the Manichees, and the Priscillianists of Spain imagine? (3) or are souls kept in a divine treasure house wherein they were stored of old as some ecclesiastics, foolishly misled, believe? (4) or are they daily created by God and sent into bodies, according to what is written in the gospel, ‘My Father is working still, and I am working’s’ (5) or are souls really produced, as Tertullian, Apollinarius, and the majority of the Western divines conjecture, by propagation, so that as the body is the offspring of body, the soul is the offspring of soul...? (Jerome, Letter 126.1)

Of these five possibilities, Christians found it easiest to reject the second. This view contradicted the fundamental distinction between God and creatures. With regard to the other four theories, each had its defenders. However, Jerome was convinced that both the views of Origen and those of Tertullian should be rejected. Origen seemed to make the union of body and soul a punishment, and to open the door to reincarnation, while Tertullian seemed guilty of the opposite mistake of making the origin of the soul too much like the origin of the body, and thus endangering the spiritual and immortal character of the human soul. Having also excluded the ‘foolish’ belief that souls were kept in a treasure house (the doctrine of the Talmud and perhaps also of Clement of Alexandria), Jerome’s choice became clear: human souls were created individually by God at the same time as the body was formed in the womb.

    Jerome set out his views concerning the origin of the soul at length it an early work (Apology against Rufinus 11, 1, 8-10, III, 28-31). He later stated his position more succinctly (Letter to Parumachius against John of Jerusalem) when the reduced from five to three the possible accounts of the origin of soul, and placed creationism between the opposite errors of traducianism (Tertullian’s view) and pre-existence (Origen’s view). This schema was so powerful that it would eventually become the standard characterisation of the problem from the Middle Ages up to the present day.

     So confident was Jerome of his own view that he characterized it as what ‘the Church teaches in accordance to the Saviour’s words’ (Letter to Pammachius, 22). In contrast, Augustine approached the question in quite a different spirit. From his earliest writing as a Christian (On the Happy Life I.5 c.CE 386) to his review of his life’s writings, written only three years before he died (Retractions, 2.56, c.CE 427), Augustine expressed his inability lo solve‘ this problem. It was one he returned to many times. In his book On the Freedom of the Will (c. CE 395), Augustine listed four possible origins of the soul: ‘(1) whether all souls are derived by propagation from the first; (2) or are in the case of each individual specially created; (3) or being created apart from the body are sent into it; (4) or introduce themselves into it of their own accord ...’ (On the Freedom of the Will 3.20). These comprised four of the five possibilities later to be mentioned by Jerome (5, 4, 3, and 1, respectively). However, unlike Jerome, Augustine did not attempt to adjudicate between the rival accounts. This reticence caused so much dismay to his readers that he found it necessary to write a further defence of his agnosticism on this subject. There he stated, that ‘if any one is able to produce such [conclusive] arguments in discussing the very obscure question of the soul’s origin, let him help me in my ignorance; but if he cannot do this, let him forbear from blaming my hesitation on the question’ (Letter 143.11).

    While he refrained from defending any one particular view on the origin of the soul, Augustine’s thought on the matter shifted significantly over the course of his career. At the time of his conversion to Christianity he was very strongly influenced by Platonic philosophy. He referred with approval to Plato’s theory of learning as memory, which presupposed the pre-existence of the soul (Letter 7, c.CE 389). The same doctrine seems to lie behind a passage in the Confessions (c.CE 397) where he wrote, ‘But what, O God, my Joy, preceded that period of life [in the womb]? Was I, indeed, anywhere, or anybody? No one can explain these things to me, neither father nor mother, nor the experience of others, nor my own memory’ (Confessions VI.9). In contrast, in his letter to Jerome (CE 415), Augustine explicitly rejected the Platonic view that ‘souls sin in another earlier life, and that for their sins in that state of being they are cast down into bodies as prisons’ (Letter 166.26). In his writings from this period (Letter 166 and A Literal Commentary of Genesis book 10) there seem only two serious possibilities for the origin of the soul: either souls were created immediately by God or they were propagated from the first human being. Augustine was inclined to prefer the first option, creationism, but he was unwilling to accept it unreservedly because it threatened to contradict the justice of God. 1f every new soul was created afresh in a way that was unconnected with Adam, then it seemed unfair (to Augustine) that a newly conceived child should contract original sin and be punished for Adam’s fault.

    Augustine returned to the question in CE 420 with his most sustained treatment of the subject: On the Soul and its Origin. This work was a reply to a book by Vincentius Victor who, like others before him, was critical of Augustine’s failure to advocate a single account of the origin of the soul. Augustine took time and care to answer the book though he found it confused in its argumentation and rash in its assertions. Vincentius argued that, though itself innocent, the soul deserved to he tainted by sin simply because it was infused into a body. The justice of God in condemning unbaptized infants, was, in turn, explained by reference to divine foreknowledge: God condemned according to what he knew the infant would have done. This supposed explanation struck Augustine as both unfounded and unjust, and went to the root of his misgivings about creationism. In the face of such questions, Augustine advocated the honest admission of ignorance. ‘[B]etter for a man to confess his ignorance of what he knows nothing about, than either to run into heresy which has been already condemned, or to found some new heresy ...’ (On the Soul and its Origin 1.34).

    To the end Augustine remained unwilling to adopt wholeheartedly the position advocated by Jerome: that souls were not propagated by the human parents but were created immediately by God as the human body was formed in the womb. He pointed out that Scripture did not resolve the question. For example, the text from Ecclesiastes, ‘the dust returns to the earth as it was, and the spirit returns to God who gave it’ (Ecclesiastes 12:7) did necessarily imply that that God gave the spirit in the sense of individually creating each new soul. The reference to the dust is a clear allusion to the fashioning of the first human being, so also the giving of spirit echoes the giving of the breath of life to the first human being. The soul would be no less a gift of God if it were passed on from parent to child by generation. Again, the use of the word ‘return’ could be invoked in support of the view that the soul pre-existed with God before entering a body. Nevertheless, in metaphorical terms, being made by God can be thought of as going forth from God and returning as turning towards the source of being (Letter 143.8-10, Letter 166.26). In a similar fashion other scriptural texts relevant to the origin of the soul were open to more than one interpretation.

    Augustine strongly affirmed the spiritual character of the soul, an attitude that once inclined him to favour pre-existence and later inclined him to favour direct creation. Nevertheless, he was uncertain how much weight to place on philosophical arguments in an area so deeply mysterious as the human soul. Augustine invited Jerome to provide a demonstration to settle the issue (Letter 166), but Jerome was unable to do so. Augustine, Jerome and the later tradition rejected the form of material traducianism put forward by Tertullian. They also rejected the opinion of Plato, Philo and Origen that the fall of the pre-existent soul explained its union with the body. This view was incompatible with a deeper Christian understanding of the creation, of the goodness of the body and of the bodily resurrection (see for example, City of God XI.23, XIII.16-20, XXII.11-21). Nevertheless, there could be forms of traducianism (or ‘generationism’) more sophisticated than that of Tertullian, and forms of pre-existence (such as that implied in the Talmud and Clement) which did not suffer from the same problems as the version put forward by Origen. Furthermore, while creationism was the most satisfying account available in the fourth or fifth century, it had theological problems of its own, not least how it was compatible with the doctrine of original sin as Christians then understood it.

    In the Middle Ages it was Jerome’s confidence rather than Augustine’s scepticism) that was destined to win out. This was helped somewhat by the influence of a work thought to be by Augustine, now universally attributed to Gennadius, a follower of Jerome, which clearly stated that the soul was directly created by God together with the body (On the Dogmas of the Church 14). Furthermore, the pattern put forward by Jerome, of creationism as the middle way between the errors of pre-existence and traducianism had a great appeal to the medieval mind. All the major Scholastic theologians, with the exception of Hugh of St Victor and Alexander of Hales, held creationism to be absolutely certain and even they regarded creationism to be the more probable opinion. The two greatest theological textbooks of the Middle Ages, the Sentences of Peter Lombard and the Summa Theologiae of Thomas Aquinas, both characterized creationism as a dogma of the Church (Sentences II, D. 18; ST la Q. 185. art. 2). It was a doctrine that cohered neatly with the medieval Christian-Aristotelian account of the development of the embryo. Nevertheless, there was never a time when the Catholic Church formally defined its teaching on the origin of the soul. ‘It should, however, he noted that ... there are no such explicit definitions authoritatively put forth by the Church as would warrant our calling the doctrine of Creationism de fide’ (Siegfried 1913).

    The immediate creation of the soul by God, though it has been the dominant view among Christians from the Middle Ages to the present day, has not been held universally. In the twelfth century, Hildegard of Bingen felt free to use the imagery of pre-existent souls crying out as they were swept down into bodies by invisible currents (Liber Scivias). During the Reformation the issue of the origin of the soul was revived with Martin Luther, and many later Lutheran theologians favoured traducianism (see Chapter 10). In the nineteenth century a number of Catholic theologians also began to question the received opinion, so that in 1857 Rome felt obliged to censure a book by Froschammer arguing for a version of traducianism. In 1887 Rome also acted against Antonio Rosmini, condemning, among other things, a proposition relating to the origin of the soul and thought to be semi-traducianist. However, the condemnation of these propositions was lifted in 2001 by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. This reversal was made explicit in order to pave the way for the eventual beatification of Rosmini, but it also serves as a reminder that the question of the origin of the soul is viewed as a more open question in 2001 than it appeared to be in 1887. Furthermore, while Origenist pre-existence has been rejected by the tradition, it should be remembered that the form of pre-existence found in Jewish sources had its roots in the pre-existence of all creatures ill the mind of God, and that doctrine retains its place in Christian theology.

    For contemporary Catholic theologians, doubts about creationism have been less concerned with original sin (the problem for Augustine) and more concerned with the way that, at least In some simplistic forms, the doctrine of the special creation of the soul seems to negate human parenthood. It seems to reduce the human parents to the fathers and mothers of  animals which God subsequently transforms into children, or even the fathers and mothers of vegetables which later become animals and which God finally transforms into children. This was a point made long ago by Maximus the Confessor. In an effort to find a middle way, Karl Rahner has argued that divine creative causality should be seen as a transcendent cause and therefore not as being in competition with natural causes. If such a view is acceptable then children could be seen both as the true offspring of their parents and as the newly created gift of God.

    Rahner’s view, and similar views put forward by other twentieth-century theologians, stands midway between traducianism and creationism. It is possible to affirm that God is involved in some particular and intimate way in the creation of each human soul and that the soul is not reducible to material causes, and vet also to hold that God gives parents a true role in generation of the new human person. Only God can create (ex nihilo) but parents can cooperate in this action such that ‘in the sexual union, man and woman under God become procreators’ (The Way Supplement 25 (1975): 12, cited by the Oxford English Dictionary as an example of a new use of the term ‘procreator’). An acute and well-balanced assessment of the various theories of the origin of the soul was given by the nineteenth-century Early Church historian Philip Schaff.

The three theories of the origin of the soul, we may remark by way of concluding criticism, admit of a reconciliation. Each of them contains an element of truth, and is wrong only when exclusively held. Every human soul has an ideal pre-existence in the divine mind, the divine will, and we may add, in the divine life; and every human soul as well as every human body is the product of the united agency of God and the parents. Pre-existentianism errs in confounding an ideal with a concrete, self-conscious, individual pre-existence; traducianism, in ignoring the creative divine agency without which no being, least of all an immortal mind, can come into existence, and in favoring a materialistic conception of the soul; creationism, in denying the human agency, and thus placing the soul in a merely accidental relation to the body. (Schaff, History of the Christian Church, Vol. III §154)

In summary:

•  In the course of history Christians have come to reject definitively a number of theories concerning the origin of the soul. The soul is not a part of God, nor is the soul joined to a body because of sins committed in a previous life. No account can he accepted that would contradict the natural union of body and soul. Neither can an account be accepted that would contradict the individual, spiritual and immortal character of the soul.

•  The dominant view among Western Catholic Christians since the fifth century has been that the soul is immediately created by God and infused into the new human being that is formed in the womb. However, this has never been formally defined by the Church by a pope or an ecumenical council.

•  The caution of Augustine and his willingness to admit ignorance on this issue, in particular between the competing theories of traducianism and creationism, has more to commend it to contemporary theologians than the brash confidence of Jerome.

•  While the soul is certainly created by God ‘out of nothing’ (for this is true of everything that is not God) there is ongoing reflection and discussion among Catholic theologians concerning how to interpret the doctrine of the creation of the soul of each new individual and, in particular, what theological role the parents play in the generation of a new human life.

The question of the origin of the soul is theologically interesting in its own right. Furthermore, it is also relevant to the question of when soul comes to he in the embryo. Recent discussion among Catholic and Reformed theologians seems increasingly to favour the view that the parents have a true role in the generation of the whole human being, notwithstanding the necessity of a special creative act of God to enable such an act of generation, a position midway between materialistic traducianism and simple creationism. This would seem to suggest that the soul is present when the embryo is generated by the parents, i.e. front the time that male and female elements fuse at conception. However, while most of those who hold that the soul is generated by the parents also hold that it is present from conception, some theologians (Rosmini, Rahner) have sought to combine a form of traducianism with delayed ‘hominization’. Determining the origin of the soul is thus not enough, on its own, to settle the issue of when the soul is acquired. The tinting of ensoulment is a question that needs to he addressed directly.

5. MEDICINAL PENALTIES
Early Christianity and abortion: Celtic/Anglo-Saxon penances, Greek/Latin canons

[ON ASKING THE PENITENT QUESTIONS]