(_d_) This theory, if it allows that the soul is originally possessed of depraved tendencies, makes God the direct author of moral evil; if it holds the soul to have been created pure, it makes God indirectly the author of moral evil, by teaching that he puts this pure soul into a body which will inevitably corrupt it. The decisive argument against creatianism is this one, that it makes God the author of moral evil. See Kahnis, Dogmatik, 3:250—“Creatianism rests upon a justly antiquated dualism between soul and body, and is irreconcilable with the sinful condition of the human soul. The truth in the doctrine is just this only, that generation can bring forth an immortal human life only according to the power imparted by God’s word, and with the special coöperation of God himself.” The difficulty of supposing that God immediately creates a pure soul, only to put it into a body that will infallibly corrupt it—“sicut vinum in vase acetoso”—has led many of the most thoughtful Reformed theologians to modify the creatian doctrine by combining it with traducianism. Rothe, Dogmatik, 1:249-251, holds to creatianism in a wider sense—a union of the paternal and maternal elements under the express and determining efficiency of God. Ebrard, Dogmatik, 1:327-332, regards the soul as new-created, yet by a process of mediate creation according to law, which he calls “metaphysical generation.” Dorner, System of Doctrine, 3:56, says that the individual is not simply a manifestation of the species; God applies to the origination of every single man a special creative thought and act of will; yet he does this through the species, so that it is creation by law,—else the child would be, not a continuation of the old species, but the establishment of a new one. So in speaking of the human soul of Christ, Dorner says (3:340-349) that the soul itself does not owe its origin to Mary nor to the species, but to the creative act of God. This soul appropriates to itself from Mary’s body the elements of a human form, purifying them in the process so far as is consistent with the beginning of a life yet subject to development and human weakness. Bowne, Metaphysics, 500—“The laws of heredity must be viewed simply as descriptions of a fact and never as its explanation. Not as if ancestors passed on something to posterity, but solely because of the inner consistency of the divine action” are children like their parents. We cannot regard either of these mediating views as self-consistent or intelligible. We pass on therefore to consider the traducian theory which we believe more fully to meet the requirements of Scripture and of reason. For further discussion of creatianism, see Frohschammer, Ursprung der Seele, 18-58; Alger, Doctrine of a Future Life, 1-17. 3. The Traducian Theory.