Evolution Is Not A Nightmare

In his book “A Brief History Of Everything,” (no hubris there) Ken Wilber makes a statement that reveals the involutionary reductionism of his world view. “There in the Heart, where the couple finally unite, the entire game is undone, this nightmare of evolution, and you are exactly where you where prior to the beginning of the whole show.”

First of all “the couple” do not unite in the Heart, one “only” sees into the Soul in the Heart. Seeing the Soul, blissful as that is, may help us identify the goal of the Spirit, which is Godhood, but Godhood can be reached only through material evolution all the way to the materiaspiritual, and ultimately to God. Thus evolution is not a “nightmare,” it is seen as a nightmare when the involutionary, internal methods of religion reduce Godhood to the Soul-Within.

We require both the involutionary methods of religion and the evolutionary methods of nature and science, first to see God, and then, with God's Grace, to reach God. Both methods are applied in the Evolutionary Christian Church.

The Fall and the Rise

For the Theoevolutionary Church the sin of the Fall which supposedly made men subject to death, even as the Spirit of man is naturally immortal, is related to ignorance as well as to The Great Spiritual Blockade. Knowing the Spirit-Within is only half the required wisdom. Evolving the material, the bio-spiritual body, to Godhood is the Forgotten Half of God's law. This great forgetting, or ignorance helps define the Fall.

The pagan idea of perfectibility through virtue, is still affirmed, as it was in the West via the “Gentleman” ethos, and this is attached to Christian Love, which was missing from the classical virtues. Unlike Classicism, Divine Grace may also be needed to reorient us from love of self to love of God, God reached secondarily by the traditional involutionary path to the Soul-Within, as well as the primary, natural, evolutionary way to Godhood, for the few.

For the West, Jesus Christ sacrificed Himself to reveal the Soul to save all men. We work in this tradition, being conservative. Yet we add the Evolutionary Outward Path to attain true Godhood.

Nonduality Not An Emptying

Nonduality is not accomplished by emptying all the material elements, as so many mystics advocate, although this is the blockading method to see the blissful Soul-Within. When the Spirit-Will is discerned one sees that the Seeing-Spirit must not become Blockaded.

The inner suggests the outer and the outer suggests the inner regarding the evolution and involution to God. Godhood seems to be the only true Nonduality.

Our task is to evolve to God. We can first identify the inner God of the Soul, which can help guide our way to seeing the Spirit-Will at the zenith of the Soul and seeing our material evolution to Godhood, where the Spirit-Will reaches Its goal.

"Youth Without Youth"

Can love and the quest for knowledge work in harmony? This question suggests a deeper question: can the spiritual work in harmony with the material? These were the main themes of Francis Ford Coppola's beautiful 2007 film version of Mircea Eliade's novella,"Youth Without Youth." Did Eliade resolve this conflict? He seems to have painfully chosen love over all in this story, yet he had to sacrifice knowledge. Or perhaps he arrived at a final knowledge that love is the most important knowledge. Still, he only implicitly, almost reluctantly chooses love.

That is the right choice, it seems to us, but it need not have been such a painful conflict. The Theovolutionary Church (EC) resolves this age old philosophical and theological difficulty with the knowledge that love does not conflict with the evolution of the material to the spiritual, which is really the supermaterial, indeed, love is the sacred means by which the material evolves to the supermaterial. The involutionary God of Jesus Christ is the God we evolve to in the cosmos.

However, there is a sacred and profane love, defined in evolutionary terms. That which evolves toward God, toward higher consciousness, toward Absolute Knowledge, is sacred love, that which does not is profane love. The Traditional Conservative perspective of EC does not dictate these values, the virtues and social philosophy move men, educate men, in this upward path. With this perspective the hero of “Youth For Youth” might have resolved his conflict over how to use his knowledge during World War Two. Here is where there could be a real dramatic conflict. But that is another story.

Redeeming Materialism In Spiritualism, And Spiritualism In Materialism

“Idealism failed to explain matter, which it defined as 'all-but-nothing.' " Charles Norris Cochrane

Materialism failed to do justice to the problem of Spirit, saying there is no spirit. Classicism found no escape, it was either upwards by way of transcending materialism, or rejecting spiritualism downward into positivism.

Theological materialism and the Evolutionary Christian Church says the material evolves to the spiritual-material, all the way to God, thus overcoming the problems between Idealism, Spiritualism and Materialism.

Christianity saw the Divine Nature as a Trinity, thus it explained the logos of Being in motion, the Holy Spirit. ECC explains this motion as the Will to Godhood, or the Spirit-Will to Godhood, defined as evolution, thus redeeming materialism in spiritualism, and spiritualism in materialism.

The Unique Offering of the Theoevolutionary Church

Science makes sacred the biosphere, religion makes sacred the noosphere, the Theoevolutionary Church makes sacred both, but does so not by trying to integrate the biosphere into the noosphere, or the noosphere into the biosphere, (which is really done through the blocking of either world) but by affirming the inner world of the Soul, seen by the great sages, as the blissful hint of the evolutionary goal of the outer world of biospiritual forms evolving all the way to the Form of Forms, Godhood. This is the unique, integrating offering of the Theoevolutionary Church.

Sixth Veda Comparison

Speaking more in Perennial religious terms, the Theoevolutionary Church could be likened to an additional  Veda in the sense that it integrates the sensory with the spiritual, it brings the finite to the infinite by way of evolution.

The TC takes the whole person with his/her worldly desires into account, whereas most spiritual traditions teach that the material and the spiritual are mutually exclusive. The evolution of material life to Godhood reconciles the two desires.

Would the Theoevolutionary Church be better described as a Sixth Veda, an advancement in the Fivefold Christian Ministry?

Science Joins Religion In Polonyi's Work

We implicitly accept Michael Polonyi's definition of science, truth and reality, which is, that both scientists and theologians can be guided by implicit knowledge, not merely the Enlightenment way of knowing through strictly logical and methodologically provable facts. (Modern Age Summer 2007 )

Polonyi defines truth and reality in terms of an idea or theory's potential for future manifestations, its capacity for revealing future awareness, or deeper meaning.

“We know things that we cannot tell.” Knowing must include our awareness of truths we may not be able to state explicitly. Of course, doing serious work in this way of knowing should not be exploited subjectively, it is implicit knowledge based on a trained capacity, after years in fields of study.

E8plane

Here is an intro to the E8plane model, from the Telegraph uk.



Surfer dude stuns physicists with theory of everything.

Inevitable Decentralization

The decentralization movement we see growing in the world is not radical, and need not be, although at first it may seem to be so. The present industrial complex, with its depleting energy sources, will mean the end of globalism and national giantism, because they will be unsustainable, they will fall apart. All the old dynamics given for why Empires fall, of course, still exist, eg. growing cultural and biological differences from the founders, leading to separations, etc.

Therefore, decentralization is not an abstract ideal prepared for with revolutionary zeal, it is a movement basically preparing for the decentralization that will inevitably come. This movement includes the American conservative ethos of limited government against the ever-expanding state. Examples would be the Swiss system of multicultural federalism from communes and cantons, or the corresponding unit of the state in the United States, or Jefferson's "little republics."

The Evolutionary Christian Church (ECC) emphatically resists the totalitarian temptation to mobilize the masses for a mytho-ideological or religious cause. The principles of decentralized federalism and Catholic subsidiarity harmonize with the evolutionary goals of ECC.

In the future, the all too human march back to centralized power will have to be prevented again.

(An excellent essay on this subject can be found in the Summer 2007 issue of Modern Age--”Secession and American Federalism,” by Arthur Versluis)

Implicit/Explicit Psychology

There is an interesting relationship to Michael Polanyi's views, mentioned below, and the views of controversial psychologist Kevin MacDonald, who applies an implicit/explicit dynamic regarding truth to the psychology between modern races. MacDonald's essay can be found in pdf form here.

Polanyi's Truth

The dreams of the communists and Nazi's were not, it seems to me, mainly the result of the mistaken hopes of the Enlightenment ideal of trying to solve all problems with reason, science and technology, which was suggested by the great modern epistemologist Michael Polanyi. It was more the “tacit intimation,” the implicit knowing that took the dictators on their paths of radical change. It seems to me that the dictators defined truth more in Polanyi's terms, that is, something is true if it reveals deeper meaning, if it has potential for future discoveries or manifestations, and not merely because something could be true because it could be proven exactly with scientific methodology.

We generally affirm Polanyi's preference for implicit truth, but we do not then blame Enlightenment science for the political philosophies of the twentieth century. We might instead turn the standard dynamic around and begin with science, the way intuition is often used first, and use implicit knowledge as the final or deeper meaning of truth. This way science, and implicit knowledge that comes from religion, can work in harmony, without having to disparage either side.

Gerhart Niemeyer's Ideology

Professor Niemeyer, of course, brilliantly argued against ideology on the grounds that the dreamlands which ideologies try to create have been most dangerous in the world, eg. Marxism, Nazism.

But then Niemeyer proceeds to develop his own dreamland, his own cosmic totality of transcendence and spirit, which he admits are beyond our immediate, sensory experience, received through faith--- a faith, however, held in balance and in natural tension with reason.

We think this is not the way to include religion in reason or science any more than were the total ideologies of the early 20th century. We can remain within both the hypothetical or theoretical realm of science, and within the faith of religion, when God can be reached through both the Involutionary Spirit within and through the bio-spiritual evolution to God, as is done in the Evolutionary Christian Church. The balance between reason and faith this way is brought into harmony without unreasonable dreamlands, while including both science and religion.

Perhaps we could mention another of Niemeyer's thoughts suggesting that religious dogmas need to be moistened and kneaded anew if they are to serve as guides to faith.

Uniting the Christian, the Enlightenment and the Romantic

An excellent essay from the Summer 2007 issue of Kirk's old journal “Modern Age,” by Andreas Kinneging, points out the differences between Conservatism, the classical pagan, the Enlightenment and the Romantic, which for Professor Kinneging are not united accept for the “Christian gentleman” who is, or was, a combination of the classical pagan man of virtues and the Christian man of love.

The Theoevolutionary Church unites these philosophies. We unite the reason of the Enlightenment and modern science but with the divine natural law of evolution to Godhood. We unite the feelings and emotions of Romanticism, and the Enlightenment conception that desires motivate man, with the drives of material, superbiological evolution, which leads to Godhood for the virtuous, therefore we add to the pagan-Christian virtues the higher, sacred, material evolution of life to supermaterial Godhood.

Conservative Perspective On Evolution And Change

Edmund Burke said in “Thoughts on French Affairs (1791)... “If a great change is to be made in human affairs, the minds of men will be fitted to it; the general opinions and feelings will grow that way. Every fear, every hope will forward it; and they who persist in opposing this mighty current in human affairs will appear rather to resist the decrees of Providence itself than the mere designs of men. They will not be resolute and firm, but perverse and obstinate.”

Burke said this without abandoning his criticism of ideology, of abstract theory. As Jeffrey Hart put it, “Burke now understood the irresistible character of social forces when they move toward institutional and cultural change.” (Modern Age, Summer 2007).

We believe that Evolution is an irresistible force and it will one day be included in traditional Catholicism. But we affirm this change while still very much affirming the religion and cultural traditions of the West, of Christendom.

It really is arrogant, as Conservatives well know, to think that we understand all the intricacies of human society and nature enough to form a guiding ideology. We must accept what reality shows us, and intricate reality fits no ideology, as yet.

Three In One Conservatism

Unifying Religion

Unlike the the elegant Christopher Olaf Blum (Modern Age, Summer 2007) we do not believe we have to choose between the two (we would say three) kinds of Conservatism, that is, those that defend the Enlightenment of a century ago, those that defend the older traditions of the ancients, including the Christian, and those of the Traditionalist School who defend pagan “myth” and its connection with Perennial religion.

We transmute these three versions of Conservatism in the Theoevolutionary Church(TC), and we add to the science of the Enlightenment the modern element of bio-spiritual evolution. The Traditionalist School is affirmed in acceptance of cycles and hierarchies, both spiritual and biological.

The Conservatives and the Liberals (classical or modern) overestimated the flexibility of human nature in regard to social behavior, whereas TC is more in accord with sociobiology. Man has primarily seen God through the involutionary Spirit-Within, which has been the activity of traditional religion. TC has at last included in traditional religion the biological and spiritual evolution to God, which deepens the natural law. Past versions of Conservatism were not wrong, they were an incomplete part of the whole.

Not Wrong, Just More Complete

“When we upend things in physics these days, it's not necessarily that old things were wrong. It's just that underlying it is a more complete theory.”

Lisa Randall, Theoretical Physicist

Back To Hyperboria?

James Lovelock's scenario of our grim future on earth suggests that survivors will retreat to the northern latitudes of Canada, Iceland, Scandinavia and the Arctic basin. The self-regulating system of the earth is out of whack and will make a jump to a hotter state, as it has in the past. Of the present 6.6 billion people only 500 million will survive.

Lovelock's book, “The Revenge Of Gaia,” predicts extreme weather by 2020, and by 2040 the Sahara will move into Europe, Berlin will be as hot as Baghdad, Atlanta will be a jungle, Phoenix will be uninhabitable, as will Beijing, which will try to move up to Siberia and thus clash with Russia, we will have severe epidemics after mass migrations.

Lovelock says we should use the term "sustainable retreat” rather than sustainable development. Remaining humans could go nuclear, desalinate the ocean, grow synthetic food, prepare for chaos, and engineer the climate. Smart cities will prepare by shoring up hospitals, securing dependable food and water. Dumb cities will be overrun and descend into chaos.

Soul Fallacies

The old terms Immanent and Transcendent remain better terms to describe the Soul and Spirit than such newer terms as “prerational” and “transrational” which Ken Wilber uses.

Immanence describes the Soul within the body, which can guide the Soul and body to Godhood. The Soul is not God, one does not “evolve” to the Soul, one “involves” to the Soul; one evolves to Godhood.

It has been politically incorrect, to say the least, to speak of future evolution, and this may have been an influence in the recent New Age confounding of evolution to God with involution to the Soul-Within. However, old masters also confounded these dynamics before evolution had been defined as we now define it.

Contact with the Soul-Within is dazzling, even life-changing, and such contact can lead to a Great Spiritual Blockade, but the Soul is to God as the spark is to the fire. We can contact the Soul-Within through involution for guidance in the bio-spiritual evolution to Godhood.

The Values of the Flesh

Bearing witness to the truth of the Christian God need not define the heroic ideal of Classicism as a far lesser value, contrary to St. Augustine. Can reason guide us further than Augustine thought it could?

Augustine asks how to satisfy the demands of human consciousness in their fullest measure. The “concupiscence of the flesh” cannot satisfy the ultimate demands of consciousness, he says, materialism is like “a runaway slave.” Theological materialism and the Evolutionary Christian Church (ECC) suggests that this view wrongly puts matrimony on a less exalted plane than a chastity which triumphs over the lusts of the flesh.

Elements of God survive in the Spirit-Will, which activates bio-spiritual life to Godhood. Augustine did not have knowledge of the science of evolution (too Manichean?) Chastity remains an important virtue in the traditional, involuntary, meditations of the Church, but religiously directed evolution raises the value of marriage. Ambrose and St. Paul declared: “marry and weep,” but the ECC does not speak of marriage in this way. Profane Reproduction leads away from God, in that it moves against evolution, whereas Sacred Reproduction enhances our evolution to Godhood. This is not to say that discerning the path to higher consciousness, higher intelligence, and beauty in evolution is easy, both science and religion are required.

Two Enlightenments

There are two goals, two enlightenments, which have in history been virtually two ways of viewing the cosmos: the involutionary and the evolutionary. For most of the world's religions the involutionary has defined spiritual enlightenment. The evolutionary goal is the goal of evolution to Godhood, or ultimate evolution. The evolutionary goal brings biological-material-supermaterial evolution into traditional religion, which has been almost exclusively centered on involutionary enlightenment.

New Age thinkers speak about “wholeness” and integrating the “shadow,” but wholeness and integration will come only when ongoing and upgoing biological evolution is affirmed and included in traditional religion. This will not be easy, of course, since the subject of continuing human evolution remains profoundly politically incorrect. This period of change in history is perhaps as great a period of change as the times of St Augustine, and later St. Thomas Aquinas, in their transmuting of the classical world.

It is understandable that the bliss which comes (but rarely for the few) from involutionary enlightenment might blind adherents, or create what we have called “The Great Spiritual Blockade,” yet we need to move on to the Second Enlightenment or Ultimate Evolution , which is our biological-material-supermaterial evolution to Godhood.

A Christian Nod Back To Classicism

Early Christianity rejected the classical view of apotheosis with the great understanding that all of humanity can be deified by learning how to believe in Christ, whereas the classical view thought that only heroes and supermen could reach Godhood.

St. Athanasius, in the fourth century, said that we are rendered immortal by activating our latent spiritual powers through the indwelling Word, which we share with God. Eastern religions also contain this departure from Classicism.

The Evolutionary Christian Church, with a nod back to Classicism (and forward to modern science) defines the process of connecting with our spiritual inward nature as only half of the great task of attaining Godhood. The other half of our religion relates to the evolutionary outward path of material and supermaterial evolution all the way to Godhood.  This is the Twofold Path.

On Reconciling Religion And Science

The radical position taken by traditionalists on reconciling religion and science is basically to reject science. The radical position taken by science on reconciling religion and science is basically to reject religion. The position that the late Pope John Paul took on this was a Conservative one, although it followed Vatican Two, which traditionalists see as not conservative.

John Paul's position was put this way: “...there are two autonomous realms of knowledge. There is what reason can attain through the use of the scientific method; and there is that knowledge which has its source in revelation. Both science and faith have points of contact: they both illumine an aspect of reality. Science considers the world and the human person on the horizontal level, the level of physical/chemical processes and of quantifiable matter. Religious faith, on the other hand, considers the vertical level: the level of the human person's transcendent origin, dignity and destiny: the level of the human person in his or her relationship with God.”

The Evolutionary Christian Church accepts John Paul's position on this as the Conservative way to proceed, but we do not rest there. We move forward and seek to join religion and science and make them one, we prefer not to see them as a marriage of different things. Yet we think we should proceed on this conservatively, moving ever toward the future, when religion and science are finally seen as one, as we are seeking to see it.

ECC's Eco-Philosophy

Eco-philosophers (e.g. Worldchanging) seek evolution toward the sustainability of our material circumstances and social formations, and traditional spiritualists seek the interior, involutionary structures of consciousness. The Evolutionary Christian Church wants the Green vision of sustainability to include the future, sustainable, evolution of human life, all the way to Godhood.

A. Material-social sustainability
B. Involutionary spirituality
C. Sustainable, human, bio-spiritual evolution

The Problem Of Integral Psychology: Low Aim

Ken Wilber's levels of the “transformation of consciousness” are limited to involutionary levels of change. Evolutionary transformation requires far greater biological transformation and the addition of other advanced fields in genetic technology and political philosophy. As with most traditional religions, Wilber's religion is involutionary, when Godhood requires greater evolutionary as well as involutionary transformation.

Wilber's integral “ full spectrum” is not the full spectrum of evolution, it stops at anthropomorphic narcissism. Godhood is not reached by human consciousness, no matter how advanced. In this respect Wilber's “pre/trans fallacy,” where pre-rational and trans-rational consciousness are supposedly confused, is itself a confusing notion, in thinking that the two are distinctly different. Pre-rational or simple consciousness is only relatively less advanced than the trans-rational or more complex consciousness, both are on the path to the Absolute Consciousness of Godhood, following greater bio-spiritual evolution. Only God has God-consciousness, we have to evolve to Godhood to attain God-consciousness.

On Defining God

It is perhaps best, in attempting to define God, not to see or symbolize lesser Gods, penultimate Gods, those who might still be evolving.

It seems better to see God as consisting of more than one aspect, eg. as both creator and preserver. The Trinity (Absolute Truth, Absolute Being, Absolute Becoming) becomes the mature Western reflection.

God is the end of evolution, the Kosmic Summit. The beginning of evolution takes place after the Kosmic Center gives birth to the Kosmos via the Spirit..

We evolve to Godhood, with God's grace.

Surpassing The Involutionary Bliss

Using involutionary religious procedures, after great effort, consciousness “awakens” to the Soul. This has been defined as “complete integration,” manifest form is integrated with the unmanifested formless. This awakening of consciousness to the Soul is universally considered the end goal, the purpose of life, even the purpose of evolution. Alas, the bliss becomes too wonderful to surpass and what follows is The Great Spiritual Blockade.

This blissful awakening is “only” the involutionary goal of traditional religions, the evolutionary goal is necessarily blocked. Godhood cannot be fully reached using half the measures required. The bliss of experiencing the Soul within must be surpassed by the continuing path of the Spirit-Will through material-supermaterial evolution. The path of evolution has been working in the cosmos with only half the conscious help of the mystics on earth.

Building The Kingdom of God

The deficiency of Classicism, which culminated in the Roman Empire, was to think too much politically, the deficiency of Christianity was to think too much spiritually, which is why they both failed.

What was missing was the transmutation of the material to the spiritual by way of evolution, the spiritualizing of biology, uniting material science with religion. This, the Evolutionary Christian Church, seeks to do.

We offer a faith more adequate to human needs in the modern world. We look inward with involution to see and know God through the Soul-Within, we look outward to seek God through evolution of man to God.

How do we avoid the Pagan mistake of treating other men as means rather then ends when evolution beyond man to God is the way to Godhood? Christian mutual caring and fraternity affirm altruism, which also bonds people for successful survival and reproduction.

Political power, according to Catholic Social Philosophy, is justified when it is employed for the fulfillment of God's purposes—right doesn't depend on might, but right receives its mandate from divine authority. The Church claims the right to intervene in government to keep economic and political motives in line with spiritual and moral ends.

As some have said, all politics are local and tribal, therefore the Traditional (paleo) Conservative position harmonizes well with federalism, and the subsidiarity of the church. Small is not only beautiful, it allows for spiritual, moral, and biological advancement.

Transmutations

Charles Murray and others have written that the “transmutation of the classical intellectual foundation by Christianity” gave modern Europe its impetus and pushed Europe far ahead of all other cultures. And ethnic qualities also no doubt played a part.

The Evolutionary Christian Church offers the next transmutation of modern science by Christianity, i.e., evolutionary science, which will have a better chance of saving the West (and the East for that matter) than science alone, atheistic fascism, or various forms of globalism.

Fallacies Of Descent And Ascent

The elements of Ken Wilber’s so-called Pre-rational and Trans-rational fallacy, as well as rationality itself are contained within man and within the Soul of man; we do not see the need to separate the “pre” from the ‘trans.”

For example, the causal, subtle, psychic (Trans-rational), and the archaic, magic, mythic (Pre-rational), as well as the rational, and including the subconscious (pre), the self-conscious (rational), and the superconscious (trans), all are contained within man and within the Soul of man. All these qualities we define as Involutionary.


Carl Jung was given a bad rap by Wilber for elevating or defining the prerational as the transrational. It seems to us that Jung’s demarcation correctly relates to the Dual Aspect of the Soul and Spirit, which is seen also in the Immanence and Transcendence of the Soul and Spirit.

The problem seems to stem from two things. 1. The need to protect the concept of how high God could descend to “low” life in the face of the theory of evolution from the simple to the complex. 2. And from confounding Godhood as reachable by human beings, however superhuman they may be, when we are actually “only” reaching the Soul-Within man, or the Spirit in man, the Spirit originally coming from God at the beginning of evolution.

We do not wish to devalue the experience of God-Consciousness in humans, e.g. by referring to the bliss of It as “addiction,” because God-Enlightenment is too difficult to warrant such demeaning. But we do refer to It as The Great Spiritual Blockade, preventing us from evolution to God.

Biological life is not “low,” indeed, it is the vehicle required to evolve to Godhood, guided by the Soul-Within and activated by the Spirit. The Soul and Spirit Within are our vital contact with the Immanent and the Transcendent, which brings us in touch with the God we must evolve to.

Evolution will be better integrated into spirituality when we realize that the Soul-Within can give us a glorious glimpse of God, but this is not Itself Godhood, we must evolve biologically-spiritually to God.

Dreadful Choices

Will the God of Christianity be buried in the ruins of the Western Civilization we have failed to save?

According to Charles Cochrane---“Christianity And Classical Culture"---this kind of ruin happened to the ancient Gods of the Roman Empire---an empire we increasingly resemble---in the early 400's when the Emperor Theodosius officially legislated the Graeco-Roman Gods out of existence and declared Christianity the state religion. Victory was easy and swift.

One could say that the change was accomplished conservatively, since Constantine had initiated the change from paganism to Christianity a hundred years earlier.

But the Christian religion had been attached to the husk of the Roman Empire, a new people did not ride in and conquer, although they were threatening.

Keeping this history in mind we have been advocating the Theoevolutionary Church, a change or synthesis presented without trying to destroy the house we are living in. We would think this less difficult than promoting an entirely new religion, as happened in the late Roman Empire.

We maintain the character, tone and guiding belief of Western Civilization, and we gradually, conservatively, add evolutionary science, and elements of ancient Perennial wisdom, which Christianity has tragically failed to absorb.

The alternative seems to be the slow replacement or death of Christianity and our Civilization, which is being threatened on all sides, along with our people no longer caring to replace themselves. If that death happens, perhaps after the fall, small, stark, and not necessarily Christian ethnostates might rise, and the whole civilizing cycle would begin again.

Low Aim

Contacting the Soul-Within seems the sole aim of many religious sages, whether they define it this way or not, which they define as the movement from the lower to the higher. We describe this as “low aim” in the sense that contacting the Soul-Within is a Secondary Evolutionary Goal, and not the Primary Evolutionary Goal of the Theoevolutionary Church. The Primary Evolutionary Goal from the lower to higher is in the evolution of the Spirit and Body all the way to Godhood. When the Spirit attains Its Goal there will be no separation between Body and Spirit, together they will have evolved to Oneness, or Godhood.

Nietzsche spoke of courage being more important than intelligence in finding the truth, and we suspect that fear of the reality and the science of evolution has been the main obstacle to the blocking or denial of the religious acceptance of the primary evolution of the Body along with the Spirit to Godhood.

Moral Art, Moral Imagination

Art in general, not merely fashion or culture, should delight, provoke, surprise, but you can’t have great art without having moral art.

Does this involve some restriction or discrimination in what one creates? Yes, but no more restriction than human nature or nature itself.

Russell Kirk used Burke's term “moral imagination,” which is an apt phrase. You can’t have one without the other. Moral-only and you can have boring, didactic art, imagination-only or you can have wild chaos.

When we look at the history of art we find that the greatest art had moral imagination.

The God Within/Without

In the West, Jesus Christ taught the Involutionary Way to know God. Several Great Teachers in the East taught other versions of the Involutionary Way. The Traditionalists School of thought has generally called this the Perennial Philosophy.

The Evolutionary Christian Church (ECC) defines the Involutionary Way as exoteric, and the Evolutionary Way of bio-spiritual evolution to God as esoteric, which seems reverse. Involution seeks the God-Within, Evolution seeks the God Within/Without.

Detractors have labeled ECC a new revelation, but we define ECC as using the language and knowledge of our time to reach the God of Tradition.

A Long Way To Glory

Plotinus thought that with humans evolution was half completed. Ancient and modern yogis, saints, sages and siddhas tend to believe that the ultimate aim of evolution is to awaken to God, which is really awakening only to the Soul. The great mystics arrived at this state. With due respect to the mystics, we are not anywhere near halfway to the gods, even the direct intuitive apprehension of Being is not nearly halfway to Godhood.

The apprehension of Being, related to the apprehension of the Soul-Within, is an involutionary attainment, blissful and seemingly complete, yet evolution must carry the Spirit-Will and Body far beyond the human state. The experience of the Soul, not God, seen through involution by the mystics must not become a Great Spiritual Blockade. In the face of our arrogance and anthropomorphism, we have a long way to evolve to God.

An Ignominious But Inevitable Retreat

Our time resembles the period when the Roman Emperor Jovian (c. 332 - February 17, 364) had to extricate the remains of the broken Roman army from Mesopotamia. Jovian had to accept an “ignominious but inevitable retreat.”

According to Charles Cochrane (“Christianity And Classical Culture”) from this moment on conditions within the empire approximated a permanent state of siege. Rome was now confronted not only with those who had for centuries troubled their northern borders, but by new and unknown assailants. Everything had to be subordinated to the paramount necessity of defense.

It seems that we too will soon have to essentially retreat to our borders and subordinate almost everything to the defense of the West. A further retreat and defense of states and regions within the federated nation also seems possible in the future. Let us face it, welcome to the future.

Politically Incorrect Evolutionary Advancement

It is safer, more politically correct, especially today, to limit evolution to spiritual "evolution," many sages and gurus have done just this.

The involutionary enlightenment occasionally accomplished by recognition of the Soul-Within, has been the central religious knowledge, and not the material evolutionary goal of Godhood.  Both can take place, together, to attain true Godhood. Each physical material advance in evolution brings higher levels of spiritual advancement.  Forces from within and without help this process, or hinder it. Perhaps every major evolutionary advance involves divine grace as well in connection with the Spirit-Within, which activates material life to Godhood, shaped by evolution.

Unblocking The Psychological Systems

Elaborate modern psychological systems, e.g. most recently Ken Wilber’s psychological system, have been more or less unblocked by knowledge coming in from sociobiology. These psychological systems have been elaborate attempts to explain away and usually reject the politically incorrect. For example, competition, and even war, could not be reconciled with religion without rejecting and demonizing them.

An imbalance was created by overemphasizing involutionary religion and underemphasizing or rejecting evolutionary religion. This we have called The Great Spiritual Blockade, which was an elaborate compensation and repression of the evolutionary path to Godhood. The involutionary aspect of the Soul-Within was exclusively represented.

We need to cooperate with the evolution of life to Godhood, the Godhood that was first recognized internally by the great religious sages. Now we must see that we evolve to the same God externally, through natural and scientific evolution. This is not an evil path, it is central to the true attainment of the God we have seen internally, although, indeed, it may be politically incorrect at this time.

Western and Eastern Balance

When Christianity entered the Roman Empire, Eastern religion met Western religion, but there are Traditionalists who tell us that they were cousins meeting after a long separation, which began with the Indo-European migrations from East to West. The Indo-European religion of Zarathustra was an ancient ancestor to Christianity by way of the Jewish sages, who learned much during their exile later in Babylon. But the religions had since changed toward an outgoing (Western, Classical) and ingoing (Eastern, Spiritual) direction. Both contained wisdom which took generations to synthesize in the West, while back East, the original Indo-European religion was more or less retained.

The Catholic Church eventually came to contain both the Classical-Western outward and the spiritual-Eastern inward elements---the Church was willing to absorb and slowly change. We maintain that the Church absorbed far more of the involutionary Eastern than the evolutionary Western. The God of involution, seen through the Soul-Within, and the God reached by evolution, are the same, although the Soul is but an aspect of the God we evolve to. We seek more of a Balance.

The Theoevolutionary Church and Archeofuturism 2

One of the main differences between Archeofuturism (AF)---which is Guillaume Faye’s view of the ancients united not with the moderns but with the futurists---and the Theoevolutionary Church (TC), is the Conservatism of TC and the more or less radical traditionalism of AF. Both world views more of less affirm futurism but the Conservatism of TC takes a more realistic position, considering the present condition of the West and the prospects for radical change. Perhaps TC emphasizes evolution and science more as well.T C is a three-fold, Traditional-Conservative(modern?)-Futurist perspective.

Another difference seems to be our attitude toward power. AF appears to embrace the ring of power in a more or less Nietzschean affirmation, TC seeks to divide power for many reasons, including longer term peace. This affirms the Christian attitude toward power against statism, yet stands for light federalism and protectionism.

The question is, can Christendom revive the martial spirit necessary to save Christendom without being overcome with the thirst for power? TC can provide the added biological imperative with the evolutionary path to Godhood within our otherwise Christian involutionary religion. But this does require change.

"The Once & Future Christendom"

The times call for a heroic defense of Christendom. Here is an excellent essay: "The Once & Future Christendom, "From death of the West—to knights of the West," by James P. Pinkerton (The American Conservative, September 10, 2007) This is an American version of Guillaume Faye’s "Pre-War Account of an Impending Cataclysm."

Wilber and the Uroboros

Religions are often trapped in the “Uroboros” phase, the circular symbol of the snake eating its own tail. This is the Involutionary Way of seeing God Within via the Soul Within.

Contrary to Ken Wilber, who used this symbol to explain the consciousness of early man, we do not escape this circle through the highest consciousness alone. This experience of the Soul Within is not Godhood, though it is a vital aspect of God.

Only through higher and higher biological evolution can we escape the Uroboros. To adapt Wilber’s excellent phrase, in each stage of evolution we transcend but include our predecessors. This also defines the formula for Perennial Conservatism.

Contrary to Wilber’s way of dealing with the Perennial Wisdom in mythology, we have not advanced beyond Golden Age consciousness. Wilber’s “pre/trans fallacy,” which was his method of dealing with the duality of biological evolution and spirituality, is not a fallacy.

The “Wholeness” experienced by the great sages is the same today as it was in the Golden Age, i.e. an inward experience of the Godhood Who can really be attained only “outwardly” after many many years of biological evolution.

Anti-Life Religious Interpretations

The Evolutionary Christian Church doesn’t define culture as a symbolic substitute for transcendence, as the East, the New Age and Western Psychology often do, transcendence is a symbolic substitute for evolving man to Godhood. Sex, food, money, fame, knowledge, and power can, of course, be used in anti-evolutionary, profane ways, but biology--the originator of these things-- provides the only way to finally reach the evolutionary Godhood that the East and New age speak of when they speak of their involutionary God. These interpretations must therefore be seen as anti-life, anti-evolution, or at best only half truths.

Bodhisattva And The Blissful Trap

In the Evolutionary Christian Church the role of the “bodhisattva” is not merely one who compassionately refrains from entering "Nirvana," in order to save others, it is one who declares that Nirvana in human life can be a blissful trap (The Great Spiritual Blockade) which can impede one from biospiritual evolution to God, far beyond the human species.

It is good to know where one is going but it is not good to dwell exclusively on that virtual knowledge or virtual experience. A Golden Middle Way, once again, is the pattern to follow, seeking the enlightened experience of Nirvana within, not for the sake of the experience alone, but as a blissful hint of the goal of  Godhood evolved to in the cosmos.

Perennial Conservatism

The term Perennial Conservatism affirms ancient Pagan and Christian Tradition, and ancient and modern science. Paleoconservatism affirms Western Christian Tradition including elements of Greco-Roman Classicism. Perennial Conservatism reaches back earlier and forward further than paleoconservatism.

Heresy and the Conservative Approach to Church Doctrine

As the tree is bent, so it grows.

I think of myself as a philosophical and practical Conservative, but I think that when the Council of Nicaea in 325 A.D. declared Arius (Presbyter of Alexandria) and Arianism heretical, and an anathema, this was a radical, not a conservative declaration, since Arius was trying to conservatively bring Tradition, Classicism and the Pagan philosophers into the Church. The Church Fathers disagreed and created a radical break from Classicism and Science, which took many years to find its way back into the Church. When Science (Classicism’s child) struggled its way back into Western Civilization, it did so largely minus the Church, which had rejected it; a very tragic split.

With theological materialism and the Theoevolutionary Church, the theory of evolution has been brought back to the Church, taking up in this sense, where Classicism ended in 325 A.D., with a new effort to include Science in Religion. Life in the cosmos is seen as evolving to God.

God-Within, God-Without

Opening The Spiritual Blockade

Biological evolution is difficult, full of struggle, tragedy and death, yet these problems can be somewhat easier to accept when it is understood that the God-Within, the Immanent, the Involutionary God, can be reached only through material evolution to the God-Without, the Evolutionary God.

Religions have almost exclusively concentrated on the Immanent God Within, the Involutionary Way. Experiencing the God-Within is a blissful experience, because one has a glimpse of the Transcendent God Without, but this experience often leads to the Great Spiritual Blockade of the Transcendent God Without.

Let us not become so dazzled by the God-Within that we become blind to the God-Without. The Evolutionary Christian Church seeks to open the Great Spiritual Blockade. Christianity is applied to the Involutionary God, Evolutionism is applied to the Evolutionary God. Jesus Christ teaches us how to become like God from within, free of worldly desires, Evolution teaches us how to evolve to Godhood by fulfilling the divine material drives which seek Godhood.

Evolutionary Teleology

Theological materialism suggests that Idealism is wrong if it says that reality lies beyond phenomena, or that it transcends phenomena. Phenomena evolves to superphenomena which is virtually transcendent yet is the highest form of materiality, or supermateriality. Only in this sense does matter evolve from the material to the spiritual. This is not historical or dialectical materialism, which resides in nonGodhood materialism, it is more evolutionary teleology, or theological materialism.

Virtues And Ethics

The Evolutionary Church derives it values and virtues from a union of the Christainty and Evolutionism. The seven Involutionary Virtues (Catholicism) are: prudence, justice, courage, temperance, faith, hope and charity. The Evolutionary Ethics affirm Evolution. The goal of the Involutionary Virtues is to understand God, the goal of the Evolutionary Ethics is to evolve to God.

The Great Spiritual Blockade

Reaching the God Within does not heal the primary dualism of life and history, this experience is not “It,” this is “only ” recognizing the God Within. Greater than the God Within is outward Godhood itself, reached through material evolution over great time.

The God we can witness within in the present is not reached in the present but is reached only through  evolution. Let us therefore not stop here, swimming in the bliss of Virtual Godhood. The divine adventure continues.

Updated Classicism

Christian thinkers have said that without God there can be no sound basis for idealism, and that Classicism failed for this reason.

The advantage of the religious philosophy of theological materialism and the Theoevolutionary Church is that the sound early scientific grounding of Classicism, which led to leaders who were considered supermen, is synthesized with or applied to the Christian God, where God is the only highest Being.

That is, the Christian God of Religion is evolved to by way of updated Classicism. The early scientific ethos of Aristotle is updated and applied to the Godhood of Christianity, and the Revealed Religions. We evolve in the material/supermaterial world to Godhood.

A Pre-War Account of an Impending Cataclysm

Here is a review by Michael O Meara of a 2002 work by Guillaume Faye (Pre-War Account of an Impending Cataclysm) Faye offers stark and hard predictions, which should be considered.

The Great Blockade

The Great Spiritual Blockade is the idea that the Timeless can never be reached through evolution in the world of objects or biology, which is preached by everyone from Buddha to Ken Wilber. The Great Blockade seems to suffer from enlightenment addiction, which means swimming in the bliss of Virtual Godhood, reached through the Soul within, while apparently unaware or blocking the Greater Goal of Godhood Itself, reached only at the Great End of material-supermaterial evolution. In the “spectrum of consciousness” of the Great Blockade, defined as total, the outer half appears to be missing.

The Fallacy Of The Pre/Trans Fallacy

Ken Wilber defines the “pre/trans fallacy” as mistaking the experience of “pre-rational bliss” with “trans-rational bliss.” Wilber suggests that these are not the same. The first, Wilber says, is really the Romantic bliss of ignorance in early man, the second is the true bliss of God-consciousness which has been attained only after evolution. This way it seems that Wilber can include evolution and progress for man without getting trapped by a Romantic view of a past Golden Age, as the myths portray.

One benefit of here exposing this non-fallacy is that if pre and trans are essentially the same then Tradition can be affirmed, eg., Perennial Tradition, because the Golden Age bliss is not really different from the New Age trans-rational bliss. The same virtual God was and is experienced, and evolution can be validated, without degrading the Golden Age experience. We have not evolved far from early man.

The problem with Wilber---who has many admirable qualities---and the problem with many mystics, is that they tend to stop their search at God-consciousness rather than at Godhood Itself, or they stop with the Awareness of Nonduality rather than Nonduality Itself.

Nonduality and God-consciousness are possessed only by God, not by animal, man or superman. We can sometimes catch a virtual glimpse of God-consciousness by experiencing the seed or soul of God that dwells within us. This is the Involutionary Way, which is usually accomplished by blocking out the Evolutionary Way.

Evolution is related to the Transcendence of God without and Involution is related to the Immanence of God Within. Immanent Involution leads to the attainment of the virtual experience of the God Within.or the Soul , whereas Evolution leads to the Transcendent of the God Without.

A virtual experience of God, great as that may be, is not enough. The Dual Aspect of the Soul and Spirit must be seen. Both the Immanent and Transcendent Aspects of the Soul and Spirit can be affirmed, and together, with great time and effort, we can bio-spiritually evolve all the way to Godhood, where the Immanent and Transcendent truly become One, Nonduality, or God.

Nonduality Itself

Saints, sages, and mystics have experienced Godly Nondual Awareness. The goal of the Evolutionary Christian Church is not “merely” Nondual Awareness, glorious as that is, the goal is to biologically-spiritually attain Nonduality Itself, at the culmination of biological-spiritual evolution.

This path avoids the artificial split between matter (immanence) and spirit (transcendence) because the Janus-face of Immanence-Transcendence must together evolve all the way to Nondual Godhood.

This way avoids the tragic religious demeaning of the material world and evolution.

Christianity Plus Classicism

Understanding The Superman

Theological materialism and the Evolutionary Christian Church found its way through the long history of duality between Christianity, which gives God ultimate power, and Classicism, which gives man ultimate power, not by demeaning the superman and extolling the man who “sticks to God,” but by affirming the idea that moving toward the superman is evolving toward God.

The reverse also follows that we do not demean the principle of sticking to God by extolling the classical superman without God. And this is not suggested as merely a practical solution to an old duality, it derives from a higher conviction and definition of the goal of evolution remaining beyond the human and beyond the superman, with Godhood at the Zenith of Evolution.

The Realization Of Evolution

The impulse of evolution is not only toward greater depth and expanding consciousness, which we call involutionary, great as that is, the central impulse of evolution is to evolve materially-supermaterially to Godhood, which we call evolutionary.

The great sages were mainly concerned with involutionary God-Realization. We are concerned with the realization-of-evolution, although included is involutionary God-Realization.

Traditional Christanity is our involutionary way, being from the West, material-supermaterial evolution is our evolutionary way. Both combine in leading us to Godhood.

With this religious insight we upgrade and make real Ken Wilber’s phrase: “Transcend-yet-include.”

The Balance

In the Revealed Religions the balance between exoteric material evolution and esoteric spiritual involution is weighted heavily on the side of esoteric involution. In the Evolutionary Christian Church the balance is weighted more evenly, but it seems that the esoteric difficulties may be reversed.

The balance indicates that the God within and the God beyond are the same God, yet the open-ended upper half of the cross---X---suggests evolution leads toward the zenith of Godhood.  

Another Dimension Of Holy Silence

TheTheoevolutionary Church does not split a Gordian Knot regarding the spiritual state of Holy Silence (Christianity), Nirvana (Hinduism and Buddhism), and fana (Sufism ), rather, we bring or see another dimension, from a different vantage point.

The spiritual state of Holy Silence in the Revealed Religions is seen as a direct uniting with the Divinity, the finite is reintegrated with the Infinite, everything pertaining to the creature is seen as detached, and this is seen as the highest spiritual goal of man.

This spiritual condition is defined in theTheoevolutionary Church as the Sacred Inward State, the God seen and known inwardly is a version of the same God as the God evolved to. The True Reintegration of the finite with the Infinite takes place in reality only after great cosmic periods of bio-spiritual evolution.

For us this does not diminish the Involutionary Devotions of the Church to the spiritual goal of Holy Silence, this helps us understand Great Evolutionary Godhood; we are seeing the next dimension of this spiritual state in a new religious theology.

The Future Mutation

God-consciousness in the present human being, which is uncommon, is a glorious yet virtual glimpse--or a future-mutation–of the biological evolution to God. It is not meant as a final destination in Itself, it is a glimpse, however glorious, of how it will be to actually reach God through evolution.

The apparent necessity in most religions of blocking the senses of biology to experience God-consciousness is paradoxically a way to find the primary purpose of biology and evolution, which is the bio-spiritual evolution to God. Blocking biology in meditation in order to experience a glimpse of God should not be confounded--as it often is--with blocking the evolution of biology to God.

One might close one eye to better see a star or a planet in the sky but this does not mean that the eyes are useless in traveling to the star.

Spiritually Animating Materialism

Human nature indeed seeks survival and reproductive success, but human
nature also primarily seeks higher evolution to Godhood, which we
believe may one day be understood scientifically, as it is now
understood religiously. The Evolutionary Christian Church animates
materialistically explained human nature with the religiously explained
Soul, Spirit and Evolution.

ECC also affirms the Conservative view of culture, where biological drives are best fulfilled in conservative societies, which are built upon the foundation of sociobiologically explained human nature and religion, with a deeper and longer term goal than merely successful survival, which is Godhood.

The New Vision

Does the science of evolution encroach upon the Primordial Tradition which we find in all revealed religions?

The present level of decadence is such that first we must reaffirm the Word of Primordial Tradition, in whatever religious form. For us this is Jesus Christ as revealed in the Traditional Church.

Following the reaffirmation of God in the world, then can come the affirmation of the Evolution to Godhood, the same God seen in the Primordial Tradition.

This is the new vision of the Theoevolutionary Church which in this way does not encroach on Primordial Tradition.

The past meets the future, science meets religion, biology meets spirituality in the Theoevolutionary Church.

Rigid Ritualism Or Living Symbolism?

When a ritual has lost its symbolism, its living symbolism---i.e. contact with God or the numinous---recovery sometimes takes the form of a rigid ritualism, where the rites have become almost meaningless yet preserved, the symbol has become a mere sign, exhausted of living symbolism. One hopes this was not the case in the recent reaffirmation of the Traditional Mass and that this was done to restore the living symbols.

Carl Jung, who is insightful regarding the use of symbols, pointed out that a symbol only lives when it is the highest expression of something divined but not yet known, this is how a symbol advances and creates life. The Theoevolutionary Church, with its evolutionary yet ancient symbol of St. Andrew’s cross, has brought back a powerful living symbolism.

Let us learn to contact the God within, as affirmed by Jesus Christ, and then let us join together and evolve toward higher man and higher consciousness, and ultimately to Godhood.

Imperfection

Eastern esotericism says that the image of God cannot be that which it represents and that the world is imperfect for this reason since the world is only the image of God.

The Evolutionary Christian Church (ECC) says that the world is imperfect not because it is the mere image of God but because it is unevolved. The world is essentially related to God via the Spirit, we have God within us.

We are imperfect until we evolve to Godhood. Does ECC therefore see man and nature as more Godly than the East? In any case, man has a long way to evolve.

Reaching Up And Reaching Down

Biology reaches up toward evolving to God, religion reaches down and up toward contact with God and the soul within; biology and religion are complementary in the Evolutionary Christian Church.

On the psychological level this is like dreams reaching up toward the conscious mind from the unconscious, and like meditation reaching from the conscious down to the unconscious. They are complementary.

This helps balance the conflicts that arise between the within and without, biology and cosmology, religion and science. In the same way conflicts subside in human psychology when the unconscious and conscious mind are better integrated. Totality this way arrives. Evolution is the key.

Integrating The Exoteric And Esoteric

The suggested “split” between the exoteric and esoteric, or the religious and metaphysical, is better understood in the Evolutionary Christian Church (ECC) than in the typical Traditionalist perspective.

Typically the exoteric affirms morality and action, the esoteric contemplation and symbolism, and limits are usually placed on the exoteric, related to action and morality. The typical esoteric reintegrates himself into the Divinity, the Absolute, but stops there in the glory of Oneness, united with the Divine Essence. This is not considered completeness in ECC, however glorious it may be.

In ECC, uniting with the Divine Essence in this world and in this body is considered a uniting but it is not the end goal of religion. We must evolve, with exoteric action and morality, all the way to the God, the same God whom the typical "esoteric" virtually unites with in his intellection.

To be fair to the esoteric Traditionalists, they tend to speak of the exoteric as another dimension and not something directly inferior. Yet the condition of superiority and hierarchy are there in the initiation process, and the exoteric is considered a lesser knowledge.

Far more evolution of the body-and-soul is required to actually reach the Reality of Godhood. We prefer to think of a union of the exoteric and esoteric perspectives, as pilot and navigator, on the path to Godhood. Let us join the exoteric and esoteric and evolve to the Supreme Reality of God.

Continuing The Conservative Synthesis

Theological materialism and the Theoevolutionary Church continues the Western synthesis of Greek-Christian civilization. Both the Greek and Christian world views have been expanded in modern times by the theory of evolution. Evolution need not be considered new revelation or new science strictly speaking, it is an expansion on past revelation (Christian) and past science (Greek.)

The addition brought by theological materialism includes the evolution of life all the way to Godhood, which expands on the traditional knowledge of God, understood through the experience of the soul within, and also expands the natural science of evolution, from the simple to the complex, to include evolution all the way to Godhood.

Keeping The Husk With The Kernal

One of the reasons we have tried to keep various spiritual insights of the Church is our belief in the general practicality of Conservatism. The spirit beneath the form, as Frithjof Schuon pointed out, has a tendency to breach its formal limitations. (Schuon, however, would not have affirmed our view of evolution.) One could consider every new religious adaptation as an esoterism adapted to a preceding exoteric religious form. Meister Echart said, “If you must have the kernal, you must break the husk.” But we are not breaking the husk, we are enlarging the husk.

Religions tend to decline to the point where they outlive their usefulness and they survive as forms without much substance. The religious form tends to be made for a time and place and a human collectivity. In the West, Catholicism remains the best preserved.

Knowledge of Evolution has taken form in the Theoeolutionary Church, the form being adapted, supposedly, by the "spirit." This evolutionary knowledge is being kept, at least by us, within the structure of the Traditional Church. What is this knowledge? The God we have seen within, in our traditional religion, must be naturally and materially evolved to, from the material to the supermaterial, all the way to Godhood.

Who can affirm this?

What Is Culture?

"What is culture? The word itself comes from “cultus” or cult and has intrinsic religious dimensions. Culture, strictly speaking, refers to all the aspects of daily life that bear the imprint of society’s religious center: tools, architecture, clothing, as well as art, literature, and music. From this perspective, culture refers to the sanctification of daily life.”

Arthur Verluis
The American Conservative
June 4, 2007

So, what we have now is anticulture.

The Natural Reason To Affirm the Theoevolutionary Church Over Scientific Beyondism

Animals didn’t evolve new genes to control the growth of hands and feet, our amphibian ancestors adapted the genes that their ancestors used to develop fins, i.e., the Hox family of control genes in land animals.

The Theoevolutionary Church adapts Evolution to traditional Christinaity rather than attempting to create a new scientific religion, such as Beyondism..

We are also in this way affirming the natural, Conservative, way of change. Culture follows biology in this way of adapting. Which religion will be quicker for the people to accept? Beyondism does good science, but which best holds on to past traditions?

Inward and Outward Evolution

Our spirituality contains both organic instinct and religious reality. Evolutionary goals dwell within the Spirit-Will Spirit has great knowledge of God, who lives beyond the Soul and the Spirit. This dynamic works upon the psyche of man.

The indwelling Will to God, in a sense, negotiates with the outward world of natural selection in our evolution to God. The direction of the path of evolution depends upon outward conditions as well as the inward Will to God.

We are only recently beginning to see how we might consciously effect formerly unconscious evolution. This is not a negative development for religion, it is a positive development in our understanding of the path to God.

The point here is that we do not think of religion as being “reduced” to organic instinct; which religionist's claim is done in psychology (e.g. Jungian). The Spirit dwells within organic life yet also connects in its will to Godhood with outward Godhood, in both its Immanence and Transcendence.

The other extreme of seeing little or no connection between spirituality and the material world, which some Traditionalists fall prey to, creates a split consciousness, which can also be resolved in the theology of the Theoevolutionary Church. (See an excellent essay related to this: “Jungian Psychology and Christian Spirituality,” by Robert M. Doran, S.J.)

The “Self” of Jung is not called the self in Christian Tradition, the “still point” is the region where knowledge of God dwells within our being within the Soul. Here we can know the Spirit, at the zenith of the Soul which has been given to us.

But this “still point” of the Soul is within the mind, and here the Jungians and Christians take sides, Jungians with nature, Christians with spirit.

The Theoevolutionary Church resolves and integrates nature and religion in declaring that both organic instinct and spirituality dwells in the activating Spirit.

Where the religionists tend to think that spirit and matter, good and evil, can be resolved only by faith in the incomprehensibility of God, the Theoevolutionary Church declares that spirit and matter are finally resolved when we evolve to Godhood.

The Still Point

Along with the established Christian symbol, the “Still Point” represents the point where the human Spirit and Holy Spirit of God meet, within man, and then expand out to God beyond man, beyond the Self.

This is thus not a closed mandala, which Jungians tend to prefer; we are not limited to the Self but to the outer dimensions of God.

Traditionalists do not, or can not, or will not reconcile or integrate good and evil, only the gift of God can help them to accept the incomprehensible, or can reconcile these dimensions. To them only conversion can reconcile good and evil, not evolution.

It is not faith alone, or conversion alone, or grace alone, that can reconcile "good and evil," or spirit and matter, important as they are, it is the evolution of the material to the spiritual, to Godhood, which will finally reconcile good and evil, spirit and matter.

Forms Of Reconciliation

The Theophysiology of the Theoevolutionary Church

Carl Jung wanted to reconcile “good” and “evil” in the same manner that one reconciles other opposites within the psyche, e.g. ego-unconscious, masculine-feminine, ego-self. That is, Jung located this reconciliation exclusively within the psyche.

Religious Jungians tend to consider the “opposites” of “spirit” and “matter” rather than “good” and “evil,” and they want to “resolve” this by being transformed by “God’s grace” in such a way that we choose the good rather than the evil, and also by transcending the Self.

The Theoevolutionary Church reconciles good and evil, spirit and matter, with the dynamic of evolution, which can transform matter into spirit, and defines the Soul within as that element of God and the activating Spirit which helps us see and define the God whom the Spirit seeks, by way of evolution of the body along with the Soul to Godhood.

“Good” is, among other things, this affirmation of evolution and life to Godhood; “evil” is, among other things, the denial and death of life and evolution. Matter is not “evil,” as the Gnostics would seem to have it, matter is the stuff out of which evolution takes place. Evil is the obstruction of matter in its potential evolution to Godhood.

Various sages and prophets have examined the depths within man and identified the Spirit or Soul within, with God. The Theoevolutionary Church adds or includes the dynamic of evolution along with the wisdom of the ancients concerning the soul, the body, and religion, thus various forms of deep reconciliation can take place.

The Theoevolutionary Church resolves into a deeper center for the psyche, and a totality, in the activating Spirit and in the God we evolve to, with a wholeness deeper than the psyche alone, and with a broader view of God’s purpose and grace.

Science and Traditionalism

The Theoevolutionary Church brings back the material world which had been undervalued or even exiled, e.g. Gnosticism, Traditionalism, and we join the material to the spiritual by way of evolution of the material to God, the same God we see and know inwardly in traditional religions.

This determines a wholeness that has been lacking in the split between religion and science. It will require courage on both sides to understand and include evolution and religion together as a religious whole---both have been at war with one another.

If the Traditionalists are against science and technology because it is abused and exploited by the modern world, yet if they approve of the creative spirit of innovation, as long as it maintains its spiritual and territorial quality, then they can harmonize with the Theoevolutionary Church, which views science and technology as helping us evolve to Godhood. We therefore approve of parts of the Enlightenment in this innovative spiritual sense, which Traditionalists do not do.

from “The Essence of Archaism" by Guillaume Faye

... as the philosopher Raymond Ruyer, detested by the left-bank
intelligentsia, foretold in his two important works, /Les nuisances
idéologiques/ and /Les cents prochains siècles/, once the historical
digression of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries has finally closed,
with egalitarianism's hallucinations having descended into catastrophe,
humanity will return to archaic values, that is, quite simply, to
biological and human (anthropological) values: distinctive sexual roles;
the transmission of ethnic and popular traditions; spirituality and
sacerdotal organization; visible and supervisory social hierarchies; the
worship of ancestors; initiatory rites and tests; the reconstruction of
organic communities that extend from the individual family unit to the
overarching national community of the people; the deindividualization of
marriage to involve the community as much as the couple; the end of the
confusion of eroticism and conjugality; the prestige of the warrior
caste; social inequality, not implicit, which is unjust and frustrating,
as in today's egalitarian utopias, but explicit and ideologically
justifiable; a proportioned balance of duties and rights; a rigorous
justice whose dictates are applied strictly to acts and not to
individual men, which will encourage a sense of responsibility in the
latter; a definition of the people and of any constituted social body as
a diachronic community of shared destiny, not as a synchronic mass of
individual atoms, etc....

Obviously, contemporary ideology, hegemonic today but not for much
longer, regards these values as diabolical, much as a mad paranoiac
might see the features of a demon in the psychiatrist trying to cure
him. In reality, they are the values of justice. True to human nature
from time immemorial, these archaic values reject the Enlightenment
error of the emancipation of the individual, which has only ended in the
isolation of this individual and in social barbarism. These archaic
values are /just/, in the Ancient Greek sense of the term, because they
take man for what he is, a /zoon politicon/ ("a social and organic
animal integrated into a communatarian city-state"), and not for what he
is not, an isolated and asexual atom fitted out with universal but
imprescriptible pseudo-rights.

In practical terms, archaism's anti-individualist values permit
self-realization, active solidarity and social peace, unlike
egalitarianism's pseudo-emancipating individualism, which ends in the
law of the jungle.

See full essay here: The Essence of Archaism by Guillaume Faye

Reconciliation Of Opposites

A central goal of the Evolutionary Christian Church is the reconciliation of the so-called opposites of the immanent understanding of God (eg. Carl Jung) with the transcendent understanding of God (the Traditional Church.) Science and religion can join in this reconciliation.

Our quest is to recover the God within, i.e. the Soul (called the Self in psychology) and reconcile the Soul with the God without, the God of the Spirit i.e. the God of the kosmos, who we can bio-spiritually evolve to. We also seek to establish a connection between our individual ego and the Soul, defining the Soul within as the secondary center of our being, and the God without as the primary center of our being.

This can define a wholeness worthy of our past and future.

A Western Way To Save The West

In a desperate attempt to try to save the West from global imperialism, some on the far right, and in the New Right, have jumped too quickly to affirm the way of Islam—some have even converted. (see "The Reds, The Browns and the Greens or The Convergence of Totalitarianisms” by Alexandre del Valle.) One can understand how the Right could become impatient with the slow ways of Christianity and Conservatism, which have barely even recognized dynamic evolution.

The Theoevolutionary Church seeks to save the West by applying both Western religion and Western science. How much better it is not to abandon ones history and ones people when the going gets very rough. The Theoevolutionary Church holds that we must evolve to the God we know from our Traditional religion, and we do so by means of such things as selection, divergence, and local variety. And this is guided by light federalism, protected by nationalism, and counseled in all things by the Traditional Church.

In any case all the revealed religions, including Islam, connect in the same Involutionary Inward Path to the God Within. This is a strong basis for ecumenism. Then, all can join the Evolutionary Outward Path to Godhood in the Theoevolutionary Church.

Economic Nationalism

In our reflections on the European New Right, Localism, etc., it should again be mentioned that Nationalism defends our internal freedom to be localists, and does not contradict the light Federalism and States Rights of our Founding Fathers. Under Economic Nationalism we can even be Libertarian. Our defense and security should be second to none. Only Nationalism can protect us against large states and powerful alliances.

Ideologists in the European New Right have been virtually forced to think of joining with Russia to protect themselves, even though they share our Western heritage. American imperialism, which economic nationalism opposes, has made enemies of our friends in Europe and in Russia, and we should be friends, since the Western world is under-breeding and the South and East are expanding.

The Theoevolutionary Church and Archeo-Futurism

Guillaume Faye has reached deep into the world, and we can affirm much of what he has seen.

In his long essay, “L’archeofuturisme,” Faye, a leader in the old French New Right, now advocates a return to archaic values while upholding future technology. Faye expects global catastrophe and he wants to meet the great catastrophe with a combination of new science and ancient traditional solutions. The past and the future can harmonize in a new European Order of the North (Eurosiberia), with many sovereignties. Without such a foundation we will be overrun by the South and East.

The Theoevolutionary Church has seen the same global catastrophe and our solution contains a similar harmony of the past and future. We prefer the term Evolution to “Futurism,” and Catholicism to the “Archaic.”

The Theoevolutionary Church seeks to synthesize Traditionalism---which contains essential insights of the Traditional religion, with Evolution---which contains essential insights of the sciences. Traditional Catholicism teaches us how we may see and know God, and how to live in the world---including the slowly channeled additions of the Theoevolutionary Church. Evolution, understood bio-spiritually, teaches us how we may evolve to God. This is how we would reconcile the opposites of the material and spiritual, the immanent and transcendent, traditional and modern, archaic and future.

Conservatives believe that there exists a legitimate presumption in favor of things long established. Centuries of accumulated wisdom make the Traditional Church like a Golden Age that still exists.

David Livingston reminded us (Chronicles) that the thousands of little localities, which the New Right prefers, were seen from around 1100 to 1500 in the Christian Commonwealth. There was no central authority, although the Christian civilization was vast. There were thousands of divided sovereignties, secular authorities were independent of one another. There was no such thing as the State in Christendom. And in the center of Europe was the light federalism of the Holy Roman Empire.

We need not embrace historical determinism, the West is dying, yet even individual action can profoundly alter the drift of the times. Think of one brave little French girl, Joan of Arc, who changed the world.

Psychological Wholeness Requires Transcendence

Hypothesis on Jung

I don’t think I have a problem seeing Carl Jung’s “Self” as both immanent and transcendent (we would say Spirit here). Psychologically it is immanent, religiously it is the Soul and transcendent. Jung strongly implied that only immanence exists.

If Jung cannot reconcile the immanent and transcendent, then he cannot claim wholeness. Wholeness is not whole within an immanent Self, it is not enough to reconcile opposites within the immanent domain, the transcendent must also be reconciled to achieve the true wholeness.

Religion does this, psychology does not seem to do this. Yet I see no reason not to use both in achieving psychic and religious health.

I think Jung was at least disingenuous–perhaps understandably–in not stating clearly that he thought the immanent Self was alone God, although he may have had personal difficulties in completely believing this himself; if the God Self is transcendent, one would in fact feel doubt.

The Theoevolutionary Church (TC) achieves wholeness in reconciling material evolution with spiritual Godhood, in the evolution of the material to the spiritual, thus defining the Soul and Spirit within as both immanent and transcendent.

Wholeness in TC can also reconcile Pagan with Christian symbols, e.g. as biospiritual evolution involves diversity and variety in competition. The problem of abusing collective archetypical symbols, which Jung feared, is lessened when evolution is understood in all its diversity as the way to attain the transcendent Godhood, which one can immanently discern, religiously and psychically within, as the Self, or Soul. When evolution is considered, the “Other” can be defined at least as competitor, if not as “evil,” without being considered psychologically unhealthy.

Defining Jesus as historically the “Christ” sent to teach us the Doctrines of the Church, allows us to see God within, and, with the Social Doctrines (including the channeled additions of TC) allows us to evolve successfully to God (Ordered Evolution). This is sociobiologically and psychologically healthy, allowing the collective (Church, State, People) the social bonding necessary for both psychological and spiritual success.

The Sacred Continuum

Religious thinkers believe that God exists outside of the psyche, outside the unconscious mind, whereas most psychologists say God is in the unconscious only, or they say we can, in any case, only experience God in our psyches, wherever God might come from. I see a continuum here, with the psychologist examining how we might experience God psychologically, leading up to the religionists, who examine God beyond the senses, beyond the unconscious mind. Biology and Sociobiology lie further back on the continuum, before psychology. And the artist exists almost like a brother to the religionists and the psychologists, exploring the same areas, or in the best art, in affirming the sacred. This continuum suggests something like the “total art work” hypothesized by Richard Wagner. The Evolutionary Christian Church contains the sacred continuum, from the simple to the complex to Godhood.

Energy for renewal

History moves and new facts arise. After the Reformation the Church seemed to lack the energy to define traditional social ethics in a new way, and this helped secular capitalism take over. Calvin’s spiritual individualism had softened society for economic individualism. Now the Church is dragging behind the secular world in relating to evolution, which allows the secular world to define evolution.

Evolution is a central dynamic of nature, and therefore of Godhood, and it needs to be channeled into traditional Christian ethics. With energy for renewal, evolution is attached to evolution in the Theoevolutionary Church. We can see God in the traditional way, and we can evolve to Godhhood, guided by the Church, in the natural evolutionary way.

Jung And The Traditionalists

Carl Jung did not deny an Absolute God, he said he knew that God exists but he denied our ability to fathom this God outside of our individual psyches, which is more the position of Western science.

This position put him on the outs with Traditionalists like Ananda Coomaraswamy, Frithjof Schuon and others who know that we can see the Absolute with the mystic Intellect.

The Evolutionary Christian Church (ECC) affirms both perspectives, more or less: 1. We can know the Absolute by way of knowing the Soul within, given religious discipline. 2. We affirm evolution, the jewel of science, in the conception of bio-spiritual evolution to Godhood .

ECC harmonizes science and religion, the spiritual and the material, the micro-soul and spirit within and the macro-evolution to God.

Future and Past Utopias

While examining various “utopias” in the latest issue of “What Is Enlightenment,” it seemed to me that evolution better fits the linear future, with its “world to come,” future heaven, the arrival of the Messiah, the golden world arrived at last, etc. Conservatism, which allows for slow change channeled into Tradition, also fits well from this perspective.

Traditionalism, on the other hand, fits better with past Golden Ages, Paradise, and utopias of the Hindus and Greeks, which look less positively upon evolution and change, often with outright rejection of evolution.

Nihilists and many anarchists in modern times often think in terms of dystopias, the future as living hell. Without grounding in religion, dystopias tend to develop in the mind.

Teilhard de Chardin’s “Noosphere” seems to depend too much on inherent goodness evolving to bring us all together with involution, whereas evolution, in its creativity, works through divergence and competition, as well as with Chardin’s integration.

The Theoevolutionary Church affirms the world to come, the arrival of heaven, and the Messiah, or Godhood, with bio-spiritual evolution toward Godhood working in concert with the Traditional Church and its sacred inward methods of seeing and knowing God.

Resolving Dualities

The problem of dualities, i.e. religion/science, sacred/profane, archaic/modern, mythological/historical, poetic/scientific, biological/spiritual, as examined heroically by, among others, Guenon and Jung, usually ends with one side wanting to recuperate only the former, Tradition, and the other the latter, Science. Can the two ever meet?

The two meet in bringing biological evolution into the spiritual. Traditional religion is devoted to where it applies best, seeing and knowing God, morality, social philosophy, etc., and science is applied to evolution, biology, even string theory, etc. The two are combined in the Evolutionary Christian Church, adding to Tradition the evolutionary element concerned with higher intelligence and higher consciousness. Thus, you have the evolution of the biological all the way to the spiritual, ultimately to God, guided by traditional religion. The dualities are this way reconciled.

On Bigness

Imperialism, Big Business Globalism, and Big Government, break down into smaller nations, states and localities, as Bigness has always done throughout history. Localism, variety and divergence are natural and harmonious with human nature. The question is what will be the extent of the damage done by the latest attempts at Bigness?

When Bigness fails, force is often used, yet even force can’t stop the devolution into smaller units. Big Business tactics of offering money, pleasure, power, the good consumer life are more manipulative. China is now trying these things with its population. Will Western Civilization be mortally wounded? Will the globe be polluted beyond repair? Will Western people survive, since we are not replacing ourselves?

Religion has always been the foundation of Civilization. The Theoevolutionary Church will support the redeeming of life, the renewal of localism, bonded by the Church. Without religion pernicious Bigness will rise again.

Selling The Collective Unconscious

The liberal wing of Jungian spiritualists tend to want to use the Collective Unconscious–which all people share–as a basis for understanding peace and equality between all races and cultures. This is naive, and perhaps manipulative.

Archetypes in the Collective Unconscious, such as the Royal, Warrior, Magician and Lover, (as defined by Neo-Jungian Robert Moore) were obviously useful in human survival and reproduction, which is why they have been inherited. We should not overlook this inherited purpose. These Archetypes came by way of natural selection and competition in evolution and to define them as promoting peace between all people is deceiving.

When Evolution is seen as the deepest activating force in the cosmos, and in ourselves–which is the position of the Theoevolutionary Church–then competition and natural selection look healthier. Jungians tend to neglect, or de-emphasize, the very creator of the Collective Unconscious, which is evolution. Perhaps evolution should be given its own central Archetype?

Competition, Variety, Diversity, and Localism harmonize with our evolutionary nature, and these are reflected in the Conservative doctrines of the Theoevolutionary Church. As we have said elsewhere, to love ones neighbor is not literally to love the whole world, which would be contrary to human nature, it is to love one's kin, one's group. This definition harmonizes with the definition of love of God: evolution takes place best in diverse, separate groups, thus in loving one's group and loving ones neighbor we love God, and we love God by evolving to God. We love the world in the sense that we affirm the right of every group to love its own neighbor, its own group, then all groups may love God by evolving to God.

Objection To Anarchism And Revolution

R. H. Tawney said the remedy for bad laws is good law, not lawlessness. Like the revolutionary, the anarchist hungers for a society in which order and fraternity reign without the “tedious, stale, forbidding ways of custom, law and statute.” (Luther) The revolutionary thinks order and fraternity naturally well up in their native purity from the heart.

“The task is not to destroy but to revitalize the existing social order, which though vitiated, still has valuable resources which would be criminal to destroy or neglect.” (Jean Ousett)

Counter-revolution does the opposite of revolution. It renews social bonds instead of breaking them, it co-ordinates the classes rather than to disorganize or antagonize them.

Human institutions are often a tragic parody of our hopes and ideals; some men hate men for this weakness, and cry revolution, others know that man will never be perfect and work with the imperfect social institutions built by man.