Re: [asa] Evolution of the Soul

Folks,

To evolve God, is to make God no longer God, the resurrection a myth
and if
Christ be not raised we serve not a living GOD.

I (who am not TE - nor YEC) am glad that there are a number of TE's
whose
concept of God does not move in this direction. Is this not really
similar to the
liberal theological answer to God and miracles? Our concept of God
can not be
rationally discovered but must depend in part or mainly on his
revelation to us.

Blind copy to my colleague who teaches a perspectives course at Dordt.

-- 
James Mahaffy (mahaffy@dordt.edu)          Phone: 712 722-6279
498 4th Ave NE
Biology Department                                     FAX :  712  
722-1198
Dordt College, Sioux Center IA 51250-1697
>>> On 9/25/2006 at 9:54 AM, in message
<20060925145404.68060.qmail@web52415.mail.yahoo.com>, Gregory Arago
<gregoryarago@yahoo.ca> wrote:
> Given that a majority of people on this discussion list are both  
> scientists
> and Christians who accept evolution as the vehicle (or mechanism)  
> through
> which God created the world, there is a question that has returned  
> to me that
> I would like to ask you now. It comes from reading the work of Nikolai
> Berdyaev, the Russian religious philosopher who was exiled and  
> lived in Paris
> after the Russian Revolution(s). Berdyaev writes about ‘the genesis  
> of man in
> God and God in man.’ It got me wondering how an evolutionary  
> theist, theistic
> evolutionist (TE) or evolutionary creationist would understand the
> appearance, emergence or genesis of God in humankind, whether God  
> would
> appear from within or from outside of the human mind/body and how the
> connection would (originally) be made.
>
>   Berdyaev writes: “For if there is such a thing as a human longing  
> for God
> and a response to it, then there also must be a divine longing for  
> man the
> genesis of God in man; a longing for the love and the freely-loving  
> and, in
> response to it, the genesis of man in God.”
>
>   My questions to those at ASA are the following: What do we know  
> about the
> evolution of spirit or the evolution of the image of God? Was there an
> ‘intervention’ in the process of transformation in the morphology  
> of species
> change between quadruped and biped, in the case of where human beings
> (supposedly) ‘evolved’ from ancestor beings, when something non- 
> natural or
> extra-natural was involved? Could it be said that God (has) evolved  
> in God’s
> relationship with human beings? Did knowledge of God and  
> relationship with
> God evolve ‘into’ human existence, based on the physiological  
> capacity of
> having a larger brain and evolving language? Or do human beings and  
> also all
> of matter contain (a kind of) spirit from the ‘big bang’ that was  
> realized in
> a personhood sense somewhere along the timeline of life on earth?
>
>   A book and an article, both of the same title, have been helpful  
> for me on
> this topic: “The Evolution of the Soul,” by Igor Sikorsky (1949),  
> father of
> the modern helicopter, and The Evolution of the Soul by Richard  
> Swinburne
> (1986, 1997), current philosopher of religion at Oxford University.  
> Both
> books accept (natural) scientific evolution as a reality and  
> discuss the
> spiritual life of humanity in the light of philosophical and  
> theological
> understanding.
>
>   Gregory A.
>
>  		
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