Article 3. What is the Origin of the Human Soul

169. Here we inquire not only into the origin of the soul of the first man, but into the origin of the soul in each man. Although this question is usually treated in philosophy, nevertheless it also pertains under many heads to revealed doctrine, and therefore we cannot omit it entirely. We shall treat it briefly, refuting the false opinions, establishing the true one, and determining theologically its degree of certitude.

170. The diverse opinions concerning the origin of the human soul are all easily brought back to three classes. For either it is said to be produced from the substance of God (it would be better said to be unproduced), and we have pantheistic opinions; or it is said to be produced from the substance of the parents, and we have Traducianism; or it is said to be produced from nothing, and we have Creationism.

171. The pantheistic opinions, as is clear from the very essence of this absurd system, all agree in this, that human souls are educed from the substance of God. But since the same system is proposed under diverse forms, there is also established a diverse mode by which the soul is produced from the substance of God. For those who establish God, the first principle of things, as a corporeal being say that the soul is a part of God himself; those who acknowledge God to be a spiritual being hold that the soul is, as it were, an efflux of God; and finally those who hold that God is a certain indeterminate being consider the human soul as some determination, a phenomenon of divinity.

172. There is no need here to linger longer in refuting these absurd pantheistic opinions, since they are easily refuted from those things by which pantheism is refuted in its proper place. It is enough to bring forward some things from St. Thomas, by which it is evidently shown that the human soul cannot be produced from the substance of God, whatever mode of emanation may finally be assigned. "Everything," says the holy Doctor, Contra Gentiles, book 2, c. 85, "from which something is made is in potency to that which is made from it. But the substance of God is not in potency to anything, since it is pure act. Therefore it is impossible that from the substance of God a soul, or anything else, should be made. Again, that from which another thing is made is changed in some way. But God is altogether immutable. Therefore it is impossible that something should be made from him. Moreover, in the soul there manifestly appears variation according to knowledge and virtue and their opposites. But God is altogether invariable both per se and per accidens. Therefore the soul cannot be of the divine substance." St. Augustine also very beautifully proposes this last argument, Epistle 166, § 3, saying: "The soul is not a part of God.... For if it were, it would neither decline into worse nor advance into better; nor would it begin to have in itself anything which it did not have, or cease to have what it did have, so far as concerns its own affections. But how differently it stands, there is no need of external testimony: whoever attends to himself knows it."

173. Traducianism is distinguished as twofold. For some said that not only the body but also the soul is generated from the corporeal seed of the parents; others, however, think that the souls of children are generated not from the body, but from the soul of the parents, attributing to the soul itself a certain spiritual seed. Some call this spiritual traducianism generatianism, in order to distinguish it from the material one, to which they leave the name traducianism.

174. The Fathers rejected traducianism, which Tertullian once seems to have taught. Thus St. Augustine, Epistle 190 to Optatus, c. 4, says: "Those who assert that souls are propagated from the one which God gave to the first man, and thus say that they are drawn from parents, if they follow the opinion of Tertullian, certainly contend that they are not spirits, but bodies, and that they arise from corporeal seeds; what more perverse can be said? Nor is it to be wondered that Tertullian dreamed this, who also opines that God the Creator himself is nothing but a body." St. Jerome (On Ecclesiastes 12:7): "From this those are sufficiently to be laughed at who think that souls are sown with bodies and are generated not by God, but by the parents of bodies." Moreover, this error can easily be refuted by all those arguments by which the simplicity and spirituality of the human soul are vindicated in philosophy.

175. In these last times Klee renewed generatianism, whom a few others followed. Since the arguments to be brought forward for proving the true opinion equally exclude generatianism, it will be enough here to report what Bellarmine has against it. "If the souls of men," he says (On the Loss of Grace and the State of Sin, book 4, c. 11), "are drawn from the parents, they are drawn either from the body or from the soul of the parents.... If from the soul, either from the whole or from a part; if from the whole, then either the parent thereafter lacks the soul, since he has poured the whole into the son, or the whole remains in the father and in the son. Each is evidently false; for experience testifies that the parent is not deprived of soul through generation, and that there is not one and the same soul of father and son; to omit that it is singular and proper to the divine nature, on account of its infinity, that one in number should be in several persons. But if the soul of the son exists not from the whole, but from a part of the soul of the father, then the soul is divisible, and by this very fact corporeal and mortal. Thus one always returns to the article concerning the immortality of the soul." This last part of the argument is valid if it is supposed that some spiritual seed is, as it were, cut off from the soul of the parents and constitutes, as it were, a part of the soul of the offspring; and generatianism implies both. A little below the same Bellarmine adds: "If the human soul is traduced, no otherwise than the souls of beasts, it will both be generated from matter and, separated from matter, will fail and perish. Thus, therefore, let it be demonstrated that human souls are not made from propagation, but are created." But it will be useful to read the whole cited chapter, where he treats fully the whole question concerning the origin of the human soul.

176. Those who defend creationism agree in this, that the human soul is produced from nothing. But some more recent authors, such as Froschammer, teach that the parents themselves produce the souls of their children from nothing, in the book which he published in the year 1854. The Sacred Congregation of the Index condemned this book, and the Supreme Pontiff Pius IX again reproved the author in the Brief to the Archbishop of Munich and Freising, Gravissimas inter acerbitates, December 11, 1862. This error is refuted from the things said (n. 26 and following, and n. 53 and following). See La Civilta Cattolica, series 5, vol. 10, p. 141.

177. Others indeed confess that human souls do not exist except through creation by God, but at the same time they hold that all were created from the beginning of the world and at some time lived life without a body; but since in that state they fell into sins, they were thrust down into bodies as into a prison, as punishment for sin. Not a few among the Jews taught this error, such as Philo with the sect of the Essenes; also some among Christians, such as the Priscillianists, Origen, etc.; and in these last times Kant renewed it. The reason on which all these relied was sought from the inclination to evil, miseries, etc., which according to them cannot be explained otherwise than through the disordered action which the soul committed before this earthly life.

178. This opinion, however, is manifest heresy. This is clear 1. from Scripture. For Romans 5:14 reads: "Death reigned from Adam unto Moses, even over those who did not sin in the likeness of the prevarication of Adam." But it cannot be said that they did not sin insofar as they did not contract original sin; therefore they did not sin by committing actual sin, as, for example, infants, who nevertheless die. Romans 9:11 says: "when they had not yet been born, or had done anything good or evil, etc." And St. Augustine (On Original Sin against Pelagius and Coelestius, c. 31) says: "For it is not, as some according to the Platonists opine, that this is rendered to the soul of each infant because it committed it by its own will before this life, when it had before this body a free choice of living either well or badly; since the Apostle Paul says most openly that those not yet born had done nothing good or evil."

It is clear 2. from the Fathers. St. Gregory Nazianzen (Oration 37, c. 15) says: "I fear lest someone embrace the foolish opinion, as if the soul had already lived previously in some place, and afterwards had been cast into the body as into a prison.... This opinion is insane and is repugnant to ecclesiastical tradition." St. Jerome (book 2, c. 2) attacks Rufinus with a sharp style because he defended Origen saying that "souls existed before bodies and did something because of which they were bound to gross bodies, as if after the manner of dormice they had grown torpid and had fallen asleep." Theodoret (Compendium of Heretical Fables, book 5, c. 9, on man) says: "But we profess ... that the soul does not exist before the body." St. Leo (Epistle 93, c. 10): "The Catholic faith constantly and truly proclaims that the souls of men did not exist before they were breathed into their bodies." Clement of Alexandria, Tertullian, Lactantius, Peter of Alexandria, and St. Cyril of Alexandria teach the same. And the Fifth Council of Constantinople issued nine chapters by which it proscribed the errors of Origen, among which is listed that concerning the preexistence of souls (Acta Conciliorum, ed. Harduin, p. 283).

It is clear 3. from reason. For a) a soul whose essence is not changed through union with the body ought to retain some memory of its previous life and of its own faults. b) All the more because, according to the opinion of the adversaries, memory and consciousness of past offenses would be necessary so that men could be purified from them and make satisfaction for them. c) God created a spiritual creature, a corporeal creature, and man participating in both, for the order of the universe. d) The inclination to evil, miseries, etc., in the present state are traced back to original sin, etc. See Bellarmine, the book cited above.

179. Nor must those be heard who assert that all human souls were created from the beginning of the world, yet without adding the other error concerning faults for the expiation of which they were afterwards joined with bodies. For a) as we heard from St. Leo (which other Fathers also teach), it is a constant faith that souls did not exist before they were breathed into their bodies. b) "For if," says St. Thomas, Summa Theologiae I, q. 118, a. 3, "it is natural for the soul to be united to the body, to be without the body is contrary to nature for it, and existing without the body it does not have the perfection of its nature. But it was not fitting that God should begin his work from imperfect things, and from those things which are outside nature; for he did not make man without a hand or without a foot, which are natural parts of man; much less, therefore, did he make the soul without the body. But if someone says that it is not natural for the soul to be united to the body, it is necessary to inquire into the cause why it is united to the body. But one must say that either this was done by its will, or by another cause. If by its will, this seems unfitting. First, indeed, because this will would be irrational, if it did not need the body and wished to be united to it; for if it needed it, it would be natural to it to be united to the body, because nature does not fail in necessary things. Second, because there would be no reason why a will should have come to souls created at the beginning of the world, after so many times, that now they should be united to bodies; for spiritual substance is above time, as exceeding the revolutions of heaven. Third, because it would seem to be by chance that this soul would be united to this body, since for this there would be required the concurrence of two wills, namely of the soul arriving and of the man generating. But if it is united to the body apart from its own will and apart from its nature, it must be that this is from a cause inflicting violence; and thus it will be penal and sorrowful, which is according to the error of Origen, who held, as Epiphanius reports, book 2 against heresies, heresy 64, that souls are incorporated on account of the punishment of sin."

180. We must accomplish two things here: first, the origin of the human soul through creation by God must be established; then the theological qualification of this truth must be determined. As to the first, we note that it is enough for us to prove that the human soul cannot be produced otherwise than through creation properly so called; for since it has already been proved that creation belongs to God alone, by this very fact it is shown that the soul is immediately from God.

181. As to the second, however, two things must be noted. 1. In order that some truth be said to pertain to Catholic faith, the proposition of the Church is required; but the Church can propose in two ways those things to be believed which have been divinely revealed, namely "either by solemn judgment, or by the ordinary and universal magisterium," as the Vatican Council defined, Constitution Dei Filius, chapter 3. 2. It is known that after the times of the Apostles no new Catholic revelation is to be admitted; but this does not prevent some truths revealed by God and handed down by the Apostles from not having been, for some interval of time, so known that all were bound explicitly to offer to them the assent of divine faith. Hence during the same time there could be some disagreement about the same truths among Catholics, not indeed from a defect of revelation, but from a defect of sufficient knowledge. Afterwards, however, when new errors have arisen, when new studies have been applied to investigating the word of God, and when the Holy Spirit assists the Church, those truths can be so manifested as divinely revealed that it is permitted to no one to deny them without shipwreck in faith. There are many examples of this matter. See what we said in the treatise On the Theological Virtues, from p. 209.

182. Perhaps no express and solemn definition of the Church can be adduced concerning the origin of the human soul through creation; but we maintain that the Church has sufficiently proposed this truth by its constant and universal magisterium. We confess that for some time some doubt existed within the limits of the Church concerning this matter, as will be clear from the things to be said below concerning the mind of St. Augustine; but at the same time we assert that in later times the truth concerning the creation of the human soul was fully manifested as pertaining to the deposit of faith.

183. Since the truth and the qualification of the proposition to be established are proved by the same theological arguments, we shall first bring forward arguments of reason for proving the truth.

184. With these things explained, we say:

PROP. XVIII. That the human soul is created by God is 1. a truth, which 2. must be judged to pertain to Catholic faith.

Proof of the first part. I. The human soul has operations of intellective life which are independent of matter, or spiritual; therefore it also has a spiritual being, or one independent of matter, since operation is the effect of being itself, and consequently cannot surpass its cause. But that which is altogether independent of matter in being must necessarily be independent in coming-to-be, since coming-to-be or effecting is the very being of the thing in its coming-to-be. Therefore the human soul must be altogether independent of matter while it comes to be. But it would not be altogether independent of matter while it comes to be if it came to be from something; since this something is either required necessarily for the soul to come to be, or to be while it comes to be, and then the soul already depends upon it in being; or it is not required necessarily, and is admitted in vain. Therefore the soul must come to be from nothing, which is to be created.

Brief explanation. "The human soul, as is demonstrated from the very nature of an intelligent being, not only is simple, that is, not consisting of parts placed outside one another, but is also spiritual, namely a substance so independent of matter that it can both be and operate without it; and by this immateriality especially its essential difference from the soul of a brute is shown" (Ord. pro trien. phil. stud. 1858, p. 14). Now, as St. Thomas very often teaches, "since coming-to-be is the way to being, coming-to-be belongs to something in the same mode as being belongs to it." This principle not only has the authority of all the scholastic Doctors, but also rests upon evident reason. For effecting, coming-to-be, the transient action by which something comes to be, is not entitatively distinguished from the thing itself which comes to be (n. 15, 17, and 22); or the being of which it is now said, it comes to be, and now, it has been made, is one and the same. But there is one mode of being for one being; therefore if it is independent of matter when it has been made, it must also be independent when it comes to be. But that which comes to be independently of matter, or of any subject whatever, comes to be from nothing, or is created. Therefore.

Proof II. "Everything which is produced into being," says St. Thomas, Contra Gentiles, book 2, c. 87, "is either generated per se, or per accidens, or is created." But the human soul is produced into being, since it neither is from itself nor has always been; and it is generated neither per se nor per accidens. Therefore it is created.

Explanation and proof of the major. "We use the name of generation," teaches St. Thomas, Summa Theologiae I, q. 27, a. 2, "in two ways. In one way commonly for all generable and corruptible things; and thus generation is nothing other than a change from non-being to being. In another way properly in living things; and thus generation signifies the origin of some living thing from a conjoined living principle; and this is properly called nativity." Here, however, generation is taken in the first, less proper sense; and consequently it is clear that the division is complete. For that major proposition is equivalent to this: whatever is produced is produced either from nothing or from something; if from something, it is either generated per se, which is true of subsisting things, or it is generated per accidens, which is true of those things which do not subsist per se. But besides these modes of production, no other can be assigned. Therefore.

Explanation and proof of the minor. To be produced per accidens does not signify that something is produced as if by chance, but imports coming-to-be with relation to another and dependence upon it, so that that which is properly produced, or generated per se, is the composite from both. But that is produced with dependence upon another which depends upon it in being; for each thing, as we have often said, is related to being as it is related to coming-to-be. Now accidents and forms inferior to the human soul depend upon another in being; for accidents, in order that they be, naturally need a subject; inferior forms depend upon matter in being, just as matter depends upon them, and thus they are mutually the cause of being for each other. Hence accidents and inferior forms are not properly that which is, but that by which something is; or they do not subsist per se. That which properly is, for example, is not whiteness, but a white body; it is not roundness, but a round body; just as that which properly is, is not the vegetative principle, but a plant; it is not the sensitive principle, but an animal. This is proved from the operations, which belong to the whole composite.

These things, which are generated per accidens, are said to be educed from the potency of matter, insofar as, while they are produced in matter by the active power of the generator, this matter becomes that which it is capable of becoming: it is, for example, capable of living with vegetative life, and when the principle of this life is produced in it, it itself becomes living with this life. But this in no way implies that the principle of sensitive or vegetative life is not simple; for, as Valencia says well according to the common doctrine of the scholastics [vol. 1, disp. 3, q. 2, p. 4], those forms come to be from the subject, not from that of which they are composed, but from that from whose potency they are educed.

Hence the minor is easily proved as to each part. 1. That is said to be generated per accidens which is not subsisting per se, or which depends upon another in being; but the human soul is independent of a subject, because it is not an accident, and of matter, because it is spiritual. Therefore. That which is generated per se is a composite: for one of the elements is presupposed, another comes to be per accidens, and the composite from both is said to be generated per se. But the human soul is not composite. Therefore. These and other arguments from reason you will find in St. Thomas, Summa Theologiae I, q. 118; Quaestiones disputatae de potentia, q. 3, a. 9; Contra Gentiles, book 2, chapters 85-89.

Proof of the second part. a) Although St. Augustine (concerning whose mind we shall speak a little below) doubted whether the human soul is created by God, and from his authority a few others among the Fathers, such as St. Gregory the Great (book 7, Epistle 53 to Secundinus), St. Isidore (book 2, On Ecclesiastical Offices, c. 23), etc.; nevertheless it is certain that the opinion affirming the creation of souls was both the more common before and after the times of St. Augustine, and handed down expressly by certain Fathers as the Catholic opinion. More testimonies of the holy Fathers can be seen in Bellarmine, cited place, and Scheeben. It is enough here to recall the things which we cited from St. Leo (in the Epistle to Turibius), and those things which St. Jerome writes to Pammachius: "By what beginnings of souls is the whole human race reckoned? Whether from propagation, according to brute animals, or, as body is generated from body, so soul is generated from soul? Or indeed, what is ecclesiastical, according to the sayings of the Savior: My Father works even until now and I work; and that of Zechariah: who forms the spirit of man in him; and in the Psalms: who fashions their hearts one by one, God daily fabricates souls, whose willing is to have done, and who does not cease to be Founder?"

b) In the course of time the opinion concerning the creation of the human soul was commonly handed down as Catholic. It is enough to cite the principal authors, so that anyone may easily understand this unanimous consent. Peter Lombard [Sentences, book 2, dist. 18] says: "The Catholic Church teaches that souls were made neither together nor from propagation, but that they are infused into bodies sown and formed through intercourse, and are created by being infused."

St. Thomas [Disputed Questions, q. 3, On the Power of God, a. 9] says: "Concerning this question, diverse things were said by diverse authors in antiquity. For some said that the soul of the son is propagated from the soul of the parent, just as the body is propagated from the body. Others said that all souls are created separately; but they held that from the beginning they had all been created outside bodies, and afterwards were joined to sown bodies, either by the proper motion of the will, according to some, or by God commanding and doing it, according to others. Others said that souls, at the same time as they are created, are infused into bodies. These opinions, although they were sustained for some time and it was turned into doubt which of them was true (as is clear from Augustine in the tenth book of On Genesis Literally, and in the books which he wrote on the origin of the soul), nevertheless the first two were afterwards condemned by the judgment of the Church, and the third approved. Hence it is said in the book On Ecclesiastical Dogmas: We believe that the souls of men were not from the beginning among the other intellectual natures, nor created together, as Origen invents; nor are they sown with bodies through intercourse, as the Luciferians and Cyril and some presumptuous Latins affirm. But we say that only the body is sown through the conjugal union, and that when the body has already been formed, the soul is created and infused."

St. Bonaventure [book 2, dist. 18, q. 2]: "There is also another mode of speaking, that the production of souls is through traduction, so that soul is traduced from soul, as flesh from flesh; and just as from one candle many are lit, so from one soul, by its multiplication without diminution, many bodies are vivified; and about this Catholic treatise-writers sometimes doubted, and Augustine most of all. The third mode of speaking is Catholic and true, that souls are not sown, but once bodies have been formed they are created by God and infused by being created."

Cano [On Theological Places, book 12, last chapter]: "We can interpret a question of faith in two ways: both from its own nature and as regards us. From its own nature that is a question of Faith which has been revealed by God to the Church, even though it is unknown by many. Thus the Spirit himself revealed to the Apostles that the Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son; likewise that the souls of the Saints see God immediately when they have departed from the body. Concerning these it was once permitted to think variously and, without danger to Faith, either to affirm or deny, since neither matter was then fully defined by the Church. Thus as regards us those questions were not always regarded as questions of Faith, but with Faith preserved certain learned men held an opinion contrary to the truth. In this way Augustine asserted that it was not a question of Faith whether the rational soul is from propagation. But now, since after those times it has been established by the consensus of all Theologians and faithful that the soul exists not through generation but through creation, without doubt that question pertains to Faith."

c) In the Fifth Lateran Council it is had concerning the human soul: "According to the multitude of bodies into which it is infused, it is singularly multipliable, and multiplied, and to be multiplied." Although by these words the Council did not expressly define the opinion concerning the creation of souls, nevertheless it made it its own. For in the time of the Council, just as the generation of souls was called traduction, so commonly in the schools the creation of souls was called infusion.

Benedict XII, among the errors which he prescribed to be rejected by the Armenians, numbers generatianism: "Likewise, that a certain Teacher of the Armenians, Mekhitar, which is interpreted Paraclete, newly introduced and taught that the human soul of the son is propagated from the soul of his father, just as body from body and even one Angel from another; because, since the rational human soul and an Angel existing of intellectual nature are certain spiritual lights, they propagate other spiritual lights from themselves." And in the response of the Bishops it is read: "This error, that the soul of man is propagated from the soul of his father as body from body ... was always excommunicated in the Armenian Church, and let it be accursed" [Raynaldus, Annales Ecclesiastici, year 1341, nn. 46, 49].

d) Bellarmine adds in the cited place: "It is so implanted in the minds of the faithful that souls are newly created by God when fetuses are animated in the wombs of their mothers, that even farmers, craftsmen, shoemakers, little women, and children know this; and if anyone publicly taught the contrary, he would be heard altogether very badly among the Catholic people."

e) Hence the same author declares: "The reason why we judge that this opinion must be embraced is twofold. For first, at this time we have, besides the testimonies of the Fathers who preceded the times of St. Augustine, the rescript of St. Leo I, cited above to Turibius, the decree of Leo X in the Lateran Council, the consensus of all Theologians who have flourished in these five hundred years, and finally the excellent reasons worked out by Theologians; St. Augustine lacked these arguments."

NOTE. St. Augustine never taught any opinion concerning the origin of the soul contrary to ours, but remained doubtful between it and generatianism; the other opinions, however, he disapproved and refuted. The only reason on account of which he did not wholly admit the creation of the soul was the difficulty which arose from it concerning the propagation of original sin. Hence he wrote to Optatus: "I confess, I have not found how the soul draws sin from Adam ... and itself is not drawn from Adam"; and in Epistle 166 to Jerome he says: "That opinion concerning the creation of new souls, if it does not oppose this most firmly founded faith, let it also be mine; if it opposes it, let it not be yours either." Yet he inclined toward our opinion, since in Epistle 28 he says: "Although no one by wishing makes it true that what is not true should be true, nevertheless, if it could be done, I would wish that this opinion were true; just as I wish that, if it is true, it may be defended by you most clearly and most invincibly." And in On the Origin of the Soul, book 1, c. 19, he says: "Saying none of those four things, since any one of them is false and impious, let them defend this opinion of theirs, not only with me not forbidding it, but even favoring and giving thanks." Indeed he wills that even if the solution of that difficulty should not be found, the opinion concerning the creation of the soul should not for that reason be rejected. For in the cited Epistle to Optatus, after he had exhorted him to seek "how souls, if they are newly created by God, can be born in sin," he adds: "And if you find what I myself have not yet found, defend as much as you can and assert that the newness of infant souls is of such a kind that they are drawn by no propagation.... But if you do not find it, even so let your assent not now be rashly turned aside into another opinion, so that you believe them to be traduced by propagation from that one soul, lest perhaps another be able to find what you yourself cannot." But the aforesaid difficulty has now been solved, as will be clear in its own place.

See concerning this whole question La Civilta Cattolica, Series V, vol. 9, pp. 407 and 677; vol. 10, p. 141. Kleutgen, La Filosofia antica esposta, etc., vol. 5, tract 8, chapter 4.