Letter 50084: I received your letter, beloved brother, and I understand the confusion you describe.

Augustine to Novatus, greetings. I received your letter, beloved brother, and I understand the confusion you describe. The questions you raise about the nature of the soul — whether it is created new for each person or passed down from the parents — are among the most difficult in Christian thought, and I want to be honest with you: I do not have a definitive answer. There are two positions, and I have wrestled with both. The first, which many hold, is traducianism — that the soul is transmitted from parent to child, just as the body is. This would explain how original sin passes from Adam to all his descendants: the soul itself is inherited along with its stain. The second is creationism — that God creates each soul individually and places it in the body at some point during or after conception. This preserves the direct creative activity of God in each human life and avoids the problem of saying that God creates sinful souls. But it raises its own difficulty: if God creates each soul fresh, how does the stain of original sin attach to it? I have gone back and forth on this more times than I care to admit. What I am certain of is this: original sin is real, and every human being needs the grace of Christ. How the mechanism works — whether through the soul's transmission or through the body's — I leave to God's wisdom. The effect is clear even if the cause remains obscure. Do not be troubled that your bishop cannot answer every question. Some mysteries are not meant to be solved in this life. They are meant to drive us to prayer. Farewell, dear brother.

Letter 84 (A.D. 405) Please help support the mission of New Advent and get the full contents of this website as an instant download. Includes the Catholic Encyclopedia, Church Fathers, Summa, Bible and more — all for only $19.99... To My Lord Novatus, Most Blessed, My Brother and Partner in the Priestly Office, Esteemed and Longed For, and to the Brethren Who are with Him, Augustine and the Brethren with Him Send Greeting in the Lord. 1. I myself feel how hard-hearted I must appear to you, and I can scarcely excuse to myself my conduct in not consenting to send to your Holiness my son the deacon Lucillus, your own brother. But when your own time comes to surrender to the claims of Churches in remote places some of those whom you have educated, and who are most dear and sweet to you, then, and not till then, will you know the pangs of longing which pierce me through and through for some who, once united to me in the strongest and most pleasing intimacy, are no more beside me. Let me submit to your thoughts the case of one who is far away. However strong be the bond of kindred between brothers, it does not surpass the bond by which my brother Severus and I are united to each other, and yet you know how rarely I have the happiness of seeing him. And this has been caused neither by his wish nor by mine, but because of our giving to the claims of our mother the Church precedency above the claims of this present world, out of regard to that coming eternity in which we shall dwell together and part no more. How much more reasonable, therefore, is it for you to submit for the sake of the Church's welfare to the absence of that brother, with whom you have not shared the food which the Lord our Shepherd provides for nearly so long a period as I did with my most amiable fellow-townsman Severus, who now only with an effort and at long intervals converses with me by means of brief letters — letters, moreover, which are for the most part burdened with the cares and affairs of other men, instead of bearing to me any reminiscence of those green pastures in which we were wont to lie down under Christ's loving care! 5. You will perhaps reply, What then? May not my brother be of service to the Church here also? Is it for any other end than usefulness to the Church that I desire to have him with me? Truly, if his being beside you seemed to me to be as important for the gathering in or ruling of the Lord's flock as his presence here is for these ends, every one might justly blame me for being not merely hard-hearted, but unjust. But since he is conversant with the Punic language, through want of which the preaching of the gospel is greatly hindered in these parts, whereas the use of that language is general with you, do you think that we would be doing our duty in consulting for the welfare of the Lord's flocks, if we were to send this talent to a place where it is not specially needful, and remove it from this region, where we thirst for it with such parched spirits? Forgive me, therefore, when I do, not only against your will, but also against my own feeling, what the care of the burden imposed upon me compels me to do. The Lord, to whom you have given your heart, will grant you such aid in your labours that you shall be recompensed for this kindness; for we acknowledge that you have with a good grace rather than of necessity conceded the deacon Lucillus to the burning thirst of the regions in which our lot is cast. For you will do me no small favour if you do not burden me with any further request upon this subject, lest I should have occasion to appear anything more than somewhat hard-hearted to you, whom I revere for your holy benignity of disposition.