Darwin & The Emergent Soul

I'm finding a world to talk about in the wake of Larry Arnn's shout outs on the Hewitt Show. There are at least six or seven new ideas I'm considering. This is one briefly.

I think Arnn is in error to be concerned about the evolution of man. More specifically, I think he draws an incorrect inference from the theory of evolution. He says that if man is not perfect and unchanging, then the soul is not either. I think he seeks something fixed about knowledge and man's capacity to know that is somewhat 'presentist'.

I think that the spirit or the soul of mankind is a vessel for the divine in ways not fully comprehensible. However the ways and means of salvation and of moral thinking are relatively easy. If one takes it for granted that God is an infinite being, then nothing of God's is threatened by the infinite increase of man. Which is to say so long as God pushed the button that started this universe, he will always be greater. Given the glacially slow pace of evolution and the indefinite size of the human soul, there is nothing to suggest that our being a being in transition alters our ability or capacity to recognize God's message.

If Arnn suggests that theology and revelation doesn't improve, then there may be a problem. I'm not sure he does, but I do wonder why he worries about the evolution of the soul.

One does have to wonder, if one is not an Historicist, as Arnn claims not to be why God chose to send Jesus at that particular moment in human history. Why not in the time of Abraham? Why not before? Why not 5,000 years from now? And who's to say Jesus is singular? I'm sure that Acquinas must have wrestled with that one...

I find it difficult to square with the idea of the infinite God, that a changing set of hardware specs for the human animal would make the operating system of the soul obsolete. If so, I think God would think nothing of adding yet another holy service patch for us to download.