Words for thoughts on the O.P., from
On the Salvation of Children who Die as Infants or Pre-Born Babies — Knowing Scripture
Statements that
I can't fully make the jump to,
in blue.
Hope that's extra confusing.
He goes into the Doctrines of Grace
...and also he uses the Reformed doctrine stating, "the covenantal promises of God have been made not only to us but also to our children (Acts 2:39; Isaiah 44:3)", which I can not see or hold.
"Many devastated Christian parents, therefore, struggle with the question of whether their unborn or newborn children who have passed away are saved and in heaven.
The questions of these parents inevitably pertain to the issue of ensoulment, i.e. when precisely a human being acquires a soul that must either be saved or damned. Therefore, before addressing the question itself, let us take a brief look at the Christian doctrine of ensoulment.
Ensoulment
"Historically, there have been three positions in Christian theology with regard to the origin of the soul: preexistence, creationism, and traducianism. I will briefly explain all of these, after which I will argue in favor of the traducianist position and explain how this relates to the salvation of infants and pre-born babies.
Preexistence
"When it comes to preexistence, a distinction needs to be made between doctrines of eternal and temporal preexistence respectively.
Eternal preexistence maintains that all human souls exist from eternity and that the soul is united with the body either prior to or at the moment of birth. This pagan view has never been advocated by any theologian in the history of the Christian Church that I know of. Temporal preexistence, the idea that the soul was created by God sometime in the past and then united to the body at (or after) conception, was advocated by the third-century church father Origen, but his doctrine has no basis in Scripture and is also largely indebted to pagan thought—most notably that of Plato.
[2] It was therefore rightly condemned as heresy by the Second Council of Constantinople in 553 A.D.
[3]
Creationism
The doctrine of ensoulment most widely adhered to throughout the history of the Christian Church is known as creationism. As a doctrine of ensoulment, this should not be confused with the Christian scientific position of creationism which pertains to the origin of the universe. Creationism teaches that God creates a soul
ex nihilo for each human fetus and imputes this to that fetus. Augustine and Jerome were proponents of this view, as was
Thomas Aquinas, who adopted the Aristotelian scheme of ensoulment occurring a few weeks after conception.[4] This view was so prevalent throughout the Middle Ages that the famous Justinian Law code from the sixth century while
codifying legal penalties for abortion, excused abortions performed within 40 days (or approximately 6 weeks) after conception.[5] This view is based on the idea that
a child becomes a human being at the point of “formation,” i.e. when the body is formed, as opposed to the moment of conception.
Within the Reformed tradition, a more recent advocate of this position was the nineteenth-century Princeton theologian A.A. Hodge.
[6]
Traducianism
Traducianism (from the Latin
traduco, which means “to transfer”), although a minority view, has been held by many Christians since the days of the early church, and this is the view I believe to be the biblical one. Its earliest known proponent was the church father Tertullian (155–240 AD). In rejecting the gnostic separation between spirit and matter, he argued that the soul and the body are inseparable and that both originate simultaneously at the moment of conception. According to Tertullian, God had supernaturally infused Adam and Eve, the first human beings with a soul, whereafter the soul is passed on through the natural process of procreation.
[7]
There are a number of reasons why I believe this to be the biblical position:
(1) Scripture states that
“the life of the flesh is in the blood” (Leviticus 17:11). The original Hebrew word used for “life” in this verse נֶ֣פֶשׁ (
“nepesh”) literally means “soul” and is translated as such on numerous occasions throughout the Old Testament. This verse therefore clearly implies that there is a genetic component to ensoulment.
(2) Traducianism most clearly explains the practical outworking of original sin in a way that does not contradict Scripture. For example, while God promises to
“visit the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation” (Exodus 20:5), He also says that descendants shall not be punished for the sins of their ancestors (Ezekiel 18:19-20). These texts are difficult to reconcile with the creationist position, but not in a traducian paradigm where the corruption of the soul through original sin occurs naturally via procreation and lineage as opposed to divine imputation.
(3) As another advocate of Traducianism, the Reformed philosopher Gordon Clark observes, the traducian understanding of original sin is also taught by Christ in John 3:6, when
Christ speaks of Nicodemus’s unregenerate soul as born of his parents. Clark notes that the Greek noun
sarx (i.e. “flesh”) in relation to
gennao (the Greek word for “birth”) clearly conveys this idea of a depraved soul in distinction from the corporeal body, which means that the propagation of the human species is not only corporeal, but spiritual and mental also.
[8]
(4) In Psalm 51:5 David also notes that the depravity of his soul dates from the moment of his conception:
“Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin my mother conceived me.” This text implies that conception indeed marks the moment of ensoulment. Traducianism is the only doctrine of ensoulment that intrinsically ties ensoulment itself to conception in accordance with Scripture.
con't
. . . You're going to use that term against me, aren't you.
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