New Church Life September/October 2017 | Page 67

     to be a plant producing seeds. It has an ending state – seeds again falling to the ground; and so on, and on, and on. This is the circle of life, and it is common to all manifestations of life as we know it. And this process can in no way be said to be coincidental or random. It always has a purpose! The purpose of the seed being to produce the plant in order to produce seed again. So if there is nothing random or coincidental about how life manifests itself in its many forms in the singular, why should it be any different when we consider it in general – namely life as it has evolved on this earth from its origins? Or rather: Why should the origin of species – my Darwinistic  sword which I used against itself – be random and coincidental when everything else known about life’s appearances are not? There is, and cannot be, anything coincidental about 100 million atoms coming together to form a truly simple organism, as a virus. So why should the general development, this organizing, the origin of species on this planet, be any different? The millions, nay, billions of years the process of evolution has been in the making? Not at all! According to the doctrine of our church, time and space are peculiar to the natural world. In the spiritual world, from which the natural world comes into existence – in the words of Arcana Coelestia 8211, whatever exists in the natural world derives its origins and causes from  things which  exist in the spiritual world. In other words, time and space do not exist there. Instead  of time and space there are states and changes of state. There are initial states, which evolve into in-between states, which again evolve into ending states. If we keep this spiritual idea in our minds, and bring it to the theory of evolution, you will see that it fits exactly. The origin of species on this planet has a state of beginning – the first living cell. It has an in-between state – the evolution of all the species. And it has an ending state, which of course is mankind; or better, much, much better, the ending state is our Lord Jesus Christ, the One True Purpose and Goal! The evolution of the different species, all having their place and time, is probably fully comparable with the evolution and growth of the human embryo to the new-born baby nine months later. In the union of the sperm cell and the egg cell there is a conatus, an effort: it must be! And its purpose is the new-born baby after nine months of continual development, or evolution, or growth! There is, therefore, no reason to think that this very same principle is not valid when it comes to the origin of species on this earth. That with the first living 421