So what would his plan be today? Or what was my plan, which I dared to think he would approve? In any situation, it is generally best to start from the tradition of the culture in which one has been brought up, because it is unlikely that one will think of a good plan all by oneself, from scratch. Better to lean on the wisdom of one’s forebears, and adapt whatever appealed to them. Now in Western culture, there has been a fairly consistent tradition of thinking that the human soul was fitted for immortality of a kind, either literally or metaphorically, either in this world or in the next. The Jehovah’s Witnesses are insistent that the idea of the immortality of the soul is Greek in origin; and it is correct that it does not feature in the Old Testament, and not much in the New. In the New Testament the idea is rather that the soul dies, and either then or later is resurrected. But parallel with this has been the tradition of thinking that Adam was the perfect man, who would have lived for ever, had he not eaten the apple and fallen from grace. Even in 1940, Mr. C.S.Lewis in his remarkably popular book, The Problem of Pain, was prepared to postulate that when Man was created, either in the Neanderthals or some other species, for a brief moment he too was in a state of perfection, until he too fell from grace. And this, despite the literal truth of the Adam and Eve story having been banished for most of us to the realm of allegory nearly a century before, by the publication of Charles Darwin’s Origin of the Species. Mr. Lewis does this to make the entirely valid point that Man in harmony with his Creator, assuming that there is a Creator, is an entirely different species from man in disharmony with his Creator. The Fall was, and is, catastrophic; not a technical mistake or aberration. It is tantamount to a change of species. It is however deeply written into the human psyche of the Western world to think that immortality in the flesh is possible sometime, somewhere.
So this was the obvious starting point; to modify the old doctrine that a second Adam had come and saved us from the catastrophic harm the first Adam had inflicted on us, so that it was more in keeping with Evolution. Well, I hedged my bets, and sought an indwelling with another, within the envelope of the Divine indwelling, as I have said a number of times; and if a literal immortality came along, well and good; if it did not, too bad! Maybe I fudged the challenge of a lifetime; but I do not think so. I think I got it right; had I attempted more I would have over-reached myself, and of that only I am judge. And many people would say, I over-reached myself even as it was. But anyone who takes the trouble to read “Man’s Relationship with God”, will find on page 222 this plan modified to embrace mankind, rather than another individual. But it is naturally the same plan. Let us now consider what plan the biologists of cumulative genetic selection have got for the future of our species? How do they propose to save us from an Evolutionary cul-de-sac? As far as I know, no plan. Bankrupt!