“Good question. I’m not certain whether God is carrying around a “bag-o-souls” that He created before the foundations, waiting to dish them out at the time of conception, OR, whether He technically creates the soul at the time of conception. In either case we can know that God KNEW us before we physically existed:
Jer 1:4-5 : 4 The word of the Lord came to me, saying, 5 “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you , before you were born I set you apart; I appointed you as a prophet to the nations.”
We are no accidents. Long before He breathed life into us He knew exactly what His intentions were for each one of us. To me that FUNCTIONS as the same as our souls existing from creation. The mechanics really don’t matter.”
Close, FK, but watch that sloppy thinking in the last two sentences! Here are a couple of comments which lay out the position of The Church. The notion of the “pre-existence of souls”, btw, is heretical.
“We already existed before this world, because our creation was decided by God long before our actual creation. Before our creation we therefore existed in the thought of God, we who later turned out to be intelligent creatures of the Divine Word. Thanks to Him, we are very ancient in our origin, because ‘in the beginning was the Word.”
+Clement of Alexandria
“...the World-generating Reason also considered, in His mind’s great representations, the images of the world formed by Him, this world which was generated later, but, which, for God was present even then. Everything is before God’s eyes: what will be, what was, and what is now. For me such a division is set by time: that one thing is ahead, another thing behind. But for God all merges into one, and all is held in the arms of the Great Deity.”
+Gregory Nazianzus
Yep, that is definitely what I was thinking and he said it much better than I did. Thanks for the quotes.