[This series is part of Section Three, Creation and the Second Person. An index with links to all parts of the work as they are posted can be found [url=https://forum.evangelicaluniversalist.com/t/jrps-bite-sized-metaphysics-series-302/1218/1]here.]
[This series starts Chapter 30, “The Doctrine of Derivative Spirit”]
[Entry 1]
In this chapter I will mostly take a break from progressing in a developing argument, to spend some time picking at the proposition I have just developed, concerning the relationship of derivative spirits to Nature and to God. In the process I will be considering some questions I have asked myself, and which perhaps I can anticipate from you, my reader. I will also try some illustrative analogies (although with an eye to the limitations of the analogies).
(Keep in mind, however, that I am neither claiming nor requiring this particular theory of mine concerning the process of instigation of the soul, to be certainly correct. It does, I think, fit the bill, and is not self-contradictive; but that doesn’t exclude other methods of getting to the same result. On the other hand, I have argued in previous chapters that some other categories of proposed methods exclude themselves.)
I have three stories in mind, each of them variations on the same theme. Two of them may perhaps be mutually exclusive of each other in regard to particulars, but this indicates the range of possibilities left open by my proposal as to precise means. These are, for various reasons, the three ‘most popular’ ‘creation stories’ in Western Civilization for the past thousand years or so, concerning how people came and come to exist. So it behooves me to see how my developed results compare, and to what extent it fits with them: I will try mixing my results with each ‘story’ and see what happens.