Traducianism and Creationism

TRADUCIANISM AND CREATIONISM.
Sec. VII.

Setting aside ihe details of the answers that may be or have been given, the question runs, Is the spiritual psychical nature of the descendants of the first created man the immediate, or only the mediate constitution of God? Psychology cannot evade this question, even if its conclusions in reply should be the confession of Lucretius (i. 113):

"For it cannot be said what are the conditions of the soul, Whether it is itself begotten, or produced in those who are begotten."

And biblical psychology must especially investigate this question, since Scripture meets it, not only with numerous statements, but also with the facts of the history of redemption, which are closely associated with this question. Its importance in respect of the doctrines of the incarnation and of original sin is manifest. Hence in the church, from ancient times till now, it has ever been a point of controversy, debated with great earnestness and zeal. Within the range of heathenism, creationism was the old Italian view. Contrary to what one might have expected, the ancient Latin Church abandoned it. In its fold, Tertullian was the most decided and the boldest defender of traducianism: "Duas species confitabimur seminis, corporalem et animalem, indiscretas taraen vindicamus et hoc modo contemporales ejusdemque momenti." It was thus he spoke, and with him, according to the testimony of Jerome, maxima pars occidentalium. Jerome himself was a decided advocate of creationism. In the East, Apollinaris was a declared traducianist; but when he maintained that souls are derived from souls, as bodies are from bodies,¹ it must not be forgotten that he regarded man as consisting, in the sense of Plotinus, of three elements, a&fia, ^ruppj, and 1/0C?; and therefore he doubtless excepted the vow from this mode of origination. The Apostolic Constitutions, however, teach concerning the soul indiscriminately, that, as in the primal beginning, so in the process of conception, God creates it into that which is becoming man, eK rov fitj oWo?; and most of the Orientals were of this opinion, so far as they were not pledged, as probably even Clement of Alexandria was, to the theory of pre-existence. Nevertheless this latter theory is not less strongly opposed to traducianism than is the creationism which identifies, as to time, the origination of the body with begetting, and that of the spirit with creation. Augustine, of whom it cannot but be thought that he must or ought to have been the most exclusive traducianist, was wrestling with this question all his life; and it does great honour to his scientific accuracy and candour, that he openly acknowledges his dissatisfied wavering between for and against, although Pelagius was availing himself of creationism to oppose the dogma of inherited sin. From this ¹ See his foundation for this assertion, in Nemesius, c. ii. (ed. Matthtei), p. 108.

hesitancy of the great church teacher,—in which, in excessive dread of notions accordant with materialism and emanation, he still substantially inclined rather to creationism,—and from the semi-Pelagian tendency of the ecclesiastical anthropology, which was ever growing stronger and stronger, it is plain that the dominant church doctrine tended to become more decidedly in favour of creationism. The saying of Peter Lombardus, Creando infundit animas Deus et infundendo creat, became an authentic formula used in the Roman Catholic Church. This view, inherited from the scholastics of creationism, or, as it was also called, inf usionism or inducianism, was maintained the more strongly in proportion to the facility with which it accorded with the semi-Pelagian view, that had become prevalent, about the corruption of man. Anton. Giinther defended it with great ingenuity, on the ground of the essential dualism of spirit and nature, referring emanation and procreation to the life of nature as exclusive attributes, and making the soul only to be propagated with the body, but the spirit to come into existence by an immediate act of God's creation. Just so also Baltzer, in his diss, de modo propagations animarum (1833); Staudenmaier, in his Dogmatics; Gangauf, in his Metaphysical Psychology of St Augustine, and many other adherents of the system of Giinther; whereas traducianism in the Romish Church has only a few isolated defenders, as Klee, Oischinger, Mayrhofer, and Frohschammer. In the Lutheran Church, the opposition to the Romish semi-Pelagianism so strongly suggested the traducian view, that creationism was almost rejected as heres}-. In the meanwhile, the German reformers themselves were still undecided on this matter. In a sermon preached on the day of the conception of Mary, Luther expresses himself still remarkably in favour of creationism.¹ Melancthon, in his Psychology, declines any decision of, the question. Brentius declares himself absolutely and decidedly on the side of creationism, yet, as Quenstedt observes, solus fere ex yvrjaiw< ; Lutheranis; for Martin Chemnitz, in the Locis, designated the

¹ Works (edition, Erlangen), xv. 64, where he distinguishes the infusion of the soul as the second conception, from the first bodily conception. Yet, in the year 1545, Luther declared himself only inclined to maintain traduccm; but he went no further, although especially Bugenhagen very much urged him to do so.

principle animas creando infundi et infundendo creari as a temeraria assertio, which was responsible, or partly responsible, for the disfigurement of the pure doctrine of inherited sin. Calovius went so far as to adopt the maxim, Horninem generare hominem idque non tantum quoad corpus sed etiam animam, among the articles of a creed in his consensus repetitus, not only in opposition to the Komish, but also to the Calvinistic theology, which, as it sharply distinguishes dualistically divine and human nature in the person of the God-man, so also it distinguishes spirit and body in the person of man, and besides also, in its predestinarian view, would rather be reconciled to creationism.¹ In the seventeenth century there was hardly one Lutheran teacher who would have had an interest in creationism, but many who opposed it by all the means in their power.² And we are of their opinion. Although, moreover, later Protestant thinkers—e.g. Goschel (in his doctrine of the last things)—rend asunder spirit and Psyche, and assume that the latter is propagated by way of procreation, the former by way of creation, it is, according to Sec. IV., a view which to us is wholly untenable. Nor is the view any more acceptable to us, that the human soul comes into existence through the actual operation of the creative spirit upon the material element which is propagated, and does not become spiritual until the creative spirit sinks into it, making it its own, and making it one, as is taught by Schoberlein (in his Abh. fiber das Wesen der geistlichen Natur und Leiblichkeit)? For as it is true that spirit, and idea,

¹ Compare Schneckenburger, zur Kirchlicher Christologie (1848), pp. 82-84. Calvin himself says: Animas creatas esse non minus quam angelos certo statuendum est.

² So, for example, Balth. Meisner, in his Philosophia sobria; Theodoro Thummius, in his treatise de Traduce, againBt which the Jesuit WangnerEck wrote his tractate, de creatione anims e rationalis; Vake, in his work on the origin of human souls (1692).

³ Jahrbiicher, 1861, p. 28: "The creation of souls occurs on the basis of the material element, therefore not in such a way as that the soul would be independently formed and then placed into matter, but so that it is called forth as the higher potentiality of the general nature of the power which reigns in the matter through the operation of the spirit in the matter;" and p. 81: "The soul of man is essentially a natural soul; but a distinction between man and the mere natural being is established, in the fact that the created spirit is absorbed into the soul of man, into a true internal union with it, and the soul thereby is participant and possessor of

and word, are from the era of creation continually operative powers in that which is created, and as it is true that man only attains by the operation of God's Spirit to that spirituality, or rather holiness, which is his ideal destination, so the trichotomy which is assumed in this modification of creationism is destitute of sufficient Scripture foundation, and is contradictory in itself, —a trichotomy according to which the Spirit of God Himself is an element of human nature; and a spirit distinguishable from his soul, created and personal, is a priori denied to man. No; the man of creation is not a union of bodily-psychical life in the power of the Divine Spirit, but a union of bodily-spiritual life by means of the connecting link of the created soul. And his spiritual-psychical nature is either, according to the Romish doctrine, an immediate appointment of God in every case, or, according to the old Lutheran doctrine, it is God's immediate constitution in every case through the mediation of the act of begetting. We purpose inquiring for which of these two special possibilities Scripture decides.

As Scripture nowhere declares in a doctrinal manner anything on the origination of the spiritual-psychical nature of man as distinct from the origination of his bodily nature, so no result is to be attained in the ordinary way of proof from Scripture; and it is not to be wondered at, when Augustine says, "De re obscurissima disputatur, non adjuvantibus divinarum scripturarum certis clarisque documentis." The proof is not to be gathered from individual passages of Scripture (as, perhaps, Gen. xlvi. 26, Acts xvii. 26), but from facts which are equally certified throughout the whole of Scripture. There are such facts as, in our conviction, are inconsistent with creationism. Among these occurs to us—1st, The Creation Of Woman. The act of divine efnrvevaK by which the spiritualpsychical nature of Adam came into being is not repeated in the origination of the woman (Gen. ii. 21); on which account St Paul (1 Cor. xi. 8) says, without any limitation, yvvij e£ avb'p6<;; and Epiphanius, by way of developing this passage, says, " The woman was formed for him (Adam), out of him, resembling him, out of the very same body, and by the very same inspira

the spirit itself, so that it can be comprehended and defined with a conscious free meaning in reference to the divine idea of its being regnant in the spirit."

tion (Kat rov Clvtov efi^va-tjfiaro<;)." That Adam calls the woman only flesh of his flesh, and bone of his bones, is no argument against this, for he designates marriage only as the union of man and woman "inK "itf^?, without thereby excluding the idea that it is a fellowship of the souls, mutually complementary of one another. The narrative, indeed, throughout adheres to the externality of the manifestation, without on that account disowning the 'supersensuous background that exists therein. With the relation of the woman to the man, let the antitypical relation of the church to Christ, according to Eph. v. 22, be compared. This also is eK Tjj? aapKo< ; avrov, but it is moreover h> irvevfia with Him (1 Cor. vi. 16): it has its being and life not only from Christ's glorified corporeity, but chiefly from Christ's Spirit. It has been objected,¹ "The inspiration (endowing with spirit) was given to the two, Adam and the woman, both in one, in the still undivided, complete man. Eva is certainly not Adam's child, but Adam himself in a different sex." This is true; but does not this very duplication of the one principle of life speak very strongly in favour of traducianism? Another fact which militates against creationism is, 2d, The Sabbath Op Creation. This is a limitation sharply drawn by God Himself between His direct creative foundation, and His continuous mediate creative control (John v. 17). Scripture does not make any distinction of expression between the immediate and mediate production of God; but between the two kinds of operations of God's power, closely connected as they are, but yet absolutely distinct, there stands as an actual wall of separation, the Sabbath of creation, with which it is impossible to reconcile the principle that God is still every day immediately creating millions of souls. Of a creatio continua, in the special sense of the idea of creation, Scripture knows nothing, although it frequently speaks of the creation as of a continuous act of God (especially in such characteristic descriptions as Isa. xl. 28, xlii. 5) ;² and certainly it looks upon the divine maintenance of the world as a creatio continua, but only for the reason that all duration of things subsists in continuous pulses of the primeval creative impulse, and it is absolutely by

¹ Goschel, in his publication, Der Mensch diesscits und jenseits, p. 14. ¹ The disconnection of such participles in historical relative passages is at least not always allowable (see e.g. Ps. xxxiii. 7).

the same omnipotence which first created and now sustains the things, that they endure, while the endless chain of causes and effects in every one of their members remains conditioned by the overruling and all-penetrating will of the Author. When, then, it is said that God makes our souls (nit?W and niDEO, Jer. xxxviii. 16; Isa. lvii. 16), that God's Spirit makes us, and the breath of the Almighty gives us life (Job xxxiii. 4), that God forms the spirit within us (Zech. xii. 1, comp. Isa. li. 13), it proves absolutely nothing for creationism: for in these cases, without raising the distinction between immediate and mediate production, the origination of our spiritual-psychical nature is referred back to God's absolute causation and power as its final source¹ (comp. Ezek. xviii. 4); and otherwise, from the supposition that every mediate calling into being is only the repetition of the primal immediate one (Ps. cxxxix. 15; Job xxxiii. 6), is ascribed to God just in the same way also the formation and development of the foetus (Ps. xxii. 10, cxix. 73, cxxxix. 13—16; Job x. 8-12, xxxi. 15; Isa. xliv. 2), as the Lord likewise in Matt. vi. 30 speaks of the lilies of the field, and the apostles in 1 Cor. xv. 36-38 of the grain of seed of the plant, equally in the way of creationism. Another fact which compels us to the adoption of traducianism² is, 3d, Inherited Sin. There subsists between all men, and the first created pair who became sinful, according to the teaching of Scripture, confirmed by substantial self-knowledge and the measure of experience, a close connection, in virtue of which every individual regards the beginning of the human race as his own beginning; so that not only the sin of the race is his sin, but also the transgression of Adam is his transgression, and thus also his guilt.³ Thus it cannot be otherwise than that the spiritual-bodily origin of humanity is one which, by virtue of the creative foundation, and of the maintaining providential co-operation of God, continues itself out of itself; and thus the spirit of the individual comes into existence by an immediate appointment of God on each occasion, just as little as does his body. It has been, indeed, remarked in the Roman Catholic

¹ As when Eusebius, on Ps. c. (xcix.), says, tl xxl ioxoi/o-/» ol 'srxripti "zoiiin rot tcx.ux, oi» i &(£; rxvrx irotfi, x«i 6 fii» xhio;, oi Si ovvxhioi, u; rtf i£ xpx*IS xirov ltXxnovm; irpootXyfiXtt.

* Frank., Theokgie der Concordien-formel, i. 53.

* Hofmann, Schriftbeweis, i. 540.

interest, sophistically enough, that the transmission by inheritance of Adam's sin can only be spoken of on the hypothesis of creationism, since the divinely created spirit which enters into the moral faculty derived from Adam, receives at the same time with it the sin inherent in it.¹ But the meaning and substance of inherited sin is rather this—that man, as soon as he attains to personal thought, and to self-knowledge, finds everything that he, the I, the person, has in himself, i.e. the entire circumference of his spiritual-bodily natural condition, permeated with sin. It is not only the corporeity of man, but the totality of his entire nature absorbed in the ahp%, in and with which sin is transmitted, so that the sinful disposition of the entire being of the individual anticipates his actual self-conscious and self-determining life; or, in other words, is prior to the commencement of his personal life. But if it be supposed that the spirit of the individual is at every time immediately created by God,^a there follow therefrom the consequences, contrary to Scripture and experience, that the human spirit stands independently, without any actual relation to original sin; that it is God Himself who concludes the human spirit under the consequences of it; that there is only a sinful determination of the bodily nature involved in the enclosing of the so-called natural-psyche, but not an inherited sin comprehending man's whole personality, and certainly not an inherited guilt; that substantially every begetting is a new commencement of human histoiy: for, since freedom belongs to the essence of the spirit, and God cannot imprint upon it the impotency of unfreedom, without becoming Himself the originator of evil, it cannot continue to be an absolute necessity for it to subject itself slavishly to the sinful aap% of Adam; and there could at least be no question of an imputability of inherited sinfulness, so long as the spirit had not yet actually in this position consented, and the image of God in it had not been ¹ e.g. Staudenmaier, Dogmatik, iii. 447-449.

* Thus e.g. even Fronmiiller (art. "Geist und Seele," in the Zeller. BibI . Worterb.), who says that, "to the soul at its origination is added immediately the spirit, as a spark of the Divine Spirit, and that this does not prejudice the fact of inherited sin, but rather places the expressions of Jesus about the childlike mind in their true light." Opposed to this, we hold to the above consequences, and refer to their further development in Frohschammer, Ueber den Ursprung der Menschlichen Seelen, 1854.

extinguished. Such results, and the like, contrary to Scripture and experience, flow, in respect of inherited sin, from creationism. Augustine was well aware of this. When, therefore, the young Vincentius Victor, disapproving Augustine's wavering, very decidedly embraced the side of creationism, Augustine in the most earnest way reproached him with his youthful inconsideration; and although he was the older teacher, he even conjured the younger Jerome and others to help him over those difficulties of creationism of which Pelagius knew so well how to avail himself.¹ But, moreover, 4th, The Incarnation bears an actual testimony against creationism. Wherever Scripture speaks of Christ in conformity with the human aspect of His personality, it places it under the point of view of begetting, conception, and birth; nowhere of immediate divine creation. Since the temporal beginning of his existence corresponds to the everlasting beginning, Christ is even, according to His human nature, vto? Tov 6eov, but so that at the same time He is, in full absolute truth, v/o? Tov avdpdnrov. He has all that belongs to the human natural condition on the one side «c irvevfxaro^ ar/iov, on the other side eii fuvauio<;. He has it by the reception of the Holy Ghost, and overshadowing of the power of the Most High (Luke i. 35), from Mary—not only the body, but also spirit and soul. Only on this supposition is He in truth (not merely according to the natural basis of human nature) our d8eXi£o?; and only upon the supposition that on all sides of human natural condition He is rooted in the compact consistency of humanity, was its universal redemption possible through Him: for, proceeding from the maxim of Gregory of Nazianzum, To airpoaXeTnov aflepdirevrov, our dogmatists rightly say—Si Christus non assu?nsisset animam ab anima Mariw, animam humanam non redemisset.¹

The last and principal support of creationism is the principle, that the assumption of the spirit's ability to propagate

¹ See Gangauf, I.e. pp. 250-266, where the position of Augustine to the question in debate is set forth with praiseworthy impartiality. That Augustine convinced himself of the truth of creationism after many inward struggles, as Staudenmaier says in his Dogmatik; is untrue. Even in the retractations he still confesses that upon this question he is still, as ever, unable to give an answer (nee tunc sciebam, nee adhuc scio).

² These counter evidences against creationism are very well collected in the sketch of physiology by E. A. Mirus, in his Kurtzen Fragen aus der

itself is contrary to the dualism of nature and spirit, and transfers the essence of the former to the latter, thus confounding two departments that are sharply distinct. This reproach, however, touches Scripture itself, and proves itself unjustifiable there. For although the Scripture, as well of the Old as the New Testament, teaches that God is a Spirit, yet it reveals to us an eternal act of begetting and of birth, as in the Godhead itself (o irartjp and 6 vtof), and an eternal emanation of God the Holy Spirit from God the begetting, and God who is born. Moreover, Wisdom says, ""When there were no depths, 1 was brought forth," W^irt (P rov. viii. 24); and Scripture does not shrink from calling God's creative production Tvin (Job xxxviii. 28) and ^in (Ps. xc. 2; Deut. xxxii. 18), compare Ps. xc. 2; and His new creative production avar/evvav (1 Pet. i. 3) and airoKveiv (Jas. i. 18): nay, it speaks directly of a divine cnrepfia (1 John iii. 9; compare 1 Pet. i. 23). The Scripture could not teach and speak in this manner, if begetting and participation, indivisibility and propagation, were coincident ideas; and if there were not a manner of begetting which corresponds to the nature of spirit, in which the essential distinction of the spirit from nature remains unabolished.

After these counter evidences against creationism, the one passage of Scripture which for the most part favours it (Heb. xii. 9), will not be able to suggest to us another to succeed it. Our fathers are there, as T//< ; aapKo< ; fjfiwv TraTepe?, contrasted with God as iriiTrjp rwv irvevfidrwv, and certainly in a physical, not in an ethical sense. God is not called our spiritual Father, in opposition to the merely natural paternity of our ancestors; but the divine co-operation in the origination of our spiritual-bodily existence is raised so much the higher, as the spirit is exalted above the flesh; and the latter we have from our ancestors, the former from the Father of spirits, scil. the spirits of all flesh (Num. xvi. 22, xxvii. 16).¹ There can hardly be a more classical

Pneumatica Sacra (1710), pp. 206-209. Gen. v. 3 is here rightly referred to. The likeness of God did not propagate itself in the immediateness of its origin, but in the mediateness given by Adam's self-determination, which ensued in the meanwhile, whereby human instrumentality is required for the origination of the entire man, even of his spirit.

¹ See my Commentary in loco, and Riehm's confirmation of the argu

proof text for creationism. But if it be considered in connection with other statements of Scripture, and especially of the Epistle to the Hebrews itself, the matter appears somewhat differently. For when (vii. 5) the writer says that the Israelites came out of the loins of Abraham, and (vii. 10, comp. Gen. xlvi. 26) that when Abraham met Melchizedec, Levi was still in the loins of the former, his ancestor, he means thereby, that the subsequent family,—on the one hand indeed, not by the necessity of nature, but according to promise, but, on the other hand, not only partially according to the flesh, but generally according to its entire substance,—was determined in Abraham; for only on this supposition is the meaning conveyed, that in and with Abraham, Levi also had mediately paid tithes. The passage xii. 9 cannot thus be quoted in favour of creationism, in such a sense as that the traducian view, which it so strongly expresses, should be afterwards negatived by it; rather it will appropriately supplement this latter view, by taking up into it that which is true in creationism.¹ In other words, the writer does not mean to say that the new beginning of a human life is effected bodily indeed by procreation, while spiritually it is constituted by a divine new creation; but rather that the body . as well as spirit of the child comes into being at the moment of procreation: the former, however, in virtue of an act of human will, by means of material impregnation; the latter in virtue of a divine impulse of creative power, by means of an inspiration performed through the medium of the spirit of the person that begets an inspiration, in which the primitive manner of endowing with spirit is continued. For this reason God is called (Zech. xii. 1) the former of the spirit of man within him, and (Ps. xxxiii. 15) the fashioner of the hearts of all men. Our corporeity looks back to a process of nature, our spirit to the creative concurrence of the Father of spirits.²

ment there for the (briefly) creationish sense of the passage in his Lehrbegriff des Hebrcierbriefs, pp. 678-681.

¹ In the same way, Goschel, Der Mensch diesseits und jenseits, p. 13; comp. Philippi, Glaubenslehre, iii. 102, " It is possible that the concursus generate of the sustaining activity of God in procreation is changed into a concursus specialis (miraculosus) of a more creative character."

² Luther also aimed at this when he thus expressed himself: Animam Deus ex semine patris creat. He means to say that the creative operation does not resemble the creatio prima ex nihilo, but is creatio secunda

The origination of man is, indeed, on all sides a mystery (Prov. xxx. 19; Eccles. xi. 5). That which in these passages was said by the ancient Israelitish Chokma, must also still be said by the latest physiology. But, without seeking to unveil this mystery, we may, on the ground of Scripture, and of our previous scriptural inquiry, state the following principles: (1.) In the spiritual-psychical nature of Adam, was at the same time potentially constituted that of all men who were to come into existence; for according to Scripture, without any limitation, the woman is ef avSpb<;, and the whole human race is c'^ evo? <Ufiaro< ; (Acts xvii. 26). (2.) After the distinction was established between the sexes, this potentiality was a divided one; for the bringing into existence of man is thenceforward conditioned by the fact that the man knows the woman, and the woman the man (Gen, iv. 1; comp. Num. xxxi. 17, .Tudg. xi. 39); a biblical mode of expression, which, as also Kia, is everywhere used only of human, and never of brute coition; because the former, as distinct from the latter, is a free moral act, not merely performed by the flesh, but moreover by the spiritual-soul. It is a figure in harmony with Scripture, when the ancients say that the tree of humanity, in its entire ramification, as it stood before God in the mirror of wisdom, was originally enclosed in the soul of Adam like a grain of seed, which after the creation of the woman is assigned to man and woman. (3.) Not only in the man, but in the woman also, is the potentiality of the whole man that was to come into existence according to his spiritual-bodily nature.¹ It is in both, according to distinct aspects, for,in both is spirit and soul; but in man prevails the spirit working life, in the woman the soul

ex prsejacente termino. Leibnitz says, with reference to the divine concurrence: Ordinaria an extraordinaria operatione Dei non definio. See Goschel, I.e. p. 26. Together with other places referring to procreation in v. Lasaulx's Philosophie der Geschichte (1857), the expression communicated from the Indian book of law of Jugnavalkja is very remarkable: "In the union of man and wife, if blood and seed be pure, the Lord takes the five elements (ether, fire, air, water, earth), and is Himself the sixth."

¹ Among our old theologians, Sal. Gesner says, that the soul of the child is lighted at that of the father, as a light at a light. In the same way, Balth. Meisner excludes tho mother, but remembers at last the truer representation, that the souls of the parents, in the act of procreation, act reciprocally, and that the soul of the child is derived from the souls of

representing and developing life.¹ From the fact that the Logos receives from Mary the entire natural condition of a man, proceeds the result that even in the woman, although partially, is the potentiality of the entire man; and from the fact that this potentiality is made actual in Mary by the operation of the Holy Spirit, we appear to be compelled to the conclusion that, in virtue of the divine creative power mediately operating in the act of procreation, the establishment of a new human beginning of life is thereby effected; that man's prevailing spiritual nature, to which corresponds the fructifying male sperma, exerts an influence upon the woman's prevailing psychic nature, to which corresponds the female ovum waiting for fructification, as we in comparing nari"ip, Gen. i. 2, with Luke i. 35,² are the better able to assert, because Scripture does not attribute to the woman a sperma of her own; but still not merely the capacity of conception, but, moreover, the perfecting of the male sperma (Lev. xii. 2), and thus an accessory participation in the production of the man. We might refer also, for the distribution of the spiritual and psychical portion of the power of procreation, to Gen. vi. 1-4, comp. Jude C, where the sons of God, who are still ninn, engender with the daughters of men; yet we fear that we may be accused of confounding that which is divine, natural, and demoniacal,

both, as when a torch is illumined at two others, when it cannot be said that its light comes exclusively from this or from that.

¹ When the Jerusalem Targum, on Gen. ii. 7, says that God created man "IVni DTIE* pDID (red, black, and white), and a Midrasch (see a collection of small Midraschim brought out by Ad. Jellinek, Pt. i. p. 155), y"ifD E^Kil DDK njTltD flE'ttrn (the man impregnates white, and the woman red), it coincides with what is said above. For white (the colour of light) is the symbol of the spirit, red (the colour of fire) the symbol of the soul, and black (the colour of earth) the symbol of the body. According to another view, resting on Lev. xii. 2, which must be taken into consideration in Hob. xi. 11, a male fruit is produced when the female seed anticipates the male, and a female when the male seed anticipates the female. This also agrees with the above. The spirit has the impulse to become soul, and the soul has the impulse to become the medium and the representative of the spirit.

² This reciprocal relation is doubtless aimed at; and as Basilios (after the example of his friend Ephrem) remarks, in reference to the nSmD of the genesis of the Kosmos, xxrd T))» ilxinx rii; ex«x£oi/ir»f oprifai, so not less strikingly (after the example of Theophylact) Maldonatus, on the 'nriaxiiau of the genesis of the God-man: Sicut solet avis ova sua tcgere, ut ejus calore pulli gignantur excludanturque.

especially as of late an emphatic protest has been made again by Keil, Philippi, and Keerl, against the angelological apprehension of what is there narrated (which we, with v. Hofmann, Kurtz, and v. Zezschwitz, maintain). But, on the other hand, it is still an undeniable truth, that divine and spiritual are in many ways the transcendental archetype of created and natural, and that the latter is an anagogic type of the former; and thus, moreover, that in the demoniacal kingdom (as will be confirmed further on by the examination of many experimental facts of psychology) is manifoldly represented the caricatured counterfeit (which belongs to the dark magic) of the divine. (4.) From the fact that conception frequently ensues when the passions of the man and woman are worn out, and does not ensue in spite of all the fervour of love where any bodily hindrance of any kind, often pathologically incapable of recognition, is opposed to it, manifestly results the principle that the event is completed by means of a creatively established and providentially conditioned natural necessity within the department of nature, withdrawn from the self-consciousness and freedom, as even then the act of begetting is truly a sinking of the person into the natural ground of the species, and always is associated with a veiling of the self-consciousness, and a surrender of the freedom to the force of nature. Thus it will probably remain an enigma, how, through the mutual agency of the man and woman, the man according to his spiritual aspect comes into being; and the formula borrowed from the propagation of cuttings per traducem is not a solution, but only an imperfect resemblance.¹ Better in proportion is what the ancients say: Cum flamma accendit flammam neque tota flamma accendens transit in accensam neque pars ejus in earn descendit: ita anima parentum generat animam filii ut ei nihil decedat. But even this is only a similitude borrowed from the region of the natural.

¹ Therefore Quenstedt says: Distinguendum est inter traductionem vel propagationem animse ipsam et traductions vel propagationis modum. Propagationem animae fieri manifestum est, modus vero definitus non est adeoque ab ejus determinatione et definitione abstinemus. Klee, a Catholic adversary of creationism, has coined the name Generationism instead of Traducianism (see v. Berlepsch, Anthropologic Christian* Dogmata, 1842, p. 61,—a youthful "work of Romish zeal),—a name to which even Frohschammer gives the preference: "Generare is not a traducerc, but a secondary, a created creare.ⁿ

We know inferentially only thus much, that while in the world of angels no spirit can produce another out of itself, the human spiritual-psychical nature, because it is associated with matter, is planned for the purpose of propagating itself out of itself at the same time with the bodily procreation. But how this happens is a still greater mystery than the bodily process of procreation, which is only as the dim shadow of the more exalted spiritual process; and since the magnificat of the first mother, "I have brought forth a man with Jehovah!" every birth is and remains a marvel, only to be explained by the cooperation of God's creative power. Aristotle says man begets man with the co-operation of the sun (avOpanvos avOpanrov yevva Kal ryXto?), we say with the co-operation of the Father of spirits.