Traducianism

TRADUCIANISM. — Theory according to which human souls (except those of Adamo and Eva) are transmitted to children by their parents. This theory (t.) is opposed to the doctrine according to which individual souls are created immediately by God (creationism).

I. HISTORY

T. underwent considerable development in the Western Church, whose most significant representatives were Tertullian (De anima, 27) and St. Agostino (De libero arbitrio, III, 20–21; De Genesi ad litteram, X, 11–26; Ep., 166 and 190; De Anima; Retractationes, I, 1, 3; II, 45, 56), the former upholding a materialist t., and the latter uncertain in the face of a spiritualist t. According to materialist t., the human soul would derive from a material seed; according to spiritualist t. instead (the t. today preferably called “generationalism”), the child’s soul would derive from the parent’s soul. The manner of explaining this derivation is undoubtedly difficult: St. Agostino expressed it by means of an image that later became classical: “Just as one torch lights another without the communicating flame losing any of its light, so the soul is transmitted from father to son” (Ep., 190, 15). This is merely an image, and he realized that it did not solve the enigmas of this generation; indeed, he asks: “Does the immaterial germ of the soul perhaps pass from the father to the mother through some secret and invisible channel at the moment of conception? Or, something even more difficult to admit, is this principle latent in the material germ of the body? And what happens to the spiritual seed when a conjugal union is not followed by generation?” (Ep., 190, 15). These are the fundamental difficulties of spiritualist t., and they emerged throughout all periods of history; J. FROHSCHAMMER, JACOB (v.), in order to overcome them, eliminated in his Difesa del generazionismo (1845) the notion of every material and spiritual seed, and attributed creative efficacy to the action of the parents with regard to the child’s soul. This is the most up-to-date expression of t.; such, in fact, cannot be said of Rosmini’s opinion, according to which the child derives from the parent only its sensitive soul, which becomes intellectual by coming to know ideal being and uniting itself with it as with its intelligible form.

II. THE MAGISTERIUM OF THE CHURCH

The documents of the magisterium concerning traducianism are not numerous, and none is definitional. The first interventions date back to the struggle against the Manichaeans and the Priscillianists; emanationism and the idea of a pre-existence of souls in a state from which they fell into this world because of their sin were condemned; instead, the principle that the soul is created by God was affirmed (cf. Symbol of Toledo of 447; Denz-U, 20, 31; Second Council of Braga of 561; Denz-U, 235-236). In the same sense, and more clearly, is the fifteenth letter of s. Leone to Turbio in 447: «Nec ab alio incorporantur nisi ab opifice Deo qui et ipsarum est creator et corporum» (PL 54, 685). The most explicit document on traducianism is a letter of Anastasius II (of 498) to the bishops of Gaul, in which he condemns those who hold that, just as parents generate the body through material seed, so they also give their children the soul; this opinion is declared nova haeresis (Denz-U, 170). Among the subsequent documents, mention should be made of the condemnation of 1341 directed against the opinion according to which the human soul of the son proceeds from that of the father (ibid., 533), and the decree of the Fifth Lateran Council (ibid., 738). In the nineteenth century the magisterium intervened with the condemnation (1857) of Frohschammer’s book and of the twentieth Rosminian proposition; and more recently with the encyclical Humani generis, in which, while treating of evolutionism, the Pope incidentally makes this declaration: «La fede cattolica ci obbliga a ritenere che le anime sono state create immediatamente da Dio» (AAS, 44 [1950], p. 575).

None of these documents is definitional; nevertheless, they are sufficient to conclude that a Catholic cannot uphold any form of traducianism: the materialist form because it is heretical (for it denies the spirituality of the soul), the spiritualist form (whether it derives the soul of the son from a spiritual seed or attributes a creative activity to the action of the parents) because it is erroneous. The so-called traducianism of Rosmini, on the other hand, is merely a condemned opinion (Denz-U, 1910).

III. REFUTATION OF T

Spiritualist T. (we shall limit ourselves to this, since the materialist form is eliminated by the demonstration of the spirituality of the soul) is not tenable either by philosophical arguments or by arguments drawn from Revelation; indeed, in both fields there are proofs demonstrating its inconsistency. The principal philosophical argument for T. is this: if parents do not transmit the soul to their children, they cannot claim to have generated them, since they produce not a being like themselves but only a body; consequently, human activity in generation would have to be considered inferior to that of the animal, which generates its offspring both as regards the body and the sensitive soul. This reasoning, however, is based on an erroneous philosophical conception of man, who is not an accidental compound of body and soul, but a substantial compound. Only under the first hypothesis can parents, by not producing the child’s soul, be unable to claim that they have generated him; not under the second hypothesis. For parents to be called the cause of the birth of a human being, it is sufficient that they generate one of his substantial elements (the body), which «requires» God to intervene in order to create the other. Another argument to which the traducianists of the previous century readily resorted is that of heredity: if one does not admit that the children’s soul derives from that of their parents, one could not explain the mutual resemblances, which are not merely physical and somatic, but also psychic and spiritual. The answer is easy: the intimate bond, established by experience and explained by Thomistic philosophy, between body and spirit already helps us to understand how someone who derives his body from another also resembles him spiritually; nor should one forget that parents and children belong to the same familial and historical environment, which is of great importance in the formation of an individual’s mentality and character—that is, in the formation of his spiritual physiognomy. The refutation of T. is completed by arguments directly opposed to II. Materialist T. must be excluded because on this hypothesis either the spirituality of the soul is denied, or one must say that a cause (material seed) can produce an effect superior to itself (the spiritual soul). Generational T. must also be excluded, because it is difficult to imagine what the action of a soul generating another soul could be (the difficulty of s. Agostino): in any event, since this would be a matter of generation, one would have to say that a part of the parents’ soul passes to the child; but this cannot occur because the parents’ soul is indivisible, being simple (cf. D. Mercier, Psychologie, II, Lovanio 1908, p. 332). Frohschammer’s hypothesis must be excluded because a creature cannot create; as for Rosmini’s opinion, it is bound up with his entire system and consequently shares its weaknesses.

From the theological point of view, the refutation is even easier. T. cannot in fact claim any argument from Holy Scripture in its favor: the few passages cited (e.g., Gen. 1, 28; 5, 3, 46, 26) prove nothing. Nor can it invoke any real contradiction, or even any difficulty arising from other doctrines of faith: the transmission of original sin can creationism (v.); to regard God as the creator of souls does not mean making him responsible for the possible illicitness of a conjugal act. Nor can T. appeal to the tradition of the Fathers, since the opinion of Tertullian and of other Western writers who more or less followed him on this point (s. Girolamo, with evident exaggeration, said that the majority of the Latins were followers of T.: Ep., 125, 2), and the uncertainties of s. Agostino, are insufficient to yield a definitive argument. The line of development of the tradition, in fact, is not, as can also be shown by the few documents cited, in a traducianist direction, but in a creationist one.