In the past two THOUGHTS I have declared that all human beings possess an immaterial soul and that the possession of the soul marks the beginning of life. These two truths are vital in determining the morality of the abortion issue. A question that needs to be answered though, is when does a person possess a soul. If the soul is present at conception, then abortion is the murder of a genuine human being. If, however, the soul becomes part of a person sometime after conception, then up until that point in time, what is in the womb of a woman is not a human being and there is a moral legitimacy to its abortion.
There are two significant problems in determining the time of the origin of the soul. As I stated in a previous THOUGHT, how can you detect by physical means a non-physical object. Ultrasounds can give a very detailed image of the child in the womb, but how do you take a picture of something that is invisible? It’s like trying to take a picture of air. Secondly, Scripture, which declares the existence of the soul in every person, does not specifically state in a singular sentence when that soul comes into being. However, there are certain statements in Scripture that reasonably declare the time of the soul’s origin.
Throughout time, there have been three prominent theories concerning the soul’s origin. The first, which has mostly been abandoned, at least in Christianity, is the Preexistence Theory. It posits that all souls were created in the beginning of creation or that they have existed eternally. At some time, either at conception or before birth, the soul enters the body. From a biblical standpoint, there is a huge problems with this belief. The created souls would be free from sin but Scripture states that all have sinned (Romans 3:23). The only way then that all of mankind would be sinners is that God created sinful souls, which contradicts Genesis 1:31.
The second theory is the Creation Theory. Advocates of this belief claim that each soul is created individually and directly by God and is embodied in the child in the womb either at conception or birth or sometime in between. This belief has the same problem explaining sin as does the Preexistence Theory and it also contradicts Genesis 2:2 that God ended His work of creation on the 7th day.
The third theory is known as the Traducian Theory. This theory states that when God created Adam, He created him with the ability to procreate. Adam’s procreative ability was not limited to creating a body, but also a soul. God created Adam with a sinless soul which is consistent with the nature of God and the declaration of Genesis 1:31. But Adam sinned before generating children and possessed a sin nature (his soul was defiled). He then reproduced after his kind, which agrees with Romans 5:12. Another witness to the validity of the Traducian Theory is the statement of David in Psalm 51:5 where he said that, “in sin did my mother conceive me.” The use of a personal pronoun indicates the conception of a whole person, including the immaterial soul.
Beginning in the 1980’s, DNA profiling allowed an accurate determination of one’s parentage. There no longer needs to be a question of one’s biological origin. The DNA of the child in the womb is complete at conception. It is neither added to or changed during the pregnancy of the mother. Likewise, the spiritual DNA of a person is complete at conception- the soul has been generated and the child in the womb is a genuine living human being. As such, the purposeful taking of its life is murder.