atonement doctrine

186:5.1There is no di­rect re­la­tion be­tween the death of Je­sus and the Jew­ish Pass­over. True, the Mas­ter did lay down his life in the flesh on this day, the day of the prepa­ra­tion for the Jew­ish Pass­over, and at about the time of the sac­ri­fic­ing of the Pass­over lambs in the tem­ple. But this co­in­ci­den­tal oc­cur­rence does not in any man­ner in­di­cate that the death of the Son of Man on earth has any con­nec­tion with the Jew­ish sac­ri­fi­cial sys­tem. Je­sus was a Jew, but as the Son of Man he was a mor­tal of the realms. The events al­ready nar­rated and lead­ing up to this hour of the Mas­ter’s im­pend­ing cru­ci­fix­ion are suf­fi­cient to in­di­cate that his death at about this time was a purely nat­u­ral and man-man­aged af­fair.

186:5.2It was man and not God who planned and ex­e­cuted the death of Je­sus on the cross. True, the Fa­ther re­fused to in­ter­fere with the march of hu­man events on Uran­tia, but the Fa­ther in Par­a­dise did not de­cree, de­mand, or re­quire the death of his Son as it was car­ried out on earth. It is a fact that in some man­ner, sooner or later, Je­sus would have had to di­vest him­self of his mor­tal body, his in­car­na­tion in the flesh, but he could have ex­e­cuted such a task in count­less ways with­out dy­ing on a cross be­tween two thieves. All of this was man’s do­ing, not God’s.

186:5.3At the time of the Mas­ter’s bap­tism he had al­ready com­pleted the tech­nique of the re­quired ex­pe­ri­ence on earth and in the flesh which was nec­es­sary for the com­ple­tion of his sev­enth and last uni­verse be­stowal. At this very time Je­sus’ duty on earth was done. All the life he lived there­after, and even the man­ner of his death, was a purely per­sonal min­istry on his part for the wel­fare and up­lift­ing of his mor­tal crea­tures on this world and on other worlds.

186:5.4The gospel of the good news that mor­tal man may, by faith, be­come spirit-con­scious that he is a son of God, is not de­pen­dent on the death of Je­sus. True, in­deed, all this gospel of the king­dom has been tremen­dously il­lu­mi­nated by the Mas­ter’s death, but even more so by his life.

186:5.5All that the Son of Man said or did on earth greatly em­bel­lished the doc­trines of son­ship with God and of the broth­er­hood of men, but these es­sen­tial re­la­tion­ships of God and men are in­her­ent in the uni­verse facts of God’s love for his crea­tures and the in­nate mercy of the di­vine Sons. These touch­ing and di­vinely beau­ti­ful re­la­tions be­tween man and his Maker, on this world and on all oth­ers through­out the uni­verse of uni­verses, have ex­isted from eter­nity; and they are not in any sense de­pen­dent on these pe­ri­odic be­stowal en­act­ments of the Cre­ator Sons of God, who thus as­sume the na­ture and like­ness of their cre­ated in­tel­li­gences as a part of the price which they must pay for the fi­nal ac­quire­ment of un­lim­ited sov­er­eignty over their re­spec­tive lo­cal uni­verses.

186:5.6The Fa­ther in heaven loved mor­tal man on earth just as much be­fore the life and death of Je­sus on Uran­tia as he did af­ter this tran­scen­dent ex­hi­bi­tion of the co­part­ner­ship of man and God. This mighty trans­ac­tion of the in­car­na­tion of the God of Neb­a­don as a man on Uran­tia could not aug­ment the at­tri­butes of the eter­nal, in­fi­nite, and uni­ver­sal Fa­ther, but it did en­rich and en­lighten all other ad­min­is­tra­tors and crea­tures of the uni­verse of Neb­a­don. While the Fa­ther in heaven loves us no more be­cause of this be­stowal of Mi­chael, all other ce­les­tial in­tel­li­gences do. And this is be­cause Je­sus not only made a rev­e­la­tion of God to man, but he also like­wise made a new rev­e­la­tion of man to the Gods and to the ce­les­tial in­tel­li­gences of the uni­verse of uni­verses.

186:5.7Je­sus is not about to die as a sac­ri­fice for sin. He is not go­ing to atone for the in­born moral guilt of the hu­man race. Man­kind has no such racial guilt be­fore God. Guilt is purely a mat­ter of per­sonal sin and know­ing, de­lib­er­ate re­bel­lion against the will of the Fa­ther and the ad­min­is­tra­tion of his Sons.

186:5.8Sin and re­bel­lion have noth­ing to do with the fun­da­men­tal be­stowal plan of the Par­a­dise Sons of God, al­beit it does ap­pear to us that the sal­vage plan is a pro­vi­sional fea­ture of the be­stowal plan.

186:5.9The sal­va­tion of God for the mor­tals of Uran­tia would have been just as ef­fec­tive and unerringly cer­tain if Je­sus had not been put to death by the cruel hands of ig­no­rant mor­tals. If the Mas­ter had been fa­vor­ably re­ceived by the mor­tals of earth and had de­parted from Uran­tia by the vol­un­tary re­lin­quish­ment of his life in the flesh, the fact of the love of God and the mercy of the Son—the fact of son­ship with God—would have in no wise been af­fected. You mor­tals are the sons of God, and only one thing is re­quired to make such a truth fac­tual in your per­sonal ex­pe­ri­ence, and that is your spirit-born faith.

188:4.11Even if God were the stern and le­gal monarch of a uni­verse in which jus­tice ruled su­preme, he cer­tainly would not be sat­is­fied with the child­ish scheme of sub­sti­tut­ing an in­no­cent suf­ferer for a guilty of­fender.

20:6.6When the be­stowal Sons, Cre­ator or Mag­is­te­rial, en­ter the por­tals of death, they reap­pear on the third day. But you should not en­ter­tain the idea that they al­ways meet with the tragic end en­coun­tered by the Cre­ator Son who so­journed on your world nine­teen hun­dred years ago. The ex­traor­di­nary and un­usu­ally cruel ex­pe­ri­ence through which Je­sus of Naz­a­reth passed has caused Uran­tia to be­come lo­cally known as “the world of the cross.” It is not nec­es­sary that such in­hu­man treat­ment be ac­corded a Son of God, and the vast ma­jor­ity of plan­ets have af­forded them a more con­sid­er­ate re­cep­tion, al­low­ing them to fin­ish their mor­tal ca­reers, ter­mi­nate the age, ad­ju­di­cate the sleep­ing sur­vivors, and in­au­gu­rate a new dis­pen­sa­tion, with­out im­pos­ing a vi­o­lent death. A be­stowal Son must en­counter death, must pass through the whole of the ac­tual ex­pe­ri­ence of mor­tals of the realms, but it is not a re­quire­ment of the di­vine plan that this death be ei­ther vi­o­lent or un­usual.

20:6.7When be­stowal Sons are not put to death by vi­o­lence, they vol­un­tar­ily re­lin­quish their lives and pass through the por­tals of death, not to sat­isfy the de­mands of “stern jus­tice” or “di­vine wrath,” but rather to com­plete the be­stowal, “to drink the cup” of the ca­reer of in­car­na­tion and per­sonal ex­pe­ri­ence in all that con­sti­tutes a crea­ture’s life as it is lived on the plan­ets of mor­tal ex­is­tence. Be­stowal is a plan­e­tary and a uni­verse ne­ces­sity, and phys­i­cal death is noth­ing more than a nec­es­sary part of a be­stowal mis­sion.

148:4.7“You are con­fused, Thomas, by the doc­trines of the Greeks and the er­rors of the Per­sians. You do not un­der­stand the re­la­tion­ships of evil and sin be­cause you view man­kind as be­gin­ning on earth with a per­fect Adam and rapidly de­gen­er­at­ing, through sin, to man’s pres­ent de­plorable es­tate. But why do you refuse to com­pre­hend the mean­ing of the rec­ord which dis­closes how Cain, the son of Adam, went over into the land of Nod and there got him­self a wife? And why do you refuse to in­ter­pret the mean­ing of the rec­ord which por­trays the sons of God find­ing wives for them­selves among the daugh­ters of men?

148:4.8“Men are, in­deed, by na­ture evil, but not nec­es­sar­ily sin­ful. The new birth—the bap­tism of the spirit—is es­sen­tial to de­liv­er­ance from evil and nec­es­sary for en­trance into the king­dom of heaven, but none of this de­tracts from the fact that man is the son of God. Nei­ther does this in­her­ent pres­ence of po­ten­tial evil mean that man is in some mys­te­ri­ous way es­tranged from the Fa­ther in heaven so that, as an alien, for­eigner, or stepchild, he must in some man­ner seek for le­gal adop­tion by the Fa­ther. All such no­tions are born, first, of your mis­un­der­stand­ing of the Fa­ther and, sec­ond, of your ig­no­rance of the ori­gin, na­ture, and des­tiny of man.

148:4.9“The Greeks and oth­ers have taught you that man is de­scend­ing from godly per­fec­tion steadily down to­ward obliv­ion or de­struc­tion; I have come to show that man, by en­trance into the king­dom, is as­cend­ing cer­tainly and surely up to God and di­vine per­fec­tion. Any be­ing who in any man­ner falls short of the di­vine and spir­i­tual ide­als of the eter­nal Fa­ther’s will is po­ten­tially evil, but such be­ings are in no sense sin­ful, much less in­iq­ui­tous.

148:4.10“Thomas, have you not read about this in the Scrip­tures, where it is writ­ten: ‘You are the chil­dren of the Lord your God.’ ‘I will be his Fa­ther and he shall be my son.’ ‘I have cho­sen him to be my son—I will be his Fa­ther.’ ‘Bring my sons from far and my daugh­ters from the ends of the earth; even ev­ery one who is called by my name, for I have cre­ated them for my glory.’ ‘You are the sons of the liv­ing God.’ ‘They who have the spirit of God are in­deed the sons of God.’ While there is a ma­te­rial part of the hu­man fa­ther in the nat­u­ral child, there is a spir­i­tual part of the heav­enly Fa­ther in ev­ery faith son of the king­dom.”

188:4.1Al­though Je­sus did not die this death on the cross to atone for the racial guilt of mor­tal man nor to pro­vide some sort of ef­fec­tive ap­proach to an oth­er­wise of­fended and un­for­giv­ing God; even though the Son of Man did not of­fer him­self as a sac­ri­fice to ap­pease the wrath of God and to open the way for sin­ful man to ob­tain sal­va­tion; not­with­stand­ing that these ideas of atone­ment and pro­pi­ti­a­tion are er­ro­neous, nonethe­less, there are sig­nif­i­cances at­tached to this death of Je­sus on the cross which should not be over­looked. It is a fact that Uran­tia has be­come known among other neigh­bor­ing in­hab­ited plan­ets as the “World of the Cross.”

188:4.2Je­sus de­sired to live a full mor­tal life in the flesh on Uran­tia. Death is, or­di­nar­ily, a part of life. Death is the last act in the mor­tal drama. In your well-meant ef­forts to es­cape the su­per­sti­tious er­rors of the false in­ter­pre­ta­tion of the mean­ing of the death on the cross, you should be care­ful not to make the great mis­take of fail­ing to per­ceive the true sig­nif­i­cance and the gen­uine im­port of the Mas­ter’s death.

188:4.3Mor­tal man was never the prop­erty of the archde­ceivers. Je­sus did not die to ran­som man from the clutch of the apos­tate rulers and fallen princes of the spheres. The Fa­ther in heaven never con­ceived of such crass in­jus­tice as damn­ing a mor­tal soul be­cause of the evil-do­ing of his an­ces­tors. Nei­ther was the Mas­ter’s death on the cross a sac­ri­fice which con­sisted in an ef­fort to pay God a debt which the race of man­kind had come to owe him.

188:4.4Be­fore Je­sus lived on earth, you might pos­si­bly have been jus­ti­fied in be­liev­ing in such a God, but not since the Mas­ter lived and died among your fel­low mor­tals. Moses taught the dig­nity and jus­tice of a Cre­ator God; but Je­sus por­trayed the love and mercy of a heav­enly Fa­ther.

188:4.5The an­i­mal na­ture—the ten­dency to­ward evil-do­ing—may be hered­i­tary, but sin is not trans­mit­ted from par­ent to child. Sin is the act of con­scious and de­lib­er­ate re­bel­lion against the Fa­ther’s will and the Sons’ laws by an in­di­vid­ual will crea­ture.

188:4.6Je­sus lived and died for a whole uni­verse, not just for the races of this one world. While the mor­tals of the realms had sal­va­tion even be­fore Je­sus lived and died on Uran­tia, it is nev­er­the­less a fact that his be­stowal on this world greatly il­lu­mi­nated the way of sal­va­tion; his death did much to make for­ever plain the cer­tainty of mor­tal sur­vival af­ter death in the flesh.

188:4.7Though it is hardly proper to speak of Je­sus as a sac­ri­fi­cer, a ran­somer, or a re­deemer, it is wholly cor­rect to re­fer to him as a sav­ior. He for­ever made the way of sal­va­tion (sur­vival) more clear and cer­tain; he did bet­ter and more surely show the way of sal­va­tion for all the mor­tals of all the worlds of the uni­verse of Neb­a­don.

188:4.8When once you grasp the idea of God as a true and lov­ing Fa­ther, the only con­cept which Je­sus ever taught, you must forth­with, in all con­sis­tency, ut­terly aban­don all those prim­i­tive no­tions about God as an of­fended monarch, a stern and all-pow­er­ful ruler whose chief de­light is to de­tect his sub­jects in wrong­do­ing and to see that they are ad­e­quately pun­ished, un­less some be­ing al­most equal to him­self should vol­un­teer to suf­fer for them, to die as a sub­sti­tute and in their stead. The whole idea of ran­som and atone­ment is in­com­pat­i­ble with the con­cept of God as it was taught and ex­em­pli­fied by Je­sus of Naz­a­reth. The in­fi­nite love of God is not sec­ondary to any­thing in the di­vine na­ture.

188:4.9All this con­cept of atone­ment and sac­ri­fi­cial sal­va­tion is rooted and grounded in self­ish­ness. Je­sus taught that ser­vice to one’s fel­lows is the high­est con­cept of the broth­er­hood of spirit be­liev­ers. Sal­va­tion should be taken for granted by those who be­lieve in the fa­ther­hood of God. The be­liever’s chief con­cern should not be the self­ish de­sire for per­sonal sal­va­tion but rather the un­selfish urge to love and, there­fore, serve one’s fel­lows even as Je­sus loved and served mor­tal men.

188:4.10Nei­ther do gen­uine be­liev­ers trou­ble them­selves so much about the fu­ture pun­ish­ment of sin. The real be­liever is only con­cerned about pres­ent sep­a­ra­tion from God. True, wise fa­thers may chas­ten their sons, but they do all this in love and for cor­rec­tive pur­poses. They do not pun­ish in anger, nei­ther do they chas­tise in ret­ri­bu­tion.

188:4.12The great thing about the death of Je­sus, as it is re­lated to the en­rich­ment of hu­man ex­pe­ri­ence and the en­large­ment of the way of sal­va­tion, is not the fact of his death but rather the su­perb man­ner and the match­less spirit in which he met death.

188:4.13This en­tire idea of the ran­som of the atone­ment places sal­va­tion upon a plane of un­re­al­ity; such a con­cept is purely philo­sophic. Hu­man sal­va­tion is real; it is based on two re­al­i­ties which may be grasped by the crea­ture’s faith and thereby be­come in­cor­po­rated into in­di­vid­ual hu­man ex­pe­ri­ence: the fact of the fa­ther­hood of God and its cor­re­lated truth, the broth­er­hood of man. It is true, af­ter all, that you are to be “for­given your debts, even as you for­give your debtors.”

188:5.1The cross of Je­sus por­trays the full mea­sure of the su­preme de­vo­tion of the true shep­herd for even the un­wor­thy mem­bers of his flock. It for­ever places all re­la­tions be­tween God and man upon the fam­ily ba­sis. God is the Fa­ther; man is his son. Love, the love of a fa­ther for his son, be­comes the cen­tral truth in the uni­verse re­la­tions of Cre­ator and crea­ture—not the jus­tice of a king which seeks sat­is­fac­tion in the suf­fer­ings and pun­ish­ment of the evil-do­ing sub­ject.

188:5.2The cross for­ever shows that the at­ti­tude of Je­sus to­ward sin­ners was nei­ther con­dem­na­tion nor con­do­na­tion, but rather eter­nal and lov­ing sal­va­tion. Je­sus is truly a sav­ior in the sense that his life and death do win men over to good­ness and righ­teous sur­vival. Je­sus loves men so much that his love awak­ens the re­sponse of love in the hu­man heart. Love is truly con­ta­gious and eter­nally cre­ative. Je­sus’ death on the cross ex­em­pli­fies a love which is suf­fi­ciently strong and di­vine to for­give sin and swal­low up all evil-do­ing. Je­sus dis­closed to this world a higher qual­ity of righ­teous­ness than jus­tice—mere tech­ni­cal right and wrong. Di­vine love does not merely for­give wrongs; it ab­sorbs and ac­tu­ally de­stroys them. The for­give­ness of love ut­terly tran­scends the for­give­ness of mercy. Mercy sets the guilt of evil-do­ing to one side; but love de­stroys for­ever the sin and all weak­ness re­sult­ing there­from. Je­sus brought a new method of liv­ing to Uran­tia. He taught us not to re­sist evil but to find through him a good­ness which ef­fec­tu­ally de­stroys evil. The for­give­ness of Je­sus is not con­do­na­tion; it is sal­va­tion from con­dem­na­tion. Sal­va­tion does not slight wrongs; it makes them right. True love does not com­pro­mise nor con­done hate; it de­stroys it. The love of Je­sus is never sat­is­fied with mere for­give­ness. The Mas­ter’s love im­plies re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion, eter­nal sur­vival. It is al­to­gether proper to speak of sal­va­tion as re­demp­tion if you mean this eter­nal re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion.

188:5.3Je­sus, by the power of his per­sonal love for men, could break the hold of sin and evil. He thereby set men free to choose bet­ter ways of liv­ing. Je­sus por­trayed a de­liv­er­ance from the past which in it­self prom­ised a tri­umph for the fu­ture. For­give­ness thus pro­vided sal­va­tion. The beauty of di­vine love, once fully ad­mit­ted to the hu­man heart, for­ever de­stroys the charm of sin and the power of evil.

188:5.4The suf­fer­ings of Je­sus were not con­fined to the cru­ci­fix­ion. In re­al­ity, Je­sus of Naz­a­reth spent up­ward of twenty-five years on the cross of a real and in­tense mor­tal ex­is­tence. The real value of the cross con­sists in the fact that it was the su­preme and fi­nal ex­pres­sion of his love, the com­pleted rev­e­la­tion of his mercy.

188:5.5On mil­lions of in­hab­ited worlds, tens of tril­lions of evolv­ing crea­tures who may have been tempted to give up the moral strug­gle and aban­don the good fight of faith, have taken one more look at Je­sus on the cross and then have forged on ahead, in­spired by the sight of God’s lay­ing down his in­car­nate life in de­vo­tion to the un­selfish ser­vice of man.

188:5.6The tri­umph of the death on the cross is all summed up in the spirit of Je­sus’ at­ti­tude to­ward those who as­sailed him. He made the cross an eter­nal sym­bol of the tri­umph of love over hate and the vic­tory of truth over evil when he prayed, “Fa­ther, for­give them, for they know not what they do.” That de­vo­tion of love was con­ta­gious through­out a vast uni­verse; the dis­ci­ples caught it from their Mas­ter. The very first teacher of his gospel who was called upon to lay down his life in this ser­vice, said, as they stoned him to death, “Lay not this sin to their charge.”

188:5.7The cross makes a su­preme ap­peal to the best in man be­cause it dis­closes one who was will­ing to lay down his life in the ser­vice of his fel­low men. Greater love no man can have than this: that he would be will­ing to lay down his life for his friends—and Je­sus had such a love that he was will­ing to lay down his life for his en­e­mies, a love greater than any which had hith­erto been known on earth.

188:5.8On other worlds, as well as on Uran­tia, this sub­lime spec­ta­cle of the death of the hu­man Je­sus on the cross of Gol­go­tha has stirred the emo­tions of mor­tals, while it has aroused the high­est de­vo­tion of the an­gels.

188:5.9The cross is that high sym­bol of sa­cred ser­vice, the de­vo­tion of one’s life to the wel­fare and sal­va­tion of one’s fel­lows. The cross is not the sym­bol of the sac­ri­fice of the in­no­cent Son of God in the place of guilty sin­ners and in or­der to ap­pease the wrath of an of­fended God, but it does stand for­ever, on earth and through­out a vast uni­verse, as a sa­cred sym­bol of the good be­stow­ing them­selves upon the evil and thereby sav­ing them by this very de­vo­tion of love. The cross does stand as the to­ken of the high­est form of un­selfish ser­vice, the su­preme de­vo­tion of the full be­stowal of a righ­teous life in the ser­vice of whole­hearted min­istry, even in death, the death of the cross. And the very sight of this great sym­bol of the be­stowal life of Je­sus truly in­spires all of us to want to go and do like­wise.

188:5.10When think­ing men and women look upon Je­sus as he of­fers up his life on the cross, they will hardly again per­mit them­selves to com­plain at even the sever­est hard­ships of life, much less at petty ha­rass­ments and their many purely fic­ti­tious grievances. His life was so glo­ri­ous and his death so tri­umphant that we are all en­ticed to a will­ing­ness to share both. There is true draw­ing power in the whole be­stowal of Mi­chael, from the days of his youth to this over­whelm­ing spec­ta­cle of his death on the cross.

188:5.11Make sure, then, that when you view the cross as a rev­e­la­tion of God, you do not look with the eyes of the prim­i­tive man nor with the view­point of the later bar­bar­ian, both of whom re­garded God as a re­lent­less Sov­er­eign of stern jus­tice and rigid law-en­force­ment. Rather, make sure that you see in the cross the fi­nal man­i­fes­ta­tion of the love and de­vo­tion of Je­sus to his life mis­sion of be­stowal upon the mor­tal races of his vast uni­verse. See in the death of the Son of Man the cli­max of the un­fold­ing of the Fa­ther’s di­vine love for his sons of the mor­tal spheres. The cross thus por­trays the de­vo­tion of will­ing af­fec­tion and the be­stowal of vol­un­tary sal­va­tion upon those who are will­ing to re­ceive such gifts and de­vo­tion. There was noth­ing in the cross which the Fa­ther re­quired—only that which Je­sus so will­ingly gave, and which he re­fused to avoid.

188:5.12If man can­not oth­er­wise ap­pre­ci­ate Je­sus and un­der­stand the mean­ing of his be­stowal on earth, he can at least com­pre­hend the fel­low­ship of his mor­tal suf­fer­ings. No man can ever fear that the Cre­ator does not know the na­ture or ex­tent of his tem­po­ral af­flic­tions.

188:5.13We know that the death on the cross was not to ef­fect man’s rec­on­cil­i­a­tion to God but to stim­u­late man’s re­al­iza­tion of the Fa­ther’s eter­nal love and his Son’s un­end­ing mercy, and to broad­cast these uni­ver­sal truths to a whole uni­verse.

183:1.1There is great dan­ger of mis­un­der­stand­ing the mean­ing of nu­mer­ous say­ings and many events as­so­ci­ated with the ter­mi­na­tion of the Mas­ter’s ca­reer in the flesh. The cruel treat­ment of Je­sus by the ig­no­rant ser­vants and the cal­loused sol­diers, the un­fair con­duct of his tri­als, and the un­feel­ing at­ti­tude of the pro­fessed re­li­gious lead­ers, must not be con­fused with the fact that Je­sus, in pa­tiently sub­mit­ting to all this suf­fer­ing and hu­mil­i­a­tion, was truly do­ing the will of the Fa­ther in Par­a­dise. It was, in­deed and in truth, the will of the Fa­ther that his Son should drink to the full the cup of mor­tal ex­pe­ri­ence, from birth to death, but the Fa­ther in heaven had noth­ing what­ever to do with in­sti­gat­ing the bar­barous be­hav­ior of those sup­pos­edly civ­i­lized hu­man be­ings who so bru­tally tor­tured the Mas­ter and so hor­ri­bly heaped suc­ces­sive in­dig­ni­ties upon his non­re­sist­ing per­son. These in­hu­man and shock­ing ex­pe­ri­ences which Je­sus was called upon to en­dure in the fi­nal hours of his mor­tal life were not in any sense a part of the di­vine will of the Fa­ther, which his hu­man na­ture had so tri­umphantly pledged to carry out at the time of the fi­nal sur­ren­der of man to God as sig­ni­fied in the three­fold prayer which he in­dited in the gar­den while his weary apos­tles slept the sleep of phys­i­cal ex­haus­tion.

183:1.2The Fa­ther in heaven de­sired the be­stowal Son to fin­ish his earth ca­reer nat­u­rally, just as all mor­tals must fin­ish up their lives on earth and in the flesh. Or­di­nary men and women can­not ex­pect to have their last hours on earth and the super­ven­ing episode of death made easy by a spe­cial dis­pen­sa­tion. Ac­cord­ingly, Je­sus elected to lay down his life in the flesh in the man­ner which was in keep­ing with the out­work­ing of nat­u­ral events, and he stead­fastly re­fused to ex­tri­cate him­self from the cruel clutches of a wicked con­spir­acy of in­hu­man events which swept on with hor­ri­ble cer­tainty to­ward his un­be­liev­able hu­mil­i­a­tion and ig­no­min­ious death. And ev­ery bit of all this as­tound­ing man­i­fes­ta­tion of ha­tred and this un­prece­dented dem­on­stra­tion of cru­elty was the work of evil men and wicked mor­tals. God in heaven did not will it, nei­ther did the arch­en­e­mies of Je­sus dic­tate it, though they did much to in­sure that un­think­ing and evil mor­tals would thus re­ject the be­stowal Son. Even the fa­ther of sin turned his face away from the ex­cru­ci­at­ing hor­ror of the scene of the cru­ci­fix­ion.

2:3.1God is righ­teous; there­fore is he just. “The Lord is righ­teous in all his ways.” “‘I have not done with­out cause all that I have done,’ says the Lord.” “The judg­ments of the Lord are true and righ­teous al­to­gether.” The jus­tice of the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther can­not be in­flu­enced by the acts and per­for­mances of his crea­tures, “for there is no in­iq­uity with the Lord our God, no re­spect of per­sons, no tak­ing of gifts.”

20:5.2On Uran­tia there is a wide­spread be­lief that the pur­pose of a Son’s be­stowal is, in some man­ner, to in­flu­ence the at­ti­tude of the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther. But your en­light­en­ment should in­di­cate that this is not true. The be­stowals of the Avo­nal and the Mi­chael Sons are a nec­es­sary part of the ex­pe­ri­en­tial pro­cess de­signed to make these Sons safe and sym­pa­thetic mag­is­trates and rulers of the peo­ples and plan­ets of time and space. The ca­reer of sev­en­fold be­stowal is the su­preme goal of all Par­a­dise Cre­ator Sons. And all Mag­is­te­rial Sons are mo­ti­vated by this same spirit of ser­vice which so abun­dantly char­ac­ter­izes the pri­mary Cre­ator Sons and the Eter­nal Son of Par­a­dise.

2:4.3Only the dis­cern­ment of in­fi­nite wis­dom en­ables a righ­teous God to min­is­ter jus­tice and mercy at the same time and in any given uni­verse sit­u­a­tion. The heav­enly Fa­ther is never torn by con­flict­ing at­ti­tudes to­wards his uni­verse chil­dren; God is never a vic­tim of at­ti­tu­di­nal an­tag­o­nisms. God’s all-know­ing­ness un­fail­ingly di­rects his free will in the choos­ing of that uni­verse con­duct which per­fectly, si­mul­ta­ne­ously, and equally sat­is­fies the de­mands of all his di­vine at­tri­butes and the in­fi­nite qual­i­ties of his eter­nal na­ture.

• Andonic animal sacrifice preserved in

63:6.4Very early the An­donic peo­ples formed the habit of re­frain­ing from eat­ing the flesh of the an­i­mal of tribal ven­er­a­tion. Pres­ently, in or­der more suit­ably to im­press the minds of their youths, they evolved a cer­e­mony of rev­er­ence which was car­ried out about the body of one of these ven­er­ated an­i­mals; and still later on, this prim­i­tive per­for­mance de­vel­oped into the more elab­o­rate sac­ri­fi­cial cer­e­monies of their de­scen­dants. And this is the ori­gin of sac­ri­fices as a part of wor­ship. This idea was elab­o­rated by Moses in the He­brew rit­ual and was pre­served, in prin­ci­ple, by the Apos­tle Paul as the doc­trine of atone­ment for sin by “the shed­ding of blood.”

• Christ became all-sufficient human sacrifice

89:9.3The an­cient so­cial broth­er­hoods were based on the rite of blood drink­ing; the early Jew­ish fra­ter­nity was a sac­ri­fi­cial blood af­fair. Paul started out to build a new Chris­tian cult on “the blood of the ev­er­last­ing covenant.” And while he may have un­nec­es­sar­ily en­cum­bered Chris­tian­ity with teach­ings about blood and sac­ri­fice, he did once and for all make an end of the doc­trines of re­demp­tion through hu­man or an­i­mal sac­ri­fices. His the­o­logic com­pro­mises in­di­cate that even rev­e­la­tion must sub­mit to the grad­u­ated con­trol of evo­lu­tion. Ac­cord­ing to Paul, Christ be­came the last and all-suf­fi­cient hu­man sac­ri­fice; the di­vine Judge is now fully and for­ever sat­is­fied.

89:9.4And so, af­ter long ages the cult of the sac­ri­fice has evolved into the cult of the sacra­ment. Thus are the sacra­ments of mod­ern re­li­gions the le­git­i­mate suc­ces­sors of those shock­ing early cer­e­monies of hu­man sac­ri­fice and the still ear­lier can­ni­bal­is­tic rit­u­als. Many still de­pend upon blood for sal­va­tion, but it has at least be­come fig­u­ra­tive, sym­bolic, and mys­tic.

• primitives sacrificed to restore relationship with God

103:4.2When prim­i­tive man felt that his com­mu­nion with God had been in­ter­rupted, he re­sorted to sac­ri­fice of some kind in an ef­fort to make atone­ment, to re­store friendly re­la­tion­ship. The hunger and thirst for righ­teous­ness leads to the dis­cov­ery of truth, and truth aug­ments ide­als, and this cre­ates new prob­lems for the in­di­vid­ual re­li­gion­ists, for our ide­als tend to grow by ge­o­met­ri­cal pro­gres­sion, while our abil­ity to live up to them is en­hanced only by arith­meti­cal pro­gres­sion.

• Paul’s teaching original
• Philo taught God forgave only when blood shed

121:6.5Many, but not all, of Philo’s in­con­sis­ten­cies re­sult­ing from an ef­fort to com­bine Greek mys­ti­cal phi­los­o­phy and Ro­man Stoic doc­trines with the le­gal­is­tic the­ol­ogy of the He­brews, Paul rec­og­nized and wisely elim­i­nated from his pre-Chris­tian ba­sic the­ol­ogy. Philo led the way for Paul more fully to re­store the con­cept of the Par­a­dise Trin­ity, which had long been dor­mant in Jew­ish the­ol­ogy. In only one mat­ter did Paul fail to keep pace with Philo or to tran­scend the teach­ings of this wealthy and ed­u­cated Jew of Alexan­dria, and that was the doc­trine of the atone­ment; Philo taught de­liv­er­ance from the doc­trine of for­give­ness only by the shed­ding of blood. He also pos­si­bly glimpsed the re­al­ity and pres­ence of the Thought Ad­justers more clearly than did Paul. But Paul’s the­ory of orig­i­nal sin, the doc­trines of hered­i­tary guilt and in­nate evil and re­demp­tion there­from, was par­tially Mith­raic in ori­gin, hav­ing lit­tle in com­mon with He­brew the­ol­ogy, Philo’s phi­los­o­phy, or Je­sus’ teach­ings. Some phases of Paul’s teach­ings re­gard­ing orig­i­nal sin and the atone­ment were orig­i­nal with him­self.

• Mithraic origin

121:7.102. The ap­peal­ing teach­ings of the pre­vail­ing mys­tery cults, es­pe­cially the Mith­raic doc­trines of re­demp­tion, atone­ment, and sal­va­tion by the sac­ri­fice made by some god.

• intended to make gospel acceptable to Jews

149:2.31. The ef­fort to con­nect the gospel teach­ing di­rectly onto the Jew­ish the­ol­ogy, as il­lus­trated by the Chris­tian doc­trines of the atone­ment—the teach­ing that Je­sus was the sac­ri­ficed Son who would sat­isfy the Fa­ther’s stern jus­tice and ap­pease the di­vine wrath. These teach­ings orig­i­nated in a praise­wor­thy ef­fort to make the gospel of the king­dom more ac­cept­able to dis­be­liev­ing Jews. Though these ef­forts failed as far as win­ning the Jews was con­cerned, they did not fail to con­fuse and alien­ate many hon­est souls in all sub­se­quent gen­er­a­tions.

2:5.2It is wrong to think of God as be­ing coaxed into lov­ing his chil­dren be­cause of the sac­ri­fices of his Sons or the in­ter­ces­sion of his sub­or­di­nate crea­tures, “for the Fa­ther him­self loves you.” It is in re­sponse to this pa­ter­nal af­fec­tion that God sends the mar­velous Ad­justers to in­dwell the minds of men. God’s love is uni­ver­sal; “whoso­ever will may come.” He would “have all men be saved by com­ing into the knowl­edge of the truth.” He is “not will­ing that any should per­ish.”

4:5.6The be­stowal of a Par­a­dise Son on your world was in­her­ent in the sit­u­a­tion of clos­ing a plan­e­tary age; it was in­es­cap­able, and it was not made nec­es­sary for the pur­pose of win­ning the fa­vor of God. This be­stowal also hap­pened to be the fi­nal per­sonal act of a Cre­ator Son in the long ad­ven­ture of earn­ing the ex­pe­ri­en­tial sov­er­eignty of his uni­verse. What a trav­esty upon the in­fi­nite char­ac­ter of God! this teach­ing that his fa­therly heart in all its aus­tere cold­ness and hard­ness was so un­touched by the mis­for­tunes and sor­rows of his crea­tures that his ten­der mer­cies were not forth­com­ing un­til he saw his blame­less Son bleed­ing and dy­ing upon the cross of Cal­vary!

98:7.1A Cre­ator Son did not in­car­nate in the like­ness of mor­tal flesh and be­stow him­self upon the hu­man­ity of Uran­tia to rec­on­cile an an­gry God but rather to win all man­kind to the rec­og­ni­tion of the Fa­ther’s love and to the re­al­iza­tion of their son­ship with God. Af­ter all, even the great ad­vo­cate of the atone­ment doc­trine re­al­ized some­thing of this truth, for he de­clared that “God was in Christ rec­on­cil­ing the world to him­self.”

2:4.2God is in­her­ently kind, nat­u­rally com­pas­sion­ate, and ev­er­last­ingly mer­ci­ful. And never is it nec­es­sary that any in­flu­ence be brought to bear upon the Fa­ther to call forth his lov­ing-kind­ness. The crea­ture’s need is wholly suf­fi­cient to in­sure the full flow of the Fa­ther’s ten­der mer­cies and his sav­ing grace. Since God knows all about his chil­dren, it is easy for him to for­give. The bet­ter man un­der­stands his neigh­bor, the eas­ier it will be to for­give him, even to love him.

6:3.4The min­istry of the Eter­nal Son is de­voted to the rev­e­la­tion of the God of love to the uni­verse of uni­verses. This di­vine Son is not en­gaged in the ig­no­ble task of try­ing to per­suade his gra­cious Fa­ther to love his lowly crea­tures and to show mercy to the wrong­do­ers of time. How wrong to en­vis­age the Eter­nal Son as ap­peal­ing to the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther to show mercy to his lowly crea­tures on the ma­te­rial worlds of space! Such con­cepts of God are crude and grotesque. Rather should you re­al­ize that all the mer­ci­ful min­is­tra­tions of the Sons of God are a di­rect rev­e­la­tion of the Fa­ther’s heart of uni­ver­sal love and in­fi­nite com­pas­sion. The Fa­ther’s love is the real and eter­nal source of the Son’s mercy.

2:6.5Righ­teous­ness im­plies that God is the source of the moral law of the uni­verse. Truth ex­hibits God as a re­vealer, as a teacher. But love gives and craves af­fec­tion, seeks un­der­stand­ing fel­low­ship such as ex­ists be­tween par­ent and child. Righ­teous­ness may be the di­vine thought, but love is a fa­ther’s at­ti­tude. The er­ro­neous sup­po­si­tion that the righ­teous­ness of God was ir­rec­on­cil­able with the self­less love of the heav­enly Fa­ther, pre­sup­posed ab­sence of unity in the na­ture of De­ity and led di­rectly to the elab­o­ra­tion of the atone­ment doc­trine, which is a philo­sophic as­sault upon both the unity and the free-will­ness of God.

2:6.6The af­fec­tion­ate heav­enly Fa­ther, whose spirit in­dwells his chil­dren on earth, is not a di­vided per­son­al­ity—one of jus­tice and one of mercy—nei­ther does it re­quire a me­di­a­tor to se­cure the Fa­ther’s fa­vor or for­give­ness. Di­vine righ­teous­ness is not dom­i­nated by strict re­tribu­tive jus­tice; God as a fa­ther tran­scends God as a judge.

90:0.1The evo­lu­tion of re­li­gious ob­ser­vances pro­gressed from pla­ca­tion, avoid­ance, ex­or­cism, co­er­cion, con­cil­i­a­tion, and pro­pi­ti­a­tion to sac­ri­fice, atone­ment, and re­demp­tion. The tech­nique of re­li­gious rit­ual passed from the forms of the prim­i­tive cult through fe­tishes to magic and mir­a­cles; and as rit­ual be­came more com­plex in re­sponse to man’s in­creas­ingly com­plex con­cept of the super­ma­te­rial realms, it was in­evitably dom­i­nated by med­i­cine men, shamans, and priests.

4:5.4The bar­barous idea of ap­peas­ing an an­gry God, of pro­pi­ti­at­ing an of­fended Lord, of win­ning the fa­vor of De­ity through sac­ri­fices and pen­ance and even by the shed­ding of blood, rep­re­sents a re­li­gion wholly puerile and prim­i­tive, a phi­los­o­phy un­wor­thy of an en­light­ened age of sci­ence and truth. Such be­liefs are ut­terly re­pul­sive to the ce­les­tial be­ings and the di­vine rulers who serve and reign in the uni­verses. It is an af­front to God to be­lieve, hold, or teach that in­no­cent blood must be shed in or­der to win his fa­vor or to di­vert the fic­ti­tious di­vine wrath.

4:5.5The He­brews be­lieved that “with­out the shed­ding of blood there could be no re­mis­sion of sin.” They had not found de­liv­er­ance from the old and pa­gan idea that the Gods could not be ap­peased ex­cept by the sight of blood, though Moses did make a dis­tinct ad­vance when he for­bade hu­man sac­ri­fices and sub­sti­tuted there­for, in the prim­i­tive minds of his child­like Bed­ouin fol­low­ers, the cer­e­mo­nial sac­ri­fice of an­i­mals.

194:2.8Je­sus lived a life which is a rev­e­la­tion of man sub­mit­ted to the Fa­ther’s will, not an ex­am­ple for any man lit­er­ally to at­tempt to fol­low. This life in the flesh, to­gether with his death on the cross and sub­se­quent res­ur­rec­tion, pres­ently be­came a new gospel of the ran­som which had thus been paid in or­der to pur­chase man back from the clutch of the evil one—from the con­dem­na­tion of an of­fended God. Nev­er­the­less, even though the gospel did be­come greatly dis­torted, it re­mains a fact that this new mes­sage about Je­sus car­ried along with it many of the fun­da­men­tal truths and teach­ings of his ear­lier gospel of the king­dom. And, sooner or later, these con­cealed truths of the fa­ther­hood of God and the broth­er­hood of men will emerge to ef­fec­tu­ally trans­form the civ­i­liza­tion of all man­kind.

39:5.6In the more ad­vanced epochs of plan­e­tary evo­lu­tion these ser­a­phim are in­stru­men­tal in sup­plant­ing the atone­ment idea by the con­cept of di­vine at­tune­ment as a phi­los­o­phy of mor­tal sur­vival.