theology

5:5.12The ex­pe­ri­ence of God-con­scious­ness re­mains the same from gen­er­a­tion to gen­er­a­tion, but with each ad­vanc­ing epoch in hu­man knowl­edge the philo­sophic con­cept and the the­o­logic def­i­ni­tions of God must change. God-know­ing­ness, re­li­gious con­scious­ness, is a uni­verse re­al­ity, but no mat­ter how valid (real) re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ence is, it must be will­ing to sub­ject it­self to in­tel­li­gent crit­i­cism and rea­son­able philo­sophic in­ter­pre­ta­tion; it must not seek to be a thing apart in the to­tal­ity of hu­man ex­pe­ri­ence.

103:1.4Ra­tio­nal­ism is wrong when it as­sumes that re­li­gion is at first a prim­i­tive be­lief in some­thing which is then fol­lowed by the pur­suit of val­ues. Re­li­gion is pri­mar­ily a pur­suit of val­ues, and then there for­mu­lates a sys­tem of in­ter­pre­ta­tive be­liefs. It is much eas­ier for men to agree on re­li­gious val­ues—goals—than on be­liefs—in­ter­pre­ta­tions. And this ex­plains how re­li­gion can agree on val­ues and goals while ex­hibit­ing the con­fus­ing phe­nom­e­non of main­tain­ing a be­lief in hun­dreds of con­flict­ing be­liefs—creeds. This also ex­plains why a given per­son can main­tain his re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ence in the face of giv­ing up or chang­ing many of his re­li­gious be­liefs. Re­li­gion per­sists in spite of rev­o­lu­tion­ary changes in re­li­gious be­liefs. The­ol­ogy does not pro­duce re­li­gion; it is re­li­gion that pro­duces the­o­logic phi­los­o­phy.

90:5.7The priest­hoods have done much to de­lay sci­en­tific de­vel­op­ment and to hin­der spir­i­tual prog­ress, but they have con­tributed to the sta­bi­liza­tion of civ­i­liza­tion and to the en­hance­ment of cer­tain kinds of cul­ture. But many mod­ern priests have ceased to func­tion as di­rec­tors of the rit­ual of the wor­ship of God, hav­ing turned their at­ten­tion to the­ol­ogy—the at­tempt to de­fine God.

103:9.6When the­ol­ogy mas­ters re­li­gion, re­li­gion dies; it be­comes a doc­trine in­stead of a life. The mis­sion of the­ol­ogy is merely to fa­cil­i­tate the self-con­scious­ness of per­sonal spir­i­tual ex­pe­ri­ence. The­ol­ogy con­sti­tutes the re­li­gious ef­fort to de­fine, clar­ify, ex­pound, and jus­tify the ex­pe­ri­en­tial claims of re­li­gion, which, in the last anal­y­sis, can be val­i­dated only by liv­ing faith. In the higher phi­los­o­phy of the uni­verse, wis­dom, like rea­son, be­comes al­lied to faith. Rea­son, wis­dom, and faith are man’s high­est hu­man at­tain­ments. Rea­son in­tro­duces man to the world of facts, to things; wis­dom in­tro­duces him to a world of truth, to re­la­tion­ships; faith ini­ti­ates him into a world of di­vin­ity, spir­i­tual ex­pe­ri­ence.

143:6.3The first night of the camp on Mount Ger­izim the apos­tles ex­pected that Je­sus would re­buke them for their at­ti­tude to­ward the woman at Ja­cob’s well, but he made no ref­er­ence to the mat­ter. In­stead he gave them that mem­o­rable talk on “The re­al­i­ties which are cen­tral in the king­dom of God.” In any re­li­gion it is very easy to al­low val­ues to be­come dis­pro­por­tion­ate and to per­mit facts to oc­cupy the place of truth in one’s the­ol­ogy. The fact of the cross be­came the very cen­ter of sub­se­quent Chris­tian­ity; but it is not the cen­tral truth of the re­li­gion which may be de­rived from the life and teach­ings of Je­sus of Naz­a­reth.

92:3.4Evo­lu­tion­ary re­li­gion makes no pro­vi­sion for change or re­vi­sion; un­like sci­ence, it does not pro­vide for its own pro­gres­sive cor­rec­tion. Evolved re­li­gion com­mands re­spect be­cause its fol­low­ers be­lieve it is The Truth; “the faith once de­liv­ered to the saints” must, in the­ory, be both fi­nal and in­fal­li­ble. The cult re­sists de­vel­op­ment be­cause real prog­ress is cer­tain to mod­ify or de­stroy the cult it­self; there­fore must re­vi­sion al­ways be forced upon it.

92:7.3The many re­li­gions of Uran­tia are all good to the ex­tent that they bring man to God and bring the re­al­iza­tion of the Fa­ther to man. It is a fal­lacy for any group of re­li­gion­ists to con­ceive of their creed as The Truth; such at­ti­tudes be­speak more of the­o­log­i­cal ar­ro­gance than of cer­tainty of faith. There is not a Uran­tia re­li­gion that could not prof­itably study and as­sim­i­late the best of the truths con­tained in ev­ery other faith, for all con­tain truth. Re­li­gion­ists would do bet­ter to bor­row the best in their neigh­bors’ liv­ing spir­i­tual faith rather than to de­nounce the worst in their lin­ger­ing su­per­sti­tions and out­worn rit­u­als.

196:0.5The­ol­ogy may fix, for­mu­late, de­fine, and dog­ma­tize faith, but in the hu­man life of Je­sus faith was per­sonal, liv­ing, orig­i­nal, spon­ta­neous, and purely spir­i­tual. This faith was not rev­er­ence for tra­di­tion nor a mere in­tel­lec­tual be­lief which he held as a sa­cred creed, but rather a sub­lime ex­pe­ri­ence and a pro­found con­vic­tion which se­curely held him. His faith was so real and all-en­com­pass­ing that it ab­so­lutely swept away any spir­i­tual doubts and ef­fec­tively de­stroyed ev­ery con­flict­ing de­sire. Noth­ing was able to tear him away from the spir­i­tual an­chor­age of this fer­vent, sub­lime, and un­daunted faith. Even in the face of ap­par­ent de­feat or in the throes of dis­ap­point­ment and threat­en­ing de­spair, he calmly stood in the di­vine pres­ence free from fear and fully con­scious of spir­i­tual in­vin­ci­bil­ity. Je­sus en­joyed the in­vig­o­rat­ing as­sur­ance of the pos­ses­sion of un­flinch­ing faith, and in each of life’s try­ing sit­u­a­tions he un­fail­ingly ex­hib­ited an un­ques­tion­ing loy­alty to the Fa­ther’s will. And this su­perb faith was un­daunted even by the cruel and crush­ing threat of an ig­no­min­ious death.

143:5.5By this time Nalda was sobered, and her bet­ter self was awak­ened. She was not an im­moral woman wholly by choice. She had been ruth­lessly and un­justly cast aside by her hus­band and in dire straits had con­sented to live with a cer­tain Greek as his wife, but with­out mar­riage. Nalda now felt greatly ashamed that she had so un­think­ingly spo­ken to Je­sus, and she most pen­i­tently ad­dressed the Mas­ter, say­ing: “My Lord, I re­pent of my man­ner of speak­ing to you, for I per­ceive that you are a holy man or maybe a prophet.” And she was just about to seek di­rect and per­sonal help from the Mas­ter when she did what so many have done be­fore and since—dodged the is­sue of per­sonal sal­va­tion by turn­ing to the dis­cus­sion of the­ol­ogy and phi­los­o­phy. She quickly turned the con­ver­sa­tion from her own needs to a the­o­log­i­cal con­tro­versy. Point­ing over to Mount Ger­izim, she con­tin­ued: “Our fa­thers wor­shiped on this moun­tain, and yet you would say that in Je­ru­sa­lem is the place where men ought to wor­ship; which, then, is the right place to wor­ship God?”

143:5.6Je­sus per­ceived the at­tempt of the woman’s soul to avoid di­rect and search­ing con­tact with its Maker, but he also saw that there was pres­ent in her soul a de­sire to know the bet­ter way of life. Af­ter all, there was in Nalda’s heart a true thirst for the liv­ing wa­ter; there­fore he dealt pa­tiently with her, say­ing: “Woman, let me say to you that the day is soon com­ing when nei­ther on this moun­tain nor in Je­ru­sa­lem will you wor­ship the Fa­ther. But now you wor­ship that which you know not, a mix­ture of the re­li­gion of many pa­gan gods and gen­tile philoso­phies. The Jews at least know whom they wor­ship; they have re­moved all con­fu­sion by con­cen­trat­ing their wor­ship upon one God, Yah­weh. But you should be­lieve me when I say that the hour will soon come—even now is—when all sin­cere wor­shipers will wor­ship the Fa­ther in spirit and in truth, for it is just such wor­shipers the Fa­ther seeks. God is spirit, and they who wor­ship him must wor­ship him in spirit and in truth. Your sal­va­tion comes not from know­ing how oth­ers should wor­ship or where but by re­ceiv­ing into your own heart this liv­ing wa­ter which I am of­fer­ing you even now.”

143:5.7But Nalda would make one more ef­fort to avoid the dis­cus­sion of the em­bar­rass­ing ques­tion of her per­sonal life on earth and the sta­tus of her soul be­fore God. Once more she re­sorted to ques­tions of gen­eral re­li­gion, say­ing: “Yes, I know, Sir, that John has preached about the com­ing of the Con­verter, he who will be called the De­liv­erer, and that, when he shall come, he will de­clare to us all things”—and Je­sus, in­ter­rupt­ing Nalda, said with startling as­sur­ance, “I who speak to you am he.”

103:1.5That re­li­gion­ists have be­lieved so much that was false does not in­val­i­date re­li­gion be­cause re­li­gion is founded on the rec­og­ni­tion of val­ues and is val­i­dated by the faith of per­sonal re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ence. Re­li­gion, then, is based on ex­pe­ri­ence and re­li­gious thought; the­ol­ogy, the phi­los­o­phy of re­li­gion, is an hon­est at­tempt to in­ter­pret that ex­pe­ri­ence. Such in­ter­pre­ta­tive be­liefs may be right or wrong, or a mix­ture of truth and er­ror.

5:5.6Re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ence, be­ing es­sen­tially spir­i­tual, can never be fully un­der­stood by the ma­te­rial mind; hence the func­tion of the­ol­ogy, the psy­chol­ogy of re­li­gion. The es­sen­tial doc­trine of the hu­man re­al­iza­tion of God cre­ates a para­dox in fi­nite com­pre­hen­sion. It is well-nigh im­pos­si­ble for hu­man logic and fi­nite rea­son to har­mo­nize the con­cept of di­vine im­ma­nence, God within and a part of ev­ery in­di­vid­ual, with the idea of God’s tran­scen­dence, the di­vine dom­i­na­tion of the uni­verse of uni­verses. These two es­sen­tial con­cepts of De­ity must be uni­fied in the faith-grasp of the con­cept of the tran­scen­dence of a per­sonal God and in the re­al­iza­tion of the in­dwelling pres­ence of a frag­ment of that God in or­der to jus­tify in­tel­li­gent wor­ship and val­i­date the hope of per­son­al­ity sur­vival. The dif­fi­cul­ties and para­doxes of re­li­gion are in­her­ent in the fact that the re­al­i­ties of re­li­gion are ut­terly be­yond the mor­tal ca­pac­ity for in­tel­lec­tual com­pre­hen­sion.

103:9.1The­ol­ogy deals with the in­tel­lec­tual con­tent of re­li­gion, meta­physics (rev­e­la­tion) with the philo­sophic as­pects. Re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ence is the spir­i­tual con­tent of re­li­gion. Not­with­stand­ing the mytho­logic va­garies and the psy­cho­logic il­lu­sions of the in­tel­lec­tual con­tent of re­li­gion, the meta­phys­i­cal as­sump­tions of er­ror and the tech­niques of self-de­cep­tion, the po­lit­i­cal dis­tor­tions and the so­cioe­co­nomic per­ver­sions of the philo­sophic con­tent of re­li­gion, the spir­i­tual ex­pe­ri­ence of per­sonal re­li­gion re­mains gen­uine and valid.

103:9.2Re­li­gion has to do with feel­ing, act­ing, and liv­ing, not merely with think­ing. Think­ing is more closely re­lated to the ma­te­rial life and should be in the main, but not al­to­gether, dom­i­nated by rea­son and the facts of sci­ence and, in its non­ma­te­rial reaches to­ward the spirit realms, by truth. No mat­ter how il­lu­sory and er­ro­neous one’s the­ol­ogy, one’s re­li­gion may be wholly gen­uine and ev­er­last­ingly true.

103:6.1The­ol­ogy is the study of the ac­tions and re­ac­tions of the hu­man spirit; it can never be­come a sci­ence since it must al­ways be com­bined more or less with psy­chol­ogy in its per­sonal ex­pres­sion and with phi­los­o­phy in its sys­tem­atic por­trayal. The­ol­ogy is al­ways the study of your re­li­gion; the study of an­other’s re­li­gion is psy­chol­ogy.

103:6.2When man ap­proaches the study and ex­am­i­na­tion of his uni­verse from the out­side, he brings into be­ing the var­i­ous phys­i­cal sci­ences; when he ap­proaches the re­search of him­self and the uni­verse from the in­side, he gives ori­gin to the­ol­ogy and meta­physics. The later art of phi­los­o­phy de­vel­ops in an ef­fort to har­mo­nize the many dis­crep­an­cies which are des­tined at first to ap­pear be­tween the find­ings and teach­ings of these two di­a­met­ri­cally op­po­site av­enues of ap­proach­ing the uni­verse of things and be­ings.

• have usually held people back

102:8.6While per­sonal re­li­gion pre­cedes the evo­lu­tion of hu­man morals, it is re­gret­fully re­corded that in­sti­tu­tional re­li­gion has in­vari­ably lagged be­hind the slowly chang­ing mores of the hu­man races. Or­ga­nized re­li­gion has proved to be con­ser­va­tively tardy. The proph­ets have usu­ally led the peo­ple in re­li­gious de­vel­op­ment; the the­olo­gians have usu­ally held them back. Re­li­gion, be­ing a mat­ter of in­ner or per­sonal ex­pe­ri­ence, can never de­velop very far in ad­vance of the in­tel­lec­tual evo­lu­tion of the races.

• have formulated 500 definitions of religion

103:1.1The unity of re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ence among a so­cial or racial group de­rives from the iden­ti­cal na­ture of the God frag­ment in­dwelling the in­di­vid­ual. It is this di­vine in man that gives ori­gin to his un­selfish in­ter­est in the wel­fare of other men. But since per­son­al­ity is unique—no two mor­tals be­ing alike—it in­evitably fol­lows that no two hu­man be­ings can sim­i­larly in­ter­pret the lead­ings and urges of the spirit of di­vin­ity which lives within their minds. A group of mor­tals can ex­pe­ri­ence spir­i­tual unity, but they can never at­tain philo­sophic uni­for­mity. And this di­ver­sity of the in­ter­pre­ta­tion of re­li­gious thought and ex­pe­ri­ence is shown by the fact that twen­ti­eth-cen­tury the­olo­gians and philoso­phers have for­mu­lated up­ward of five hun­dred dif­fer­ent def­i­ni­tions of re­li­gion. In re­al­ity, ev­ery hu­man be­ing de­fines re­li­gion in the terms of his own ex­pe­ri­en­tial in­ter­pre­ta­tion of the di­vine im­pulses em­a­nat­ing from the God spirit that in­dwells him, and there­fore must such an in­ter­pre­ta­tion be unique and wholly dif­fer­ent from the re­li­gious phi­los­o­phy of all other hu­man be­ings.

• Jesus held dishonest theologians in contempt

126:0.3As he grew older, Je­sus’ pity and love for the Jew­ish peo­ple deep­ened, but with the pass­ing years, there de­vel­oped in his mind a grow­ing righ­teous re­sent­ment of the pres­ence in the Fa­ther’s tem­ple of the po­lit­i­cally ap­pointed priests. Je­sus had great re­spect for the sin­cere Phar­isees and the hon­est scribes, but he held the hyp­o­crit­i­cal Phar­isees and the dis­hon­est the­olo­gians in great con­tempt; he looked with dis­dain upon all those re­li­gious lead­ers who were not sin­cere. When he scru­ti­nized the lead­er­ship of Is­rael, he was some­times tempted to look with fa­vor on the pos­si­bil­ity of his be­com­ing the Mes­siah of Jew­ish ex­pec­ta­tion, but he never yielded to such a temp­ta­tion.

• Jesus’ life should restrain formation of creeds by

195:10.2The beauty and sub­lim­ity, the hu­man­ity and di­vin­ity, the sim­plic­ity and unique­ness, of Je­sus’ life on earth pre­sent such a strik­ing and ap­peal­ing pic­ture of man-sav­ing and God-re­veal­ing that the the­olo­gians and philoso­phers of all time should be ef­fec­tively re­strained from dar­ing to form creeds or cre­ate the­o­log­i­cal sys­tems of spir­i­tual bond­age out of such a tran­scen­den­tal be­stowal of God in the form of man. In Je­sus the uni­verse pro­duced a mor­tal man in whom the spirit of love tri­umphed over the ma­te­rial hand­i­caps of time and over­came the fact of phys­i­cal ori­gin.