我们的灵魂从何处来 - Where Do Our Souls Come From?

Ichthys

古德恩系统神学 23章 F

Where Do Our Souls Come From?
What is the origin of our individual souls? Two views have been common in the history of the church.

Creationism is the view that God creates a new soul for each person and sends it to that person’s body sometime between conception and birth. Traducianism on the other hand, holds that the soul as well as the body of a child are inherited from the baby’s mother and father at the time of conception. Both views have had numerous defenders in the history of the church, with creationism eventually becoming the prevailing view in the Roman Catholic Church. Luther was in favor of traducianism, while Calvin favored creationism. On the other hand, there are some later Calvinist theologians such as Jonathan Edwards and A.H. Strong who favored traducianism (as do most Lutherans today). Creationism has had many modern evangelical advocates as well.

There is one other popular view called pre-existentianism namely, that the souls of people exist in heaven long before their bodies are conceived in the wombs of their mothers, and that God then brings the soul to earth to be joined with the baby’s body as he or she grows in the womb. But this view is not held by either Roman Catholic or Protestant theologians and is dangerously akin to ideas of reincarnation found in Eastern religions. Moreover, there is no support for this view in Scripture. Before we were conceived in the wombs of our mothers, we simply did not exist. We were not. Of course, God looked forward into the future and knew that we would exist, but that is far removed from saying that we actually did exist at some previous time. Such an idea would tend to make us view this present life as transitional or unimportant and make us think of life in the body as less desirable and the bearing and raising of children as less important.

In favor of traducianism it may be argued that God created man in his own image (Gen. 1:27), and this includes a likeness to God in the amazing ability to “create” other human beings like ourselves. Therefore, just as the rest of the animal and plant world bears descendants “according to their kinds” (Gen. 1:24), so Adam and Eve also were able to bear children who were like themselves, with a spiritual nature as well as a physical body. This would imply that the spirits or souls of Adam and Eve’s children were derived from Adam and Eve themselves. Moreover, Scripture sometimes can speak of descendants being somehow present in the body of someone in the previous generation, as when the author of Hebrews says that when Melchizedek met Abraham, “Levi... was still in the loins of his ancestor” (Heb. 7:10). Finally, traducianism could explain how the sins of the parents can be passed on to the children without making God directly responsible for the creation of a soul that is sinful or has a disposition that would tend toward sin.

However, the biblical arguments in favor of creationism seem to speak more directly to the issue and give quite strong support for this view. First, Psalm 127 says that “sons are a heritage from the Lord, the fruit of the womb a reward” (Ps. 127:3). This indicates that not only the soul, but also the entire person of the child, including his or her body, is a gift from God. From this standpoint, it seems strange to think of the mother and father as being responsible by themselves for any aspect of the child’s existence. Was it not the Lord who, David says, “knit me together in my mother’s womb” (Ps. 139:13)? Isaiah says that God gives breath to the people on the earth and “spirit to those who walk in it” (Isa. 42:5). Zechariah talks of God as the one “who forms the spirit of man within him” (Zech. 12:1 NIV). The author of Hebrews speaks of God as “the Father of spirits” (Heb. 12:9). It is hard to escape the conclusion from these passages that God is the one who creates our spirits or souls.

Ichthys

Yet we must be cautious in drawing conclusions from this data. Our discussion of the doctrine of God’s providence in chapter 16 demonstrated that God usually acts through secondary causes. God often brings about the results he seeks through the actions of human beings. Certainly this is so in the conception and bearing of children. Even if we say that God does create individual souls for human beings before they are born, and that he is the one who allows children to be conceived and born, we must also recognize that apart from the physical union of man and woman in the conception of a child, no children are born! So we must not make the mistake of saying that the father and mother have no role in the creation of the child. Even if we say that God is the “Father of spirits” and the Creator of every human soul, just as he is the Maker and Creator of each of us, we must still also affirm that God carries out this creative activity through the amazing process of human procreation. Whether God involves the human mother and father to some degree in the process of the creation of a soul as well as of a physical body, is impossible for us to say. It is something that occurs in the invisible realm of the spirit, which we do not have information about except from Scripture. And on this point Scripture simply does not give us enough information to decide.

However, the arguments listed above in favor of traducianism must be said not to be very compelling ones. The fact that Adam and Eve bear children in their own image (see Gen. 5:3) could suggest that children somehow inherit a soul from their parents, but it might also indicate that God gives an individually created soul to the child and that that soul is consistent with the hereditary traits and personality characteristics that God allowed the child to have through its descent from its parents. The idea that Levi was still in the body of Abraham (Heb. 7:10) is best understood in a representative, or figurative, sense, not in a literal sense. Moreover, it is not simply Levi’s soul that is talked about in any case, but Levi himself, as a whole person, including body and soul—yet Levi’s body was certainly not physically present in any meaningful sense in Abraham’s body, for there was no distinct combination of genes at that time that could be said to be Levi and no one else. Finally, since God brings about events in the physical world that are consistent with the voluntary activities of human beings, there does not seem to be any real theological difficulty in saying that God gives each child a human soul that has tendencies to sin that are similar to the tendencies found in the parents. In fact, we read in the Ten Commandments of God “visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children to the third and the fourth generation of those who hate [him]” (Ex. 20:5), and, quite apart from the question of the human soul, we know from human experience that children do in fact tend to imitate both the good and bad traits in their parents’ lives, not only as a result of imitation but also because of hereditary disposition. For God to give each child a human soul that accords with the imitation of parents that we see in the lives of children would simply be an indication that God, in creating a human soul, acts consistently with the way he acts in relation to the human race in other matters as well.

In conclusion, it seems hard to avoid the testimony of Scripture to the effect that God actively creates each human soul, just as he is active in all the events of his creation. But the degree to which he allows the use of intermediate or secondary causes (that is, inheritance from parents) is simply not explained for us in Scripture. Therefore, it does not seem profitable for us to spend any more time speculating on this question.

天父爱你

好奇问下，这个论坛有多少人是可以看懂这个比天书还难懂符号的？我一个字都看不懂

Ichthys

天父爱你 发表于 2016-4-7 23:06
好奇问下，这个论坛有多少人是可以看懂这个比天书还难懂符号的？

这是分享园地-英语特区啊。而且主贴提供了中文版的章节可以英汉对照。

天父爱你

Ichthys 发表于 2016-4-7 23:07
这是分享园地-英语特区啊。而且主贴提供了中文版的章节可以英汉对照。

我知道是英文呀。我只是好奇下论坛上懂英文的人多么？
你主贴我一个字都看不懂，更别提什么英汉对照了。见谅。

天父爱你

Ichthys 发表于 2016-4-7 23:07
这是分享园地-英语特区啊。而且主贴提供了中文版的章节可以英汉对照。

对了，为什么你这么懂英文，难道同另外一个版主样，也住国外的？

Ichthys

天父爱你 发表于 2016-4-7 23:11
我知道是英文呀。我只是好奇下论坛上懂英文的人多么？
你主贴我一个字都看不懂，更别提什么英汉对 ...

就算是中文，正经的帖子一般也没什么人看，没什么人回。但是免不了以后有搜索查资料的人会用得到。

辩论争论的贴虽然有很多人看很多人回，但是一般人对反对方的帖子也都只是扫一眼而已，不会仔细读得，其实也是一样的。

天父爱你

Ichthys 发表于 2016-4-8 10:56
就算是中文，正经的帖子一般也没什么人看，没什么人回。但是免不了以后有搜索查资料的人会用得到。

辩 ...

正经的帖子我觉得看倒是有人看。不过在论坛上稍微待久点，像我们这种一点神学基础
知识的人都没有的人就会感觉，每天都在吸收些杂乱五章的信息，即使是正经帖子，还有名牧讲道，
但是也有公说公有理，婆说婆有理的时候，虽然能分辨好歹，但是在其中也建立不了正确的系统
知识。
不过话说回来，如果你丢本《基督教要义》这种书给我，我完全看不下去，一个头两个大。
好吧。目前还只能看《圣经》与灵修文章。