Abstract

This article studies sixteenth-century discussions on the origin of the soul and reappraises a confessional divide that scholarship has identified within these discussions. Historians have claimed that while Catholic and Calvinist authors defended the idea that individual human souls were created by God ex nihilo (creationism), Lutherans argued that human souls were propagated through the seed of the parents, ex traduce (traducianism). This study demonstrates that, while several Lutherans did defend traducianism, this opinion was not required by their faith, and the very fathers of the Lutheran faith, Martin Luther and Philip Melanchthon, refused to express any dogmatic conclusions on the topic. This article shows, then, both that sixteenth-century Lutherans held a number of different opinions on the origin of the soul and how traducianism became linked to – and sometimes part of – Lutheranism through polemical exchanges.