A creationist understanding of the soul’s origin206 maintains that each person’s soul/spirit, i.e., that which is separated from the body at death, is created immediately by God and planted into the embryo procreated by the parents. Such has been the prevalent view within Eastern Orthodoxy and is also the official teaching of the Roman Church207
albeit Augustine had wavered from it. Through original sin, the divinely created spirit finds itself within a morally sickly environment, or expressed another way is required to operate through an impure medium - the procreated body of death. Physiologically the physical and spiritual entities (body and soul/spirit) are in union, yet they have opposing moral impulses.
Augustine, considered to be the first Christian anthropologist had started well, aptly applying the analogy “your body is your wife”: the couple were once in perfect harmony but following the Fall are in combat with one another. Paul however goes further: the physical and spiritual entities are influenced by separate and distinct laws or engrained principles; the body, being the corrupted medium through which the soul/spirit (Paul’s “inner man”) functions, has impulses of its own:
“For I am gratified by the law of God in my inner man, but I perceive a different
law in my bodily members warring with the law in my mind and bringing me into captivity to the sinful law that is in my bodily members”208
The “law in one’s members” refers to the senses perceived through the members of the body processed by the brain, an organ that, it must be remembered, is part of the procreated vessel through which the divinely planted soul/spirit must operate. Like the rest of the body, it ultimately derives from fallen Adam’s loins and is heading for the grave. The human psyche, emotions and motivations cannot be contained within that vital organ or 206 Explanation and historical background:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creationism_%28soul%29
207 Catechism of the Catholic Church #366 http://www.vatican.va/archive/ENG0015/__P1B.HTM
208 Rom7:23
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entirely derived from it, for when our spiritual essence departs from the body it is conscious and memory-retaining as Scripture affirms. The rich man wondering why he must experience suffering in Hades was told by Abraham to “remember that in your lifetime you received good things and likewise Lazarus evil things, so now he is comforted and you are tormented”209. Paul’s reference in this context to the “law of God” is referring to a moral sense of right and wrong, in particular the need to exercise love and consideration for others, which the apostle confirms was always the law’s (and the Torah’s) heart and purpose210. It is intuitive, being the outworking of the human conscience211 which is clear or
“clean” when one obeys that principle, guilty when one does not.