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There are well over one hundred different views of the nature of human existence; though the Bible may rule out many of these, there still remains a large number that are all compatible with Scripture. The Bible never explicitly defines the nature of the soul or spirit, which is actually quite puzzling or even ironic, given that one major aim of Scripture is spiritual development and ultimate questions about the soul. In fact, Judeo-Christian thinking on those questions has been evolving over the course of four thousand years. This book documents that evolution as a man named Abram left Babylon four thousand years ago, journeying through the lands and the philosophies of civilizations preceding him by many more thousands of years, while he and his descendants (both physical and spiritual) unpacked their understanding of our inner being–the human soul–and the afterlife. That journey is followed to the present day, and examines how a critically thinking Christian can embrace a theology of the human soul that is fully compatible with modern scientific findings, including explanations for consciousness, mind, and soul.

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Church tradition has long held that humanity arose from two people living in a garden of paradise in the Mesopotamian basin roughly six thousand years ago. Scientists now have abundant evidence that the human population never numbered less than ten thousand, originated out of Africa hundreds of thousands of years ago, and descended from ancestors that we share in common with several other species (some now extinct, some still living). Is it possible to make these two starkly different worldviews agree, or do we have to choose one and discard the other? This book will summarize the fossil and genetic discoveries that support the scientific view, and then address the impact that this has upon many Christian theological tenets. In the process, it presents many examples of the church adjusting long-held traditions and teachings in the face of scientific advances, as well as examples of how we often hold two seemingly contradictory ideas together without feeling a need to discard one of them. Many theologians have written on this topic without adequately incorporating the scientific aspects. Many others have addressed the science without exploring the impact on theology. This book accomplishes both.

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