The opening chapter criticizes the concepts of man advanced by the Greeks from Plato to the 3rd-century Christian sectarians; it then emphasizes the place of man in the plan of creation as delineated in the Mosaic literature of the Old Testament and in the letters of St . Paul
Some of these are included in God's providential plan of creation and will receive an actual being.
Some of these are included in God's providential plan of creation and will receive actual being.
Yet, despite Darwin (1859) pointing out that reference to "the plan of creation" or "unity of design" revealed our ignorance rather than provided an explanation, a natural, agent-less cause like natural selection is difficult for most Americans to understand.
That is the aim of what is perhaps the most prominent strategy employed in recent theodicy, which is based on the concept of free will, and its importance in the plan of creation.
As creator, on this account, God really does not know what kind of world he is creating: how evil it will be, whence the evil will arise, and how to anticipate it in detail in the plan of creation.
"Community of descent is the hidden bond which naturalists have been unconsciously seeking, and not some unknown plan of creation, or the enunciation of general propositions and the mere putting together and separating of objects more or less alike" (Darwin 1872).
To understand this, we need to look at God's original plan of creation.
The pontiff added: "Human beings, as they become aware of being partly responsible for the plan of creation, become capable of mutual respect, instead of fighting between themselves, damaging and impoverishing the planet".
To my mind, we have here a description of the primeval biological environment out of which the "sounding clay" - the matrix, as it were - of man's physical body has evolved in accordance with God's plan of creation.
