The Real Nature of Religion

101:2.1The fact of re­li­gion con­sists wholly in the re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ence of ra­tio­nal and av­er­age hu­man be­ings. And this is the only sense in which re­li­gion can ever be re­garded as sci­en­tific or even psy­cho­log­i­cal. The proof that rev­e­la­tion is rev­e­la­tion is this same fact of hu­man ex­pe­ri­ence: the fact that rev­e­la­tion does syn­the­size the ap­par­ently di­ver­gent sci­ences of na­ture and the the­ol­ogy of re­li­gion into a con­sis­tent and log­i­cal uni­verse phi­los­o­phy, a co-or­di­nated and un­bro­ken ex­pla­na­tion of both sci­ence and re­li­gion, thus cre­at­ing a har­mony of mind and sat­is­fac­tion of spirit which an­swers in hu­man ex­pe­ri­ence those ques­tion­ings of the mor­tal mind which craves to know how the In­fi­nite works out his will and plans in mat­ter, with minds, and on spirit.

101:2.2Rea­son is the method of sci­ence; faith is the method of re­li­gion; logic is the at­tempted tech­nique of phi­los­o­phy. Rev­e­la­tion com­pen­sates for the ab­sence of the mor­ontia view­point by pro­vid­ing a tech­nique for achiev­ing unity in the com­pre­hen­sion of the re­al­ity and re­la­tion­ships of mat­ter and spirit by the me­di­a­tion of mind. And true rev­e­la­tion never ren­ders sci­ence un­nat­u­ral, re­li­gion un­rea­son­able, or phi­los­o­phy il­log­i­cal.

101:2.3Rea­son, through the study of sci­ence, may lead back through na­ture to a First Cause, but it re­quires re­li­gious faith to trans­form the First Cause of sci­ence into a God of sal­va­tion; and rev­e­la­tion is fur­ther re­quired for the val­i­da­tion of such a faith, such spir­i­tual in­sight.

101:2.4There are two ba­sic rea­sons for be­liev­ing in a God who fos­ters hu­man sur­vival:

101:2.51. Hu­man ex­pe­ri­ence, per­sonal as­sur­ance, the some­how reg­is­tered hope and trust ini­ti­ated by the in­dwelling Thought Ad­juster.

101:2.62. The rev­e­la­tion of truth, whether by di­rect per­sonal min­istry of the Spirit of Truth, by the world be­stowal of di­vine Sons, or through the rev­e­la­tions of the writ­ten word.

101:2.7Sci­ence ends its rea­son-search in the hy­poth­e­sis of a First Cause. Re­li­gion does not stop in its flight of faith un­til it is sure of a God of sal­va­tion. The dis­crim­i­nat­ing study of sci­ence log­i­cally sug­gests the re­al­ity and ex­is­tence of an Ab­so­lute. Re­li­gion be­lieves un­re­servedly in the ex­is­tence and re­al­ity of a God who fos­ters per­son­al­ity sur­vival. What meta­physics fails ut­terly in do­ing, and what even phi­los­o­phy fails par­tially in do­ing, rev­e­la­tion does; that is, af­firms that this First Cause of sci­ence and re­li­gion’s God of sal­va­tion are one and the same De­ity.

101:2.8Rea­son is the proof of sci­ence, faith the proof of re­li­gion, logic the proof of phi­los­o­phy, but rev­e­la­tion is val­i­dated only by hu­man ex­pe­ri­ence. Sci­ence yields knowl­edge; re­li­gion yields hap­pi­ness; phi­los­o­phy yields unity; rev­e­la­tion con­firms the ex­pe­ri­en­tial har­mony of this tri­une ap­proach to uni­ver­sal re­al­ity.

101:2.9The con­tem­pla­tion of na­ture can only re­veal a God of na­ture, a God of mo­tion. Na­ture ex­hibits only mat­ter, mo­tion, and an­i­ma­tion—life. Mat­ter plus en­ergy, un­der cer­tain con­di­tions, is man­i­fested in liv­ing forms, but while nat­u­ral life is thus rel­a­tively con­tin­u­ous as a phe­nom­e­non, it is wholly tran­sient as to in­di­vid­u­al­i­ties. Na­ture does not af­ford ground for log­i­cal be­lief in hu­man-per­son­al­ity sur­vival. The re­li­gious man who finds God in na­ture has al­ready and first found this same per­sonal God in his own soul.

101:2.10Faith re­veals God in the soul. Rev­e­la­tion, the sub­sti­tute for mor­ontia in­sight on an evo­lu­tion­ary world, en­ables man to see the same God in na­ture that faith ex­hibits in his soul. Thus does rev­e­la­tion suc­cess­fully bridge the gulf be­tween the ma­te­rial and the spir­i­tual, even be­tween the crea­ture and the Cre­ator, be­tween man and God.

101:2.11The con­tem­pla­tion of na­ture does log­i­cally point in the di­rec­tion of in­tel­li­gent guid­ance, even liv­ing super­vi­sion, but it does not in any sat­is­fac­tory man­ner re­veal a per­sonal God. On the other hand, na­ture dis­closes noth­ing which would pre­clude the uni­verse from be­ing looked upon as the hand­i­work of the God of re­li­gion. God can­not be found through na­ture alone, but man hav­ing oth­er­wise found him, the study of na­ture be­comes wholly con­sis­tent with a higher and more spir­i­tual in­ter­pre­ta­tion of the uni­verse.

101:2.12Rev­e­la­tion as an ep­ochal phe­nom­e­non is pe­ri­odic; as a per­sonal hu­man ex­pe­ri­ence it is con­tin­u­ous. Di­vin­ity func­tions in mor­tal per­son­al­ity as the Ad­juster gift of the Fa­ther, as the Spirit of Truth of the Son, and as the Holy Spirit of the Uni­verse Spirit, while these three super­mor­tal en­dow­ments are uni­fied in hu­man ex­pe­ri­en­tial evo­lu­tion as the min­istry of the Su­preme.

101:2.13True re­li­gion is an in­sight into re­al­ity, the faith-child of the moral con­scious­ness, and not a mere in­tel­lec­tual as­sent to any body of dog­matic doc­trines. True re­li­gion con­sists in the ex­pe­ri­ence that “the Spirit it­self bears wit­ness with our spirit that we are the chil­dren of God.” Re­li­gion con­sists not in the­o­logic propo­si­tions but in spir­i­tual in­sight and the sub­lim­ity of the soul’s trust.

101:2.14Your deep­est na­ture—the di­vine Ad­juster—cre­ates within you a hunger and thirst for righ­teous­ness, a cer­tain crav­ing for di­vine per­fec­tion. Re­li­gion is the faith act of the rec­og­ni­tion of this in­ner urge to di­vine at­tain­ment; and thus is brought about that soul trust and as­sur­ance of which you be­come con­scious as the way of sal­va­tion, the tech­nique of the sur­vival of per­son­al­ity and all those val­ues which you have come to look upon as be­ing true and good.

101:2.15The re­al­iza­tion of re­li­gion never has been, and never will be, de­pen­dent on great learn­ing or clever logic. It is spir­i­tual in­sight, and that is just the rea­son why some of the world’s great­est re­li­gious teach­ers, even the proph­ets, have some­times pos­sessed so lit­tle of the wis­dom of the world. Re­li­gious faith is avail­able alike to the learned and the un­learned.

101:2.16Re­li­gion must ever be its own critic and judge; it can never be ob­served, much less un­der­stood, from the out­side. Your only as­sur­ance of a per­sonal God con­sists in your own in­sight as to your be­lief in, and ex­pe­ri­ence with, things spir­i­tual. To all of your fel­lows who have had a sim­i­lar ex­pe­ri­ence, no ar­gu­ment about the per­son­al­ity or re­al­ity of God is nec­es­sary, while to all other men who are not thus sure of God no pos­si­ble ar­gu­ment could ever be truly con­vinc­ing.

101:2.17Psy­chol­ogy may in­deed at­tempt to study the phe­nom­ena of re­li­gious re­ac­tions to the so­cial en­vi­ron­ment, but never can it hope to pen­e­trate to the real and in­ner mo­tives and work­ings of re­li­gion. Only the­ol­ogy, the prov­ince of faith and the tech­nique of rev­e­la­tion, can af­ford any sort of in­tel­li­gent ac­count of the na­ture and con­tent of re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ence.