Body & Soul

[zsmcd]

In his A Compendious View of Natural and Revealed Religion , John Brown of Haddington says the following:

The human soul is immediately created by God in that very
act which unites it to its respective body. No man ever remembered
of his being in a pre-existent state, in which, had
it been, it behoved his unembodied soul to have been very active.
It is absurd to pretend, that it pre-existed in animalcules
of generating matter. The existence of such, or the formation
of the human body from them, hath never been proved; nor
can be, without supposing a stifling or extinction of millions of
souls in the conception of every infant.

I am having trouble understanding the section that I italicized. He seems to be saying that it is absurd to believe that there is life at conception. Thoughts?

 

[earl40]

He is saying the "material" of the soul is not like the material of our body which we are derived from.

 

[Hamalas]

Without being able to read the above quote in its full context, I think what he's doing here is rejecting the idea of the pre-existence of the soul which was so common amongst the ancient pagans (Plato, etc...). He's not speaking to the issue of life at conception in the way that we would in the contemporary abortion debates.

 

[RamistThomist]

He is denying Transmigration of souls.