Paper 102 - The Foundations of Religious Faith, Parallel Chart · 2020. 8. 10. · Revised 1 April 2015 and 10 Aug. 2020 P A P E R 1 0 2 — T HE FOUNDATIONS OF RELIGIOUS FAITH

WORK-IN-PROGRESS (AUGUST 10, 2020) PARALLEL CHART FOR

Paper 102 — The Foundations of Religious Faith

© 2011, 2015, 2020 Matthew Block

This chart is a revision of the 2015 version.Most endnotes and Urantia Book cross-references have been deleted to enhance readability.

Sources for Paper 102, in the order in which they first appear

(1) John Baillie, The Interpretation of Religion: An Introductory Study of TheologicalPrinciples (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1928)

(2) William Ernest Hocking, Ph.D., The Meaning of God in Human Experience: APhilosophy Study of Religion (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1912)

(3) E. Washburn Hopkins, Ph.D., LL.D., Origin and Evolution of Religion (New Haven: YaleUniversity Press, 1923)

[Note: Hocking is coded ‘H’; Hopkins is coded ‘Ho’.]

(4) Rev. L.W. Grensted, M.A., D.D., Psychology and God: A Study of the Implications ofRecent Psychology for Religious Belief and Practice (London: Longmans, Green and Co.,1931)

(5) Edwin Lewis, God and Ourselves: A Plea for the Reality, Adequacy and Availability ofGod (New York: The Abingdon Press, 1931)

Key

(a) Green indicates where a source author first appears, or where he/she reappears.

(b) Yellow highlights most parallelisms.

(c) Tan highlights parallelisms not occurring on the same row, or parallelisms separated byyellowed parallelisms.

(d) An underlined word or words indicates where the source and the UB writer pointedlydiffer from each other.

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(e) Blue indicates original (or “revealed”) information, or UB-specific terminology andconcepts. (What to highlight in this regard is debatable; the highlights are tentative.)

(f) Light green indicates Bible passages or fragments thereof, which are not paralleled in thesource text.

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SOURCE OR PARALLEL URANTIA PAPER 102

Work-in-progress Version 17 april 2011

© 2011, 2015, 2020 Matthew Block Revised 1 April 2015 and 10 Aug. 2020

P A P E R 1 0 2 — T H EFOUNDATIONS OFRELIGIOUS FAITH

II, VI: RELIGION AS GROUNDED INOUR CONSCIOUSNESS OF VALUE: ARECONSTRUCTIVE STATEMENT(Baillie 299)

IX. IRRELIGION (Baillie 332)

[Quoting Bertrand Russell’s A Free Man’s Worship:] 102:0.1 To the unbelieving materialist,1

“That man is the product of causeswhich had no prevision of the end theywere achieving;

man is simply an evolutionary accident.

that his origin, his growth, his hopes His hopes

of survival are strung on a figment ofmortal imagination;

and fears, his loves and his beliefs, his fears, loves, longings, and beliefs

are but the outcome of accidentalcollocations of atoms;

are but the reaction of the incidentaljuxtaposition of certain lifeless atoms ofmatter.

that no fire, no heroism, no intensity ofthought and feeling

No display of energy nor expression oftrust

can preserve an individual life beyond thegrave;

can carry him beyond the grave.

that all the labours of the ages, all thedevotion, all the inspiration, all thenoonday brightness of human genius,

The devotional labors and inspirationalgenius of the best of men

are destined to extinction in the vast deathof the solar system,

are doomed to be extinguished by death,

the long and lonely night of eternaloblivion and soul extinction.

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and that the whole temple of man’sachievement must inevitably be buriedbeneath the débris of a universe inruins—all these things, if not quitebeyond dispute, are yet so nearly certainthat no philosophy which rejects them canhope to stand.

Only within the scaffolding of thesetruths, only on the firm foundation ofunyielding despair, can the soul’shabitation henceforth be safely built” (B337).

Nameless despair

is man’s only reward for living andtoiling under the temporal sun of mortalexistence.

[contd] “Brief and powerless is Man’slife; on him and all his race the slow, suredoom falls pitiless and dark.

Each day of life slowly and surelytightens the grasp of a pitiless doom

Blind to good and evil, reckless ofdestruction, omnipotent matter rolls on itsrelentless way; for Man, condemned to-day to lose his dearest, to-morrow himselfto pass through the gate of darkness, itremains only to cherish, ere yet the blowfalls, the lofty thoughts that ennoble hislittle day” (B 337).

which a hostile and relentless universe ofmatter

has decreed shall be the crowning insultto everything in human desire which isbeautiful, noble, lofty, and good.

102:0.2 But such is not man’s end andeternal destiny; such a vision is but thecry of despair uttered by some wanderingsoul who has become lost in spiritualdarkness, and who bravely struggles on inthe face of the mechanistic sophistries ofa material philosophy, blinded by theconfusion and distortion of a complexlearning.

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And all this doom of darkness and all thisdestiny of despair are forever dispelled byone brave stretch of faith on the part ofthe most humble and unlearned of God’schildren on earth.

102:0.3 This saving faith has its birth inthe human heart when the moralconsciousness of man realizes that humanvalues may be translated in mortalexperience from the material to thespiritual, from the human to the divine,from time to eternity.

1. ASSURANCES OF FAITH

II, VII: THE FOUNDATIONS OFFAITH (Baillie 340)

VI. LOVE AS THE ULTIMATE ORGAN OFSPIRITUAL DISCERNMENT (Baillie 363)

102:1.1 The work of the ThoughtAdjuster constitutes the explanation ofthe translation of man’s primitive andevolutionary sense of duty into that

It is not by developing our logical acumennor yet our powers of speculative inquiry,but by deepening our moral experienceand clarifying our moral insight, that wecan hope to come to a firmer faith in theDivine ... (B 363).

higher and more certain faith in theeternal realities of revelation.

There must be perfection hunger in man’sheart to insure capacity for comprehend-ing the faith paths to supreme attainment.

The essential meaning of this greatbeatitude of our Lord’s [i.e., “Blessed arethe pure in heart; for they shall see God”]has perhaps never been better para-phrased than in the Johannine words: “Ifany man willeth to do his will, he shallknow concerning the doctrine” (B 364).

If any man chooses to do the divine will,he shall know the way of truth.

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When the long reign of rationalism had atlast reached its jubilee in the Cartesiantheology it was Pascal who was firstheard protesting that it is not by geometrybut by love and charity that the know-ledge of God is to be reached and (inwhat is surely one of the greatest sayingsof all time) that “Human things must beknown in order to be loved, but divinethings must be loved in order to beknown” (B 364-65).

It is literally true, “Human things must beknown in order to be loved, but divinethings must be loved in order to beknown.”

Some have been too quick to concludethat because the conditions of belief aremoral conditions therefore all unbelief isdue to sin and is, in fact, a sufficientindex of the moral state of the unbeliever.But ... [t]he religious history of the nine-teenth century has abundantly shown thatit is often the finest and purest soulsamong us who are ordained to passthrough just this ‘dark night of the soul,’and that often

“There lives more faith in honest doubt,Believe me, than in half the creeds” (B366).

But honest doubts and sincerequestionings are not sin;

such attitudes merely spell

[‘Sin is any action or habit inhibiting or delayingthe soul’s progress to perfection, of the danger ofwhich the soul is, or ought to have been,conscious’ (Grensted 130-31).]

delay in the progressive journey towardperfection attainment.

It will be remembered how Jesus Christagain and again described the moralattitude which was necessary for entranceinto the Kingdom of God as childlikeness(B 368).

Childlike trust secures man’s entranceinto the kingdom of heavenly ascent,

but progress is wholly dependent on thevigorous exercise of the robust andconfident faith of

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[[Jesus] combined the stalwart and intelligent

courage of a full-grown man with the sincere

and trusting optimism of a believing child

(196:0.11).] [Compare Eph. 4:13 (ASV).]

the full-grown man.

VII. MEANING OF THE DISTINCTIONBETWEEN FAITH AND KNOWLEDGE (Baillie370)

There is thus always, from the point ofview of science, a certain indirectness infaith’s procedure. Instead of arguing, asscience does, from data, 102:1.2 The reason of science is based

on the observable facts of time;

it argues from agenda (B 371). the faith of religion argues from the spiritprogram of eternity.

What knowledge and reason cannot dofor us, true wisdom admonishes us toallow faith to accomplish throughreligious insight and spiritual trans-formation.

II, IX: THE CRITERION OFRELIGIOUS TRUTH AND THENATURE OF RELIGIOUS PROGRESS(Baillie 400)

I. THE CRITERION OF TRUTH AND FALSITYIN RELIGION (Baillie 400)

[See also 101:4.1.] 102:1.3 Owing to the isolation ofrebellion, the revelation of truth onUrantia has all too often been mixed upwith the statements of partial andtransient cosmologies. Truth remainsunchanged from generation to generation,but the associated teachings about thephysical world vary from day to day andfrom year to year.

But it would be as profound a mistake ascould here be made to suppose that areligious experience is therefore poor asreligion, because it is united in the mindof its possessor

Eternal truth should not be slightedbecause it chances to be found incompany

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either with profound scientific ignoranceor with some out-of-date system ofscientific knowledge (B 405).

with obsolete ideas regarding the materialworld.

II, VII: THE FOUNDATIONS OFFAITH (Baillie 340)

VIII. FAITH NOT A PROBABLE HYPOTHESISTO BE AFTERWARDS VERIFIED, BUT ANEVER-DEEPENING PERSONAL TRUST (Baillie373)

[Compare B 373-75.] The more of science you know, the lesssure you can be; the more of religion youhave, the more certain you are.

Here then we come upon the crux ofthe whole matter: the certitude of sciencediffers from the certitude of religion inthat the former proceeds primarily fromthe intellect

102:1.4 The certainties of scienceproceed entirely from the intellect;

but the latter from the personality as awhole (B 376).

the certitudes of religion spring from thevery foundations of the entire personality.

What Jesus meant by faith in God was thewillingness to cast oneself without fearupon His love. When He required suchfaith of His followers, His appeal wasnever merely to their perspicacity or totheir power of understanding,

Science appeals to the understanding ofthe mind;

but rather to their loyalty (B 377). rel igion appeals to the loyalty anddevotion of the body, mind, and spirit,even to the whole personality.

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102:1.5 God is so all real and absolutethat no material sign of proof or nodemonstration of

It is true that the apologists of theseventeenth and eighteenth centuries werein the habit of endeavouring to clinchmatters in favour of Christianity byappealing to the ‘miracles’ embedded inits sacred writ; but nowadays the presenceof the incidents in the records is morecommonly felt as an obstacle than as anaid to nascent belief ... (B 379).

so-called miracle

may be offered in testimony of his reality.

And indeed to faith’s own eye thisvery fact [i.e., that faith is never super-seded in our earthly life], far fromremaining a ground of bitterness or ofdespair, comes sooner or later to appearas a characteristic and very graciousfactor of the divine discipline. Is it not agood and salutary thing that there shouldthus be room in our lives for loyal trust?(B 379-80)

Always will we know him because wetrust him,

and our belief in him is wholly based onour personal participation in the divinemanifestations of his infinite reality.

II, VIII: THE CONCEPTION OF GOD(Baillie 381)

III. THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF MAINTAINING ARELIGIOUS OUTLOOK ON THE WORLDWITHOUT BELIEVING IT TO BE UNDERSPIRITUAL CONTROL (Baillie 389)

102:1.6 The indwelling ThoughtAdjuster unfailingly arouses in man’ssoul a true and searching hunger forperfection together with a far-reachingcuriosity which can be adequatelysatisfied only by communion with God,the divine source of that Adjuster.

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We may therefore make bold to statethe case in the broadest possible way andsay that the most vital needs of religioncannot conceivably be satisfied byanything less than the Living God.

The hungry soul of man refuses to besatisfied with anything less than thepersonal realization of the living God.

It is only with Spirit that our spirits canbe one, or that we can have any measureof spiritual communion.

Whatever more God may be than a moralpersonality,

Whatever more God may be than a highand perfect moral personality,

He cannot, if our finite personalities arenot to be spiritually homeless, be any less(B 391).

he cannot, in our hungry and finiteconcept, be anything less.

2. RELIGION AND REALITY

PART I: RELIGION AS SEEN IN ITSEFFECTS (Hocking 1)

III: THE TRAITS OF RELIGION INPERSONS (Hocking 27)

[contd] We know religion when wemeet it in persons.

102:2.1 Observing minds anddiscriminating souls know religion whenthey find it in the lives of their fellows.

We are in no need of definition to guideour eyes, or to help in identifying it.

Religion requires no definition;

We are perpetually seeing its fruits, ormissing them, in our neighbors (H 27).

we all know its social, intellectual, moral,and spiritual fruits.

Indeed, we are instinctive connoisseurson this subject, every son of Adam,—because religion is a human property, nota property of culture (H 27).

And this all grows out of the fact thatreligion is the property of the human race;it is not a child of culture.

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Our perception of religion, True, one’s perception of religion

is still human and therefore subject to thebondage of ignorance, the slavery ofsuperstition,

like any other instinctive perception, candoubtless be sophisticated and work false.It holds its truth with difficulty in thepresence of prejudice, theological inter-est, and passion (H 28).

the deceptions of sophistication, and thedelusions of false philosophy.

That which chiefly marks thereligious soul is

102:2.2 One of the characteristicpeculiarities of genuine religious assur-ance is that,

notwithstanding the absoluteness of itsaffirmations and the stanchness of itsattitude,

a fearless and original valuation ofthings....

But this originality and this freedomare strangely united with an oppositequality, necessity. The certitude of thereligious spirit is so poised by an inwardbond that it conveys no impression ofpersonal self-assertion.

the spirit of its expression is so poisedand tempered that it never conveys theslightest impression of self-assertion oregoistic exaltation.

Its wisdom does not emanate from itselfalone, is in some paradoxical fashion

The wisdom of religious experience issomething of a paradox

both original and derivative: in that it is both humanly original andAdjuster derivative.

it has the air of being less a product ofindividual force

Religious force is not the product of theindividual’s personal prerogatives

than a result of profound partnership withsome invisible source of wisdom (H 29).

but rather the outworking of that sublimepartnership of man and the everlastingsource of all wisdom.

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The words and actions of the religiousman become authoritative for the worldof men. In becoming free, he has alsobecome obedient to some necessity; andin becoming obedient he has becomeuniversal (H 30).

Thus do the words and acts of true andundefiled religion become compellinglyauthoritative for all enlightened mortals.

102:2.3 It is difficult to identify andanalyze the factors of a religious exper-ience, but it is not difficult to observe thatsuch religious practitioners live and carryon as if already in the presence of theEternal.

[contd] Surely the religious spirit isliving as if immortality were its share.

Believers react to this temporal life as ifimmortality already were within theirgrasp.

What its source of judgment and powermay be we have yet to discover, but in itsvalid originality,

In the lives of such mortals there is avalid originality

and a spontaneity of expression thatforever segregate them from those of theirfellows who have imbibed only thewisdom of the world.

and in its emancipation from the stressand haste of the temporal current,

Religionists seem to live in effectiveemancipation from harrying haste and thepainful stress of the vicissitudes inherentin the temporal currents of time;

we may see a present possession of that towhich the secular spirit presses forward(H 30).

they exhibit a stabilization of personalityand a tranquillity of character notexplained by the laws of physiology,psychology, and sociology.

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Here lies the essential distinctionbetween religion and the Arts on theground of personal experience. Art islong; religion is immediate. Theattainment in every Art is future,infinitely distant;

102:2.4 Time is an invariable elementin the attainment of knowledge;

the attainment of religion is present. r e l i g i o n m a k e s i t s e n d o w me n t simmediately available,

[But grow in grace, and in the knowledge ofour Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ (2 Pet. 3:18).]

albeit there is the important factor ofgrowth in grace, definite advancement inall phases of religious experience.

Religion indeed involves a presentpossession in some sort of the veryobjects which the Arts infinitely seek.Knowledge, for example, is an infinitequest in the order of nature,—

Knowledge is an eternal quest;

always are you learning, but never areyou able to arrive at the full knowledge ofabsolute truth.

and in it there is no absolute certainty butonly a growing probability and approx-imation:

In knowledge alone there can never beabsolute certainty, only increasingprobability of approximation;

but the religious soul but the religious soul of spiritualillumination knows,

knows now— and knows now.

and that without losing interest in And yet this profound and positivecertitude does not lead such a sound-minded religionist to take any less interestin

the ups and downs of the progress ofhuman wisdom, which is bound up on itsmaterial end with

the slow movement of science (H 31). the developments of slow-movingscience.

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PART II: RELIGIOUS FEELING ANDRELIGIOUS THEORY (Hocking 35)

IV: THE RETIREMENT OF THEINTELLECT (Hocking 37)

Unless a fact is caught in the circuit of aself; unless somewhere it reports to thesensitive, irritable, responsive thing wecall a mind, it is nothing (H 43). 102:2.5 Even the discoveries of science

are not truly real in the consciousness ofhuman experience until they areunraveled and correlated, until theirrelevant facts actually become meaningthrough encircuitment in the thoughtstreams of mind.

The result of this conviction is thatwe incline to unravel every science fromits inner end,

Mortal man views even his physicalenvironment from the mind level,

from its psychological insertion (H 43). from the perspective of its psychologicalregistry.

It is not, therefore, strange that manshould place a highly unified inter-pretation upon the universe and then seekto identify this energy unity of his sciencewith the spirit unity of his religiousexperience. Mind is unity; mortal con-sciousness lives on the mind level andperceives the universal realities throughthe eyes of the mind endowment.

The mind perspective will not yield theexistential unity of the source of reality,the First Source and Center, but it can andsometime will portray to man theexperiential synthesis of energy, mind,and spirit in and as the Supreme Being.

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But mind can never succeed in thisunification of the diversity of realityunless such mind is firmly aware ofmaterial things, intellectual meanings,and spiritual values; only in the harmonyof the triunity of functional reality is thereunity, and only in unity is there thepersonality satisfaction of the realizationof cosmic constancy and consistency.

102:2.6 Unity is best found in humanexperience through philosophy. Andwhile the body of philosophic thoughtmust ever be founded on material facts,the soul and energy of true philosophicdynamics is mortal spiritual insight.

Men have always been more or less clearthat the essence of religion cannot be farfrom the brewing-place of action, and thatthe most sensitive test of genuine religionis in its ethical consequences. Prophetshave always been obliged to recall idlemankind—keen to evade a hard require-ment—from the extraneous to the centralelements in their religion.

102:2.7 Evolutionary man does notnaturally relish hard work.

To keep pace in his life experience withthe impelling demands and the compel-ling urges of a growing religious exper-ience means incessant activity in spiritualgrowth, intellectual expansion, factualenlargement, and social service. There isno real religion apart from a highly activepersonality.

Therefore do the more indolent of menoften seek to escape the rigors of trulyreligious activities by a species ofingenious self-deception through resort-ing to a retreat to the false shelter ofstereotyped religious doctrines anddogmas. But true religion is alive.Intellectual crystallization of religiousconcepts is the equivalent of spiritualdeath.

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You cannot conceive of religion withoutideas,

Of such extraneous elements, rite andceremony were prominent in the earlierages of prophetic rebuke; but in theselatter days it is the seduction of thereligious idea, with the same illusorypromise of security formerly offered bythe rite, that is the chief antithesis togenuine religion (H 51).

but when religion once becomes reducedonly to an idea,

it is no longer religion; it has becomemerely a species of human philosophy.

102:2.8 Again, there are other types ofunstable and poorly disciplined souls whowould use the sentimental ideas ofreligion as an avenue of escape from theirritating demands of living. When certainvacillating and timid mortals attempt toescape from the incessant pressure ofevolutionary life, religion, as they con-ceive it, seems to present the nearestrefuge, the best avenue of escape. But it isthe mission of religion to prepare man

[It is entirely possible that the comforts ofreligion can be enjoyed while the religious believeris bravely facing up to the reality situations of life.Genuine religion is far from being a mechanism forescaping reality (William S. Sadler, M.D., Theoryand Practice of Psychiatry [1936], p. 1087).]

for bravely, even heroically, facing thevicissitudes of life.

Religion is evolutionary man’s supremeendowment, the one thing which enableshim to carry on and

[By faith he forsook Egypt, not fearing thewrath of the king: for he endured, as seeing himwho is invisible (Heb. 11:27).]

“endure as seeing Him who is invisible.”

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Mysticism, however, is often somethingof a retreat from life which is embracedby those humans who do not relish themore robust activities of living a religiouslife in the open arenas of human societyand commerce. True religion must act.Conduct will be the result of religionwhen man actually has it, or rather whenreligion is permitted truly to possess theman.

V: RELIGION’S DILEMMA INRESPECT TO THEORY (Hocking 56)

If only as students of history we mustcome to terms with this conspicuous fact:that religion has never as yet been able totake itself as a matter of feeling (H 56-57).

Never will religion be content with merethinking or unacting feeling.

102:2.9 We are not blind to the fact that

[Theology may sometimes stupefy, but the truefaith of the heart acts—even though it sometimesacts unwisely (William S. Sadler, M.D., Theoryand Practice of Psychiatry [1936], p. 1088).]

religion often acts unwisely, evenirreligiously, but it acts.

Unless the idea in religion has somenecessary and central function, we arewholly without explanation for this lavishand persistent yield of “revealed truth.”And still more perverse and inexplicablemust seem the universal insistence onthese intellectual by-products; thepersecution and slaughter uttered inmaintaining them. Slaughter andintolerance are aberrations, sometimes;but they are aberrations founded at leaston convictions. They may belong to theDark Ages, but they do not belong to theDead Ages, of religion (H 58-59).

Aberrations of religious conviction haveled to bloody persecutions,

but always and ever religion doessomething;

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[Religion is not always a sedative; the higher typesof religious belief are truly creative and dynamic(William S. Sadler, M.D., Theory and Practice ofPsychiatry [1936], p. 1088).]

it is dynamic!

3. KNOWLEDGE, WISDOM,AND INSIGHT

Deficit of mind must always, I venture tothink, be a weakness in religion,

102:3.1 Intellectual deficiency oreducational poverty unavoidably handi-caps higher religious attainment

because such an impoverished environ-ment of the spiritual nature

and must rob that religion at last of allmordant power.

robs religion of its chief channel ofphilosophic contact with the world ofscientific knowledge.

A great religion will produce, anddemand of its adherents that theyreproduce, some great idea or system ofideas. Such, I say, is the evident purportof history (H 59).

[contd] The intellectual elements ofreligion must be vital;

The intellectual factors of religion areimportant,

yet the embarrassments which religionsuffers on account of them have hardlybeen overstated (H 59).

but their overdevelopment is likewisesometimes very handicapping andembarrassing.

Religion seems to labor under a doublenecessity:

Religion must continually labor under aparadoxical necessity:

the necessity of making much use ofthought,

the necessity of making effective use ofthought

and the necessity of discounting allthought.

while at the same time discounting thespiritual serviceableness of all thinking.

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Kant’s theory regarding our knowledge ofGod, immortality, and other religiousobjects, does fairly describe our apparentsituation (H 60).

Religious speculation is inevitable; 10 2 :3 . 2 Religious speculat ion isinevitable but always detrimental;

yet it always falsifies the religious object, speculation invariably falsifies its object.

turns it into something humanistic andmaterial,

Speculation tends to translate religioninto something material or humanistic,

something which interferes with the clearsweep of scientific thought

and thus, while directly interfering withthe clarity of logical thought,

and at the same time brings the religiousobject into the world

it indirectly causes religion to appear as afunction of the temporal world,

with which it should stand in contrast. the very world with which it shouldeverlastingly stand in contrast.

We are thus caught in what Kant calls the“dialectical illusion”; and religion isunable to evade either of the twoopposing requirements (H 60).

The mystics, for their part, are equallyunable to ignore the necessity for usingideas, even while the ideas are defective:but as an upright and downright lot, theyare unable to reckon [unlike themediaeval scholastics] with shades in thestatus of truth. They therefore take refugein paradox, which is but another way ofconfessing the same dilemma (H 61).2

Therefore will religion always becharacterized by paradoxes,

the paradoxes resulting from the absenceof the experiential connection betweenthe material and the spiritual levels of theuniverse—morontia mota, the super-philosophic sensitivity for truth discern-ment and unity perception.

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VI: THE DESTINY OF FEELING(Hocking 64)

We have already noticed how closelyfeeling is connected with action (H 65). 102:3.3 Material feelings, human

emotions, lead directly to materialactions, selfish acts.

Religious insights, spiritual motivations,lead directly to religious actions,unselfish acts of social service andaltruistic benevolence.

[A]ll feelings, I venture to say, are formsof desire—not forgetting those feelingswhich seem to terminate desire, as joy,triumph, and relief—and all have at theircenter a string of restlessness (H 65).

102:3.4 Religious desire

is the hunger quest for divine reality.

And if the attainment which religionoffers is indeed a satisfaction of alldesire, and not of some fragment of ournature, it must intend a living escape fromthis perpetual circle: we should expect tofind in religion the destruction of allfeeling as such.

What is that other-than-feeling inwhich feeling may end? I answer,consciousness of an object (H 65-66).

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 ofthat being such an indescribable

As to the feeling of triumph—triumph,“unable to contain itself,” has certainlymuch to do.... The restlessness of triumph restlessness of triumph in discovery

will usher the subject along toward hisfriends or his populace,

that he is impelled to seek loving service-contact with his less illuminated fellows,

not to disclose that he has found God,

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until in physical contact with theirresponses (a flood height within balancedby an answering flood height without),the internal tumult is appeased andfeeling disappears—into what? Into clear,animated cognizance: cognizancegenially distributed over the new situationcreated by the event of triumph, and thecommon knowledge of it (H 67).

but rather to allow the overflow of thewelling-up of eternal goodness within hisown soul to refresh and ennoble hisfellows.

Real religion leads to increased socialservice.

And thus knowledge, which of oldhas had the dreary character of feeling-quencher, must also be accepted asfeeling-goal, the natural absorbent anddestiny of feeling.... And such knowledge, 102:3.5 Science, knowledge,

so far from being less a ‘value-consciousness’ than the feeling which hasled up to it, is but the more excellent con-dition of that very value-consciousnessembodied in the feeling. Such feeling sofar from being less a “fact-consciousness”is, in its guiding idea, throughout aprophecy of the fact; as if the object itselfwere pressing to be known in presence (H68).

leads to fact consciousness;

religion, experience, leads to valueconsciousness;

[Compare: Science represents what we know,religion what we feel, but philosophy is the domainof our deliberate thought and our coördinatethinking, and it represents for the time being ourcomposite decision (William S. Sadler, M.D., HowYou Can Keep Happy [1926], p. 162).]

philosophy, wisdom, leads to co-ordinateconsciousness;

revelation (the substitute for morontiamota) leads to the consciousness of truereality;

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while the co-ordination of the con-sciousness of fact, value, and true realityconstitutes awareness of personalityreality, maximum of being, together withthe belief in the possibility of the survivalof that very personality.

Knowledge of human nature tends toplace men instead of hating them orblaming them; and the traditionalimpassivity of this kind of wisdom is noabsence of feeling, but only a relativelycomplete translation of emotion into aworking creed (H 70).

102:3.6 Knowledge leads to placingmen,

to originating social strata and castes.

[See H 70.]

Religion leads to serving men, thuscreating ethics and altruism. Wisdomleads to the higher and better fellowshipof both ideas and one’s fellows.Revelation liberates men and starts themout on the eternal adventure.

102:3.7 Science sorts men; religionloves men, even as yourself; wisdom doesjustice to differing men; but revelationglorifies man and discloses his capacityfor partnership with God.

III: THE TRAITS OF RELIGION INPERSONS (Hocking 27)

[contd from 102:2.4] Human brotherhoodalso is an infinite problem—men have tobe made brothers, and the whole ofhistory is requisite to tell the tale ofachieving that end:

102:3.8 Science vainly strives to createthe brotherhood of culture;

but in religion men are already brothersand experience their brotherhood in themoment of common worship (H 31).

religion brings into being the brotherhoodof the spirit.

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Philosophy strives for the brotherhood ofwisdom; revelation portrays the eternalbrotherhood, the Paradise Corps of theFinality.

VI: THE DESTINY OF FEELING(Hocking 64)

[See 102:3.4, above.]

102:3.9 Knowledge yields pride in thefact of personality; wisdom is theconsciousness of the meaning of person-ality; religion is the experience ofcognizance of the value of personality;revelation is the assurance of personalitysurvival.

102:3.10 Science seeks to identify,analyze, and classify the segmented partsof the limitless cosmos.

Fear is a fundamental element in religiousfeeling; but what distinguishes a giventype of fear as religious? Why is it thatsuch fear appears only in the humanbeing, not in the animal? Because it isroused by a situation which it requireshuman imagination to grasp. Someconception of the Whole of things, somesuper-stition is necessary before that fearcan take hold of the mind, even though itbe excited by purely natural happenings.[Etc.] (H 72)

Religion grasps the idea-of-the-whole, theentire cosmos.

Philosophy attempts the identification ofthe material segments of science with thespiritual-insight concept of the whole.Wherein philosophy fails in this attempt,revelation succeeds, affirming that thecosmic circle is universal, eternal,absolute, and infinite. This cosmos of theInfinite I AM is therefore endless,limitless, and all-inclusive—timeless,spaceless, and unqualified. And we beartestimony that the Infinite I AM is alsothe Father of Michael of Nebadon and theGod of human salvation.

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102:3.11 Science indicates Deity as afact; philosophy presents the idea of anAbsolute; religion envisions God as aloving spiritual personality.

[Compare: XIII: THE NEED OF UNITY (H 166), XIV: THE NEED OF AN ABSOLUTE (H 183),XV: THE NEED OF A GOD (H 207).]

Revelation affirms the unity of the fact ofDeity, the idea of the Absolute, and thespiritual personality of God

and, further, presents this concept as ourFather—the universal fact of existence,the eternal idea of mind, and the infinitespirit of life.

XII: THE WILL AS A MAKER OFTRUTH (Hocking 139)

102:3.12 The pursuit of knowledgeconstitutes science; the search for wisdomis philosophy; the love for God isreligion;

“Thou wouldst not seek me hadst thou notalready found me,” said Pascal: and toSabatier this thought came “like a flash oflight . . . the solution of a problem thathad long appeared insoluble.” Thereligiousness of man’s nature is the wholesubstance of his revelation (H 147).

the hunger for truth is a revelation.

But it is the indwelling Thought Adjusterthat attaches the feeling of reality toman’s spiritual insight into the cosmos.

102:3.13 In science, the idea precedesthe expression of its realization; inreligion, the experience of realizationprecedes the expression of the idea.

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There is a vast difference between theevolutionary

There are certainly some regions ofreality which are unfinished. We areendowed with wills only because thereare such regions, to which it is our wholeoccupation to give shape and character. Insuch regions the will-to-believe isjustified, because it is no will-to-make-believe, but a veritable will to create thetruth in which we believe (H 140).

will-to-believe

and the product of enlightened reason,religious insight, and revelation—the willthat believes.

The birth of the idea of God in themind—the judgment “Reality is living,divine, a God exists”—is so subtle, likethe faintest breath of the spirit upon theface of the waters, that no look within cantell whether God is here revealing himselfto man, or man creating God (H 143-44). 102:3.14 In evolution, religion often

leads to man’s creating his concepts ofGod;

revelation exhibits the phenomenon ofGod’s evolving man himself,

while in the earth life of Christ Michaelwe behold the phenomenon of God’srevealing himself to man.

Evolution tends to make God manlike;revelation tends to make man Godlike.

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PART III: THE NEED OF GOD(Hocking 163)

XIII: THE NEED OF UNITY: MONISMAS BEARING ON OPTIMISM (Hocking166)

[See B 174-75.] 102:3.15 Science is only satisfied withfirst causes, religion with supremepersonality, and philosophy with unity.

If monism is to be of service to ourexpectations, it must affect the apparentas well as the Real; we must indeed gobeneath the surface of experience, wheregood and bad meet on equal terms, butonly for the sake of prophetic controlover that same surface in its furtherdevelopments. Monism begins to offersignificant basis for our prospects when itseizes upon the actual processes of theworld, and declares that they are all casesof One Process (H 172).

Revelation affirms that these three areone, and that all are good.

It is necessary, then, to any optimism,that there should be unity in the consciousprocesses of the world; and especially aunity of the resistances or evils, whichsuch processes have to meet. But this isnot a sufficient foundation for optimism.Optimism requires a further judgment,namely, that the Real is the good, and notthe evil: i.e., that evil is an essentiallyconquerable thing, not a reality co-ordinate with the purpose that is against it(H 174).

The eternal real is the good of theuniverse and not the time illusions ofspace evil.

In the spiritual experience of allpersonalities, always is it true that

Every one must fall back at last on vismedicatrix naturæ when working out hisdestiny, making mute appeal to theproposition that the real is the good, andthe good the real par excellence (H 177).

the real is the good and the good is thereal.

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4 . T H E F A C T O FEXPERIENCE

PART IV: HOW MEN KNOW GOD(Hocking 227)

XVII: THE KNOWLEDGE OF OTHERMINDS THAN OUR OWN (Hocking241)

102:4.1 Because of the presence in yourminds of the Thought Adjuster, it is nomore of a mystery for you to know themind of God than for you to be sure ofthe consciousness of

[contd] Our enquiry into theknowledge of God has led to this as thecentral issue: whether in the midst ofexperiences of Nature and of humanextremity, using these in some way asmediators, there can be a veritableexperience of infinite Spirit other thanmyself. We do not mitigate the difficultyof this question by pointing out that theknowledge of any other minds than ourown, even in plain human intercourse, hasits difficulties also (H 241).

knowing any other mind, human orsuperhuman.

The problem of our socialconsciousness is as old as Berkeley’sidealism ... It has become a stock spectre,especially for idealistic theories, to showthat their logic must end in solipsism.Several ways to escape the logic ofseparate personality have been devised....

All of these ways—by physicalcriterion, by response, and by acknow-ledgment—have a common presup-position.

Religion and social consciousness havethis in common:

They all suppose the mind to be furnishedin advance with an idea of an Other Mind(H 246, 250).

They are predicated on the consciousnessof other-mindness.

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The technique whereby you can acceptanother’s idea as yours is the samewhereby you may

[Let this mind be in you, which was also inChrist Jesus: (Phil. 2:5)]

“let the mind which was in Christ be alsoin you.”

XX: OUR NATURAL REALISM ANDREALISM ABSOLUTE (Hocking 282)

Let us present experience to ourselvesin simple terms, as

104:4.2 What is human experience? Itis simply

an interplay between an active Self andan active External Reality (H 285).

any interplay between an active andquestioning self and any other active andexternal reality.

The mass3 of experience is determined bydepth of concept plus totality ofrecognition of the reality of the external.

The motion of experience equals

My own independent activity in makingexperience what it is may be fairlyestimated by that force of expectantimagination with which I meet and placethe materials that sensation offers me (H285).

the force of expectant imagination

plus the keenness of the sensorydiscovery of the external qualities ofcontacted reality.

The fact of experience is found in self-consciousness plus other-existences—other-thingness, other-mindness, andother-spiritness.

XXIII: DEVELOPMENT OF THEKNOWLEDGE OF GOD (Hocking 317)

[contd] Man knows well that he is notalone: he does not so well know in whatcompanionship he is (H 317).

102:4.3 Man very early becomesconscious that he is not alone in the worldor the universe.

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[Compare: The idea of Other Mind is applied [byprimitive man] too indiscriminately, and in toopetty a fashion (H 317).]

There develops a natural spontaneousself-consciousness of other-mindness inthe environment of selfhood.

Faith translates this natural experienceinto religion, the recognition of God asthe reality—source, nature, and destiny—of other-mindness. But such a knowledgeof God is ever and always a reality ofpersonal experience. If God were not apersonality, he could not become a livingpart of the real religious experience of ahuman personality.

After all, there is no other essential errorin thinking of God than this:

102:4.4 The element of error present inhuman religious experience

that God becomes an object among otherobjects, natural or psychical.

is directly proportional to the content ofmaterialism which contaminates thespiritual concept of the Universal Father.

And this is not all error. For not only dothese over-materialized conceptions holdfast the genuine objectivity of God(which all-important character is usuallyweakened by attempts to think of God aspure spirit); but further, there isindispensable truth in the tendency toincarnate God in his works, and to thinkof him as there where his activity is, andwhere his objects are (H 321).

Man’s prespirit progression in theuniverse consists in

What a man begins with in knowingGod is truth. He adds to this, further truthand an admixture of error and earth. Theelimination of this error by furtherexperience does at the same time developthe truth still farther (H 321).

the experience of divesting himself ofthese erroneous ideas of the nature ofGod and of the reality of pure and truespirit.

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Deity is more than spirit, but the spiritualapproach is the only one possible toascending man.

PART V: WORSHIP AND THEMYSTICS (Hocking 339)

XXIV: THOUGHT AND WORSHIP(Hocking 341)

[contd] Worship, or prayer, is theespecial sphere of the will in religion (H341).

102:4.5 Prayer is indeed a part ofreligious experience,

but it has been wrongly emphasized bymodern religions, much to the neglect ofthe more essential communion ofworship.

Reflective thought, it appears, is toopurposive, active, self-distinguishing,self-preserving, and at the same time toounindividual and unfree in its result, to dojustice to the meaning of worship (H344).

The reflective powers of the mind

are deepened and broadened by worship.

[Compare 143:7.4-8.] Prayer may enrich the life, but worshipilluminates destiny.

PART VI: THE FRUITS OF RELIGION(Hocking 443)

XXXIII: THE UNIFYING OF HISTORY(Hocking 515)

102:4.6 Revealed religion is theunifying element of human existence.

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[The prophet] must find in the current ofhistory a unity corresponding to the unityof the physical universe, or else he mustcreate it. And what I want to point out isthat it is just such a conscious unificationof history that the religious will spon-taneously tends to bring about (H 517-18).

Revelation unifies history,

co-ordinates geology, astronomy, physics,chemistry, biology, sociology, andpsychology.

Spiritual experience is the real soul ofman’s cosmos.

5. THE SUPREMACY OFPURPOSIVE POTENTIAL

XXI: THE REALITY OF RELIGION(Hopkins 350)

Belief is widespread, but by establishingthe fact of belief

102:5.1 Although the establishment ofthe fact of belief

we do not establish the reality of what isbelieved, only the reality of believing (Ho350).

is not equivalent to establishing the factof that which is believed,

[Compare Ho 352-53.] nevertheless, the evolutionary progres-sion of simple life to the status ofpersonality does demonstrate the fact ofthe existence of the potential of person-ality to start with. And in the timeuniverses, potential is always supremeover the actual. In the evolving cosmosthe potential is what is to be, and what isto be is the unfolding of the purposivemandates of Deity.

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102:5.2 This same purposivesupremacy is shown in the evolution ofmind ideation when primitive animal fearis transmuted into the constantlydeepening reverence for God and intoincreasing awe of the universe. Primitiveman had more religious fear than faith,and the supremacy of spirit potentialsover mind actuals is demonstrated whenthis craven fear is translated into livingfaith in spiritual realities.

102:5.3 You can psychologizeevolutionary religion but not thepersonal-experience religion of spiritualorigin.

[See 196:3.33.] Human morality may recognize values,but only religion can conserve, exalt, andspiritualize such values.

But notwithstanding such actions,

[[Quoting Matthew Arnold:] “Religion . . . is ethicsheightened, enkindled, lit up by feeling; thepassage from morality to religion is made when tomorality is applied emotion. And the true meaningof religion is thus not simply morality but moralitytouched by emotion.” We feel at once, however,that this does not help us; for morality touched byemotion is still only morality and, if quiteuntouched by emotion, it would be as little worthyof the name of morality as of the name of religion(Baillie 316).]

religion is something more thanemotionalized morality.

Religion is to morality as love is to duty,as sonship is to servitude, as essence is tosubstance. Morality discloses an almightyController, a Deity to be served; religiondiscloses an all-loving Father, a God tobe worshiped and loved. And again this isbecause the spiritual potentiality ofreligion is dominant over the dutyactuality of the morality of evolution.

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6. THE CERTAINTY OFRELIGIOUS FAITH

I : S O M E F U N D A M E N T A LPRINCIPLES OF PSYCHOLOGY(Grensted 1)

102:6.1 The philosophic elimination ofreligious fear

To every science there come occasionalperiods of sudden and startling develop-ment ...

and the steady progress of science

And not unnaturally [the believer] istroubled, and does not readily see that allnew knowledge is of God, and shall turnto His glory. The mortality amongst falsegods shall indeed be great. But truth,being true, has nothing to hide (Gr 4-5).

add greatly to the mortality of false gods;

and even though these casualties ofman-made deities may momentarilybefog the spiritual vision, they eventuallydestroy that ignorance and superstitionwhich so long obscured the living God ofeternal love.

Definitions of religion which depend fortheir content upon feeling must inevitablyfail. And religion has notoriously proveditself astonishingly difficult to define. Forreligion is a matter between the soul orself, and God. And that which is betweenthe self and God is just life, neither morenor less.

The relation between the creature and theCreator is a living experience,

a dynamic religious faith, which is notsubject to precise definition.

To isolate part of life and to call itreligious,

To isolate part of life and call it religion

is to degrade life and to destroy religion. is to disintegrate life and to distortreligion.

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That is why the God of our worshipclaims all or nothing (Gr 19).

And this is just why the God of worshipclaims all allegiance or none.

III: FAITH AND WORSHIP (Grensted67)

Is the whole structure of religious beliefan illusion, the God of our worship ashadow of ourselves? (Gr 69)

102:6.2 The gods of primitive men mayhave been no more than shadows ofthemselves;

the living God is the divine light whoseinterruptions constitute the creationshadows of all space.

PREFACE (Lewis 11)

102:6.3 The religionist of philosophicattainment has faith in a personal God ofpersonal salvation, something more thana reality,

God is Value— a value,

a level of achievement,

God is Process— an exalted process,

God is Change— a transmutation,

God is Space-Time— the ultimate of time-space,

God is Idealized Reality— an idealization,

God is Principle of Concretion—God isIdea—

the personalization of energy, the entityof gravity,

God is a Projection— a human projection,

God is Yourself— the idealization of self,

God is Nature’s Upthrust— nature’s upthrust,

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God is Tendency to Good— the inclination to goodness,

the forward impulse of evolution, or asublime hypothesis.

contemporary discussions are full ofcharacterizations such as these; and inmany cases those who offer them seemquite convinced that religion can be“saved” only as one or other of thesesubstitutes for the God of “the GreatTradition” shall be accepted, and theolder view be entirely surrendered.

The writer believes that this is allwrong, and he has written this book to saywhy (L 11-12).

The religionist has faith in a God of love.Love is the essence of religion and thewellspring of superior civilization.

I: THE RIGHT TO BE CERTAIN (Lewis17)

THE ARGUMENT (Lewis 18)

If God is only a “probability,” then wehave no right to claim absolute certaintyof any other fact. On the other hand, ifcertainty on the ground of experience is apossibility at all, there is no proper reasonfor excluding religious experience asyielding certainty.... The God who is onlya “probability” to philosophy thereforebecomes a “certainty” to religious faith. 1 0 2 : 6 . 4 F a i t h t r a n s f o r m s t h e

philosophic God of probability into thesaving God of certainty in the personalreligious experience.

Skepticism may continue to offer itsobjections—as serious as they are forreason as for faith—but though theobjections may be difficult to answer, theman who has met God in experience canalways say, “I have known” (L 18).

Skepticism may challenge the theories oftheology,

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Faith in the reliability of experienceis indispensable as a condition to arrivingat truth (L 18).

but confidence in the dependability ofpersonal experience

affirms the truth of that belief which hasgrown into faith.

[CHAPTER PROPER] (Lewis 19)

102:6.5 Convictions about God may bearrived at through wise reasoning, but theindividual becomes God-knowing only byfaith, through personal experience.

There is no intention here to deny thelarge place that probability mustnecessarily hold in human life. In much that pertains to life, probability

must be reckoned with,

All that is being claimed is that there aredegrees of probability, and that ininnumerable cases the probability isenough of a certainty that we can live byit ... without any fear that we may turn outto be mistaken (L 21).

but when contacting with cosmic reality,certainty may be experienced when suchmeanings and values are approached byliving faith.

Again and again we say, “I know.” The God-knowing soul dares to say, “Iknow,”

even when this knowledge of God isquestioned by the unbeliever who deniessuch certitude because it is not whollysupported by intellectual logic.

And if we be asked by the theorist, “Howdo you know that you know?” we arejustified in replying with someimpatience,

To every such doubter the believer onlyreplies,

“How do you know that I don’t know?”(L 22)

“How do you know that I do not know?”

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Reason can always question faith, butfaith can always supplement reason.

102:6.6 Though reason can alwaysquestion faith, faith can always supple-ment both reason and logic.

Reason can create a probability, but faithcan transform the probability into moralcertainty (L 19).

Reason creates the probability whichfaith can transform into a moral certainty,even a spiritual experience.

God is the Last Fact: God is the first truth and the last fact;

therefore does all truth take origin in him,

therefore all other facts exist relatively tohim.

while all facts exist relative to him.

God is the Ultimate Truth: God is absolute truth.

therefore all other truths derive their truthfrom him.

As truth one may know God,

To explore God is, therefore, to exploreeverything (L 23).

but to understand—to explain—God, onemust explore the fact of the universe ofuniverses.

The vast gulf between the experience ofthe truth of God and ignorance as to thefact of God can be bridged only by livingfaith. Reason alone cannot achieveharmony between infinite truth anduniversal fact.

102:6.7 Belief may not be able to resistdoubt and withstand fear, but faith isalways triumphant over doubting, forfaith is both positive and living.

The positive always has an advantageover the negative.

The positive always has the advantageover the negative,

truth over error, experience over theory,spiritual realities over the isolated factsof time and space.

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The very fact that there can be a man whodeclares himself to be “very sure of God,”and whose assurance is evidenced in hiswhole demeanor,

The convincing evidence of this spiritualcertainty consists in the social fruits ofthe spirit which such believers, faithers,yield as a result of this genuine spiritualexperience.

so that instead of prating about “buildingon a foundation of unyielding despair” hebuilds upon a foundation of buoyantconfidence—the very fact of even onesuch man ought to suffice to give pause tothe unwilling unbelievers, in spite of theirnumbers (L 27).

[By this shall all men know that ye are mydisciples, if ye have love one to another (John13:35).]

Said Jesus: “If you love your fellows as Ihave loved you, then shall all men knowthat you are my disciples.”

102:6.8 To science God is a possibility,to psychology a desirability, tophilosophy a probability,

God merely a working hypothesis? Forphilosophy—yes. For religious faith—no.God a complete certainty? Forphilosophy—no. For religious faith—yes(L 28).

to religion a certainty, an actuality ofreligious experience.

The philosophy that cannot find God Reason demands that a philosophy whichcannot find the God of probability

should treat fairly the religious faith thatcan (L 28).

should be very respectful of that religiousfaith which can and does find the God ofcertitude.

Philosophy is inclined to treat ratherlightly the religious view of things on theground of its being credulous anddogmatic.

Neither should science discount religiousexperience on grounds of credulity,

not so long as it persists in

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Religion has had its share of credulity,but it has hardly monopolized it. Themost astounding single claim the modernworld has been asked to accept is thathuman intelligence has emerged

the assumption that man’s intellectualand philosophic endowments emerged

as the final issue of a process whichbecomes less intelligent the farther backit reaches,

from increasingly lesser intelligences thefurther back they go,

until eventually it is lost in a chaos wherethere is neither life nor feeling northought.

finally taking origin in primitive lifewhich was utterly devoid of all thinkingand feeling.

This may be acceptable enough as a meredescription of the surface facts: it is as faras we have a right to expect science to go.But what shall we say of the philosophythat takes it as a sufficient account? (L 28-29)

102:6.9 The facts of evolution

must not be arrayed against the truth ofthe reality of the certainty of the spiritualexperience of the religious living of theGod-knowing mortal.

Intelligent men should cease to reasonlike children and should attempt to usethe consistent logic of adulthood, logicwhich tolerates the concept of truthalongside the observation of fact.

There are, fortunately, an increasingnumber of thinking men who are comingto realize that an interpretation is notadequate which consists simply inrefunding what is admittedly higher backinto what is admittedly lower. Thescientific materialism of a past generationwas less worthy of the mind of man thanthe crude supernaturalism against whichto some extent it was directed (L 29).

Scientific materialism has gone bankruptwhen it persists, in the face of eachrecurring universe phenomenon, inrefunding its current objections byreferring what is admittedly higher backinto that which is admittedly lower.

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What many men do not seem toappreciate is that the descriptive state-ment [of scientific materialism] simplycannot be true unless much else is true aswell. And yet they will ... stigmatize asmere credulities the other statements—especially those concerning a creative andpurposive God—which are necessary tosave their own belief from being the mostcomplete naïveté (L 29). Consistency demands the recognition of

the activities of a purposive Creator.

102:6.10 Organic evolution is a fact;purposive or progressive evolution is atruth which makes consistent theotherwise contradictory phenomena ofthe ever-ascending achievements ofevolution.

The higher any scientist progresses in hischosen science, the more will he

Popular thinking always lags behind thescientific, so that while there are manyencouraging signs that contemporaryscience is coming over to the side of theangels, or at least is beginning torecognize that there may be such a side,the popular mind is still very largelyunder the influence of the older scientificview (L 30).

abandon the theories of materialistic factin favor of the cosmic truth

of the dominance of the Supreme Mind.

It is useless to blink the fact that we livein a time when a cheap view of humanlife prevails. Not necessarily a cheapview of life as an economic or political orbiological entity, but a cheap viewconcerning its ultimate reference (L 30).

Materialism cheapens human life;

the gospel of Jesus tremendously en-hances and supernally exalts everymortal.

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Is God the proper implicate of man? Is thelife-process at one and the same timehuman upreach and divine down-reach?

Mortal existence must be visualized asconsisting in the intriguing and fascin-ating experience of the realization of thereality of the meeting of the humanupreach and the divine and savingdownreach.

Are there moments of mutual discoveryas between God and man—momentswhen God has the man and the man hasGod? These, surely, are questions of far-reaching import, and there are still thosewho are prepared to answer themaffirmatively (L 31).

7. THE CERTITUDE OF THEDIVINE

102:7.1 The Universal Father,

The reason for any “this” is in a “that,”and the “that” must always be adequate tothe “this.” The principle involves finallythe self-explanatory and hence the self-existent.

being self-existent, is also self-explanatory;

he actually lives in every rational mortal.

[See L 42.] But you cannot be sure about God unlessyou know him; sonship is the onlyexperience which makes fatherhoodcertain.

It is, of course, often urged that while theidea of necessary existence is inescap-able, the universe in its entirety is such anexistence: in its parts it is contingent, as awhole it is absolute. The reply to this canbe drawn from scientific thought itself.For are we not being told to-day that thecharacteristic of the universe is change?(L 32)

The universe is everywhere undergoingchange.

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Stated simply, a changing universe is adependent universe, and therefore cannotbe an absolute.

A changing universe is a dependentuniverse; such a creation cannot be eitherfinal or absolute.

A finite universe is wholly dependent onthe Ultimate and the Absolute. Theuniverse and God are not identical; one iscause, the other effect. The cause isabsolute, infinite, eternal, and changeless;the effect, time-space and transcendentalbut ever changing, always growing.

Yet an absolute we must have in order tobe able to give an intelligent account ofthings. That absolute is God who, himselfself-existent, self-sufficient, and, asSpinoza would say, “self-caused” (suicausa), maintains all else (L 32).

102:7.2 God is the one and onlyself-caused fact in the universe.

He is the secret of the order, plan, andpurpose of the whole creation of thingsand beings.

The everywhere-changing universe isregulated and stabilized by

There would be no eternal laws if therewere no eternal God, no unchanging lawsif there were no unchanging God, noabsolute laws if there were no absoluteGod.

absolutely unchanging laws, the habits ofan unchanging God.

The first great Fact is God: The fact of God, the divine law, ischangeless;

all else is commentary (L 33). the truth of God, his relation to theuniverse, is a relative revelation which isever adaptable to the constantly evolvinguniverse.

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102:7.3 Those who would invent

“A Religion of Humanity” is a contra-diction in terms if “humanity” is used asexcluding all reference to or belief in“Deity” (L 34).

a religion without God

are like those who would gather fruitwithout trees, have children withoutparents.

You cannot have effects without causes;only the I AM is causeless.

Religion means God: we shall speak laterof the so-called nontheistic religions (L34).

The fact of religious experience impliesGod,

and such a God of personal experiencemust be

Prayer, trust, submission, service,worship, communion—these are the veryessence of religion, and they all proceedwith reference to a Reality—shall we nowsay a Personal Reality—an “Other.” a personal Deity.

You can hardly You cannot

pray to a chemical formula, supplicate amathematical equation,

pray to a hypothesis, worship a hypothesis,

worship a postulate, confide in a postulate,

confide in a process, commune with a process,

serve an abstraction, serve an abstraction,

and hold fellowship with a law (L 34). or hold loving fellowship with a law.

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This insistence on the relation of religionto life and reality is not made because ofany supposition that men will surrenderall their idealisms if they should cease tobelieve in God. The supposition would beas untrue as unkind. Many of the normalfruits of religion may grow from otherthan religious roots.

102:7.4 True, many apparentlyreligious traits can grow out of non-religious roots.

Man can, intellectually, deny God and yetbe morally good, loyal, filial, honest, andeven idealistic.

“Grafting” is not confined to thegreenhouse and orchard.

Man may graft many purely humanisticbranches onto his basic spiritual nature

and thus apparently prove his contentionsin behalf of a godless religion,

What was originally nourished by religionmay enter into the social heritage and beaccepted by those who ignore the originor even repudiate it. Nevertheless, manyof the most precious fruits of religionmust cease to flourish when God issurrendered—

but such an experience is devoid ofsurvival values, God-knowingness andGod-ascension.

God, that is, in the sense of a Realityupon which man may lay hold and whichmay lay hold upon him (L 35).

In such a mortal experience only socialfruits are forthcoming, not spiritual. Thegraft determines the nature of the fruit,notwithstanding that the livingsustenance is drawn from the roots oforiginal divine endowment of both mindand spirit.

102:7.5 The intellectual earmark ofreligion is certainty; the philosophicalcharacteristic is consistency; the socialfruits are love and service.

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The theist knows where the questionmarks may be put just as well as theatheist or agnostic or humanist does (L31).

102:7.6 The God-knowing individual isnot one who is blind to the difficulties orunmindful of the obstacles which stand inthe way of finding God in the maze ofsuperstition, tradition, and materialistictendencies of modern times.

It may very well be that the man who hasgone the highest in these matters has alsogone the lowest (L 31).

He has encountered all these deterrentsand triumphed over them, surmountedthem by living faith, and attained thehighlands of spiritual experience in spiteof them.

But it is true that many who are inwardlysure about God fear to assert suchfeelings of certainty because of

Some of the cleverest contemporaryminds are rehabilitating “the theisticdisproofs”—if there can really be such (L37).

the multiplicity and cleverness of thosewho assemble objections and magnifydifficulties about believing in God.

It takes less brains to point out difficulties It requires no great depth of intellect topick flaws, ask questions, or raiseobjections.

than it does to deal with them, when thedifficulties concern such facts as creativepurpose, providential control, and thesupernatural generally (L 37).

But it does require brilliance of mind toanswer these questions and solve thesedifficulties;

faith certainty is the greatest techniquefor dealing with all such superficialcontentions.

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102:7.7 If science, philosophy, orsociology dares to become dogmatic incontending with the prophets of truereligion,

The man who is sure of God, and who isset in the world to help others find asimilar assurance, ... will oppose a philo-sophy that leaves no room forGod—saying quietly, but finally, evendogmatically, “It is wrong.” He willoppose a science that so far forgets itselfas to declare that man is wholly of theearth.... He will not offer this oppositionin the name of a set of dogmas, man-madeas they are, and temporal as theytherefore must be. He will offer it in thename of God ... And if it be charged thatthe claim thus to speak for God andinterpret his will is still dogmatism, let itbe so.

then should God-knowing men reply tosuch unwarranted dogmatism with thatmore farseeing dogmatism of thecertainty of personal spiritual experience,

What else than dogmatic can that man bein whose soul the voice of the Eternal—“IAm That I Am”—has been heard? (L 40-41).

“I know what I have experienced becauseI am a son of I AM.”

If the personal experience of a faither isto be challenged by dogma, then thisfaith-born son of the experiencible Fathermay reply with that unchallengeabledogma, the statement of his actualsonship with the Universal Father.

102:7.8 Only an unqualified reality, anabsolute, could dare consistently to bedogmatic. Those who assume to bedogmatic must, if consistent, sooner orlater be driven into the arms of theAbsolute of energy, the Universal oftruth, and the Infinite of love.

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[See L 19-20.] 102:7.9 If the nonreligious approachesto cosmic reality presume to challengethe certainty of faith on the grounds of itsunproved status, then the spirit exper-iencer can likewise resort to the dogmaticchallenge of the facts of science and thebeliefs of philosophy on the grounds thatthey are likewise unproved; they are likewise experiences in the consciousnessof the scientist or the philosopher.

Yes! as to God, 102:7.10 Of God,

the most inescapable of all presences, the most inescapable of all presences,

the most real of all facts, the most real of all facts,

the most living of all truths, the mostloving of all friends, and the most divineof all values,

we have the right to be certain (L 42). we have the right to be the most certain

of all universe experiences.

8. THE EVIDENCES OFRELIGION

II, IX: THE CRITERION OFRELIGIOUS TRUTH AND THENATURE OF RELIGIOUS PROGRESS(Baillie 400)

I. THE CRITERION OF TRUTH AND FALSITYIN RELIGION (Baillie 400)

102:8.1 The highest evidence of thereality and efficacy of religion consists inthe fact of human experience; namely,that

That the Spiritual Power Who controlsour destiny is such that we man,

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naturally fearful and suspicious, innatelyendowed with a strong instinct ofself-preservation and craving survivalafter death,

may safely entrust to His care the deepestinterests of our being—

is willing fully to trust the deepestinterests of his present and future to thekeeping and direction of that power andperson designated by his faith as God.

on this, as constituting the authentic coreof true religion, we may now be agreed.

That is the one central truth of allreligion.

But to every further question that can beput as to how this Power is disposedtowards us, as to what He requires of us,as to how we can best enter into relationswith Him, or as to the nature and extentof the help which He may be expected togive us,

As to what that power or person requiresof man in return for this watchcare andfinal salvation,

there seems to be an almost inexhaustiblenumber of possible replies; and there ishardly one of these replies that has not,somewhere and somewhen, been eagerlycanvassed by this or that group of ourhuman brethren (B 400).

no two religions agree; in fact, they allmore or less disagree.

102:8.2 Regarding the status of anyreligion in the evolutionary scale, it maybest be judged by its moral judgmentsand its ethical standards.

“ ... [W]e may rightly test a religion by itssuccess in encouraging, and being itselfencouraged by, moral and intellectualprogress among its votaries...” (B 402).

The higher the type of any religion, themore it encourages and is encouraged bya constantly improving social moralityand ethical culture.

We are accordingly in no way helped bythe suggestion that we should judge areligion according to the level ofcivilization with which it is associated orinto which it best fits.

We cannot judge religion by the status ofits accompanying civilization;

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For indeed by what shall we judge of anation’s culture, if not (as on thissuggestion we are, in order to avoidcircularity of reasoning, debarred fromdoing) by the purity and nobility of itsreligion? (B 404)

we had better estimate the real nature ofa civilization by the purity and nobility ofits religion.

Many of the individuals who havecontributed most notably to the world’sstore of religious insight have beenalmost unlettered (B 405).

Many of the world’s most notablereligious teachers have been virtuallyunlettered.

The wisdom of the world is not necessaryto an exercise of saving faith in eternalrealities.

There thus remains as the trueprimary cause of all the most significantvariations in religious belief the differ-ence of the values in terms of whichreality is envisaged

102:8.3 The difference in the religionsof various ages is wholly dependent onthe difference in man’s comprehension ofreality and on his differing recognition ofmoral values, ethical relationships, andspirit realities.

by different races and groups, and atdifferent periods within the same race orgroup (B 408).

II. THE NATURE AND LAWS OF RELIGIOUSPROGRESS (Baillie 409)

102:8.4 Ethics is the e[x]ternal social orracial mirror which faithfully reflects theotherwise unobservable progress ofinternal spiritual and religious develop-ments.

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A generation ago ... it was taught thatreligion began by being quite non-ethicaland gradually became more and moreethical in character until finally we reachin Christianity a completely ethicisedreligion.... As against any such view wehave already declared our conviction thatmen have always thought of God in termsof the best they knew, and that theadvance has been due primarily, not to acloser drawing together of the threadswhich connect the gods with humanvalues, but to an advance in these valuesthemselves (B 410).

Man has always thought of God in theterms of the best he knew,

his deepest ideas and highest ideals.

We must hold, with Höffding, that “everyreligious standpoint gathers up into itsconception of God the highest knownvalues.” Or we may borrow the phraseused by another distinguished con-temporary thinker to describe the Leit-motiv of his own philosophy, and say thatthe guiding-thread of historical religionhas always been “the principle ofinterpretation by the highest we know” (B410-11).

Even historic religion has always createdits God conceptions out of its highestrecognized values.

“Everyone gives the name of God tothe Best he knows.”

Every intelligent creature gives the nameof God to the best and highest thing heknows.

102:8.5 Religion, when reduced toterms of reason and intellectual ex-pression, has always dared to criticizecivilization and evolutionary progress asjudged by its own standards of ethicalculture and moral progress.

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102:8.6 While personal religionprecedes the evolution of human morals,it is regretfully recorded that

[W]e find almost everywhere in history acertain tardiness in the application ofnewly realised ethical values to religiousconceptions.... Hence if we are to say thatreligion keeps pace with the mores, wemust remember that this does not meanthat it keeps quite abreast of them; for itnearly always lags a little way behind andis, moreover, constantly showing signs oftrying to catch up (B 411).

institutional religion has invariablylagged behind the slowly changing moresof the human races.

Organized religion has proved to beconservatively tardy.

[The saint or prophet is one thing, and the scientifictheologian is another. The former breaks newground in religion, the latter sets in order groundalready broken (B 20).]

The prophets have usually led the peoplein religious development; the theologianshave usually held them back.

Religion, being a matter of inner orpersonal experience, can never developvery far in advance of the intellectualevolution of the races.

[See 102:1.5, above.] 102:8.7 But religion is never enhancedby an appeal to the so-called miraculous.

[Jesus looked upon such a course of expected

miracle working as a harking back to the

olden days of ignorant magic and the

degraded practices of the savage medicine

men (136:6.6).]

The quest for miracles is a harking backto the primitive religions of magic.

True religion has nothing to do withalleged miracles, and never does revealedreligion point to miracles as proof ofauthority.

Religion is ever and always rooted andgrounded in personal experience. Andyour highest religion, the life of Jesus,was just such a personal experience:

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1. Baillie begins: Mr. Russell’s essay [i.e., A Free Man’s Worship], though the movingly beautiful manner ofits expression has made it a minor classic by itself, agrees so exactly in its teaching with Huxley’s lecture, that itwould be superfluous to give a separate account of it here. But the quotation of a few striking sentences may serve toround off our delineation of the non-religious outlook as a whole: (B 337)

2. Hocking continues: God is real, they assert, yet he is nothing, infinite emptiness; he is at once all-being and no-being. The other world is real and objective; yet at the same time it is within myself—I myself am heaven and hell (H61).

3. The mass of idea which I call my Self, my “apperceptive mass,” carries on a spontaneous self-projection, running-ahead in anticipation of experience: and no experience can come to me which is not an answer to certain organicquestionings set out to receive events (H 285).

[The achievement of God seeking man and

finding him and the phenomenon of man

seeking God and finding him;

man, mortal man, seeking God andfinding him to the fullness during oneshort life in the flesh, while in the samehuman experience there appeared Godseeking man and finding him

and doing all of this to mutual satisfaction and

doing it during one short lifetime in the flesh

(120:2.8).]

to the full satisfaction

of the perfect soul of infinite supremacy.

And that is religion, even the highest yetrevealed in the universe of Nebadon—theearth life of Jesus of Nazareth.

102:8.8 [Presented by a Melchizedek ofNebadon.]

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Documents

Paper 102 - The Foundations of Religious Faith, Parallel Chart · 2020. 8. 10. · Revised 1 April 2015 and 10 Aug. 2020 P A P E R 1 0 2 — T HE FOUNDATIONS OF RELIGIOUS FAITH