The Cambridge Platonists and the Origin of the Soul: A Critique in Light of the Biblical Doctrine of the Fall

Introduction

The Cambridge Platonists, including Henry More, Ralph Cudworth, John Smith, and Benjamin Whichcote, offered one of the most intellectually refined syntheses of Christian theology and Platonic philosophy during the 17th century. At the heart of their thought was a high view of the soul’s dignity, reason, and divine likeness. They defended the soul’s immaterial nature against the rising tide of materialism, and largely embraced creationism—the doctrine that each soul is individually created by God at or near the moment of conception. However, their view, while noble in its defense of the soul’s rational and moral capacities, runs into serious difficulties when examined in light of Scripture’s teaching on human sin and fallenness, particularly as developed by the Apostle Paul. Ironically, it is the much-maligned view of Origen—despite its speculative tendencies—that aligns more closely with the biblical portrayal of man as a fallen being. But even Origen’s view is inadequate to explain the depth of human moral corruption that later thinkers like Augustine, Luther, and Calvin would bring out with greater clarity.

The Cambridge Platonists on the Soul’s Origin

The Cambridge Platonists’ commitment to the dignity of reason led them to affirm the immediate creation of each individual soul. Cudworth, for example, rejected Origen’s pre-existence doctrine, insisting instead that souls "are produced by the immediate power of God" (The True Intellectual System, p. 786). Henry More defended a similar view in The Immortality of the Soul, where he insisted that the soul is immaterial, rational, and created fresh for each person. This allowed them to maintain the soul’s purity at creation, free from any inherited corruption, which they saw as compromising God's justice.

In this framework, evil is explained primarily as a misuse of freedom rather than a congenital condition. Sin becomes, essentially, an individual act of moral failure, not a hereditary corruption of nature. Thus, while the Cambridge Platonists fully accepted the need for grace, their anthropology left the human will with a robust capacity for moral reasoning and self-correction, minimizing the radical power of sin over the soul.

The Problem of Sin’s Transmission

However, the creationist view of the soul encounters serious theological difficulties when confronted with the doctrine of original sin as articulated in Scripture. Paul makes clear that sin is not merely the product of individual acts but is transmitted through Adam to all humanity:

"Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned" (Romans 5:12, ESV).

In Ephesians, Paul speaks of humanity as "by nature children of wrath" (Ephesians 2:3), indicating an inherited condition. The Cambridge Platonists’ model of the soul’s immediate creation, coupled with its initial moral purity, leaves unexplained how the newborn soul becomes subject to sin and guilt before any voluntary act. Their theory undermines the biblical teaching that sin is a condition of nature, not merely of choice.

The Augustinian tradition, followed by Luther and Calvin, offers a more coherent account. According to Augustine, the whole human race was united in Adam’s original transgression: "In Adam, all sinned" (Confessions, XIII.14). Calvin likewise taught that sin is inherited: "Original sin is the hereditary depravity and corruption of our nature" (Institutes, II.i.5). This hereditary view accounts for the universality of sin, even in infants who have not yet consciously acted.

Origen’s Alternative: Pre-existence and the Fall

Interestingly, Origen’s theory of the soul’s pre-existence better accounts for humanity's fallen state than the Cambridge Platonists’ creationist model, though it introduces other theological problems. For Origen, all souls were originally created in a state of equality, but through the misuse of their free will prior to embodiment, they fell into varying degrees of separation from God (De Principiis, I.6.2). Human embodiment itself is part of God’s remedial plan to restore these fallen souls.

Origen thus places the fall prior to earthly life, providing a basis for universal sinfulness while preserving divine justice, since every soul’s condition reflects its own pre-temporal choices. This resolves, at least in theory, the tension between divine justice and inherited guilt.

However, Origen’s account suffers from a different theological imbalance: an excessive confidence in libertarian freedom. By making sin a pre-cosmic voluntary act, Origen assumes that the soul retains significant capacity for moral improvement by its own initiative even after the fall. This confidence in the soul’s natural freedom is inconsistent with Paul’s declaration that "there is none righteous, no, not one" (Romans 3:10) and that "those who are in the flesh cannot please God" (Romans 8:8). Origen underestimates the depth of moral bondage described by Paul, wherein man’s will is not merely weakened but enslaved by sin.

The Necessity of Divine Grace: Augustine, Luther, and Calvin

It took Augustine, and later Luther and Calvin, to draw out the full consequences of Paul’s teaching. Augustine recognized that man’s problem is not just the external act of sin, but a nature corrupted from the outset, leaving man utterly unable to choose God without prevenient grace (Enchiridion, ch. 106). Luther declared in The Bondage of the Will that human freedom, apart from grace, is a "mere name" when it comes to choosing God. Calvin sharpened this in his doctrine of total depravity, emphasizing that every faculty of man is infected by sin, including the will itself.

Only this view fully accounts for Paul’s portrayal of humanity as "dead in trespasses and sins" (Ephesians 2:1), unable to respond to God apart from sovereign grace. Regeneration is thus not a cooperative act of human will but a divine act of spiritual resurrection (John 3:3-8; Titus 3:5).

Conclusion

The Cambridge Platonists offered an elegant and noble vision of the soul’s creation, emphasizing its dignity and rational likeness to God. Yet in their commitment to the soul’s pristine creation and moral potential, they failed to account adequately for the profound biblical doctrine of original sin and man’s inherited corruption. Origen, for all his speculative daring, better grasped the universality of sin, though he too underestimated the depth of human depravity after the fall. It was Augustine, followed by Luther and Calvin, who most faithfully expounded the Pauline teaching that man is morally unable to turn to God apart from sovereign grace. Only this robust doctrine of sin and grace fully preserves both the justice of God and the radical nature of salvation as a divine work of redemption for helpless sinners.

Origen's view of the pre-existence of souls did not conflict with the Augustinian view of man's moral inability to turn to God for salvation but rather gives what is perhaps a more cogent explanation for the origin of sin that that of Augustine and his heirs. In both Origen and Augustine, man is a fallen creature, In fact for Origen, the purpose of creation was to restore man to his rightful place in the celestial realm from which he had fallen. In this respect his metaphysics allows for a more consistent view of God's motivation for creation and allows for a cogent theodicy that resolves the problem of evil in ways that Augustinian's cannot,

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Select Bibliography

• Augustine. Confessions. Trans. Henry Chadwick. Oxford University Press, 1991.

• Calvin, John. Institutes of the Christian Religion. Trans. Ford Lewis Battles. Westminster Press, 1960.

• Cudworth, Ralph. The True Intellectual System of the Universe. London: 1678.

• Luther, Martin. The Bondage of the Will. Trans. J.I. Packer and O.R. Johnston. Revell, 1957.

• More, Henry. The Immortality of the Soul. London: 1659.

• Origen. On First Principles. Trans. G.W. Butterworth. Gloucester: Peter Smith, 1973.

• Smith, John. Select Discourses. Ed. John Worthington. Cambridge: 1660.

• Whichcote, Benjamin. Moral and Religious Aphorisms. London: 1703.

• Hutton, Sarah. The Cambridge Platonists. Cambridge University Press, 1982.