The Foundations of Religious Faith

102:3.1In­tel­lec­tual de­fi­ciency or ed­u­ca­tional pov­erty un­avoid­ably hand­i­caps higher re­li­gious at­tain­ment be­cause such an im­pov­er­ished en­vi­ron­ment of the spir­i­tual na­ture robs re­li­gion of its chief chan­nel of philo­sophic con­tact with the world of sci­en­tific knowl­edge. The in­tel­lec­tual fac­tors of re­li­gion are im­por­tant, but their overde­vel­op­ment is like­wise some­times very hand­i­cap­ping and em­bar­rass­ing. Re­li­gion must con­tin­u­ally la­bor un­der a para­dox­i­cal ne­ces­sity: the ne­ces­sity of mak­ing ef­fec­tive use of thought while at the same time dis­count­ing the spir­i­tual ser­vice­able­ness of all think­ing.

102:3.2Re­li­gious spec­u­la­tion is in­ev­i­ta­ble but al­ways detri­men­tal; spec­u­la­tion in­vari­ably fal­si­fies its ob­ject. Spec­u­la­tion tends to trans­late re­li­gion into some­thing ma­te­rial or hu­man­is­tic, and thus, while di­rectly in­ter­fer­ing with the clar­ity of log­i­cal thought, it in­di­rectly causes re­li­gion to ap­pear as a func­tion of the tem­po­ral world, the very world with which it should ev­er­last­ingly stand in con­trast. There­fore will re­li­gion al­ways be char­ac­ter­ized by para­doxes, the para­doxes re­sult­ing from the ab­sence of the ex­pe­ri­en­tial con­nec­tion be­tween the ma­te­rial and the spir­i­tual lev­els of the uni­verse—mor­ontia mota, the super­phil­o­sophic sen­si­tiv­ity for truth dis­cern­ment and unity per­cep­tion.

102:3.3Ma­te­rial feel­ings, hu­man emo­tions, lead di­rectly to ma­te­rial ac­tions, self­ish acts. Re­li­gious in­sights, spir­i­tual mo­ti­va­tions, lead di­rectly to re­li­gious ac­tions, un­selfish acts of so­cial ser­vice and al­tru­is­tic benev­o­lence.

102:3.4Re­li­gious de­sire is the hunger quest for di­vine re­al­ity. Re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ence is the re­al­iza­tion of the con­scious­ness of hav­ing found God. And when a hu­man be­ing does find God, there is ex­pe­ri­enced within the soul of that be­ing such an in­de­scrib­able rest­less­ness of tri­umph in dis­cov­ery that he is im­pelled to seek lov­ing ser­vice-con­tact with his less il­lu­mi­nated fel­lows, not to dis­close that he has found God, but rather to al­low the over­flow of the welling-up of eter­nal good­ness within his own soul to re­fresh and en­no­ble his fel­lows. Real re­li­gion leads to in­creased so­cial ser­vice.

102:3.5Sci­ence, knowl­edge, leads to fact con­scious­ness; re­li­gion, ex­pe­ri­ence, leads to value con­scious­ness; phi­los­o­phy, wis­dom, leads to co-or­di­nate con­scious­ness; rev­e­la­tion (the sub­sti­tute for mor­ontia mota) leads to the con­scious­ness of true re­al­ity; while the co-or­di­na­tion of the con­scious­ness of fact, value, and true re­al­ity con­sti­tutes aware­ness of per­son­al­ity re­al­ity, max­i­mum of be­ing, to­gether with the be­lief in the pos­si­bil­ity of the sur­vival of that very per­son­al­ity.

102:3.6Knowl­edge leads to plac­ing men, to orig­i­nat­ing so­cial strata and castes. Re­li­gion leads to serv­ing men, thus cre­at­ing ethics and al­tru­ism. Wis­dom leads to the higher and bet­ter fel­low­ship of both ideas and one’s fel­lows. Rev­e­la­tion lib­er­ates men and starts them out on the eter­nal ad­ven­ture.

102:3.7Sci­ence sorts men; re­li­gion loves men, even as your­self; wis­dom does jus­tice to dif­fer­ing men; but rev­e­la­tion glo­ri­fies man and dis­closes his ca­pac­ity for part­ner­ship with God.

102:3.8Sci­ence vainly strives to cre­ate the broth­er­hood of cul­ture; re­li­gion brings into be­ing the broth­er­hood of the spirit. Phi­los­o­phy strives for the broth­er­hood of wis­dom; rev­e­la­tion por­trays the eter­nal broth­er­hood, the Par­a­dise Corps of the Fi­nal­ity.

102:3.9Knowl­edge yields pride in the fact of per­son­al­ity; wis­dom is the con­scious­ness of the mean­ing of per­son­al­ity; re­li­gion is the ex­pe­ri­ence of cog­nizance of the value of per­son­al­ity; rev­e­la­tion is the as­sur­ance of per­son­al­ity sur­vival.

102:3.10Sci­ence seeks to iden­tify, an­a­lyze, and clas­sify the seg­mented parts of the lim­it­less cos­mos. Re­li­gion grasps the idea-of-the-whole, the en­tire cos­mos. Phi­los­o­phy at­tempts the iden­ti­fi­ca­tion of the ma­te­rial seg­ments of sci­ence with the spir­i­tual-in­sight con­cept of the whole. Wherein phi­los­o­phy fails in this at­tempt, rev­e­la­tion suc­ceeds, af­firm­ing that the cos­mic cir­cle is uni­ver­sal, eter­nal, ab­so­lute, and in­fi­nite. This cos­mos of the In­fi­nite I AM is there­fore end­less, lim­it­less, and all-in­clu­sive—time­less, space­less, and un­qual­i­fied. And we bear tes­ti­mony that the In­fi­nite I AM is also the Fa­ther of Mi­chael of Neb­a­don and the God of hu­man sal­va­tion.

102:3.11Sci­ence in­di­cates De­ity as a fact; phi­los­o­phy pre­sents the idea of an Ab­so­lute; re­li­gion en­vi­sions God as a lov­ing spir­i­tual per­son­al­ity. Rev­e­la­tion af­firms the unity of the fact of De­ity, the idea of the Ab­so­lute, and the spir­i­tual per­son­al­ity of God and, fur­ther, pre­sents this con­cept as our Fa­ther—the uni­ver­sal fact of ex­is­tence, the eter­nal idea of mind, and the in­fi­nite spirit of life.

102:3.12The pur­suit of knowl­edge con­sti­tutes sci­ence; the search for wis­dom is phi­los­o­phy; the love for God is re­li­gion; the hunger for truth is a rev­e­la­tion. But it is the in­dwelling Thought Ad­juster that at­taches the feel­ing of re­al­ity to man’s spir­i­tual in­sight into the cos­mos.

102:3.13In sci­ence, the idea pre­cedes the ex­pres­sion of its re­al­iza­tion; in re­li­gion, the ex­pe­ri­ence of re­al­iza­tion pre­cedes the ex­pres­sion of the idea. There is a vast dif­fer­ence be­tween the evo­lu­tion­ary will-to-be­lieve and the prod­uct of en­light­ened rea­son, re­li­gious in­sight, and rev­e­la­tion—the will that be­lieves.

102:3.14In evo­lu­tion, re­li­gion of­ten leads to man’s cre­at­ing his con­cepts of God; rev­e­la­tion ex­hibits the phe­nom­e­non of God’s evolv­ing man him­self, while in the earth life of Christ Mi­chael we be­hold the phe­nom­e­non of God’s re­veal­ing him­self to man. Evo­lu­tion tends to make God man­like; rev­e­la­tion tends to make man God­like.

102:3.15Sci­ence is only sat­is­fied with first causes, re­li­gion with su­preme per­son­al­ity, and phi­los­o­phy with unity. Rev­e­la­tion af­firms that these three are one, and that all are good. The eter­nal real is the good of the uni­verse and not the time il­lu­sions of space evil. In the spir­i­tual ex­pe­ri­ence of all per­son­al­i­ties, al­ways is it true that the real is the good and the good is the real.