This view was propounded by Tertullian, and was implicitly held by Augustine. In modern times it has been the prevailing opinion of the Lutheran Church. It holds that the human race was immediately created in Adam, and, as respects both body and soul, was propagated from him by natural generation—all souls since Adam being only mediately created by God, as the upholder of the laws of propagation which were originally established by him.
Tertullian, De Anima: “Tradux peccati, tradux animæ.” Gregory of Nyssa: “Man being one, consisting of soul and body, the common beginning of his constitution must be supposed also one; so that he may not be both older and younger than himself—that in him which is bodily being first, and the other coming after” (quoted in Crippen, Hist. of Christ. Doct., 80). Augustine, De Pec. Mer. et Rem., 3:7—“In Adam all sinned, at the time when in his nature all were still that one man”; De Civ. Dei, 13:14—“For we all were in that one man, when we all were that one man.... The form in which we each should live was not as yet individually created and distributed to us, but there already existed the seminal nature from which we were propagated.”
Augustine, indeed, wavered in his statements with regard to the origin of the soul, apparently fearing that an explicit and pronounced traducianism might involve materialistic consequences; yet, as logically lying at the basis of his doctrine of original sin, traducianism came to be the ruling view of the Lutheran reformers. In his Table Talk, Luther says: “The reproduction of mankind is a great marvel and mystery. Had God consulted me in the matter, I should have advised him to continue the generation of the species by fashioning them out of clay, in the way Adam was fashioned; as I should have counseled him also to let the sun remain always suspended over the earth, like a great lamp, maintaining perpetual light and heat.”
Traducianism holds that man, as a species, was created in Adam. In Adam, the substance of humanity was yet undistributed. We derive our immaterial as well as our material being, by natural laws of propagation, from Adam,—each individual man after Adam possessing a part of the substance that was originated in him. Sexual reproduction has for its purpose the keeping of variations within limit. Every marriage tends to bring back the individual type to that of the species. The offspring represents not one of the parents but both. And, as each of these parents represents two grandparents, the offspring really represents the whole race. Without this conjugation the individual peculiarities would reproduce themselves in divergent lines like the shot from a shot-gun. Fission needs to be supplemented by conjugation. The use of sexual reproduction is to preserve the average individual in the face of a progressive tendency to variation. In asexual reproduction the offspring start on deviating lines and never mix their qualities with those of their mates. Sexual reproduction makes the individual the type of the species and gives solidarity to the race. See Maupas, quoted by Newman Smith, Place of Death in Evolution, 19-22.
John Milton, in his Christian Doctrine, is a Traducian. He has no faith in the notion of a soul separate from and inhabiting the body. He believes in a certain corporeity of the soul. Mind and thought are rooted in the bodily organism. Soul was not inbreathed after the body was formed. The breathing of God into man's nostrils was only the quickening impulse to that which already had life. God does not create souls every day. Man is a body-and-soul, or a soul-body, and he transmits himself as such. Harris, Moral Evolution, 171—The individual man has a great number of ancestors as well as a great number of descendants. He is the central point of an hour-glass, or a strait between two seas which widen out behind and before. How then shall we escape the conclusion that the human race was most numerous at the beginning? We must remember that other children have the same great-grandparents with ourselves; that there have been inter-marriages; and that, after all, the generations run on in parallel lines, that the lines spread a little in some countries and periods, and narrow a little in other countries and periods. It is like a wall covered with paper in diamond pattern. The lines diverge and converge, but the figures are parallel. See Shedd, Dogm. Theol., 2:7-94, Hist. Doctrine, 2:1-26, Discourses and Essays, 259; Baird, Elohim Revealed, 137-151, 335-384; Edwards, Works, 2:483; Hopkins, Works, 1:289; Birks, Difficulties of Belief, 161; Delitzsch, Bib. Psych., 128-142; Frohschammer, Ursprung der Seele, 59-224.
With regard to this view we remark:
(a) It seems best to accord with Scripture, which represents God as creating the species in Adam (Gen. 1:27), and as increasing and perpetuating it through secondary agencies (1:28; cf. 22). 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).
Gen. 1:27—“And God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him: male and female created he them”; 28—“And God blessed them: and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth”; cf. 22—of the brute creation: “And God blessed them, saying, Be fruitful, and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let birds multiply on the earth.” Gen. 2:7—“And Jehovah God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul”; cf. 22—“and the rib which Jehovah God had taken from the man, made he a woman, and brought her unto the man”; 1 Cor. 11:8—“For the man is not of the woman; but the woman of the man” (ἐξ ἀνδρός). Gen. 4:1—“Eve ... bare Cain”; 5:3—“Adam ... begat a son ... Seth”; 46:26—“All the souls that came with Jacob into Egypt, that came out of his loins”; Acts 17:26—“he made of one [“father” or “body”] every nation of men”; Heb. 7:10—Levi “was yet in the loins of his father, when Melchisedek met him”; Gen. 2:2—“And on the seventh day God finished his work which he had made, [pg 495]and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had made.” Shedd, Dogm. Theol., 2:19-29, adduces also John 1:13; 3:6; Rom. 1:13; 5:12; 1 Cor. 15:22; Eph. 2:3; Heb. 12:9; Ps. 139:15, 16. Only Adam had the right to be a creatianist. Westcott, Com. on Hebrews, 114—“Levi paying tithes in Abraham implies that descendants are included in the ancestor so far that his acts have force for them. Physically, at least, the dead so rule the living. The individual is not a completely self-centred being. He is member in a body. So far traducianism is true. But, if this were all, man would be a mere result of the past, and would have no individual responsibility. There is an element not derived from birth, though it may follow upon it. Recognition of individuality is the truth in creatianism. Power of vision follows upon preparation of an organ of vision, modified by the latter but not created by it. So we have the social unity of the race, plus the personal responsibility of the individual, the influence of common thoughts plus the power of great men, the foundation of hope plus the condition of judgment.”
(b) It is favored by the analogy of vegetable and animal life, in which increase of numbers is secured, not by a multiplicity of immediate creations, but by the natural derivation of new individuals from a parent stock. A derivation of the human soul from its parents no more implies a materialistic view of the soul and its endless division and subdivision, than the similar derivation of the brute proves the principle of intelligence in the lower animals to be wholly material.
God's method is not the method of endless miracle. God works in nature through second causes. God does not create a new vital principle at the beginning of existence of each separate apple, and of each separate dog. Each of these is the result of a self-multiplying force, implanted once for all in the first of its race. To say, with Moxom (Baptist Review, 1881:278), that God is the immediate author of each new individual, is to deny second causes, and to merge nature in God. The whole tendency of modern science is in the opposite direction. Nor is there any good reason for making the origin of the individual human soul an exception to the general rule. Augustine wavered in his traducianism because he feared the inference that the soul is divided and subdivided,—that is, that it is composed of parts, and is therefore material in its nature. But it does not follow that all separation is material separation. We do not, indeed, know how the soul is propagated. But we know that animal life is propagated, and still that it is not material, nor composed of parts. The fact that the soul is not material, nor composed of parts, is no reason why it may not be propagated also.