1.1 Early Christian Conceptions of the Unity of Humanity in Adam and Christ
Eighteen years ago, as part of a Latin class, I began reading through Hilary of Poitiers’ Psalm commentaries (at that time untranslated into any modern language). When I had worked my way through the 900 pages of Latin, I was left with the impression that has directed much of my work for the past eighteen years: Hilary had what seemed to me at the time a strange conception of humanity’s corporate unity in the body of Christ. Hilary’s language and images concerning the existence of all humanity in Christ’s body went far beyond commonplace reflections on the Church as the body of Christ. Hilary presented a view of the unity of humanity that allowed not only Adam but also Christ to enact a change in the human condition that affects every human individual. The universality of the effects of the fall was, in Hilary’s thought, mirrored by universal effects of the incarnation. Over the years I wondered: How unique is Hilary in having this strong sense of the unity of humanity such that, through Adam and Christ, there is a universal component to both fall and redemption?
As regards human unity in Adam, several recent studies have mirrored my own conclusion that there exists in early Christianity an extremely widespread commitment to human unity in Adam. The great question of how Adam’s choice to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil can have disastrous and universal consequences on all humanity – when, for example, Cain’s murder of his brother seems to have no effects that go beyond his individual person – was answered in the fifth century with the conviction that all humanity is unified within Adam. Marta Przyszychowska, in her study of the early Christian conception of unity in Adam, makes the broad claim that “ALL or almost all Fathers believed in the unity of mankind in Adam because the belief of the unity of humankind was at that time self-evident.”Footnote 1 Przyszychowska’s claim for a widespread Christian conception of human unity in Adam is not surprising when viewed in light of the established scholarship on the conception of human unity that already existed in classical philosophy, including in both Platonism and Stoicism.Footnote 2 Human unity is a conception already in common currency at the time of early Christianity. The novelty in the Christian conception of human unity is not the conception of human unity itself but the Christian linkage of human unity to an individual historical figure, Adam. Przyszychowska argues that while classical philosophy created a climate that already fostered conceptions of human unity, the placement of this unity in Adam was self-evident to early Christians because of a shared conviction in a universal fall in which “Adam lost sanctity and justice not only for himself, but also for us; that he passed onto the entire human race not only mortality and suffering of the body, but also sin that is death of the soul.”Footnote 3 In this way, the unity of all humans in Adam was the bedrock for early Christian thinking about the fall and provided the rationale for the universal fallenness of human body and soul.
However, while human unity in Adam is a conviction ubiquitous in early Christian reflection, human unity in Christ is an idea that is more limited in early Christianity. There are different ways to conceptualize the unity of all humanity in Adam, and some of these ways have a logic that extends more naturally to a human unity in Christ than others. For example, the articulation of human unity through the language and conceptualization of “universals,” as found in Marius Victorinus and Gregory of Nyssa, is an idea of unity that works equally well for human unity in Christ as it does for human unity in Adam. However, the belief that humans are unified in Adam by being seminally present “in his loins,” as found, for example, in Origen, is a conceptualization of human unity that does not so easily transfer to Christ because Christ, unlike Adam, is not the physical progenitor of the race.Footnote 4
Therefore, while nearly all early Christians teach that humanity is unified in Adam, which explains the universal effects of Adam’s actions, not all early Christians teach that all humanity is similarly unified in Christ. Only a subset of early Christian writers attribute the same universality to the effects of Christ’s incarnate life, passion, and death as they do to Adam’s choice to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good of evil.
The first thing to note about this subset of early Christian writers is that they manifest no awareness that their extension of human unity in Adam to human unity of Christ – with their parallel willingness to accept that the incarnation has universal effects in the same way as did the fall – is unique or in need of either philosophical explanation or polemical defense. Przyszychowska notes that the majority of early Christians made little to no effort to explain how humanity is united in Adam because the existence of that unity seemed self-evident.
It is the general climate of those times, the universal convictions so deeply instilled in the way of thinking of the people who lived then that frequently nobody even explained them. I am deeply convinced that ALL or almost all Fathers believed in the unity of mankind in Adam because the belief of the unity of humankind was at that time self-evident.Footnote 5
Nevertheless, several early Christians did make attempts to explain how humanity is united in Adam, and there is a wide variety of these explanations, variety that was never the source of polemical debate – from the argument that all human nature is united as a singular universal; to the Stoic-influenced conviction that there is a “natural, literally physical unity of the entire humankind”Footnote 6; to the view that all humanity is in Adam because he is the progenitor of all; to a weaker sense in which Adam functions as a representative of humanity. The lack of any direct, much less heated, engagement among early Christian authors until the fifth century on this question of how humanity is united in Adam manifests that none of these authors felt that any one of the variety of positions entered into the realm of possible heresy. Expanding on Przyszychowska’s conclusions, I believe that there is a similar lack of theological worry concerning the articulations that and how all humanity is united in Christ, even though these arguments are less ubiquitous than the arguments concerning unity in Adam.
The second thing to note about this group of Christian authors who posit a unity of humanity in Christ, such that the incarnation has universal effects on humanity, is that this conviction is in nearly every case developed individually and not inherited. While Cyril likely did have knowledge of the presence of this idea in Athanasius’ thought, and Maximus in the thought of Athanasius, Gregory of Nyssa, and Cyril of Alexandria, there is no indication that Marius Victorinus, Athanasius, Hilary of Poitiers, or Gregory of Nyssa were familiar with the writings of each other; rather, in at least these four cases, we must admit that their conviction of the universal effects of the incarnation resulting from the unity of humanity in Christ was individually developed. However, we must return to the first point: None of these authors manifest an awareness that they were developing a position that was novel or minority.
Although the articulation that there is a unity in Christ, such that the incarnation has universal effects, is not widespread in early Christianity, the lack of any outcry or polemical engagement with this position by those who did not hold it seems to support its proponents’ belief that this position was not a novelty but was at that time universally accepted as a legitimate application of the general conviction of human unity in Adam.
1.2 The Natural Development of Physicalist Soteriology in Fourth-Century Theology
As Christians thought about the narrative of fall and redemption, the correspondence of Adam and Christ (first articulated by Paul) as having roles that were similar in scope but reversed in effect became commonplace. Adam’s role in the fall was mirrored by Christ’s role in redemption. This ubiquitous Adam–Christ comparison was taken one step further by several theologians in the fourth century. For these authors, the universality of the effect of Adam’s actions demanded a universality in the effect of Christ’s actions. If Adam, a mere man, could initiate a fall of the human condition that affects all humans, so Christ, who is God and more powerful than Adam, initiates an improvement of the human condition that affects all humans.
This idea that there is a unity of humanity in Christ, such that the incarnation enacts a universal change of the human condition, has been recognized as the “physical” or “mystical” theory of redemption since the nineteenth century. J. N. D. Kelly explains the fundamental rationale of the “physical” theory as a reflection on the nature of the parallel between the works of Adam and Christ – as an incorporation of all humanity in both the actions of Adam and Christ and the consequences of those actions – that we have just gone through.
Just as all men were somehow present in Adam, so they are, or can be present in the second Adam, the man from heaven. Just as they were involved in the former’s sin, with all its appalling consequences, so they can participate in the latter’s death and ultimate triumph over sin, the forces of evil and death itself.Footnote 7
I will discuss the historiography and reception history related to the nineteenth-century recognition and labeling of this theory in Chapter 2. Here I note that throughout the rest of this book I name as “physicalism” or “physicalist soteriology” this belief in a unity of humanity in Christ, which enables the incarnation to enact a universal change in the human condition, and I call the proponents of this belief “physicalists.”
Physicalist soteriology is a phenomenon centered in the second half of the fourth century. The following chapters in this book will explain the details that flesh out this physicalist belief that a unity of humanity in Christ gives the incarnation the ability to universally affect the human condition. However, even apart from those details, it is obvious that physicalist soteriology is not a “trajectory” in the sense that we might speak of the trajectory of “pro-Nicene trinitarian theology” or “mia-physis Christology.” In both these examples, there is a trajectory of development where shared technical terminology and scriptural constellations manifest an interaction both between generations (individual authors are intentionally developing the previous generations’ theology) and within a generation (individual authors are responding to the polemical critiques their contemporaries offer of the previous generations’ theology). If a “trajectory” requires interaction between its proponents and opponents, which would result in shared terminology and scriptural foci, then it is clear that there is no such thing as a trajectory of physicalist soteriology. Each physicalist in this book – Marius Victorinus (290–364), Athanasius (296–373), Hilary of Poitiers (315–368), Gregory of Nyssa (335–394), Cyril of Alexandria (378–444), and Maximus the Confessor (580–662) – creates his own brand of physicalism. Each of these authors presents a physicalism that is unique in terms of provenance and that is also unique conceptually, including terminology, scriptural support, and even broad differences in the conceptualization of both how Christ effects a transformation of all humanity and of what that transformation consists. Furthermore, none of the physicalists in this book were engaged in any intentional theological dialogue either promoting or defending this idea.
The rise of several independent proponents of physicalism in the second half of the fourth century and then the dearth of followers in this line of thought in succeeding centuries manifest that physicalism is a natural outgrowth of fourth-century theology that is swiftly curtailed by substantial theological changes in the early fifth century. There is no “father of physicalism.” Rather, the independent and spontaneous appearance of physicalism in several authors (both Latin and Greek) in the second half of the fourth century implies that the physicalist conviction of a unity of humanity in Christ that enables the incarnation to have a universal effect on the human condition is a fairly natural outgrowth of late fourth-century theological positions. Additionally, there was never, in the fourth or succeeding centuries, any direct attention on this conviction: There is no hint of either a polemical condemnation or a defense of physicalism anywhere by anyone in this time period. It is worth noting at this juncture that physicalism, in arguing that the unity of humanity in Christ allows the incarnation to have universal effects, can be a building block in a theology of universal salvation: such is the case with Gregory of Nyssa, and possibly Marius Victorinus and Maximus the Confessor. However, there are several physicalists who explicitly argue that the universal effects of the incarnation are not in and of themselves salvific. Athanasius, Hilary of Poitier, and Cyril of Alexandria are clear that while the incarnation does affect all, it does not save all. Therefore, there is no necessary correlation between physicalism and universalism.
After the fourth century, there are only two further physicalists: Cyril of Alexandria in the first half of the fifth century, and then Maximus the Confessor, in the seventh century, is the last physicalist. After Maximus, this conviction that the incarnation enacts a universal change in the human condition as a result of the human unity in Christ simply disappears from the Christian tradition. If physicalism was indeed a natural outgrowth of fourth-century theology, then its abrupt diminishment in the fifth century manifests that whatever supported the natural outgrowth of physicalism in the late fourth century – and made it a teaching inoffensive even to its nonproponents – disappears by the second half of the fifth century.
1.3 The Rise of the Creationist Ensoulment Model and Its Detrimental Effect on Corporate Conceptions of Humanity, Original Sin, and Physicalist Soteriology
Drawing from the discussion so far, we see that the conviction that there is a unity of humanity in Christ that results in some manner of universal human transformation is a theological extension of the belief that the fall has a universal effect on humanity enabled by the unity of humanity in Adam. Just as Adam, through the unity of humanity in him, changed all humanity for the worse, Christ, through the unity of humanity in him, changes all humanity for the better. Interestingly, while the conviction of a unity in Christ leading to universal human transformation received no polemical attention at any period in early Christianity, the unity of humanity in Adam – including the effects of this unity on all humanity, and the manner in which these effects were transmitted from Adam to all other humans – was a topic of theological conflict from very early on and came to be a central interest in the polemics revolving around several different controversies in the fourth and especially fifth centuries.
Amid the theological developments and debates of the late fourth and early fifth centuries – from the post-Nicene trinitarian debates to the christological controversies – one development that has been consistently underrecognized and undervalued is the shift in the Christian conception of ensoulment. The late fourth and early fifth centuries see a shift away from the two ensoulment models that had coexisted up to the fourth century – pre-existence and traducianism – toward a new model, creationism. The transition from traducianism and pre-existence to the creationist ensoulment model does not happen all at once, and I find it helpful to think of four stages within this process, even though some of these stages chronologically overlap. In Stage 1, which lasted until the late fourth century, there exist two ensoulment models in Christianity: pre-existence and traducianism, both of which intentionally function as the mechanism to explain how and why the fall has universal consequences and coexist with the idea that there is a unity of humanity in Adam. In Stage 2, these two ensoulment models devised to explain the universality of the fall, namely pre-existence and traducianism, get rejected as part of antiascetical polemics, for reasons that have nothing to do with the universality of the fall. In Stage 3, around the turn of the fifth century, a new ensoulment model, creationism, is created and rises to prominence. This ensoulment model, unlike the earlier ones, was not designed to be an explanatory mechanism for the universal consequences of the fall and explicitly limits the unity of humanity in Adam to a physical/bodily unity (that excludes a unity of soul). In Stage 4, creationism completely ousts the former ensoulment models. Despite the Pelagian use of creationism to deny any universal effects of the fall by denying a unity of humanity, on the level of the soul, in Adam, Augustine seems to be the only one to recognize that – now that ensoulment has ceased to provide the rationale for how and why the fall can have universal effects – Christianity is left without anything else to fill in this necessary logic.
In Stage 1, which lasts until the late fourth century, two different ensoulment models coexisted in Christianity, and both were intentional answers to the question: How can the fall affect all humans universally? Both Origen and Tertullian – as the fathers, respectively, of the pre-existence and traducian models of ensoulment – thought of ensoulment in light of what was to them the real and manifest conditions of universal human fallenness. Ensoulment was the way each of them explained how individual humans participate in a universal human condition of fallenness that is a result of sins committed in a distant past. Origen attests that “Christian brethren often ask a question … Little children are baptized ‘for the remission of sins.’ Whose sins are they? When did they sin?”Footnote 8 For Origen, in the beginning, all created beings were rational (nonmaterial) beings, but these rational beings turned away from God and fell. There are myriad gradations of fallenness, each directly corresponding to the level of individual fault.
God made one a daemon, one a soul and one an angel as a means of punishing each in proportion to its sin. For if this were not so, and souls had no pre-existence, why do we find some new-born babes to be blind, when they have committed no sin, while others are born with no defect at all? But it is clear that certain sins existed before the souls, and as a result of these sins each soul receives a recompense in proportion to its deserts.Footnote 9
Here we see that Origen argues that the blindness of a newborn manifests a greater level of fallenness and individual fault (than would be the case with a visually unimpaired newborn). The fault happened prior to the baby’s conception, when that individual rational being turned away from God the precise amount that garnered the punishment of becoming a human soul that would be implanted in a blind body. While there are certainly variations in the human condition that correspond to pre-existent fault, we also see here Origen’s belief that all humans universally share a level of fault that requires them to receive human bodies as punishment. The universal human experience of the sufferings associated with embodiment has a single cause that applies to all humans universally: All humans in their pre-existent nonmaterial state turned away from God the precise amount that leads to human embodiment. Therefore, for Origen, the pre-existence ensoulment model is the mechanism that explains why and how all humans, without exception, exist justly in a fallen state. While it seems that the pre-existence model of ensoulment excludes Adam from any role in the universal fall of humanity, Origen does give Adam a significant role in the fall by delineating a unity of humanity in Adam that depends upon humans existing “in Adam’s loins.”
If then Levi, who is born in the fourth generation after Abraham, is declared as having been in the loins of Abraham, how much more were all men, those who are born and have been born in this world, in Adam’s loins when he was still in paradise when he was himself driven out from there, and through him the death which had come to him from the transgression consequently passed through to them as well, who were dwelling in his loins … Through Adam, from whom all mortals derive their origin, that sin is said to have entered, and through sin, death.Footnote 10
The theological coordination of the fall of pre-existent souls with this belief that sin and death enter the human race through Adam has been a source of constant confusion to commentators.Footnote 11 It might seem that Origen sees pre-existence as explaining the fall of the soul, and the unity of humanity in Adam as explaining only the fall of the material body; however, Origen excludes such a simplistic delineation when he argues that the sin committed by Adam transmits a death of the soul: “‘And through sin,’ he says, ‘death.’ Without a doubt this is the death concerning which the prophet says, ‘The soul which sins will die.’”Footnote 12 Whatever the precise details of the relationship between the pre-existence ensoulment model and the unity of humanity in Adam, Origen espouses both of these ideas within his explanation of the universality of the fall.
Tertullian, the father of traducianism, demonstrates that his ensoulment model, like pre-existence for Origen, serves the function of explaining how individual humans participate in the universal human experience of fallenness. Also like Origen, though in a much more straightforward fashion, Tertullian uses traducianism to argue that Adam is able to initiate a universal fall because he is the progenitor of all humans. For Tertullian, both body and soul come into being through the procreative process: He gives a very vivid account of ejaculation as involving both the body and soul of the father and, therefore, communicating both body and soul to the fetus. Adam, as the great-great-great grandfather of all humanity, is the physical progenitor, via the reproductive process, of the body and soul of all humans, and, since both the body and soul of Adam are fallen, he passes on to all humans a fallen body and fallen soul.
For although we shall allow that there are two kinds of seed – that of the body and that of the soul – we still declare that they are inseparable, and therefore contemporaneous and simultaneous in origin. Indeed (if I run the risk of offending modesty even, in my desire to prove the truth), I cannot help asking, whether we do not, in that very heat of extreme gratification when the generative fluid is ejected, feel that somewhat of our soul has gone from us? And do we not experience a faintness and prostration along with a dimness of sight? This, then, must be the soul-producing seed, which arises at once from the out-drip of the soul, just as that fluid is the body-producing seed which proceeds from the drainage of the flesh.Footnote 13
Every soul, then, by reason of its birth, has its nature in Adam until it is born again in Christ; moreover, it is unclean all the while that it remains without this regeneration; and because unclean, it is actively sinful, and suffuses even the flesh (by reason of their conjunction) with its own shame.Footnote 14
For Tertullian, the sexual transmission of the soul is a necessary element in explaining how all humans participate in a fallen condition because sin is the work of the soul while the body is merely “annexed to the soul as a chattel.”Footnote 15 It is the “unclean” soul transmitted from Adam, through the generations, to each fetus that “suffuses” and taints the body. Humanity could not be universally fallen if human souls remained disconnected, and so untarnished, from Adam’s sin. Therefore, traducianism explicitly delineates the universality of the fall as the repercussions of the unity of humanity, body, and most especially soul, in Adam.
In Stage 2 of the progression of Christian ensoulment models, which takes place in the late fourth- and early fifth-centuries, both traducianism and pre-existence get wrapped up in polemical debates that severely tarnish the continuing viability of either of these models. Traducianism gets included in the criticisms of anti-Messalian, anti-Encratite, and antiascetical polemics, while pre-existence becomes almost universally rejected as the result of the Origenist controversy. Before we get into the details of these various controversies and how they worked together to side-line both pre-existence and traducianism, we should note that none of these controversies targeted as problematic the functionality of either of these ensoulment models as explanatory mechanisms for the universality of the fall. In other words, that ensoulment – in both of these models – functioned to explain the universality of the fall was never questioned or criticized.
I begin my outline of the controversies that led to the rejection of both ensoulment models with the various types of antiascetical (including anti-Messalian and anti-Encratite) polemics, because, as we will see, some of the same arguments deployed against the ascetical movements that tarnish traducianism are also employed against Origen’s pre-existence model of ensoulment. Elizabeth Clark’s argument that the ascetic disputes – though not “high theology” and, therefore, not usually accorded significant scholarly attention – were nevertheless definitive of late fourth- and early fifth-century Christianity is accurate.Footnote 16 While each ascetical movement was certainly distinctive, there were enough commonalities that the antiascetic polemical method of painting a not-very-detailed picture of their opponents, or even overtly lumping wildly different groups together as a single target, was, even if not exactly accurate, fairly successful. One of these commonalities between various extremist ascetical groups was a concrete rejection of sex, a stance that was explicitly founded on a modified traducianism in which the consequences of the fall are handed on universally through procreation precisely because the procreative process is itself evil. Clement characterizes the Encratite position against sex as being dependent on this modified traducianism.
“No one is pure from defilement,” says Job, “not even if his life last but one day.” Let them tell us how the newly born child could commit fornication, or how that which has done nothing has fallen under the curse of Adam. The only consistent answer for them, it seems, is to say that birth is an evil, not only for the body, but also for the soul for the sake of which the body itself exists. And when David says: “In sin I was born and in unrighteousness my mother conceived me,” he says in prophetic manner that Eve is his mother. For Eve became the mother of the living.” But if he was conceived in sin, yet he was not himself in sin, nor is he himself sin.Footnote 17
For the Encratites, according to Clement, every child is evil because, since the procreative process is evil, every child is “conceived in sin.” The Encratites characterize Adam’s sin as sexual, and through the sinfulness of sex, Adam hands on to his children a vitiated evil nature, with the result that – since human nature can only be handed on through procreation, and procreation always defiles human nature – the consequences of Adam’s fall are transmitted to every human being.
Though the Messalians differed from the Encratites in many ways, the polemical literature reveals that Messalians were perceived to share with the Encratites a practical repudiation of sex that was theologically dependent upon viewing sex as the mechanism by which the consequences of sin – defined by the Messalians as possession by demons – are transmitted from Adam to all humans universally. John of Damascus (writing in the eighth century) presents a Messalian as arguing for this traducianist handing on of the consequences of Adam’s sin: “Just as everyone born inherits his nature from his first parents, so also does he inherit a state of servitude to the demons.”Footnote 18 Polemicists against this ascetical connection between sex and a traducianist explanation for the universality of the fall often labeled their ascetical opponents with the more recognizably dangerous title of Manichean, either out of genuine confusion or as a useful polemical tool. For example, Severus equates the Messalians with the Manichees when he says: “The sin of those who engendered us, that is, the sin of Adam and Eve, is not naturally mixed with our substance as the evil and impious opinion of the Messalians, in other words the Manicheans, claims.”Footnote 19 The antiascetical literature tended to ignore the particularities of the various ascetical groups, favoring instead an approach of generalizing the message so that one polemical treatise could serve as the attack on all. Even Jerome’s asceticism is criticized as being Manichaean, and Jerome only exacerbates this polemically driven intentional ignorance of details when he defends himself from the charge by declaring “I am no Marcionite, Manichaean, or Encratite. I know that God’s first commandment was ‘Be fruitful, multiply, and fill the earth.’”Footnote 20 The end result of this lumping of the ascetical movements with the bogeyman of Manichaeism, combined with a lack of care about the precise arguments of each group, was that the ascetic/Encratite/Messalian/Manichaean linkage of a rejection of sex with traducianism led to a polemical response that repudiated both these ideas together. Although traducianism can certainly exist without a denigration of sex, as with Tertullian, antiascetical literature in its attempt to validate sex also rejected traducianism.Footnote 21
As in the antiascetical literature, anti-Origen polemicists in the fourth-century Origenist controversy believed that the ensoulment model at stake – this time pre-existence – was tied to a degradation of sexual reproduction, and, again as with the antiascetical polemics, this linkage provided the rationale for their polemical dismantling of the ensoulment model. Both Epiphanius and Theophilus attack Origen’s pre-existence of souls for the reason that it deprecates reproduction. In 394, Epiphanius argues that if pre-existent souls fell into bodies as a punishment for sin, then the body is a “tomb,” and the command to “be fruitful, multiply, and fill the earth” would be not a blessing but rather a curse.
Where is that blessing to Adam, and to his seed, and to Noah, and to his sons: “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth” (Gen 1:28, 9:7)? Indeed it would not be a blessing, but a curse, according to Origen, who turns angels into souls and makes them descend from the highest summit of dignity to the depths, as if God couldn’t give souls to the human race through a blessing unless angels sinned. And as many as have fallen in the heavens so many births are there on earth.Footnote 22
God’s command to “be fruitful” would, if souls pre-existed and only became humans with bodies because they fell, be a manifestation of an unacceptable limitation on both God and humans: God could not have given procreation to humans had souls not fallen, and humans can only procreate the number of babies as there are fallen souls. Ten years later in 404, Theophilus’ anti-Origen polemic likewise highlights what he views as a very problematic connection between the pre-existence ensoulment model and the denigration of sexual reproduction. As Clark says:
Although Theophilus here again resumes his attack on Origen’s notion of the fall of minds into bodies, in the letter of 404 the entire argument on the precosmic fall and its subsequent effects revolves around the issue of marriage and reproduction.Footnote 23
Like Epiphanius, Theophilus argues that Origen’s ensoulment model of pre-existence makes bodies into a punishment for sin, with the result that marriage and reproduction would never have been necessary if not for the fall and must be considered a part of the punishment for sin.Footnote 24 This disparagement of sexual reproduction makes the author of the Letter to the Hebrews into a liar when he says “marriage is honorable and the bed undefiled,”Footnote 25 which for Theophilus is sufficient reason to reject the pre-existence model of ensoulment.
Both traducianism and pre-existence suffered criticism because they both could be used in service of a theological denigration of marriage, sex, and procreation. The anti-Encratite, anti-Messalian, and anti-Origenist literature reveals that the polemicists believed that both the traducian and pre-existence ensoulment models were actively and irretrievably linked with an unacceptable denigration of sex. Authors engaged in this antiascetical polemic believed it to be logically impossible to have a proper Christian attitude toward sex side by side with either of these ensoulment models. While each of these ensoulment models can still boast a prominent proponent in the late fourth century – Gregory of Nyssa advocates traducianism, and Marius Victorinus advocates pre-existence – they begin to lose credibility as a result of these antiascetical polemics, and there are no significant proponents of either model in the fifth century.
None of the antiascetical critiques opposed understanding the fall as universal or the unity of humanity in Adam; on the contrary, everyone on all sides of these debates presumed the universality of the fall and its relationship to Adam. Therefore, even though the intention of both Tertullian and Origen, with traducianism and the pre-existence model of ensoulment, was to explain how all humans can justly exist in a fallen state, these models were rejected for reasons that were, at best, secondary and, at worst, of no interest to their creators, namely the connection of ensoulment with a disparagement of reproduction. Clark argues that the loss of the pre-existence model of ensoulment had the unintended effect of creating a theological vacuum, and we can easily apply the same argument to traducianism. Clark says: “When Origen’s theory of the origin and fall of creatures was rejected by Western ecclesiastical authorities at the turn of the fifth century, the central question that had stimulated his theology (how to square the justice, goodness, and power of God with the miseries and inequalities of the present life) remained open.”Footnote 26 Ensoulment, through both traducianism and pre-existence, functioned in early Christianity as the theological mechanism for explaining how the fall could have universal, and justly universal, effects. Both these models tied the universality of the fall both to the universality of the fallen condition of the soul and to the unity of humanity in Adam. The loss of these ensoulment models left the question of the universality of the fall unexplained and cast doubt on its two supporting claims, namely that souls are universally fallen and this universal fallenness of souls is transmitted through the unity of all humanity in Adam.
Stage 3 of the transition in Christian ensoulment models is the beginning and rise of creationism, which has a partial chronological overlap with Stage 2. As early as 397, Jerome argues that creationism – “God is daily making souls” – is the only legitimate Christian ensoulment model, explicitly excluding both pre-existence and traducianism.Footnote 27 Jerome explains his reasons for rejecting each of the earlier Christian ensoulment models. Pre-existence, in positing a prebody existence of the soul, undermines the resurrection because
if it is natural to the soul to be without a body, it must be contrary to nature for it to be in a body. If it is contrary to nature to be in a body, it follows that the resurrection of the body is contrary to nature.Footnote 28
Meanwhile, traducianists are presented by Jerome as imagining that souls “come by propagation, like brute beasts.”Footnote 29 Jerome’s reasons for rejecting these models have nothing to do with their intended function of explaining the universality of the fall. Rather, in his mind, the problem with pre-existence is that it undermines bodily resurrection, and the problem with traducianism is that it insults the immaterial nature of the soul.
Although it is conceivable that a new ensoulment model could have been designed that upheld both bodily resurrection and the immaterial nature of the soul while continuing to function as the explanation for how the fall can have universal effects, Jerome does not seem to view the universal consequences of the fall as a theological quandary that needs explanation and, therefore, does not view it as necessary for ensoulment to uphold the universality of the fall. In fact, even as Jerome heads off the question of how sin can be explained when creationism explicitly denies that souls are universally fallen – since God creates each individual soul directly in the womb as an untarnished, unfallen soul – he demonstrates a surprising ignorance of the need to explain the universality of the fall and the necessary logical underpinnings for such an explanation. Jerome’s argument in defense of creationism that “the cause of vice and virtue does not lie in the seed, but in the will of him who is born”Footnote 30 becomes, only a few years later, the rallying cry of Pelagius and his followers, whom Jerome vociferously denounces.Footnote 31 Jerome’s presentation of creationism denies both the universal fallenness of souls and the transmission of this fallenness through the unity of humanity in Adam. Without those arguments, creationism becomes a very useful tool in the Pelagian denial of the universality of the fall.
Within his insistence on creationism, Jerome provides an arsenal for dismantling both pre-existence and traducianism without recognizing that those ensoulment models also functioned as the scaffolding for Christian thinking on the universality of the fall. Not surprisingly, some of Jerome’s followers used his arguments for creationism and against pre-existence and traducianism with the intentional goal of rejecting a universal fall. Therefore, Jerome’s naïve lack of interest in the relationship between ensoulment and the universality of the fall laid the groundwork for the Pelagian controversy.
The Pelagian controversy originated not with Pelagius but with Rufinus the Syrian who was part of Jerome’s fiercely creationist circle in Palestine.Footnote 32 When Rufinus journeyed west between 398 and 401, he came in contact with various forms of traducianism still widespread in the West, and armed with the arguments of Jerome, as well as the weapons of antiascetical polemics, his repudiation of traducianism went hand in hand with his rejection of the belief that babies are born sinful as a result of the universal fallenness of human souls transmitted to all via a unity of humanity in Adam. In other words, Rufinus, like Jerome, tried to replace the older ensoulment models with creationism, and, again like Jerome, he argued that creationism properly handles the question of the universality of the fall by supporting the proper position that sin results from the will and not from nature.
They are insane who condemn the whole world to iniquity and shameful actions because of one man Adam. Those who say this either declare that God is unjust, or, indeed, they consider the devil to be more powerful than God, since the devil, through the misconduct of Adam and Eve would be able to turn to evil the nature that God created as good, if, indeed, by the misconduct of the first man Adam and of his wife Eve all humans are prone to sin.Footnote 33
Unlike Jerome, Rufinus intentionally expands Jerome’s logic – in a way that Jerome did not intend and later opposes – to come to the conclusion that babies are not born fallen and that there are, in essence, no universal effects of the fall. If it is insane to argue that human nature as a whole is fallen as a result of Adam’s action, then, Rufinus argues, we must instead hold that “our Lord Jesus Christ also teaches that children are totally free from all sin”Footnote 34 and “[i]nfants, then, do not receive baptism because of sins.”Footnote 35
Though Rufinus is by no means the first person to attack traducianism, but rather is explicitly following in the footsteps of antiascetical polemics and his own mentor Jerome, he is the first person to realize that pulling down traducianism has the net result of dismantling Christian argumentation for the universality of the fall. Without an ensoulment model that supports the universal fallenness of the soul transmitted through the unity of humanity in Adam, there is no way to explain the universality of the fall without falling into heresies that were already explicitly repudiated. For example, one could argue that the soul is unfallen, but the fallenness of the physical body, transmitted to all from Adam via reproduction, immediately taints the soul upon contact, but such a position would veer toward the dualist deprecation of materiality found in Manicheanism. Or, one could argue that despite the unfallen condition of each individual soul, God punishes all humans universally until or unless they are baptized, but this argument would veer toward the position of the determinists. Rufinus, Caelestius, Pelagius, Julian, and other Pelagians are the first to realize, and capitalize on, the theological hole left as a result of the shift from pre-existence and/or traducianism to the creationist ensoulment model. They all use creationism in tandem with a rejection of the universality of the fall. For example, Caelestius was condemned by a tribunal in Carthage in 411 or 412 for, among other things, asserting that “[t]he sin of Adam harmed him alone and not the human race.” Julian takes the polemical tactic of arguing that anyone who says that the fall is universal must necessarily be a traducianist, but traducianism, he claims (following the methods of antiascetical polemic), is essentially Manichaean. Therefore, Julian claims that only creationism and the rejection of the universality of the fall avoid heresy.Footnote 36 Pelagianism would have been impossible with either pre-existence or traducianism, because both those models, unlike creationism, exist as intentional explanations for the universality of the fall.
Stage 4 ushers in the recognition that if creationism is the only legitimate Christian ensoulment model, orthodox Christians have no tenable argument against the Pelagian rejection of the universality of the fall. Here we enter the most interesting part of the story of Christian ensoulment, which is that, faced with the widespread Pelagian use of creationism to undermine the universality of the fall, the recognition that creationism is not a sufficient replacement for the earlier ensoulment models is limited to only one man: Augustine. Augustine quickly saw the connection between creationism and the difficulty of maintaining a logical position in support of a universal fall. Augustine explicitly asked several avowed creationists, Jerome included, for guidance as to how creationism could be held together with an orthodox account of the universal effects of the fall.Footnote 37 To Jerome, Augustine addresses this passionate plea:
Teach me, therefore, I beseech you, what I may teach to others; teach me what I ought to hold as my own opinion; and tell me this: if souls are from day to day made for each individual separately at birth, where, in the case of infant children, is sin committed by these souls, so that they require the remission of sin in the sacrament of Christ, because of sinning in Adam from whom the sinful flesh has been derived? Or if they do not sin, how is it compatible with the justice of the Creator, that, because of their being united to mortal members derived from another, they are so brought under the bond of the sin of that other, that unless they be rescued by the Church, perdition overtakes them, although it is not in their own power to secure that they be rescued by the grace of baptism? Where, therefore, is the justice of the condemnation of so many thousands of souls, which in the deaths of infant children leave this world without the benefit of the Christian sacrament, if being newly created they have, not through any preceding sin of their own, but by the will of the Creator, become severally united to the individual bodies to animate which they were created and bestowed by Him, who certainly knew that every one of them was destined, not through any fault of its own, to leave the body without receiving the baptism of Christ? Seeing, therefore, that we may not say concerning God either that He compels them to become sinners, or that He punishes innocent souls and seeing that, on the other hand, it is not lawful for us to deny that nothing else than perdition is the doom of the souls, even of little children, which have departed from the body without the sacrament of Christ, tell me, I implore you, where anything can be found to support the opinion that souls are not all derived from that one soul of the first man, but are each created separately for each individual, as Adam’s soul was made for him.Footnote 38
Augustine is viewing ensoulment in the same way as both Origen and Tertullian had centuries before, namely as the only viable way to explain how each individual can logically and justly experience the effects of a fall that happened long before his or her birth. If each individual baby receives an unfallen soul as creationism claims, then surely at least some of these unfallen souls could remain unfallen through the course of a human lifetime, which would mean there is no universal fall – exactly as the Pelagians claim – or, for the sake of universality, they are all equally compelled by God to fall even though only some will be saved by sacramental grace, which would be a repudiation of both the justice and mercy of God.Footnote 39 Origen, Tertullian, and Augustine all agree that the universality of the fall depends upon the universal fallenness of souls and the transmission of this fallenness through the unity of humanity in Adam.
Augustine points out that traducianism works to explain the universality of the fall because it posits a unity of humanity – body and soul – in Adam. Each human body and each human soul are, in the traducian model, derived from Adam through the process of sexual procreation. Augustine argued earlier in this same letter to Jerome, and even more clearly in his letters to the creationist Optatus, that souls are immaterial, but their immateriality does not necessarily exclude them from the procreative process.Footnote 40 On the other hand, creationism undermines the unity of humanity in Adam because while, in creationism, all individual bodies still derive from Adam, individual souls do not derive from Adam but are each created new by God from nothing. Augustine asks: “How does a soul contract sin from an origin from which the soul itself does not derive its origin?”Footnote 41 If each individual soul does not have its origin in Adam, then it is nonsensical to say that it can contract fallenness from Adam. Augustine advises Optatus that if creationism, in undermining this unity of humanity in Adam by undermining the soul’s origin in Adam, cannot support the foundational Christian truth that all human souls experience the universal consequences of Adam’s sin, then creationism should be abandoned.
If, then, you can maintain that souls are created new apart from any propagation, so that they are shown by a just reason not foreign to the Catholic faith to be, even in that case, subject to the sin of the first man, defend what you hold as best you can. But if you cannot keep souls exempt from propagation except by at the same time setting them free from every bond of sin, refrain entirely from such a line of argumentation.Footnote 42
Augustine believes that ensoulment is a necessary part of the edifice of Christian belief in the universality of the fall. If creationism cannot support the universality of the fall, it is a flawed ensoulment model that should not be espoused.
However, despite the pathos of Augustine’s plea for help in understanding how creationism could ever coexist with an understanding of a universal fall, and his advice that it would be better to abandon creationism than to maintain it at the cost of abandoning the universality of the fall (which is a universal fallenness of souls transmitted via the unity of humanity in Adam), Augustine receives no response from Jerome, and creationism continues unchecked.Footnote 43 Even as Pelagius is officially condemned, creationism – the foundational tool of Pelagius’ theology – continues its trajectory toward complete dominance.Footnote 44 However, it is the pathos itself of Augustine’s plea that serves, perhaps, as the explanation for why creationism won the day. Traducianism and pre-existence had already lost their credibility in the minds of many. Augustine suggests that creationism is also not a credible ensoulment model because it undermines the universality of the fall, but despite much effort, he is never able to produce an alternate ensoulment model. With traducianism and pre-existence discredited, and no other ensoulment options, fifth-century Christians found themselves stuck with creationism despite its manifest problems. In some ways, the triumph of creationism was a hollow victory because few authors in the late fifth or early sixth centuries want to explicitly align themselves with creationism.Footnote 45 Nevertheless, the victory of creationism is a victory that leaves Christianity with an unresolved, and seemingly unresolvable, problem: There is no longer a theologically coherent rationale for the universality of the fall because there is no longer a coherent way to envision the universal fallenness of souls and the transmission of this fallenness from Adam.
Pelagius demonstrates the way in which creationism undermines not only a coherent articulation of a universal fall but also any way to think of Christ’s incarnation as having a reciprocal universality. Pelagius argues that if the fall of Adam is understood to be universal (affecting even those who do not sin), then in terms of “fittingness,” one should also acknowledge that the effects of the incarnation are universal (affecting even those who do not believe), since Christ is more powerful than Adam.
If Adam’s sin … harmed even those who were not sinners, then Christ’s righteousness helps even those who are not believers. For … in like manner, or rather to an even greater degree are people saved through the one than had previously perished through the other.Footnote 46
Pelagius intends his argument to discredit the universality of the fall because he presumes that thinking of the incarnation as universally beneficial to believers and nonbelievers alike is ridiculous, and, therefore, Christians surely must see that it is equally ridiculous to attribute universality to the consequences of Adam’s sin. However, we have already seen that not all early Christians agreed with Pelagius’ assumption that it would be ridiculous to attribute to the incarnation effects on all humanity and not just believers. It is true that the majority of pre–fifth-century Christians believed in the universality of the fall without believing that all humans – believer and nonbeliever alike – universally benefit from the incarnation. However, several prominent fourth-century Christians had already, by Pelagius’ time, articulated an understanding of human unity in which Adam and Christ mirrored each other in their ability to affect all humans universally.
Creationism undermined the unity of human individuals with both Adam and Christ. If individuals do not get their souls from Adam, then their relationship to Adam does not extend beyond the material body, and there is no orthodox way to think about universal consequences of the fall that go beyond the body. The historical narrative of the triumph of creationism over the previous ensoulment models – pre-existence and traducianism – is a story about the loss of the Christian ability to envision Adam as a protagonist in salvation history whose actions had universal detrimental effects on humanity. The relationship between Adam and Christ means, in this instance, that as creationism eliminates a theologically coherent way to speak about Adam as a historical protagonist who can have a universal effect on all humanity, it also correspondingly eliminates a theologically coherent way to speak about Christ as a historical protagonist who can have a universal effect on all humanity.
1.4 Fifth-Century Developments That Cause the Demise of Physicalist Soteriology
Physicalist soteriology flourishes in the fourth century and then nearly disappears by the second half of the fifth century. This turning of the tide of physicalism’s fortune is, I hypothesize, the result of developments in fifth-century theology: primarily the triumph of the creationist ensoulment model, but also christological positions related to Chalcedon. We have already tracked how the rise of creationism began to undermine the previously universal conviction that there is a unity of humanity in Adam such that theologians could speak of inheriting a fallen human nature (body and soul) from Adam. When there is no longer a theologically viable way of explaining how Adam can have a universal effect on humanity, there is correspondingly no longer a viable way of explaining how Christ can have a universal effect on humanity. However, as we saw, while creationists in the fifth century could not articulate a logical correlation between creationism and a universal fall, nevertheless, despite that logical failure, the non-Pelagian, “orthodox” creationists continued to believe in a universal fall dependent on Adam. We saw that Jerome’s articulated theology regarding the fall – that the cause of actual sin in individuals is their will and cannot be blamed on the nature (seed) they receive from Adam – does not logically support universality. However, his opposition to the Pelagians demonstrates that he does believe in the universal fall of both body and soul despite his inability to explain its coherence with creationism.
Three authors – Hilary, Cyril, and Maximus – demonstrate that while physicalism can coexist with creationism, it can only do so in a severely curtailed state. Augustine argued that creationism could not account for the universal fall of soul. Hilary, Cyril, and Maximus demonstrate that in the same way creationism eliminates the possibility of speaking of the incarnation having a universal effect on the soul: Physicalism must be limited to the body. While Hilary, like Augustine later, struggles to envision the universal fall in a way that logically coheres with creationism, he does find the logically coherent place for physicalism in a creationist milieu, which is to limit the universal effects of the incarnation to the human body.Footnote 47 Cyril and Maximus, like Hilary, limit physicalism to the body, but, unlike Hilary, they are able to articulate an entire narrative of fall and redemption that logically balances universality with creationism’s unfallen soul. Neither Cyril nor Maximus posits the vitiation of the soul as a universal effect of the fall, nor its rectification as a universal effect of the incarnation. Instead, for both of them, universality, in both fall and redemption, is limited to the body. Hilary, Cyril, and Maximus demonstrate that creationist theologies of either fall or redemption eliminate the ability to speak coherently of the universal aspect of either fall or redemption with terms that refer to the body and soul together, because the soul’s direct origin from God removes it from any universal effect. Creationism and physicalism can only logically coexist when the idea of a universal fall of the soul, which would depend on a unity of humanity (both soul and body) in Adam, is sacrificed. While the coherent interplay of creationism with an articulation of the universal aspects of both fall and redemption is expressed by both Cyril and Maximus with the language of “human nature,” a close reading will show that in nearly every case “nature,” to both these authors, means the physical nature of the human person, not the soul.
In addition to the rise of creationism and the corresponding loss of a coherent argument for a unity of humanity in Adam, other developments of the christological councils worked, unintentionally and without awareness, against physicalism. One example would be Chalcedon’s condemnation of mixture Christology and Eutyches’ use of the drop of vinegar in the ocean analogy to explain the absorption of Christ’s humanity into his divinity.Footnote 48 Gregory of Nyssa had used mixture Christology and the same analogy of vinegar and ocean within his physicalist logic.Footnote 49 In other words, Gregory used a set of theological tools as building blocks in his physicalist soteriology; Eutyches used those same tools to build a single-nature Christology. In its thoroughness, Chalcedon condemned not only Eutyches’ conclusion but also his theological tools, and without these tools, Nyssa’s type of physicalism becomes impossible. Certainly, physicalism is possible without mixture Christology, but Nyssa’s type of physicalism is not.
However, more detrimental to physicalism than the loss of mixture Christology is one of the four famous adverbs of the Chalcedonian definition: Christ is acknowledged in two natures that exist ἀτρέπτως (unchangeably). A foundational principle of physicalist logic shared by all the physicalists is that the incarnation institutes some change in human nature such that there is a universal effect: All humans experience this change. Physicalist soteriology includes an argument about Christ that depends upon an understanding of Adam and the fall: Adam causes the fall of all humanity because all humanity is united in Adam, and similarly, Christ changes the human condition of all humans, this time for the better, because all humanity is united in Christ. The connection between this change of the human condition – for worse and then for better – with “human nature” as a technical term is universal in physicalist thought. Marius Victorinus, Hilary, Gregory of Nyssa, and Maximus all directly argue that it is human nature itself that falls in Adam and is repaired (at least partially) in Christ. However, the connection is less direct with both Athanasius and Cyril, who clearly articulate that the intended human condition, both originally and eschatologically, is not natural: Humanity loses in Adam and gains in Christ something that is not itself a part of human nature, namely the Holy Spirit.Footnote 50 And yet even Athanasius and Cyril do propose that the incarnation initiates some change to human nature itself. Athanasius argues that the incarnation gives to human nature (and therefore all individual humans without exception) a receptive ability, previously not possessed, to maintain internally the presence of the Holy Spirit. Cyril argues that the incarnation brings about the resurrection of the body for all. Therefore, when Chalcedon denies that the interaction of Christ’s two natures can have the result of changing Christ’s human nature, it denies that the incarnation can have the effect of changing human nature in any universal sense. All physicalists believe that the fall is a universal fall of human nature and that the incarnation begins the reversal of the fall by universally transforming human nature. Even the creationist physicalists, who limit the universal transformation of human nature to the body and use “human nature” almost exclusively to refer to physical nature, still insist that human nature can and does change as a result of both fall and incarnation. But if, as Chalcedon argues with its adverb ἀτρέπτως, the incarnational contact with divinity cannot change Christ’s human nature, then it certainly cannot enact the universal change of human nature that physicalism proposes. Neither Chalcedon’s rejection of mixture Christology nor its definition of Christ’s two natures as unchangeable were intentionally targeting the physicalist conviction that the unity of humanity in Christ has a universal effect on the human condition. However, just as with the replacement of the pre-existence and traducianist ensoulment models with creationism, the rejection of mixture Christology and the definition of Christ’s human nature as being unchanged by its contact with his divine nature have the unintended effect of altering the theological matrix enough such that physicalism is no longer a natural, or even viable, outgrowth of the shared theology of the era.
1.5 A Contemporary Call for the Unity of Humanity in Adam and in Christ
There is historical value to the study of physicalism and the unique window it gives us into the theological matrix of the late fourth century. However, physicalism offers something that is of contemporary, and not just historical, interest. There is a growing cultural discontent with the individualism that has long served as the backbone of human self-understanding. Contemporary society is in search of a more corporate understanding of humanity, and physicalism can serve as a theological answer to this cultural need.
The narrative of the rise and fall of physicalism demonstrates that physicalism was a fairly natural extension of the theology in common currency in the second half of the fourth century and, further, that it was considered by proponents and nonproponents alike to be both noninnovative and unobjectionable. Furthermore, the absolute lack of any direct attention on physicalism, either positive or negative, by either its proponents or its nonproponents demonstrates that physicalism was approached by all as a fairly basic and fundamentally acceptable position.
In marked contrast to this fundamental fourth-century acceptance of the conviction that humanity is united in Christ, in such a way that the incarnation has a universal effect on the human condition, is the modern sharp opposition to this physicalist conception. Chapter 2 will look more closely at the nature of this modern opposition in terms of both its explicit and implicit rationales. However, apart from those details, we must acknowledge a very general reason that accounts for both the widespread, nonpolemical acceptance of physicalism in the fourth century and the modern vociferous rejection: Culture shifted away from the corporate or unified understandings of humanity so common in the ancient world toward individualism. Physicalism is obviously a Christian phenomenon, but this shift in Christian soteriology from more corporate to more individualistic conceptions of humanity reflects a wider cultural shift toward heightened individualism.
The existence of this cultural shift from corporate to individualistic conceptions of humanity helps to explain why the physicalist conviction that the unity of humanity in Christ enacts a universal transformation of the human condition – which to the twenty-first-century mind seems at best bizarre, and at worst non-Christian and logically impossible – was not recognized by a single physicalist proponent as anything unusual that needed explanation or defense. The individuality that we in the twenty-first century see as a self-evident fact would have required pages of defense in the fourth century. Likewise, the corporate nature of human unity that was an unargued assumption in the fourth century would require a mountain of defense today. It is always the minority, not the dominant position, that needs to explain itself. While physicalism was never the dominant position, even in the fourth century, its foundational logic, namely an understanding of human unity that could be present in one person such that that single person could enact a universal change in the human condition, was dominant through the fourth century and needed no defense.
There are several signs manifesting that we have now reached a moment of both societal and academic openness to corporate understandings of humanity in theology. I have argued in this chapter that physicalism is inextricably linked with a conception of human unity in Adam and the universal fall that results from this unity. Jesse Couenhoven has recently argued that scholarly and cultural appropriation of the doctrine of original sin is following a similar path as that trod by physicalism: What was widely accepted in the early Church became a scandal in the middle of the second millennium, but is now becoming a source of renewed interest, precisely because of the widespread cultural acceptance of the unity of humanity in early Christianity was lost but is in recent times reentering both theological and cultural consciousness.Footnote 51 Couenhoven notes that any account of a universal fall still works against modern sentiments of justice, fairness, and personal responsibility, because a universal fall presupposes that humans receive a consequence for something involuntarily inherited.Footnote 52 At the same time, there is a growing social consciousness of realities such as social sin and systematic racism that accepts that humans do in actual fact consistently receive consequences for things (like skin color) they have involuntarily inherited.Footnote 53
Frances Young has also recently traced this cultural trajectory of renewed interest in human unity and its relationship to Christian views of the unity of humanity in Adam and in Christ.Footnote 54 She also argues that the pendulum has begun its return swing away from the apex of “me–society” individualism to the corporate conceptions of humanity found in ancient times. She makes two claims: First, modern individualistic society is in recent times becoming dissatisfied with its individualism, which is leading to a growing recognition of its own need for a greater corporate identity. Second, she argues that Pauline and early Christian literature are suffused with, even defined by, exactly this corporate identity that modern society is in search of. She says, “I doubt whether it is possible to do justice to either Pauline or patristic thought without taking seriously the corporate whole of humanity, represented both in Adam and in Christ, in each of whom particular instances of humankind do, or may, participate.”Footnote 55 To illustrate the growing societal rejection of individualistic conceptions of humanity, Young points to literature – for example, Primo Levi’s account of Auschwitz in which the greatest dehumanization inflicted upon the inmates was the totally individualistic self-interest they needed to have in order to survive. Young also highlights psychoanalysis, mystical experiences, and the biological study of “emergence” as avenues wherein individuals and entire fields of study are searching for a way to envision and articulate a greater unity of humanity than is currently the norm. Corresponding to this cultural shift, she thinks Christianity is on the road to recovering a greater understanding of the corporate connectedness of humanity. She argues that the theological naming of “structural sin” is a way of recognizing that sin has both an individual and a corporate nature, and, most interesting for our purposes, she believes that recognizing that sin has a corporate aspect must lead into a recognition that salvation likewise has a corporate aspect. She argues, “corporate sin surely needs a corporate answer” and points to the parallel conception of both Adam and Christ as initiating a universal transformation of humanity.Footnote 56 Certainly recent Christian theology is manifesting a growing sensitivity to the corporate nature of sin and, as a result, of redemption. Liberation theologians like Gustavo Guitiérrez argue that the existence of social sin means that whole groups of individuals can be brought closer to or farther from liberation and redemption together through the institution or removal of these social sins.Footnote 57 Though Young does not name physicalism, she does use two of the most prominent physicalists in her argument, Athanasius and Cyril of Alexandria, likely because physicalism is the most concrete Christian expression of the corporate human identity she is pointing to as the foundation for a corporate idea of both fall and redemption.
One last example of the recent renewed interest in human unity is Niels Gregersen’s increasingly influential conception of “deep incarnation,” which presupposes a unity not only between the incarnate Christ and all humanity but also between the incarnate Christ and all material creation.Footnote 58 Elizabeth Johnson has built on Gregersen’s deep incarnation to come to a sense of a “deep resurrection,” and here we see – in an extended ecological sense – a repetition of the logical move made by the physicalists: Universal union with Christ in the incarnation has concrete universal results.Footnote 59 Gregersen has inspired a renewed interest in looking at the incarnation through a scientific lens, and through this lens, there is a scientific truth to the claim that Christ has a unity with all creation because his human body, like all material things, is composed of atoms that were formerly parts of other material things like stars, seas, snails, and millions of other material things prior.Footnote 60 Gregersen and the other scholars dialoguing with deep incarnation manifest a more extreme search for unity that seeks for unity not only between persons but also between humans and the entire cosmos. This more extreme, more expanded search for unity manifests the depth of our cultural exhaustion with individualism and the conviction that the incarnate Christ, properly understood, can liberate us from this wearisome and false individualism.
Physicalism, which was an outgrowth of the early Christian conviction of human unity, should be a historical touchpoint for contemporary Christian theologies of human unity. One way to think about the historical import of physicalism is to see it as a natural development of the early Christian consensus on the universality of the fall toward an acceptance of redemption as likewise having a universal element. Physicalists extended both the unity of humanity and the universality of the repercussions of an individual’s actions from Adam to Christ. They agreed with Young’s sense that “corporate sin needs a corporate answer.” A common trope within early Christian use of the Adam-Christ parallel is the consistent insistence that whatever effect Adam has on humanity, surely Christ’s effect is greater. While some framed that greatness only in terms of the excessive greatness of redemption, others – the physicalists – were not satisfied with a scenario in which Adam had the upper hand in terms of universality. For them, if Adam affected all, then Christ likewise affects all. The physicalists did not all agree on what this universal effect of Christ’s incarnation was: For one it was limited to the resurrection of the body; for another it was human nature’s newfound ability to possess the Holy Spirit; for another it was the totality of redemption. Nevertheless, they all agreed that just as Adam’s imprint fell on all humanity, so too does Christ’s imprint fall on all humanity, not just on the individuals who believe.
Physicalism is a theological position that was never superseded because it quickly became a less useful and less natural theological tool. Had other polemically motivated doctrinal developments not happened – the replacement of ensoulment models that supported a universal theology of the fall with creationism, which does not, and Chalcedon’s condemnation of both mixture Christology and the changeability of Christ’s human nature – it is conceivable that physicalism would have become the common Christian narrative of both fall and redemption. Of course we can never know if the lack of opposition to physicalism in the fourth century would have propelled physicalism into common currency had the fifth-century controversies and developments not occurred, but it is worth noting that in contrast to the strenuous and Church-dividing disagreements that accompanied the growth of trinitarian and christological theology in early Christianity, physicalism was experiencing an organic and unopposed (though modest) spread.
Physicalism can have contemporary theological and cultural values because the historical developments that side-lined physicalism in the fifth century introduced major theological problems that remain unsolved to this day. Augustine’s desperate pleas for someone to explain how creationism can function coherently with the traditional Christian understanding of a universal fall of humanity were unanswered in the fifth century and remain unanswered today. There has been a gaping wound in the Christian narrative of fall and redemption since the fifth century. Modern Christians stand as inheritors of fifteen centuries of unresolved tension behind the paired claims that God implants in each fetus a directly created unfallen soul and that all humans are born fallen in both body and soul. Within this inheritance, physicalist soteriology becomes a historical paradigm of contemporary interest because it was one of the last cohesive theological narratives of fall and redemption prior to the rupture created in the fifth century.
It seems unlikely that Christianity can ever be wiped entirely clean of a corporate understanding of humanity because, despite centuries of trying, it is unclear how to do so without logically undermining a universal account of the fall of humanity. The doctrinal developments of the fifth century, which solved some of the theological problems of the day, also created this new – and continuing – problem of needing some other effective rationale to explain the universality of the fall once the unity of humanity in Adam has been effectively rejected. Perhaps the path forward in this case will require a return to the universal conception of the first four centuries of Christianity that all humanity is united in Adam. With this unity in Adam as a starting point, the fifth-century developments can be reevaluated so that their intended goals are maintained, but their unintended consequences of undermining a logical conceptualization of a universal fall can be eliminated. There is already a call for reevaluating the positive historical value of mixture christology with a clear sense that, contrary to the Chalcedonian blanket condemnation, mixture christology had been used in both orthodox and unorthodox ways.Footnote 61 What would be the conclusions of a contemporary study of the traducianism vs. creationism debate if it were seen as an a priori necessity to maintain the conception of unity of humanity in Adam as the rationale for the universality of the fall?
The rest of this book gives a window into several different narratives of salvation history that share the conviction that there is a unity of humanity that adheres in a unique way to the two figures of Adam and Christ such that they, uniquely among humans, have the ability to transform the condition of all humans universally. Each of these narratives shares the conviction that since there is a universal aspect to the fall, there must be a universal aspect to redemption. Nevertheless, they all insist that just as there is a personal element to damnation, apart from the universality of the fall, so there is a personal element to salvation, apart from the universal transformation of humanity effected by the incarnation. Each author balances the universal with the personal in a different way, but each could prove useful in a contemporary recovery of a theology of human unity, which would answer both the cultural search for corporate connection and the centuries-long Christian need for a coherent account of a universal fall. And as the physicalist authors offer accounts that can fulfill these acknowledged contemporary needs, they also offer startling, and likely unwanted, proof that early Christianity accepted without question the possibility of a universal aspect to the process of redemption.
