reflections on the ability of the body to go forward and backward (in time)

A little later in the same line of thought from Richard John Neuhaus in First Things...

Permit me to take this a step further. Actually, several steps further, into the realm of the metaphysical and theological....

One cannot help but be intrigued by the implications of the fact that these adult stem cells can be induced to “reprogram” themselves back to their beginning—all the way back to their embryonic beginning....

We all learned in high school that all the molecules of the body are replaced about every seven years. Molecules are coming and going all the time with dizzying rapidity. Upon arrival they immediately become part of the DNA that provides genetic instructions for their development. But, or so it now seems, the information runs backward as well as forward.

It is not exactly memory, since the stem cells do not recall what they were but reconstitute themselves as what they were. It is as though there is an operative form holding in potentiality the past, present, and future. The form of the body, as in soul.

Please, I’m not making a scientific argument here. That’s not my field. Nor a theological argument, for that matter. But the discovery announced the day before Thanksgiving is metaphysically suggestive. Upon reading the reports, the words of Psalm 139 came to mind. We are learning ever more of the ways in which we are “fearfully and wonderfully made.”