Question: Do you believe the Bible teaches traducianism or creationism, i.e., does God create a new ...

Question: Do you believe the Bible teaches traducianism or creationism, i.e., does God create a new spirit for each person at the time of conception, or is Adam’s spirit the only one that God created out of nothing?

Answer: The soul and spirit of Adam, the first man, like his body, were created by God who “breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul” (Gn 2:7). Is each baby’s soul and spirit created by God, or by a natural process? “Traducianism” claims the latter: “the soul [and spirit] as well as the body is begotten by reproduction from the substance of the parents.”

If such were the case, then souls and spirits, like bodies, would come from and be composed of matter, which makes no sense. How could physical matter produce nonphysical souls and spirits? It couldn’t. Eve’s spirit would have come from Adam’s rib out of which her body was created; but that would not be natural “reproduction.” Either God was the first to clone a human—or He created Eve’s soul and spirit out of nothing as He did Adam’s.

That the latter is the case for all seems clear, for at death “…the spirit [of man] shall return unto God who gave it” (Eccl 3:21; 12:7). Therefore, God creates a new and unique soul and spirit for each person. This apparently occurs at conception, not at birth.