Where did your soul come from?

traducianism

 

Maybe you ought to define those, Craig. Not everyone has all those words in their vocabulary!

 

Thanks for humbling me today, Craig!

 

That's a good question.

 

I believe it came from God, and I my best guess is that He put it there some point after I was concieved. It did not exist before I was concieved, but will exist that that point on.

 

1. Creationism

2. Traducianism

3. Generationism

4. Emanationism

5. Evolutionism

What do you believe?

I believe I`d better get my dictionary out

 

I'm not entirely sure. I think most likely generationism, although that almost makes me a heretic by Catholic standards. (I've been looking these up in the Catholic Encyclopedia since that was my first Google hit for traduciansm.)

The other one I would be closest to is creationism, where God makes each individual soul. The problem with this is what does God do in the case of identical twins? They start out as one zygote. If the soul is really created at the moment of conception, that means the zygote has one soul. Then if it divides and develops into two people, where does the second soul come in? How does God decide who gets the first soul that he "attached" to the zygote?

For this reason some explanation with souls reproducing souls seems most reasonable. I disagree with traducianism because it seems to involve the soul being passed along during sex (if that is what the coy phrase "transmission of the soul by the organic process of generation" is supposed to mean), which leaves any hypothetical human clones in the future out in the cold.

Emanationism I dislike because it doesn't seem to draw a clear enough line between the essence of God and the essence of created things. Evolutionism I dislike because it seems to say that the soul develops as the body does, and then one might come to the conclusion that some people born with severe mental retardation do not have souls, which is distasteful to me.

 

OK I think our souls are an emergent property that comes when our brains reach a certain stage of complexity. Which one of these most fits that opinion?

 

Evolutionism.

 

A human being consists of three parts, body, soul, and spirit. Without any of the parts the person isn't whole and the person isn't the person God intends for them to be. We are conceived with all three parts, none of which existed prior to that moment.

 

No. 2.

Emanation is gnostic and New Age.

 

Now I have some idea what all those terms mean..... I agree with Artimeus
"A human being consists of three parts, body, soul, and spirit. Without any of the parts the person isn't whole and the person isn't the person God intends for them to be. We are conceived with all three parts, none of which existed prior to that moment"
thanks to TCassidy for the translations

 

The concept of "soul" seems to be closely connected with the idea of life itself. Therefore, when life is created, a soul is created. Traducianism.

 

But rj - that line of thinking means anything alive has a soul. I betcha something else prompts you to have that opinion.

 

From TCassidy's definitions, I would say Creationism. The soul is created by God.

I think the idea that souls are transmitted doesn't sound right. I see no reason for souls to be lesser or greater. And I don't believe our souls are related to our biology.

 

Traducianism. My soul came with my body acquired from Adam, Noah, and Japheth up to my Dad. I believe the act of marriage, two becoming one, produces characteristics of the two. The body is made in the woman, which is produced by the man, just as the soul is produced by the man and is assimilated and mixed with that of the woman.

 

IN Genesis, soul and 'nephesh' or breath of life are all one term. This is also translated as mind, will, or emotions, depending on the context. These may be expressed THROUGH the brain, but the soul is not a physical thing. In Hebrews we read that the soul and the spirit can be separated like joint and marrow. Thus, the two are closely 'related' in terms of what they are, but different. And far different from body, which is just the vehicle which we are created with to 'drive around in' for 70 or so years.

But they were all created together at conception for each individual. However it is clear from the Bible that all three are infected by sin nature from the start. This is why we need a new spirit within us, and our hearts need to be changed from stone to flesh, to use another biblical picture.