The Conservative Reformation and Its Theology - Saint Mary ...

Do. xxvii. 16; Heb. xii. 9, and in the Apocryphal books, 2 Mace. vii. 22.
Jerome asserts that this was the view of the Church, but this is an overstatement
of the fact, although it certainly was the view of a number of the
Fathers. Clemens Alexandrinus says: "Our soul is sent from Heaven."
Lactantius says: "Soul cannot be born of souls." It is the predominant view
of the Roman Church. Most of the Reformed (Calvinistic) theologians
maintain it, and usually with the theory that by the union of the soul with
the body the soul becomes sinful.
But this theory is really untenable. The strongest of the Scripture
passages quoted to sustain it, imply no more than that the spirit of man has
higher attributes than his body, is preeminent as God's work, and the chief
seat of his image, without at all implying that His creation of the soul is a
direct one. It would be quite as easy, not only to show from other
passages, but to show from a number of these, that the body of man is the
direct creation of God, which, nevertheless, no one will maintain.
To Pelagians, and the Pelagianizing Romanists, this theory indeed is
not encumbered with the great moral difficulty arising from the
acknowledgment of Original Sin, but to all others, this view involves, at its
root, unconscious Gnosticism. It makes matter capable of sin and of
imparting sinfulness. It represents the parents of a child as really but the
parents of a mere material organism, within which the nobler part, all. that
elevates it, all that loves and is loved, is in no respect really their child. On
this theory, no man could call his child really his own. He has no more
relation, as a parent, to its soul, which is the child, than any other man in
the world, and is as really the father of that which constitutes a human
being, to every other person's children as he is to his own. Moreover, with
all the explanations and ingenious resorts which have been found
necessary in retaining this theory, there is no escaping the inference, that it
makes God the author of Sin. According to this theory, God creates a
perfect, spotless, holy soul, and then places it in a polluted body; that is, He
takes what is absolutely innocent, and places it, where it inevitably, not by
choice, but of necessity, is tainted with sin,