The Third Birth

The movement from the natural material self to the spiritual self has been called the second birth. The Evolutionary Outward Path in Evolutionary Christianity defines the third birth, that is, when the Spirit-Will is recognized and affirmed as the activating force of evolution to Godhood.

The third birth is really part of the natural first birth and is symbolically called the third birth to distinguish from the first and second births.

The second birth can blind men to the Spirit-Will by blocking all the material desires, as we attempt to attain the bliss of the Soul-State, which is not the destination of the Outward Path. The second birth Soul-State is a virtual and symbolic reminder and identification with what Godhood will be like when Godhood is attained in evolution,

The Garden of Eden is the story of the second birth of the immaterial Soul-State, when men woke up to their material desires. This is transvalued in the third birth of the Outward Path. Here material life is not seen as evil but as the vehicle by which we evolve to Godhood. In the Outward Path the devolution and stagnation of evolution is evil.

But the two births are included in the Twofold Path of Evolutionary Christianity. One without the other, that is, turning ones back on the past, present or future makes an incomplete religion. The future is built on the past and present in the Ordered Evolution and Revitalized Conservatism of Evolutionary Christianity.

The battle between God and the Devil, the world and the word, the material and the spiritual is civilized and synthesized in Evolutionary Christianity; we need to continue our evolution to Godhood. As in Evolutionary Realism in art, the imperceptible needs to be made perceptible.