Introduction
I really never thought I would see the day when the error of traducianism (i.e., the teaching that the soul of the child is derived from the parents rather than immediately created by God) would become a topic of popular discourse.
This error has been rejected repeatedly by the Church over the last 1,500 years. Anastasius II (A.D. 498) refutes traducianism as a “new heresy” at length in his Letter to the bishops of Gaul:
We have praised the solicitude of Our brother... [who has provided] necessary matter for preaching against a heresy that he affirms has arisen within Gaul — which would seek to persuade by this rationale, that, just as parents are to the human race, since they hand on bodies from material dross, so they also bestow the spirit of life on souls. Whom your brotherhood ought to recall by your admonitions and preachings from a vain and false persuasion. (Letter VI, ch. I, §2; cf. DB 170.)
Pope St. Leo IX (d. 1054) included the creation of the soul ex nihilo as part of his profession of faith:
“I believe and preach that the soul is not a part of God, but created from nothing... This faith the Holy Roman and Apostolic See believes with the heart unto justice and confesses with the mouth unto salvation.” (Congratulamur vehementer; cf. DB 348.)
This is not merely an “old teaching” either, but has been repeated a number of times in the last century. Ven. Pius XII taught that “the Catholic faith obliges us to hold that souls are immediately created by God” (Humani generis, n. 36). St. Paul VI, in his Credo, which is a summary of the Catholic faith, included the teaching that God is the “creator in each man of his spiritual and immortal soul” (Solemni hac liturgia, n. 8). The current Catechism of the Catholic Church repeats this same teaching: “The Church teaches that every spiritual soul is created immediately by God—it is not ‘produced’ by the parents” (CCC 366).
Yet, I recently came across the following tweet from Joel Webbon, the Protestant pastor and conservative commentator:
To anyone who has read about traducianism, this tweet may seem quite confusing. What does the question of the origin of the soul in relation to God’s creative act have to do with liberalism?
There are many tweets like this from Joel and others in his circle, but why is traducianism even up for consideration? The controversy seems to have arisen from a clip in which Joel Webbon and Wesley Todd use the idea of traducianism to explain distinctions between ethnic groups.
This line of argumentation has long been invoked in favor of traducianism. It begins with a certain evident fact: when we look at individuals, they resemble their parents not merely in physical qualities (e.g., skin color, bone structure, etc.), but even in certain qualities pertaining to the life of the soul (e.g., behaviors, dispositions towards vice, etc.). Therefore, the traducianists conclude that not only the body that bears physical qualities, but even the soul that bears spiritual qualities must come from the parents.
The accusation of “liberalism” seems to be directed against the opposing position insofar as many of its defenders hold that heredity has no influence whatsoever upon the life of the soul, but only upon certain physical qualities that they regard as unimportant. When behavioral differences are invoked which seem to imply an influence of heredity upon psychological qualities, they explain such differences purely on the basis of social factors. Clearly, this manner of explaining the problem dissolves the union of the soul and body into a form of “spiritualism,” rejecting the influence of our corporeal organs on the operations of the soul. Therefore, the question arises: are we bound to ignore the obvious due to our insistence on this doctrine?
Here, we seem to be stuck between a rock and a hard place. On the one hand, the Catholic Church teaches that the rational soul of the person is immediately created by God and united to the body as its substantial form. The Church rejects the teaching that the substance of an individual’s soul is derived from the substance of the souls of the parents. On the other hand, it is unreasonable, from an empirical perspective, to explain the behavior of particular individuals without any reference to heredity. Its influence has been extensively studied in experimental psychology, including studies of twins separated early in life and raised apart. Further, denying every influence of the body upon the life of the soul would imagine the human person as merely a soul in a body, rather than as a composite of body and soul.
This is a question treated by theologians in a number of different places, depending on the aspect under which it is considered. First, it is treated philosophically in natural philosophy, in the treatise on the human person. Second, it is treated theologically in the doctrine of creation, in reference to the creation of man. Third, it is treated morally in general moral theology, in reference to the influences upon human acts and their freedom and imputability.
Additionally, the magisterium treats this under two aspects: first, in its teaching on creation and the human person, especially against materialistic accounts of human origins; second, in its teaching against biological determinism. A materialistic account attempts to explain the whole human person, in both his corporeal and spiritual life, as the result of material processes. Against this, the Church insists upon the soul’s spiritual nature and its origin in an immediate creative act of God. Biological determinism denies the freedom of the human person, teaching instead that the qualities inherited from our ancestors determine our behavior as a necessary expression of this heredity (i.e., as some sort of “racial impulse”).
The solution proposed by Catholic theologians avoids the opposed errors by adhering to two principles. First, the rational soul is not produced by the parents, whether directly or through an instrument, but is immediately created by God. Second, the life of the soul is neither wholly disconnected from the body and its inherited dispositions nor wholly determined by them. To put it positively, bodily dispositions incline the person towards certain acts, but they do not of themselves necessitate the consent of the will.
On Inherited Dispositions, Heredity, and Biological Determinism
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