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This is part of a series of posts based on the Churches Together in England publication one light: one world. If you click on the link you will find the biblical texts. This post of the same name covers the purpose of this series.
Romans 8:19-23
Why evolution? Why not create everything by design? An answer is in this text. We can see a purpose for evolution in this text. All creation, living and non-living, strains towards God and is in some pain as it does so.
Once again we are with the Oikoumene. It is as if creation knows there has to be more than its immediate experience.
Our experience of modern cosmology is one of ultimate futility. All things will come to an end. Eventually, not only our own sun but all stars will burn out. Creation will return to a soup of energy free chaotic matter.
But there is hope this creation is somehow a stepping stone to something else, it is as if the whole of creation is moving towards not death but new life.
We sometimes hear of the second coming, the belief that Jesus will return and put an end to all things. This is sometimes known as eschatology. Some people say the unity of the church is something we will discover at the end time; unity is eschatological.
But the thing that distinguishes life from death is its dynamic, life changes into more and more complex forms. To give birth is to bring about new life. Perhaps the eschaton is not so much unity as a new and reconciled life, increasingly diverse?
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