The Way of Jesus the Messiah spread within the Pagan Roman Empire.\u00a0 It confronted a wide range of Pagan doctrines and philosophies.\u00a0 Yet this variety had common ideas.\u00a0 One common doctrine explained how each one of us came to be.\u00a0 This idea is still held in the Shia branch of Islam.<\/p>\n
It goes like this:\u00a0 Before the person, her (or his) soul was an immaterial being in divine bliss high in the celestial realm.\u00a0 Then her soul starts to fall, according to a spiritual gravity.\u00a0 The soul runs into and accrues matter on the way down.\u00a0 The descent is never smooth, leaving her soul without some capacities that other souls have.\u00a0 When the descent is complete, the little tyke emerges from the womb, her soul animating her body and held there by the spirit of the descent, the fated trajectory of her tumble.<\/p>\n
Thus, this newborn infant who looks so innocent is really a divine soul descended into material matter.<\/p>\n
And, some would add, the \u201cdivine\u201d is \u201cgood\u201d and the \u201cmaterial\u201d \u201cevil\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Way of Jesus the Messiah spread within the Pagan Roman Empire.\u00a0 It confronted a wide range of Pagan doctrines and philosophies.\u00a0 Yet this variety had common ideas.\u00a0 One common doctrine explained how each one of us came to be.\u00a0 This idea is still held in the Shia branch of Islam. It goes like this:\u00a0 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-84","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-the-science-of-original-sin"],"yoast_head":"\n