Traducianism

Pembahasan mengenai asal-usul manusia dan dosa selalu topik yang menarik untuk dibahas. Topik yang banyak bahas adalah dari mana asal manusia dan dosa. Salah satu hal menarik untuk dibahas adalah konsep mengenai asal usul jiwa manusia. Pada umumnya pemahaman akan asal usul jiwa dipahami berasal dari Allah yang menciptakan. Namun, lain ada beberapa pandangan yang selama ini dipahami yakni, pre-eksistensialisme, tradusianisme, dan kreasionisme.

In his letter to the Philippians St. Paul gives us one of the most incredible Christological truths on the natures of Jesus Christ as fully human and fully God. Through the kenosis (ἐκένωσε), usually translated as “emptying,” but a more accurate understanding would be “to divest one’s self of one’s prerogatives.” When saying that Jesus “takes on the form of a servant” (Phil 2:8) we need to qualify the constitution of mankind. Our anthropology will influence our Christology, and in turn, our soteriology. The necessity of Jesus existing as a human being is an axiom of the Church. The reason being, as Gerald O’Collins writes, is so “he can represent us before/to God because he belongs to us by completely sharing our condition in life and death.” The question being asked is, what does it mean to be human and does that correlate with our understanding of the hypostatic union?

How did sin enter the world? What mechanism facilitated its universal transmission to every human being? What are the consequences of its pervasive influence? Careful examination of relevant biblical texts reveals that sin gained a foothold in the world through one man, Adam. As the federal representative of his posterity, he acted not as a single man, but as mankind. By means of imputation, all men are born with the guilt and corruption of sin. Death is the consequence of sin; therefore, all men die. In man’s current state, he is morally incapable of pleasing God. It is the eternal blackness of man’s wretched estate that leads the writer of Hebrews to warn against neglecting “so great a salvation” (Hebrews 2:3).

The purpose of this article is to examine Tertullian’s opinions on the origin, beginning and transmission of the human soul. These opinions cannot be considered as representing a coherent and systematic doctrine which is evidenced not only by some inner inconsequences and contradictions but also by the fact that Tertullian’s reasoning is to a great extent motivated by the efforts to refute the arguments of his opponents. The core of Tertullian’s “doctrine”—the distinction between the Spirit of God (spiritus) and his breath ( flatus), the latter being the very substance of the human soul, transmitted by the act of procreation and deriving, ultimately, from the original soul of Adam (traducianism)—was intended by him as the main weapon against the alternative concepts of the soul as presented by Hermogenes and Marcion.