Recent scientific research has shown that as much as a quarter of human pregnancies end in miscarriage, with many miscarriages taking place even before the mother had known she was pregnant.[1] Additionally, a number of children die within the first weeks or months of infancy even before being baptized. Many devastated Christian parents therefore struggle with the question of whether their unborn or newborn children who have passed away are saved and in heaven. The questions of these parents inevitably pertain to the issue of ensoulment, i.e. when precisely a human being acquires a soul that must either be saved or damned. Therefore, before addressing the question itself, let us take a brief look at the Christian doctrine of ensoulment.
Ensoulment
Historically, there have been three positions in Christian theology with regard to the origin of the soul: preexistence, creationism, and traducianism. I will briefly explain all of these, after which I will argue in favor of the traducianist position and explain how this relates to the salvation of infants and pre-born babies.
Preexistence
When it comes to preexistence, a distinction needs to be made between doctrines of eternal and temporal preexistence respectively. Eternal preexistence maintains that all human souls exist from eternity and that the soul is united with the body either prior to or at the moment of birth. This pagan view has never been advocated by any theologian in the history of the Christian Church that I know of. Temporal preexistence, the idea that the soul was created by God sometime in the past and then united to the body at (or after) conception, was advocated by the third-century church father Origen, but his doctrine has no basis in Scripture and is also largely indebted to pagan thought—most notably that of Plato.[2] It was therefore rightly condemned as heresy by the Second Council of Constantinople in 553 A.D.[3]
Creationism
The doctrine of ensoulment most widely adhered to throughout the history of the Christian Church is known as creationism. As a doctrine of ensoulment this should not be confused with the Christian scientific position of creationism which pertains to the origin of the universe. Creationism teaches that God creates a soul ex nihilo for each human fetus and imputes this to that fetus. Augustine and Jerome were proponents of this view, as was Thomas Aquinas, who adopted the Aristotelian scheme of ensoulment occurring a few weeks after conception.[4] This view was so prevalent throughout the Middle Ages that the famous Justinian Law code from the sixth century, while codifying legal penalties for abortion, excused abortions performed within 40 days (or approximately 6 weeks) after conception.[5] This view is based on the idea that a child becomes a human being at the point of “formation,” i.e. when the body is formed, as opposed to the moment of conception.
Within the Reformed tradition, a more recent advocate of this position was the nineteenth-century Princeton theologian A.A. Hodge.[6]
Traducianism
Traducianism (from the Latin traduco, which means “to transfer”), although a minority view, has been held by many Christians since the days of the early church, and this is the view I believe to be the biblical one. Its earliest known proponent was the church father Tertullian (155–240 AD). In rejecting the gnostic separation between spirit and matter, he argued that the soul and the body are inseparable and that both originate simultaneously at the moment of conception. According to Tertullian, God had supernaturally infused Adam and Eve, the first human beings with a soul, whereafter the soul is passed on through the natural process of procreation.[7]
There are a number of reasons why I believe this to be the biblical position:
(1) Scripture states that that “the life of the flesh is in the blood” (Leviticus 17:11). The original Hebrew word used for “life” in this verse נֶ֣פֶשׁ (“nepesh”) literally means “soul” and is translated as such on numerous occasions throughout the Old Testament. This verse therefore clearly implies that there is a genetic component to ensoulment.
(2) Traducianism most clearly explains the practical outworking of original sin in a way that does not contradict Scripture. For example, while God promises to “visit the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation” (Exodus 20:5), He also says that descendants shall not be punished for the sins of their ancestors (Ezekiel 18:19-20). These texts are difficult to reconcile with the creationist position, but not in a traducian paradigm where the corruption of the soul through original sin occurs naturally via procreation and lineage as opposed to divine imputation.
(3) As another advocate of Traducianism, the Reformed philosopher Gordon Clark observes, the traducian understanding of original sin is also taught by Christ in John 3:6, when Christ speaks of Nicodemus’s unregenerate soul as born of his parents. Clark notes that the Greek noun sarx (i.e. “flesh”) in relation to gennao (the Greek word for “birth”) clearly conveys this idea of a depraved soul in distinction from the corporeal body, which means that the propagation of the human species is not only corporeal, but spiritual and mental also.[8]
(4) In Psalm 51:5 David also notes that the depravity of his soul dates from the moment of his conception: “Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin my mother conceived me.” This text implies that conception indeed marks the moment of ensoulment. Traducianism is the only doctrine of ensoulment that intrinsically ties ensoulment itself to conception in accordance with Scripture.
The Souls of Infants and the Unborn
As it is clear from Scripture that human beings are endowed with a soul at the moment of conception, the question to which we now return is that of what happens when pre-born babies and infants die. Some contemporary theologians like John Piper have argued that all pre-born babies and infants are saved,[9] but the most obvious problem with this position is that it contradicts the biblical doctrine of the perseverance of the saints, whereby those who have received the grace necessary for salvation can never be lost (Romans 8:38-39; Philippians 1:6; 1 John 2:19). The implication of Piper’s position would be that the majority of people lose their salvation by simply growing up.
I believe a thorough understanding and application of God’s covenant requires a more nuanced answer. Because we stand guilty before God by virtue of our depraved nature and because we inherit this depraved nature at the moment of conception (Psalm 51:5), unborn babies and infants are as deserving of God’s judgment as anyone else. The depraved sinner can therefore not escape the judgment of God by dying a premature death outside of Christ. However, in the case of the one biblical example of someone who was born within the covenant of God died in infancy, his father king David noted that he would one day be re-united with his son in the afterlife (2 Samuel 12:23), a clear testimony to David’s conviction that his son would be taken up in the glory of heaven.
But because regeneration is a prerequisite for salvation, the Westminster Confession of Faith (10.3) actually teaches that “elect infants, dying in infancy, are regenerated, and saved by Christ, through the Spirit who worketh when, and where, and how he pleaseth.” The Westminster Confession of Faith here addresses the issue of elect infants within the context of the doctrine of effectual calling. After affirming that effectual calling ordinarily takes place in the lives of the elect through Christ’s Word and Spirit, it continues to explain how elect infants who are unable to make use of these ordinary means are still saved according to God’s sovereign purpose.[10] The Canons of Dordt (I.17) goes even further, assuring all believing parents who lose covenantal children prematurely of their salvation:
Since we must make judgments about God’s will from his Word, which testifies that the children of believers are holy, not by nature but by virtue of the gracious covenant in which they together with their parents are included, godly parents ought not to doubt the election and salvation of their children whom God calls out of this life in infancy.
This conveys the idea that God, in his providence, ordained that those covenantal children called away from this world in infancy would come to saving faith prior to their death. That this principle can be extended to covenantal children who die as pre-born babies is evident from the example of John the Baptist, who clearly already had a saving faith in the womb of his mother (Luke 1:39-44). This does not necessarily entail that all covenantal children are to be presumed already regenerated in the womb or in infancy, but certainly those whom God has ordained to call away from this world at such a young age. God’s providential decrees, no matter how difficult they may be for us to accept, are always in complete harmony with his covenantal promises.
Conclusion
Losing a pre-born child or an infant is one of the most traumatic experiences any parent can ever endure. However, as believers, we can find the greatest comfort in the fact that the covenantal promises of God have been made not only to us but also to our children (Acts 2:39; Isaiah 44:3). Therefore, if you are a believer—an adopted child of God by the grace of Jesus Christ—who have lost a pre-born or infant child, you can rest assured that, like David and Bathsheba, you will one day be joyfully re-united to your child(ren) in the eternal presence of God.
[1] Carla Dugas & Valori Slane, “Miscarriage” in Statpearls (January-June 2021).
[2] Kirk Essary, Origen’s Doctrine of the Soul: Platonist or Christian? (Lubbock, TX: Texas Tech University), 7.
[3] Second Council of Constantinople (553). The Anathemas Against Origen. Accessed at https://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/npnf214.xii.ix.html.
[4] Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, pars prima, 118.1 (1485).
[5] Larry Poston & Lindsay Disney, “When does Human Life Begin? Conception and Ensoulment,” Bible & Religion Educator Scholarship (2010): 278.
[6] Gordon Clark, “Traducianism,” The Trinity Review (July, August 1982): 1-2.
[7] Tertullian, De Anima, IV (203).
[8] Clark, Traducianism, 3.
[9] Matt Perman, “What Happens to Infants who Die?” in DesiringGod (23 January 2006), https://www.desiringgod.org/articles/what-happens-to-infants-who-die.
[10] Cornelis Venema, “The Election and Salvation of Children who die in Infancy: A Study of Article I/17 of the Canons of Dordt,” Mid-America Journal of Theology 17 (2006): 93, https://www.midamerica.edu/uploads/files/pdf/journal/17-venema.pdf.
Dr. Schlebusch is a historian, philosopher, and theologian from South Africa. He holds two BA degrees (theology and Latin) and a Master’s degree in philosophy from the University of the Free State. In 2018, he graduated with a PhD from the Faculty of Theology and Religious Studies at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands.
