Trying to sneak a pitch past him is like trying to sneak the sunrise past a rooster. Three hundred and fifty years ago, give or take a half-century, an explosion was heard that sent concussive shock waves racing across the Earth, demolishing ancient societies and creating a wholly new civilization. This explosion was, of course, the industrial revolution. And the giant tidal force it set loose on the World—the Second Wave—collided with all the institutions of the past and changed the way of life of millions. During the long millennia when First Wave civilization reigned supreme, the planet’s population could have been divided into two categories—the “primitive” and the “civilized.” The so-called primitive peoples, living in small bands and tribes and subsisting by gathering, hunting, or fishing, were those who had been passed over by the agricultural revolution. The “civilized” World, by contrast, was precisely that part of the planet on which most people worked the soil. For wherever agriculture arose, civilization took root. From China and India to Benin and Mexico, in Greece and Rome, civilizations rose and fell, fought and fused in endless, colourful admixture. However, beneath their differences lay fundamental similarities. In all of them, land was the basis of economy, life, culture, family structure, and politics. In each community, life was organized around the village. Each of which, life was a simple division of labour prevailed and a few clearly defined castes and classes arose: a nobility, a priesthood, warriors, helots, slaves, or serfs. For all of these people, power was rigidly authoritarian. #RandolphHarris 1 of 28

In all of these cases, birth determined one’s position in life. And for any one of these people, the economy was decentralized, so that each community produced most of its own necessities. There were exceptions—nothing is simple in history There were commercial cultures whose sailors crossed the seas, and highly centralized kingdoms organized around giant irrigation systems. However, despite such differences, we are justified in seeing all these seemingly distinctive civilizations as special cases of a single phenomenon: agricultural civilization—the civilization spread by the First Wave. During is dominance there were occasional hints of things to come. There were embryonic mass-production factories in ancient Greece and Rome. Oil was drilled on one of the Greek islands in 400 B.C, and in Burma in A.D. 100. Vast bureaucracies flourished in Babylonia and Egypt. Great urban metropolises grew up in Asia and South America. There was money and exchange. Trade routes crisscrossed the deserts, ocean, and mountains from Cathy to Calais. Corporations and incipient nations existed. There was even, in ancient Alexandria, a startling forerunner of the steam engine. Yet nowhere was there anything that might remotely have been termed an industrial civilization. These glimpses of the future, so to speak, were mere oddities in history, scattered through different places and periods. They never were brought together into a coherent system, nor could they have been. Until 1650-1750, therefore, we can speak of a First Wave. #RandolphHarris 2 of 28

Despite patches of primitivism and hints of the industrial future, agricultural civilization dominated the planet and seemed destined to do so forever. This was the World in which the industrial revolution erupted, launching the Second Wave and creating a strange, powerful, feverishly energetic countercivilization. Industrialism was more than smokestacks and assembly lines. It was a rich, many-sided social system that touched every aspect of human life and attacked every feature of the First Wave past. It produced the great Willow Run factory outside Detroit, but it also put the tractor on the farm, the typewriter in the office, the refrigerator in the kitchen. It produced the daily newspaper and the cinema, the subway and the DC-3. It gave us cubism and twelve-tone music. It gave up Bauhaus buildings and Barcelona chairs, sit-down strikes, vitamin pills, and lengthened life spans. It universalized the wristwatch and the ballot box. More important, it linked all these things together—assembled them, like a machine—to form the most powerful, cohesive, and expansive social system the World had ever known: Second Wave civilization. As the Second Wave moved across various societies it touched off a bloody, protracted war between the defenders of the agricultural past and the partisans of the industrial future. The forces of First and Second Wave collided head-on, brushing aside, often decimating, the “primitive” peoples encountered along the way. #RandolphHarris 3 of 28

In the United States of America, this collision began with the arrival of the Europeans bent on establishing an agricultural, First Wave civilization. A white agricultural tide pushed relentlessly westward, dispossessing the Indian, depositing farms and agricultural villages father and father toward the Pacific. However, hard on the heels of the farmers came the earliest industrializers as well, agents of the second Wave future. Factories and cities began to spring up in New England and the mid-Atlantic states. By the middle of the nineteenth century, the Northeast had a rapidly growing industrial sector producing firearms, watches, farm implements, textiles, sewing machines, and other goods, while the rest of the continent was still ruled by agricultural interests. Economic and social tensions between First Wave and Second Wave forces grew in intensity until 1861, when they broke into armed violence. The Civil War was not fought exclusively, as it seemed to many, over the moral issue of slavery or such narrow economic issues as tariffs. It was fought over a much larger question: would the rich new continent be ruled by farmers or industrializers, by the forces of the First Wave or the Second? Would the future American society be basically agricultural or industrial? When the Northern armies won, the die was cast. The industrialization of the United States of America was assured. From that time on, in economics, in politics, in social and culture life, agriculture was in retreat, industry ascendant. The First Wave ebbed as the Second came thundering in. #RandolphHarris 4 of 28

The same collision of civilizations erupted elsewhere as well. In Japan the Meiji Restoration, beginning in 1868, replayed in unmistakably Japanese terms the same struggle between agricultural past and industrial future. The abolition of feudalism by 1876, the rebellion of the Satasuma clan in 1877, the adoption of Western-style constitution in 1889, were all reflections of the collision of the First and Second Waves in Japan—steps on the road to Japan’s emergence as a premier industrial power. In Russia, too, the same collision between First and Second Wave forces erupted. The 1917 revolution was Russia’s version of the American Civil War. It was fought not primarily, as it seemed, over communism but once again over the issue of industrialization. When the Bolsheviks wiped out the last lingering vestiges of serfdom and feudal monarchy, they pushed agriculture into the background and consciously accelerated industrialism. They became the party of the Second Wave. In country after country, the same clash between First Wave and Second Wave interests broke out, leading to political crisis and upheavals, to strikes, uprisings, coup d’etat, and wars. By the mid-twentieth century, however, the forces of the First Wave were broken and the Second Wave civilization reigned over the Earth. #RandolphHarris 5 of 28

Today an industrial belt girdles the globe between the twenty-fifth and sixty-fifth parallels in the Northern Hemisphere. In North America, and much of the other developed nations, some 80 percent of the population lives an industrial way of life. Despite dizzying differences of language, culture, history, and politics—differences so deep that wars are fought over them—all these Second Wave societies share common features. Indeed, beneath the well-known differences lies a hidden bedrock of similarity. And to understand today’s colliding waves of change we must be able to identify clearly the parallel structures of all industrial nations—the hidden framework of Second Wave civilization. For it is this industrial framework itself that is not being shattered. And you, MAGNIFICENT AND MOST HONOURED LORDS, you upright and worthy magistrates of free people, permit me to offer you in particular my compliments and my respects. If there is a rank in the World suited to conferring honour on those who hold it, it is without doubt the one that is given by talents and virtue, that of which you have made yourselves worthy, and to which your fellow citizens have raised you. Their own merit adds still a new luster to yours. And I that find you, who were chosen by humans capable of governing others in order that they themselves may be governed, are as much above other magistrates as a free people; and above all that one which you have the honour of leading, is, by its enlightenment and reason, above the populace of other states. #RandolphHarris 6 of 28

May I be permitted to cite an example of which better records ought to remain, and which will always be near to my heart. I never call to mind without the sweetest emotion the memory of the virtuous citizen to whom I owe my being, and who often spoke to me in my childhood of the respect that was owed you. I sill see him living from the work of his hands, and nourishing his soul on the most sublime truths. I see Tacitus, Plutarch and Grotius mingled with the instruments of his craft before him. I see at this side a beloved son receiving with too little profit the tender instruction of the best of fathers. However, if the aberrations of foolish youth made me forget such wise lessons for a time, I have the happiness to sense at last that whatever the inclination one may have toward vice, it is difficult for an education in which the heart is involved to remain forever lost. Such, MADNIFICENT AND MOST HONOURED LORDS, are the citizens and even the simple inhabitants born in the state you govern. Such are those educated and sensible human concerning whom, under than name of workers and people, such base and false ideas are entertained in other nations. My father, I gladly acknowledge, was in no way distinguished among his fellow citizens; he was only what they all are; and such as he was, there was no country where his company would not have been sought after, cultivated, and profitably too, by the most upright humans. It does not behoove me, nor, thank Heaven, is it necessary to speak to you oft the regard which humans of that stamp can expect from you: your equals by education as well as by the rights of the nature and of birth; your inferiors by their will and by the preference they owe your merit, which they have granted to it, and for which you in tern owe them some sort of gratitude. #RandolphHarris 7 of 28

It is with intense satisfaction that I learn how much, in your dealings with them, you temper with gentleness and cooperativeness the gravity suited to the ministers of law; how much you repay them in esteem and attention for the obedience and respect they owe you; conduct full of justice and wisdom, suited to putting at a greater and greater distance the memory of unhappy events which must be forgotten so as never to see them again; conduct all the more judicious because this equitable and generous people makes a pleasure out of its duty, because it naturally loves to honour you, and because those who are most zealous in upholding their rights are the ones who are most inclined to respect yours. It should not be surprising that the leaders of a civil society love its glory and happiness; but, unfortunately for the tranquility of humans, that those who consider themselves as the magistrates, or rather as the masters, of a more holy and more subline homeland manifest some love for the Earthly homeland which nourishes them. How sweet it is for me to be able to make such a rare exception in our favour, and to place in the rank of our best citizens those zealous trustees of the sacred dogmas authorized by the laws, those venerable pastors of souls, whose lively and sweet eloquence the better instills the maxims of the Gospel into people’s hearts as they themselves always begin by practicing them. Everyone knows the success with which the great art preaching is cultivated in Geneva. #RandolphHarris 8 of 28

However, since people are too accustomed to seeing things said in one way and done in another, few of them know the extent to which the spirit of Christianity, the saintliness of mores, severity to oneself and gentleness to others reign in the body of our ministers. Perhaps it behooves only the city of Geneva to provide the edifying example of such a perfect union between a society of theologians and men of letters. It is in large part upon their wisdom and their acknowledged moderation and upon their zeal for the prosperity of the state that I base my hopes for its eternal tranquility. And I note, with a pleasure mixed with amazement and respect, how much they abhour the atrocious maxims of those sacred and barbarous humans of whom history provides more than one example, and who, in order to uphold the alleged rights of God—that is to say, their own interests—were all the less sparing of human blood because they hoped their own would always be respected. Could I forget hat precious half of the republic which produces the happiness of the other and whose gentleness and wisdom maintain peace and good mores? Amiable and virtuous women and citizens, it will always be the fate of your gender o govern ours. Happy it is when your chase power, exercised only within the conjugal union, makes itself felt only for the glory of the state and the public happiness! Thus it was that in Sparta women were in command, and thus it is that you deserve to be in command in American. #RandolphHarris 9 of 28

What barbarous man could resist the voice of honour and reason in the mouth of an affectionate wife? And who would not despise vain luxury on seeing your simple and modest attire, which, from the luster it derives from you, seems the most favourable to beauty? It is for your to maintain always, by your amiable and innocent dominion and by your insinuating wit, the love of laws in the state and concord among the citizens to reunite, by happy marriages, divided families; and above all, to correct, by the persuasive sweetness of your lessons and by the modest graces of your conversation, those extravagances which our young people come to acquire in other countries, whence, instead of the many useful things they could profit from, they bring back, with a childish manner and ridiculous airs adopted among fallen women, nothing more than an admiration for who knows what pretended grandeurs, frivolous compensations for servitude, which will never be worth as much as august liberty. Therefore always be what you are, the chaste guardians of mores and the gentle bonds of peace; and continue to assert on every occasion the rights of the heart and of nature for the benefit of duty and virtue. I flatter myself that events will not prove me wrong in basing upon such guarantees hope for the general happiness of the citizens and for the glory of the republic. #RandolphHarris 10 of 28

I admit that with all these advantages it will not shine with brilliance which dazzles most eyes; and the childish and fatal taste for this is the deadliest enemy of happiness and liberty. Let a dissolute youth go elsewhere in search of easy pleasures and lengthy repentances. Let the alleged men of tastes admire someplace else the grandeur of palaces, the beauty of carriages, the sumptuous furnishings, he pomp of spectacles, and all the refinements of softness and luxury. In American we will find only men; but such a sight has a value of its own, and those who seek it are well worth the admirers of the rest. May you all, MAGNIFICENT, MOST HONOURED AND AOVEREIGN LORDS, deign to receive with the same goodness the respectful testimonies of the interest I take in your common prosperity. If I were unfortunate enough to be guilty of some indiscreet rapture in this lively effusion of my heart, I beg you to pardon it as the tender affection of a true patriot, and to the ardent and legitimate zeal of man who envisage no greater happiness for oneself than that of seeing all of you happy. With the most profound respect, I am MAGNIFICENT, MOST HONOURED AND SOVEREIGN LORDS, you most humble and most obedient servant and fellow citizen. The Angels had wondered at the glorious plan of redemption. They watched to see how the people of God would receive His Son, clothed in the garb of humanity. Angels came to the land of the chosen people. Other nations were dealing in fables and worshipping false gods. To the land where the glory of God had been revealed, and the light of prophecy had shone, the Angels came. #RandolphHarris 11 of 28

They came to unseen America, to the appointed expositor of the Sacred Oracles, and the ministers of God’s house. Christ’s arrival had been announced. Already the forerunner was born, His mission attested by miracle and prophecy. The tidings of His birth and the wonderful significance of His mission had been spread abroad. And American was preparing to welcome her Redeemer. With amazement the Heavenly messengers beheld the excitement that the people whom God had called to communicate to the World the light of sacred truth. The American nation had been preserved as a witness that Christ was to be born of the seed of Abraham and of David’s line. The priests and teacher rehearsed their sacred prayers, and performed important rites of worship to honour the Lord, and prepare for the revelation of the Messiah. Hearts were Heavenly enthralled and were blessed by the joy that thrilled all Heaven. Everyone has the experience of doing, few of being. Yet that is the most precious, most important of all life’s experiences. This is the experience which makes the fully mature human happiest. It is usually short but its next advent will always be eagerly awaited. It is often isolated by long intervals of prosaic commonplace living, but they only serve to give it even greater value by contrast. The inner need of humans is forever demanding this experience, for it is Heaven. Whether it is born out of appreciation of beauty or an infinite humiliation of the ego, or out of some totally difference occasion, this awareness of the Overself’s presence is essential to the completion and fulfilment of human life. #RandolphHarris 12 of 28

To enter Heaven is to enter into fulfilment of our Earthly life’s unearthly purpose. And that is, simply, to become aware of the Overself. This holy awareness brings such joy with it hat we then know why the true saints and the real ascetics were able to disdain all other joys. The contrast is too disproportionate. Nothing that the World offers to tempt us can be put on the same level. One will find that somewhere within there is a holy presence not oneself, a sublime power not one’s own. One will understand then that no one is truly alive who has not made this discovery. The glimpse of Heaven lies at the core of religion, the precious gem which each devotee must find for oneself underneath all the sermons, chantings, rituals, prayers, and observances of one’s creed. A stillness which is simply the absence of noise but which is rich, fruitful, and uplifting in beauty and refinement of its presence—this is the best. No good fortune that comes one’s way will ever after be counted so great as the good fortune which one now feels to be one’s in the realization of the Overself. Would but the desert of the Fountain yield One glimpse—if dimly, yet indeed revealed, to which the fainting traveler might spring. Another significance of the glimpse is that of initiation. We cannot know God in the fullness of His consciousness but we can know the link which we have with God. If you mist, call it the soul, or if you prefer the Overself, but catch a glimpse of this link to be reborn. #RandolphHarris 13 of 28

The glimpse gives one a journey to a land flowing not with milk and honey, but with goodness and beauty, with peace and wisdom. It is the best moment of one’s life. When a human’s consciousness is turned upside-down by a glimpse, when one thought most substantial is revealed as least so, when one’s values are reversed the Good takes on a new definition, one writes that day down as one’s spiritual birthday. What better thing can one find than the divine Overself! That would be the decisive moment of one’s entire bodily existence, as establishing oneself permanently in its fullness and finality would be the grandest sequel. There is no higher happiness than this discovery of the real human. Joseph Smith knew that if his important work of translating was to be finished, he must have a capable scribe who could spend hours at a time at the job of writing. As usual when he needed guidance, Joseph prayed that such a person might be found. Meanwhile, back in Palmyra, a schoolteacher named Oliver Cowdery had come to live in the Smith home. Oliver, who was about Joseph’s age, had not been in the family of Joseph’s parent long before they told him the strange story of the golden plates and the Angel visits. Oliver liked the Smiths and believed the story. Oliver also prayed. He wanted to help in great new work. In his heart he began to feel that his place was beside Joseph. Because he felt so strongly that he could be helpful, he went to Pennsylvania in April, 1829. Upon hi arrival at the home of Joseph and Emma, Oliver told them why he had come. Joseph was not surprised because he knew God had sent this young man in answer to his prayer for help. #RandolphHarris 14 of 28

Joseph and Oliver became friends immediately. They trusted each other because each felt that God had told him, even before they met, that they would work together. Joseph had not had much opportunity to go to school to learn from books, and he was to appreciate the help of schoolteacher Oliver, who had excellent schooling, was a great reader, and a fine writer. Soon after the meeting of these two young men, the Lord Jesus Christ, spoke to them saying: “A great and marvelous work is about to come forth unto the children of men: behold, I am God, and give heed unto my word. Keep my commandments, and seek to bring forth and establish the cause of America. Seek not for riches but for wisdom; and, behold, the mysteries of God shall be unfolded unto you, and then shall you be made rich. Behold, one that hath eternal life is rich. If you desire, you shall be the means of doing much good in this generation. Say nothing but repentance unto this generation: keep my commandments, and assist to bring forth my work…and you shall be blessed. Behold, thou knowest that that thou hast inquired of me, and I did enlighten thy mind; and now I tell thee these things, that thou mayest know that thou hast been enlightened by the spirit of truth. Yea, I tell thee, that thou mayest know that there is none else save God, that knowest thy thoughts and the intents of thy heart. I tell thee these things as a witness unto thee, that the words of the work which thou hast been writing is true. Treasure up these words in thy heart. Be faithful and diligent in keeping the commandments of God, and I will encircle thee in he arms of my love. #RandolphHarris 15 of 28

“I say unto you, as I said unto my disciples, Where two or three are gathered together in my name, as touching one thing, behold, there will I be in the midst of them; even so am I in the midst of you. Fear not to do good, my sons, for whatsoever ye sow, that shall ye also reap: therefore, if ye sow good, ye shall also reap good for your reward. Therefore fear not, little flock, do good. Look unto me in every thought, doubt not, fear not. Be faithful; keep my commandments, and ye shall inherit the Kingdom of Heaven. Amen.” Two days after their meeting, Oliver began to write as Joseph translated. They worked hour after hour, day after day, happy in their new-found friendship and the work which bound them together. Oliver describes this work in these words: “These were days never to be forgotten—to sit under the sound of a vice dictated by the inspiration of Heaven. Day after day I continued to write as he translated with the Urim and Thummim.” Sometimes as they worked, on the translation they came to things they did not understand. They prayed for explanations. It was on such an occasion that the Lord explained to them how they might know the answers to many of their problems and receive the knowledge by the Holy Spirit. The Lord said: “Verily I say unto you, that assuredly as the Lord liveth, who is your God and your Redeemer, even so sure shall you receive a knowledge of whatsoever things you shall ask in faith, with an honest heart, believing that you shall receive. Yea, behold, I will tell you in your mind and in your heart by Holy Ghost, which shall come upon you, and which shall dwell in your heart. Now, behold, this is the spirit of revelation. #RandolphHarris 16 of 28

“Behold, you have not understood; you have supposed that I would give it unto you, wen you took no thoughts, save it was to ask me; but, behold, I say unto you, that you mut study it out in your mind. Then you must ask me if it be right, and if it is right, I will cause that your bosom shall burn within you; therefore, you shall fell that it is right. However, if it be not right, you shall have no such feelings, but you shall have a stupor of thought, that shall cause you to forget the thing which is wrong.” The Lord provided this means whereby Joseph and Oliver, and all the people, might know by His Holy Spirit the truth of all things. We must look upon these glimpses as sacred one. And this is so even if they rise of themselves in our best moments. For in these times we, and especially the younger ones among us, need wider definitions of such matters. These moments, when spiritual presence is distinctly felt, may be rare or frequent, misunderstood or recognized, but they are moments of blessing. And this is true even if they open the door only slightly and let in merely a ray of light. In these moments of a glimpse, one discovers the very real presence of the Overself. They provide one with a joy, an amiability, which disarms the negative side of one’s character and brings forward the beneficial side. These are precious moments; they cannot be too highly valued. And though they must pass, some communication with them is always possible through memory. #RandolphHarris 17 of 28

Remember this truth: The Old Testament is God’s will concealed, and the New Testament is God’s will revealed—every word is equally anointed, relevant, and eternally true. The glimpse is of supreme worth morally, helping to free one, bestowing goodwill and humility, uplifting one’s ideals however fleetingly. Instead of being an escape from life, as some sceptics unwisely think, they are its fulfilment. Although life is really like a dream, some phases of the dream are more worthwhile than others—those which bring the Glimpse, for instance. It is far better than being ignorant to know what is read in books or heard at lectures on this topic, but far better than both of these is to feel vividly the Overself’s presence and reality, to know the truth of It with complete certainty. No better fortune can come to a human than one’s serene inward well-being and this certitude of universal truth. We must have Good Conscience and live a Virtuous Life! Why? Because a lot of us spend more time studying hard than living well. That is such a mistake! All that does is produce a tree that bears in fruit, except perhaps the odd pear or single peace. Plowing vices under and planting virtues in their place—that is hard work. Harder even than the grunt and the grind of the great philosophical issues. However, if the priestly scholar had already done that hard and serious work in one’s own life, one would find it easier now dealing with those Devouts traipsing about in sandals and self-actualizes processing around in ermines. #RandolphHarris 18 of 28

With the certain advent of that Final Event, the question o be posed is not whether we read the right books, but whether we did the good deeds; not whether we said the right things, but whether we made the right choices. Tell me now, where are those celebrity professors who taught you when they were at the height of their careers and you were starting out? They are dead and gone. You occupy their chairs of learning now, and now you are spending their stipends. Doctors they once were; now they are only dodoes, and you can hardly remember their names. How soon the glory of the Worlds set, wrote John in his first letter to an early group of Christians (2.17)! Would that the professors’ lives had matched their doctrinal teachings! Yet they fell short. If they had it to do over again, I suppose they would have studied longer and read till their eyes turned red. However, that would have done the little good. That is what Paul had in mind when he wrote to the Romans (1.21). How many of the professors have perished because they followed the unreliable wisdom of the World! Because they gave scant attention to the service of God. They had their choices, though. They picked greatness rather than humility, and as a result logicked themselves right out of their own holy syllogisms. However, when the sun finally sets, there will be other, happier people. The truly great? Those who did not make a lot of themselves; they gathered honours as their due, but they did not display their trophies in the window. The truly prudent? If it is what would keep them on the path to God, those who gave the World its due; they would not mind sweeping up after elephants, as St. Paul put it so Earthily to the Philippians (3.8). #RandolphHarris 19 of 28

The truly educated? Those who engaged God’s will and disengaged their own in one and the same transaction. Does no death mean that the body comes to exist by itself, separated from the soul, and that the soul exists by herself, separated from the body? What is death but that? For the Hebrew, a human is a unity, and that unity is the body as a complex of parts, drawing their life and activity from a breath-soul, which has no existence apart from the body. What is our essential nature? Are we a dualism of body and soul, as Socrates and Plato believed, or a psychophysical unity, as H. Wheeler Robinson suggests is the Old Testament view? Take a little survey of Christian laypeople, and you will surely find most people agreeing with Plato: we are made up of two realities, body and soul. Or so most of us have been taught since childhood. One book of Christian doctrine for children explains: Maybe you have been to a funeral. You have seen the dead body. That is buried in the ground. However, the inside part of you, the part that thinks and feels, that is the part that lives forever. This is the part of us that would go to hell. Christians talk and sing a lot about souls. It has seemed natural to appear to our possession of a soul as “proof” that we are alive. The belief that we possess a soul has been the foundation of our dignity and out view of the sacredness of human life. For many, talk about the soul has been a way of thinking about our “divine image.” #RandolphHarris 20 of 28

Not surprisingly, anyone who seems to question one of our most treasured beliefs will face strong challenges, and quite properly be put under close scrutiny. That has happened in the past, of course, with other Christian beliefs. We all remember the sustained action to the views of Copernicus and Galileo, which displaced our Earth from the center of the Universe. How much more of a reaction, then, might we expect to anyone seeming to question our possession of a soul as the hallmark of our being made “in the image of God”? If, as the Old Testament scholar Derek Kidner suggests, “the telescope of Galileo did more to interpret Psalm 96 verse 10 than the pen of the theologian,” we need to pause and ask in what way today might the discoveries of the neuropsychologists and evolutionary psychologists do more to interpret biblical references to the soul than the comments of philosophical theologians? The distinguished Nobel laureate Francis Crick wrote, “In spite of differences among religions, there is broad agreement on at least one point: People have soul, in the literal and not merely the metaphorical sense.” Keith Ward, Regius Professor of Divinity at Oxford, begs to differ: “In the Christian tradition, like the Jewish and Muslim, the soul is not a substantial entity which exists without and before the body, and is better off without the body.” Instead, Dr. Ward contends, the Christian tradition proclaims an essential unity of body and soul. Indeed, as Socrates’ discourse on death hints, the idea of an immortal soul separable from the body arises not from the Christian Bible but from Greek thought. #RandolphHarris 21 of 28

In the end, Plato records that Socrates lived his own teaching by drinking the poison hemlock in the serene conviction that his immortal soul would now find release from its bodily prison. For Socrates and Plato, bodily death was a welcome liberation. Indeed, it was actually not dying. This Greek belief of separate body and soul has permeated Christian tradition quite thoroughly. When Origen, a third-century platonic philosopher, became the father of theology, he built into Christian doctrine Plato’s idea of the soul. In the early fifth century, Augustine thought Plato’s to be the most brilliant of all philosophers. And in the sixteenth century, John Calvin, who was heavily influenced by both Plato and Augustine, declared that Plato alone “rightly affirmed” the immortal soul that “lies hidden in humans separate from the body.” It has been one of the tasks of twenty-first century biblical scholarship to disentangle the biblical images of human nature from those of Greek philosophy. Discerning the biblical picture of the person is no simple matter, for the Bible is actually not one book but a library of sixty-six books, written over some fifteen hundred years, in three languages, and under varying historical circumstances. Not surprisingly, then, the meanings of the same words within the Hebrew Old Testament and within the Greek New Testament may shift. Fresh scholarship has modified earlier views. Today we recognize that the long-standing and pervasive view that presented a dichotomy between Hebrew thought (affirming some form of monism) and Greek thought (affirming some dualism) is a caricature.  #RandolphHarris 22 of 28

Greek thought was more caried on the nature of the soul than a reading focused solely on Plato would suggest. There was no single concept of the soul among the Greeks, and the body-soul relationship was described variously among philosophers and physicians in the Hellenistic period. It was a belief cluster, not a single view. Recognizing these varied views within Hellenistic Judaism is not seen by biblical scholars as being directly relevant to understanding the cultural narrative within which anthropology is described in the New Testament. It is increasingly recognized that it was Israel’s Scriptures that were the most potent influence on New Testament writers. Thus readings of New Testament anthropology must take Old Testament monism as their point of departure. One mistake is to interpret the everyday language of the Christian Bible and The Book of Mormon and The Doctrine and Covenants as modern, scientific statements. When the writer of Ecclesiastes (1.5) noted, “The sun rises and the sun goes down,” the church of Galileo’s day understood this to be a scriptural proclamation of a stationary Earth encircled by the sun. Because the writers of Genesis (1.16) described the moon as a “light to rule the night,” the church also could not accept Galileo’s conclusion that the moon shone by reflected light; when Galileo invited them to look through his telescope and see the shadows of the craters for themselves, they declined and dismissed his observations as delusions of the devil. It is similarly possible to misinterpret the Bible’s human images. It is important to remember the Bible is written for all people all times. #RandolphHarris 23 of 28

As such, the Bible does not intend to offer a precise psychology, and certainly not one in the language of the early twenty-first century. Moreover, the Christian Holy Bible(s) is a book for living, not a book of science. It is not biographical. It is about the acts of God in the lives of people throughout history. Bearing these cautions in mind, what general understand of human nature emerge from the library of Scriptures? Let us consider some conclusions reached by scholars who have devoted their lives to exploring the whole of Scripture, in more depth during our next few lectures. Predestination presupposes election in the order of reason; and election presupposes love. The reason of this is that predestination is a part of providence. Now providence, as also prudence, is the plan existing in the intellect directing the orderings of some things towards an end. However, nothing is direct towards an end unless the will for that end already exists. Whence the predestination of some to eternal salvation presupposes, in the order of reason, that God wills their salvation; and to this belong both election and love:–love, inasmuch as He wills them this particular god of eternal salvation; since to love is to wish well to anyone:—election, inasmuch as He wills this good to some in preference to others; since He reprobates some. Election and love, however, are differently ordered in God, and in ourselves: because in us the will in loving does not cause good, but we are incited to love by the goo which already exits; and therefore we choose someone to love, and so election in us precedes love. #RandolphHarris 24 of 28

In God, however, it is the reverse. For His will, by which in loving He wishes good to someone, is the cause of that good possessed by some in preferences to others. Thus it is clear that love precedes election in the order of reason, and election precedes predestination. Whence all the predestinate are objects of election and love. If the communication of the divine goodness in general be considered, God communicates His goodness without election; inasmuch as there is nothing which does not in some way share in His goodness. However, if we consider the communication of this or that particular good, He does not allow it without election; since He gives certain goods to some humans, which He does not give to others. Thus in the conferring of grace and glory election is implied. When the will of the person choosing is incited to make a choice by the good already pre-existing in the object chosen, the choice must needs be of those things which already exist, as happens in our choice. In God it is otherwise. This, as St. Augustin says (De Verb. Ap. Serm. 11): “Those are chosen by God, who do not exist; yet He does not err in His choice.” God wills all humans to be saved by His antecedent will, which is to will not simply but relatively; and not by His consequent will which is to will simply. I part out thrusting branches and come in beneath the blessed and the blessing trees. Though I am silent, there is singing around me. Though my vision is clouded, there is clarity around me. Though I am heavy, there is the flight of Angels around me. #RandolphHarris 25 of 28

It is a mistake to believe that because any art of healing—whether it be a material or a spiritual one—is able to heal a particular kind of sickness once, it is consequently able to heal all similar cases of sickness by its own merits. Forces outside it have something to do with the matter. There are some cases where failure by material methods is preordained by the higher power of destiny. There are others where failure by spiritual methods is also inevitable, because the heart of the sick human being has not been touched. As elsewhere, there are limits to human effort set here by certain laws. O inscribe all the children of Thy covenant of a happy life. May all the living do homage unto Thee forever and praise Thy name in truth, O God, who art our salvation and our helps. Blessed by Thou, O Lord, Beneficent One, unto whom our thanks are due. Our God and God of our fathers, bless us with the threefold blessings written in the Torah of Moses, Thy servant, and spoken by Aaron and his sons, Thy consecrated priests: May the Lord bless thee and keep thee; so may it be His will. May the Lord make His countenance to shine upon thee and be gracious unto thee: so may it be His will. May the Lord turn His countenance unto thee and give thee peace. So may it be His will. May our voids and blanks be filled with creations of intense significance, aesthetic, spiritual, and practical. Here with the Lord may we find the roots of much imaginative endeavour. May a space feel like an invitation to bridge it. #RandolphHarris 26 of 28

May we be confident people, who can draw on a sense of competence (“I am grand—I can do it”), may find a void pleasurable and attractive: it can become filled with all kinds of Christian efforts. The gap, the emptiness, the interval, the space, seem inviting to creative Christians. We see faces in the clouds. On a larger scale, people with lonely moors, with isolated lives, who have lost their parents or have empty parents, may God fill their World with vivid people and events. Painters need their empty canvasses. Dr. Barnardo, Albert Schweitzer, and others who are creative people, see what is missing and what is needed, and set about putting it there. Two people who encounter one another may create a relationship where there has been nothing This is he more fascinating because, if the creation is to endure, here has to be an element of truth, which makes the encounter one of exploration and discover. Who can tell how much invention-creation there is in such a relationship and how much discovery-creation? It must vary from person to person. Indeed, who can insist on the difference between invention and discovery in our love and hate of each other? We are so varied in our potential qualities, and so prone to have them called into being by other people’s love and hope, or hate and coldness. Do not the old stories of cruelty and redemption tell us so? #RandolphHarris 27 of 28

Scientific invention is also a matter of filling a blank. This kind of creativity seems to some in two forms: interpolation and extrapolation. Interpolation is closest to the process of “discovering the object”: the scientist has a set of starting-points, which seem connected with a phantasied endpoint or outcome which one wishes to reach. At first tis gap can conceivably be filled wit a shifting multitude of possibly useful concepts. Some of these are eliminated when we cannot get evidence, cannot get the facts to coincide with out phantasies. Eventually, if we work hard enough and are blessed enough, the pieces fall into place and bridge the gap from phantasy to outcome in a way which can be tested further. The process of extrapolation is of a more space-loving kind—discovery rather than invention. “Surely if we sail west we will come to the Indies,” said Christopher Columbus—and landed in America! Starting from the known, the discoverer takes the next step (perhaps the next logical step) and then the next and then the next. All kinds of good things can happen when conceptual activity does not eventuate in the anticipated outcome. Creative processes happen, imaginative play, artistic endeavour, invention, discovery. They all start with the kind of mental processes called phantasy (that is, untested unconfirmed concepts). In this state of mind there are (at least during the “period of hesitation”) no clear concepts, no clear contours. Bits of “self” and of “not self” are available for potential concept-formation. #RandolphHarris 28 of 28

CRESLEIGH RANCH

Rancho Cordova, CA |

Now Selling!

These charming neighborhoods offers an array of home types with eye catching architecture styles such as Mission, Mid-Century Modern, California Modern, and Contemporary Farmhouse.

Located off Douglas Road and Rancho Cordova Parkway, the residents of Cresleigh Ranch will enjoy, being just minutes from shopping, dining, and entertainment, and quick access to Highway 50 and Grant Line Road providing a direct route into Folsom. Residents here also benefit from no HOA fees, two community parks and the benefits of being a part of the highly-rated Elk Grove Unified School

Residence Four at Mills Station boasts approximately 2,700 square feet in the largest home in the community. The open concept design includes four bedrooms, three and one half bathrooms and a two car garage plus workshop.

The Home Hub, located off the entry, can be used as a study, office, or kids play room. The kitchen comes fully equipped with a large eat-in island, stainless steel appliances, and quartz counters and opens onto the spacious great room. Upstairs you’ll find the Owner’s retreat, two bedrooms, and the loft perfect for a game room or TV lounge. The Owner’s retreat is spacious and inviting with a large bedroom and spa like bathroom featuring a free-standing soaking tub, walk-in shower, dual vanities, and large walk-in closet.

Best of all, each Cresleigh home comes fully equipped with an All Ready connected home! This smart home package comes included with your home and features great tools including: video door bell and digital deadbolt for the front door, connect home hub so you can set scenes and routines to make life just a little easier. Two smart switches and USB outlets are also included, plus we’ll gift you a Google Home Hub and Google Mini to help connect everything together!

Cresleigh Ranch offers expansive, award-winning luxury home designs. There are single-level and two-story, open-concept floor plans, on nicely appointed home sites, and range size from approximately 2,000 to 4,000 square feet. Flex rooms allow for added bedrooms, multigenerational suites or office space to fit your family’s lifestyle requirements. Come and get your glimpse of Heaven and see why Cresleigh is America’s Favourite!

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