Biblical Defense
The first text that shows the Traducianist position is Genesis 1:27-28. “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. And God blessed them. And God said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.’”
This text strongly implies that God made mankind on a specific day. Although all of man had not yet sprung into existence individually, they were created in Adam on that day. It is implied that man is able to multiply through normal means in order to carry out the command of God to fill the earth. In no text where reproduction is spoken of is propagation in terms of body only.
In Genesis 2:7 we are told that “the LORD God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature.” Here we see that man is a united creature of both body and soul. He is seen as one. Throughout the rest of Scripture the actions of the body are seen to be the actions of the soul. They cannot be divided even though we make distinctions for theological purposes in the same way that we distinguish between Justification and Sanctification. It is impossible to divide these doctrines yet we distinguish between them.
It also must be noted from this same passage that Eve was created out of Adam. No hint is ever given that Eve’s soul came directly from God. The Apostle Paul affirms this notion when he argues for male authority over the woman in the church in 1 Cor 11:7-8, “For a man ought not to cover his head, since he is the image and glory of God, but woman is the glory of man. For man was not made from woman, but woman from man.” Therefore it ought to be seen that Eve came forth from Adam by a miraculous work of God.
Another extremely important verse is John 3:6. Jesus states, “That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.” Are we to assume this text is only referring to the body part of man that is being reproduced? The context is clear that man begets man. Man is unable to reproduce a man who is alive to God. Men are dead in sin and will always remain so. It is the Spirit that gives birth to the spirit in regeneration. This text means that the already existing soul is given new life from above. Therefore, men do reproduce men after their kind. If creationism is true in any sense, it is only true in regeneration.
Another form of argument showing the unity of man comes from Hebrews 7, “One might even say that Levi himself, who receives tithes, paid tithes through Abraham, for he was still in the loins of his ancestor when Melchizedek met him.”
Here is a text that shows Abraham’s descendants in some sense actually tithed to the Priest Melchizedek since they were in the loins of Abraham. Since man is not eternal like God and is not pre-existent, each person is comes forth from the soul and body of their parents. Although individual men are separated by time and space causing the term we use “generations”, the unity of man is strongly implied. The idea that a man’s body is hidden in Abraham (perhaps genetically from the physical point of view) while his soul is waiting to come into existence from another source is not consistent with this passage.
One more example of the unity of man, both body and soul, comes from Romans 5:12, “Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned…”
In this text we see that in some sense all of mankind was present in Adam when he sinned. The text teaches that Adam is mankind’s Federal Representative. Through the natural means of propagation, all of men are considered to be sinners sinning in Adam by way of imputation. Reymond states it this way,
“It [the Federal (Immediate Imputation) View] does not deny for a moment that natural union between Adam and his posterity, but it urges that the natural union only determined the ‘direction of application’ which the governing principle of representational union took.”[6]It seems best to conclude from this text that in some sense all of Adam’s posterity was in Adam when he sinned. Therefore all sinned in Adam, as Adam is their representative.
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