I posted this on Facebook's Ask About The Orthodox
Faith and it was pulled, but it also landed in an email
account so I was able to save this.
Traducianism mentioned here, is the doctrine once held
by early Fathers and Orthodox in general, later faded
back to the influence of pagan philosophy dominated
western thought (yes, it does infect Orthodox thought)
that the soul is separately created and implanted by
God at the moment of each conception.
Traducianism I think it is from a word about roots or
branches, holds that the soul/spirit stuff runs with the
material flesh stuff, so to speak. So that the egg and
sperm not only contain a fraction of the original owner's
flesh stuff, but also a fraction of their soul stuff. The
resulting conceptus then has both the flesh stuff of the
parents, and the soul stuff of the parents.
This view is more biblically consistent, since The Epistle
to The Hebrews, when explaining that the Melchizedec
priesthood of Jesus Christ is superior to that of Aaron
(Levitical priesthood), notes that Levi, still in Abraham's
loins (not having yet been born of Abraham's descendant),
paid tithes in Abraham to Melchizedec when Abraham
did so.
This might also explain some generational curses, which
however can be broken, since soul stuff is more fluid and
flexible than flesh stuff and the growth of both seem
interdependent. And it would explain some generational
blessings. Epigenetics is an interesting new field of study
which shows that the flesh stuff is more flexible than
we think.
BEGIN ARTICLE.
A contentious thread disappeared and just as well,
because it went off on a tangent of can something be
done or not, but a point within it I want to discuss.
If a person who was cloned, or for that matter which I
will discuss shortly conceived in vitro, or for that matter
augmented with non human DNA, were to come
looking for salvation, are you going to send them
away as without a soul and unsavable?
I hope not. But exactly this, and possibly even murder,
is clearly on the table when the humanity of such,
when their being in the image and likeness of God,
are denied on account of peculiarity of conception.
An OCA priest told someone that a clone would be
made in the image of man not of God, therefore would
have no soul. This is of course nonsense, because its
origin is from human cells.
(Glory to God, someone on that thread pointed out
that Eve was cloned out of Adam, obviously I would
add with a tweak done that made her female instead
of his identical male twin.)
Traducianism once held as normative by Orthodox
in earlier centuries, would support the clone being in
the image of God. Special creation of each soul and
spirit, now the dominant theory east and west, is not
something you can argue to deny humanity of a clone
because then you are claiming to know exactly what
God can and can't, or will or won't do.
Image and likeness of God are based on ancestry not
mode of conception.
Underlying this also is the western and Greek pagan
philosophy and gnostic idea that we HAVE souls (and
therefore someone might not have a soul). The
phrasing in Genesis, both in the creation of Adam,
and referencing animals who died in The Flood, is that
both have "the breath of life" in them.
"And God breathed the breath of life into the man,
and he BECAME a living soul." If you have the breath
of life you are a soul. A human soul, or an animal or
other non human soul, but you ARE a soul.
Nephesh is a term in Hebrew that is flexible, can refer
to the immortal interface between spirit and body, can
refer to the life and wellbeing of a creature, can refer
to the entire body-soul-spirit continuum. As in, "the
soul that sins, it shall die."
1. A clone is essentially an identical twin. In the womb,
a fertilized egg divides but does not stay as one group
of cells but splits in two. They go on to become
separate beings. At this point you can argue one twin
came out of the other, and therefore one is made in
the image of God and the other is in the image of man,
one is soulless and one is savable. But you don't know
which one. Next step, exactly what for somewhat
different reasons is practiced by some primitives in
Africa, is to kill one of the twins, since it doesn't
matter anyway and shouldn't exist anyway, but which
one? oh well, kill them both.
THIS IS THE KIND OF THINKING THIS CAN LEAD TO.
It is unthinkable, and rightly so, at present. But an
individual in secret with such notions who could get
away unnoticed with doing this, might do it.
If on the other hand, both the twin from the original
cell that split, and the twin from the cell that split from
it are made in the image of God, then SO IS A CLONE.
2. In vitro fertilization has been characterized as also a
case of being without a soul. This by the person having
the Bayside false marian visions, denounced by the RC
as false, and from our perspective as Orthodox false,
besides which the content included remarks that are
historically false such as I read and in one case
chemically false (boil water to remove radioactivity)
and therefore cannot be from God or The Virgin Mary
who is close to Him and would know better.
Given this demonic source for such a notion about
in vitro fertilized people, it should give you pause
about thinking anyone is without a soul.
Side note: the sense of someone being "soulless" is
actually a sense of something being very lacking or
otherwise twisted in someone, but they are still
souls, albeit warped.
Clones are still in the works, perhaps already secretly
done. But in vitro fertilization, complete with genetic
selection angles, has been going on for a long time.
There are plenty of in vitros running around, egg
and sperm join in a petri dish and after a little time
of development maybe to the point of being embryos
are flushed into the mother's or womb donor's womb,
and most won't connect and will die.
Artificial insemination, either by the husband or from
another source, to ensure a concentration of semen
collected from several auto erotic productions of
them, and to ensure perfect timing, are also pretty
common.
If you doubt this, go look up "fertility clinics." and
except for those with a Roman Catholic bias, these
measures are exactly what they do.
3. Enhanced humans. Or modified humans. the US
defence or energy dept. I forget which sub dept.
DARPA or Defence Advanced Research Projects
Agency, which when it was called just ARPA gave
us the Internet in the 1960s when it was scientist
and military access only, has been working on the
production of super soldiers by two means. Techno
chemical enhancement, and genetic manipulation.
The latter splits into two forms, one is to breed the
perfect soldier usually the plan involves adding in
genes here and there clipped from an animal
chromosome and tacked onto a human
chromosome before fertilization. Obviously this
takes a long time, and not amenable to mass
production.
The fast track form, would be to take an adult, or
a near adult, already trained perhaps, or not, and
use gene therapy techniques to do the same. Goal,
greater endurance, aggression, ability to see at
night, tolerance of damage and keep going, ability
to go for days without food or possibly even water,
and possibly without sleep and still function as a
top class warrior.
For sports reasons and maybe other reasons, the
same lines of thought have been being worked on
by other people, not just DARPA. In England a
while back, 150 human animal hybrids were made,
whether by somehow managing to insert the
sperm into the egg or by genetic surgery is
unclear, these were allowed to develop to I think
embryo stage and were killed.
Laws allow the production of such for
experimentation, so long as they are killed before
developing very far. It is therefore unknown,
officially at least, if any in fact could develop to
delivery stage, or live to adulthood, or breed.
some countries have NO laws prohibiting such
experiments, and you can count on it that this
is going on now.
Okay. Consider this scenario. some person turns
up who is a product of any of the above inquiring
about Jesus Christ. what do you do?
Well, if they aren't fully human they would still
fit in the category of Romans 8:19 and Rev. 5:13
which shows that the whole creation incl. animals
worship God and are a part of the planned
restoration of creation. (the new heavens and
new earth.) So properly speaking, yeah, they're
savable, and having enough human blood to walk
down the street without animal control being called
before they get to your church, they are inheritors
of The Fall of Adam and Eve and need Jesus as
Savior. Probably all creatures of flesh do, but
that's another matter. They certainly need Him
as Savior if they turned from Him and if never
turned from Him then are saved and kept by HIm.
But lets look closer. Just how non human are they?
Much has been made of us sharing 98% of our
genes with chimpanzees. This figure is wrong
however, because the evolution worshipping
scientists fudge the data, by not limiting
themselves to the genes that ARE the same,
but counting also those that merely perform
the same functions but are NOT the same.
Reference has been made to us sharing genes
with potatos.
Genetic engineering is mostly done using
viruses as carriers of the genes to be added.
This was developed by observing the
phenomenon in nature, that some genes
spontaneously transfer between species and
genera, without sexual activity of any kind,
this is called "lateral inheritance," by exactly
this viral means.
So you can be sure there is a non human genetic
element in all of us however small.
NOW BACK TO SQUARE ONE. If it becomes law
that a clone can be made for spare parts (killed
at will) and is owned by the person it came from
or the company who grew it, and one escapes,
are you going to shrug it off as not having a
soul anyway, and turn it over to its "owners,"
or are you going to take a risk of prosecution
for grand larceny, and help it to hide and escape?
The Holy Fathers and Elders have warned over
the centuries that very evil times would come,
and it looks like they are here now.
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