Thus the heavens and
the earth,
and all the host of
them.
were finished.
And on the seventh
day God
ended His work which
He had done,
and He rested on the
seventh day
from all His word
which He had done.
Then God blessed the
seventh day
and sanctified it,
because in it
He rested from all
His work which
God had created and
made.
Genesis 2:1–3
There are
those who will point to the above Scripture and state that by God resting on
the seventh day that this implies that God ended His creating energy and was never
again to be exerted. How this is to be understood, according to a Traducianist,
is that there is a line drawn between the immediate creation and the production
of effects in nature, by second cause under the providential control by God.
This is opposite to the doctrine of creationism which assumes that God is
constantly, from the beginning and now producing something out of nothing, ex
nihlo. Here then lies a problem for we do not know how God by His agency
operates within second causes, it is mediate, or immediate, but we do know
this, God cannot be bound by simple providential direction, that is, that God
has no control over second causes and waits for second causes to occur then
providentially exercise control. God, being God, operates in all time His
omnipresent power through means and without means in the whole sphere of
history and nature. Now, it is true that Traducianists argue in favor of this
fact, that the sin of Adam is transmitted to his posterity. They insist that to
explain this is to admit that Adam’s sin is our sin and out guilt, and that
Adam’s voluntary transgression has been transmitted to us, yet, we cannot at
this time delve into this fact until I return to the doctrine of original sin.
At the present it is enough that to repeat the remark I just made, that the
fact is one thing and the explanation of the fact is another; we must look back
into history that in all ages of the Church it has been admitted that the sin
of Adam in a true and important sense is our sin, furthermore, we receive from
Adam our corrupt nature, but to say that this necessitated the acceptance of
Traducianism is not so clear that that we must accept the Traducianist Doctrine
as it has been denied by the vast majority of the most powerful defenders of
the Christian faith who defended the doctrine of Original Sin. There are those
who call the doctrine of creationism Pelagius principle, that God will save
those who overcome by themselves and then by their actions to accept Jesus
Christ as Savior God will save them, that the sin of Adam has not been passed
down to his posterity; this is ignorant. With some force of argument there has
been and is that the Traducianist theory involves the incarnation of Jesus
Christ. Jesus Christ was born of a woman, He was the seed of the woman. It is
sand that by this birth that as to both soul and body derived from his human
mother that He cannot be truly of the same race as us. Lutheran theologians
following this though say: “If Christ would not have assumed the soul of the soul of
Mary, the human soul does not
ransomed him” (Italics mine), but this does not follow
for all that is necessary is that Jesus Christ be a man and a son of King
David. This is the same sense that King David’s posterity is from King David,
but the facdt is that there is one difference, the miraculuous conception of
Jesus Christ. Was not Jesus Christ from the substance of his mother as is any other
child which would born of her substance? Yes, but the birth of Jesus Christ
doen not determine the same sense; He was concieved miraculously by the Holy
Spirt. A favourable argument by the Tranducianist is this undeneable fact of
the transmission of the ethnical, national, family, and even the pecularities
of family, the pecularites of mind and temper that seem to envince that there
is a derivation of both the body and the soul, that in which the pecularities
inhere. But, this argmenjt is not conclusive. Why? Because it is impossible for
us to determine the proximate causes for thise pecualirarites, to what are they
due is inclusive. What we may have as a seemingly conclusion is that those
pecularites may be due to the physical constitution, this cannnt be denied that
the mind is influenced by the body. Furthermore, the body having certain
pecularities of a race, nation, or family, by within certain limits determine
the character of the soul.
Does this argument favor
Traducianism? We must next examine the doctrine of Creationism so that we can
measure one against the other before coming to a conclusion. This is what will
be done next. A final remark by me is that we must be careful in saying that
when God rested that He concluded His work of creating something out of
nothing. To say that God would not create ex nihlo is to come to a wrong
conclusion making God subject to outside forces; this cannot be done for
nothing is done without the will of God. If God does not will a thing, then
that then does not happen or exist. To say that God sits back and allows second
causes to just happen without control is the doctrine of Deism. Deism led to
liberalism within the Christian Church; a subject that in time I will address.
Wait now for the next examination for the doctrine of Creationism before making
any conclusion but until then, do what God did, rested on the seventh day,
reiterated that we should do the same in the Ten Commandments, and we are rest
from all work that is unecssary on that day, we are to give to God one day in
seven. Are you doing that? Or, are you making Sunday a day of fun and doing
things which are not giving to God one day in seven?
The
law of the LORD is perfect,
Converting the soul;
The
testimony of the LORD is sure,
Making wise the simple;
Psalm 19:7
Examine
all things, By prayer
Richard
L. Crumb
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