Dogmatic Theology Vol 2 - Shedd - V - Chapter 1 Anthropology concluded

Required reading

Dogmatic Theology Vol 2 by William G.T. Shedd (Available from Amazon or free here) - Continue Chapter 1 'Man's creation' by reading up to the paragraph that begins '3. Thirdly, the physiological argument favors traducianism.' (found on page 63 of my edition).

My summary

Today we read Shedd's arguments for traducianism from physiology - the third and last principal support for the doctrine.

Firstly Shedd states that the physiological argument favors traducianism because sex in man implies a species, and a species implies that the entire invisible rudimental substance of the posterity is created in the first pair of the species.

Secondly Shedd makes the case that Tradacianism on the side of the body presents less difficulty. It should not be confined to the body but extended to the soul, for the following physiological reasons : 

1. Man at every point in his history, embryonic as well as foetal, is a union of soul and body, of mind and matter;

2. The creation of the soul subsequently to the conception of the body, and its infusion into it, is contrary to all the analogies in nature;

3. If the body is propagated and the soul created, the body is six thousand years older than the soul, in the instance of an individual of this generation.

Thirdly, Shedd answers principal objections urged against the theory of Traducianism:

1. It is said that it conflicts with the doctrine of Christ's sinlessness;

2. It is objected that traducianism implies division of substance, and that all division implies extended material substance;

3. It is objected that upon the traducian theory that all the sinful acts of Adam and Eve ought to be imputed to their posterity, as well as the first sin.

What grabbed me

I appreciated Shedd's counsel to accept the mysteries of traducianism: 

'It is no valid objection to the doctrine of existence in Adam, and in foregoing ancestors, that it is impossible to explain the mode. The question: "How can these things be ?" as in the instance of Nicodemus, must be answered by the affirmation that it is a fact, and a mystery. It is no refutation of the doctrine, to ask how the nature exists before it is individualized or procreated, any more than it is a refutation of the doctrine of the resurrection, to ask how the invisible substance of a human body still continues to exist after death. We know the fact from Scripture ; and science also confirms it by its maxim that there is no annihilation of rudimental substance in the created universe. The body of Julius Caesar is still in being, as to its fundamental invisible substance, whatever that substance may be. Resurrection, though miraculous, is not the creation of a body ex nihilo. In like manner, the elementary invisible substance of the individual Julius Caesar, both as to soul and body, was in existence between the time of the creation of the whole human species on the sixth day, and the time of the conception of Julius Caesar. The Westminster Shorter Catechism (Q. 37) states that the bodies of believers, "being still united to Christ, do rest in their graves till the resurrection." This implies that the believer's body, as to its invisible substance, continues to exist for hundreds or thousands of years between its death and its resurrection. But this kind of existence is no more mysterious than the existence of the human nature in Adam, and its continued existence between Adam and the year 1875. In one sense, the posterity of Adam are as old as Adam ; the children as old as the parents. The human nature out of which all individuals are derived was created on the sixth day, and all sustain the same relation to it so far as the time of its creation is concerned.'

Just because something is too difficult for us to comprehend completely doesn't mean it isn't true.

Next week's reading

Read Chapter 2 'Man's primitive state'.

Now it's your turn
Please post your own notes and thoughts in the comments section below.