English

Noun

traducianism ‎(uncountable)

1. (religion) The doctrine that the soul or spirit is inherited from one or both parents.
   • 2003, Roy Porter, Flesh in the Age of Reason, Penguin (2004), page 37n:

     Augustine's insistence on its spiritual nature made it hard for him to uphold, along with Tertullian, the doctrine of physical traducianism.

   • 2009, Diarmaid MacCulloch, A History of Christianity, Penguin 2010, p. 145:

     Tertullian suggested that the human soul is transmitted by parents to their children and is therefore inescapably associated with continuing human sin: this doctrine of ‘traducianism’ underlay the pessimistic view of the human condition and its imprisonment in original sin which was presented in an extreme form by that later theological giant from North Africa, Augustine of Hippo.

Related terms

• traducian

See also

• traduce