Patriarchal Religion turns the reader here, and the pre-existence of souls is one of the ancient-theology doctrines the archive follows: the claim that intelligent souls were made and stood before God ahead of the visible world.
In Hannah Adams
In Adams’s own words, from the 1817 Dictionary. Each passage is quoted verbatim under its own entry.
PRE-EXISTENTS, aname which may not improperly be applied to those who hold the doctrine of Christ’s pre-existence. This name comprehends two classes: the Arians, who defend Christ’s pre-existence, but deny that he is a divine person: and others on the Calvinistic side, who assert both liis divinity, and that his intelligent, created soul, was produced into being, and united by an ineffable union to the second person of the trinity, before the heavens and the earth were created.
Under the article Brians, the reader has been presented with a view of the system of Arius and his immediate followers. The sentiments of the celebrated Dr. Richard Price will be brought to view under the article Unitarians. In this place a short sketch will be given of the hypothesis, which was maintained by Dr. Samuel Clarke.
This learned man held, that there is one supreme cause and original of all things; one simple, uncompounded, undivided, intelligent agent, or person; and that from the beginning there existed witli the first and supreme cause, (the Father,) a second person, called the Word, or Son, who derived his being, attributes, and powers, from the Father. He is therefore called the Son of God, and the only-begotten jf for generation, when applied to God, is only a figurative word, signifying immediate derivation of being and life from him.
To prove that Jesus Christ was generated (or produced) before the world was created, the doctor adduces the follow-, ing considerations: The Father made the world by the operation of the Son. (John i. 3—10. That all Christ’s authority, power, knowledge, and glory, are the Father’s, communicated to him, Dr. Clarke endeavours to prove by a variety of scriptures. The Son, before his incarnation, was with and in the form of God, and had glory with the Father. (John i. 2; xvii. 5. Phil. ii. 5.) The Son, before his incarnation, made visible appearances, and spake and acted in the name and authority of the invisible Father. Dr. Clarke calls Christ a divine person, solely on account of the power and knowledge which were communicated to him by the Father. He indeed owns that Christ is an object of religious worship; hut then he confines it to a limited sense: The worship paid to Christ terminates in the supreme God.* The doctrine of the preexistence of Christ’s human soul has been held by several divines; as Mr. Fleming, Dr. Goodwin, and many others who profess to maintain the proper divinity of Christ. The following sketch of the hypothesis of the late pious and ingenious Dr. Watts is selected from the rest.
He maintained one supreme God, dwelling in the human nature of Christ, which he supposed to have existed the first of all creatures; and speaks of the divide logos as the wisdom of God, and the Holy Spirit as the divine power, which, he says, is a scriptural person; i. e. spoken of figuratively in scripture, under personal characters.! In order to prove that Christ’s human soul existed previous to his incarnation, the following arguments are adduced.
I. Christ is represented as his Father’s messenger, or angel, being distinct from and sent by his Father, long before his incarnation, to perform actions which seem to he too low for the dignity of pure godhead. The appearances of Christ to the patriarchs are desorbed like the appearances of an angel, or man, really distinct from God; yet such a one, in whom Jehovah had a peculiar indwelling, or with whom the divine nature had a personal union.
II. Christ, when he came into the world, is said, in several passages of scripture, to have divested himself of some glory, which he had before his incarnation. Now, if there had existed, before his incarnation, nothing but his divine nature, this divine nature could not properly divest itself of any glory. I have glorijied thee on earth; I have finished the work, which thou gavest vie to do. And now, O Father, glorify thou me with thine own self, with the glory, which I had with thee before the world was. See John xvii. 4, 5. Ye know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that, though he was rich, yet, for our sakes, he became poor, that you, through his poverty, might be made rich. 2 Cor. viii. 9. III. It seems needful that the soul of Christ should pre-exist, that it might have opportunity to give its previous actual consent to the great and painful undertaking of atonement for our sins. The divine nature is incapable of suffering.
IV. The covenant of redemption between the Father and the Son, is represented as being made before the foundation of the world. To suppose that the divine essence, which is the same in all the three personalities, should make a covenant with itself, seems highly inconsistent.
V. Christ is the angel to whom God was in a peculiar manner united, and who in this union made all the divine appearances related in the old testament. See Gen. iii. 8 ; xvii. 1; xxviii. 12,13; xxxii.24. Exod. iii. 2; and a variety of other passages.
VI. The Lord Jehovah, when he came down to visit men, carried some ensign of divine majesty; he was surrounded with some splendid appearance; such as often was seen at the dopr of the tabernacle, and fixed its abode between the cherubim. It was by the Jews called the shekinah; i. e. the habitation of God. Hence he is described as « dwelling in light, and clothed with light as with a garment.” In the midst of this brightness there seems to have been sometimes a human form. It was probably of this glory that Christ divested himself when he was made flesh. With this he was covered at his transfiguration in the Mount, when « his garments were white as the lightand at his ascension into heaven, when a bright cloud received him; and when he appeared to John, (Rev. i. 13 ,-) and it was with this he prayed that his Father would glorify him.
VII. When the blessed God appeared in the form of a man, or angel, it is evident that the true God resided in this man, or angel; because he assumes the most exalted names and characters of godhead. And the spectators, and sacred historians, it is evident, considered him as true and proper God, and paid him the highest w orship and obedience. He is properly styled “ the angel of God’s presence”—and of the covenant. Isaiah lxiii. Mai. iii, 1.
Hannah Adams, A Dictionary of All Religions and Religious Denominations, 4th ed. (Boston: Cummings and Hilliard, 1817), entry “Pre-existents” (pp. 227–229).