Even upon the most favorable statement of Müller's view, we fail to see how it can consist with the organic unity of the race; for in that which chiefly constitutes us men—the πνεῦμα—we are as distinct and separate creations as are the angels. We also fail to see how, upon this view, Christ can be said to take our nature; or, if he takes it, how it can be without sin. See Ernesti, Ursprung der Sünde, 2:1-247; Frohschammer, Ursprung der Seele, 11-17: Philippi, Glaubenslehre, 3:92-122; Bruch, Lehre der Präexistenz, translated in Bib. Sac., 20:681-733. Also Bib. Sac., 11:186-191; 12:156; 17:419-427; 20:447; Kahnis, Dogmatik, 3:250—“This doctrine is inconsistent with the indisputable fact that the souls of children are like those of the parents; and it ignores the connection of the individual with the race.”
2. The Creatian Theory.
This view was held by Aristotle, Jerome, and Pelagius, and in modern times has been advocated by most of the Roman Catholic and Reformed theologians. It regards the soul of each human being as immediately created by God and joined to the body either at conception, at birth, or at some time between these two. The advocates of the theory urge in its favor certain texts of Scripture, referring to God as the Creator of the human spirit, together with the fact that there is a marked individuality in the child, which cannot be explained as a mere reproduction of the qualities existing in the parents.
Creatianism, as ordinarily held, regards only the body as propagated from past generations. Creatianists who hold to trichotomy would say, however, that the animal soul, the ψυχή, is propagated with the body, while the highest part of man, the πνεῦμα, is in each case a direct creation of God,—the πνεῦμα not being created, as the advocates of preëxistence believe, ages before the body, but rather at the time that the body assumes its distinct individuality.
Aristotle (De Anima) first gives definite expression to this view. Jerome speaks of God as “making souls daily.” The scholastics followed Aristotle, and through the influence of the Reformed church, creatianism has been the prevailing opinion for the last two hundred years. Among its best representatives are Turretin, Inst., 5:13 (vol. 1:425); Hodge, Syst. Theol., 2:65-76; Martensen, Dogmatics, 141-148; Liddon, Elements of Religion, 99-106. Certain Reformed theologians have defined very exactly God's method of creation. Polanus (5:31:1) says that God breathes the soul into boys, forty days, and into girls, eighty days, after conception. Göschel (in Herzog, Encyclop., art.: Seele) holds that while dichotomy leads to traducianism, trichotomy allies itself to that form of creatianism which regards the πνεῦμα as a direct creation of God, but the ψυχή as propagated with the body. To the latter answers the family name; to the former the Christian name. Shall we count George Macdonald as a believer in Preëxistence or in Creatianism, when he writes in his Baby's Catechism: “Where did you come from, baby dear? Out of the everywhere into here. Where did you get your eyes so blue? Out of the sky, as I came through. Where did you get that little tear? I found it waiting when I got here. Where did you get that pearly ear? God spoke, and it came out to hear. How did they all just come to be you? God thought about me, and so I grew.”
Creatianism is untenable for the following reasons:
(a) The passages adduced in its support may with equal propriety be regarded as expressing God's mediate agency in the origination of human souls; while the general tenor of Scripture, as well as its representations of God as the author of man's body, favor this latter interpretation.
Passages commonly relied upon by creatianists are the following: Eccl. 12:7—“the spirit returneth unto God who gave it”; Is. 57:16—“the souls that I have made”; Zech. 12:1—“Jehovah ... who formeth the spirit of man within him”; Heb. 12:9—“the Father of spirits.” But God is with equal clearness declared to be the former of man's body: see Ps. 139:13, 14—“thou didst form my inward parts: Thou didst cover me [marg. “knit me together”] in my mother's womb. I will give thanks unto thee; for I am fearfully and wonderfully made: Wonderful are thy works”; Jer. 1:5—“I formed thee in the belly.” Yet we do not hesitate to interpret these latter passages as expressive of mediate, not immediate, [pg 492]creatorship,—God works through natural laws of generation and development so far as the production of man's body is concerned. None of the passages first mentioned forbid us to suppose that he works through these same natural laws in the production of the soul. The truth in creatianism is the presence and operation of God in all natural processes. A transcendent God manifests himself in all physical begetting. Shakespeare: “There's a divinity that shapes our ends, Rough hew them how we will.”Pfleiderer, Grundriss, 112—“Creatianism, which emphasizes the divine origin of man, is entirely compatible with Traducianism, which emphasizes the mediation of natural agencies. So for the race as a whole, its origin in a creative activity of God is quite consistent with its being a product of natural evolution.”
(b) Creatianism regards the earthly father as begetting only the body of his child—certainly as not the father of the child's highest part. This makes the beast to possess nobler powers of propagation than man; for the beast multiplies himself after his own image.