A Path to Mystery
I'm trying again to gather together a core set of materials that I think most clearly lay out a single coherent mystical Christian theology, or at least seem to converge for me:
* Mary Baker Eddy's 'Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures', 1875-1910
* Frances Bird's 'The New Dispensation', circa 1915
* Agnes Sanford's 'The Healing Light', 1947
* Thomas Merton's 'New Seeds of Contemplation', 1949-1961
* Helen Schucman's 'A Course in Miracles', 1965-1972
* Rick Joyner's 'The Harvest', 1989
* Regina Dawn Akers' The Holy Spirit's Interpretation of the New Testament, 2006
ACIM and NTI are very closely linked, and Science & Health predates both. The Harvest and The New Dispensation, though nearly over seventy years apart, also are linked by language and metaphor. Science & Health, ACIM and The Healing Light all deal directly with healing miracles.
To which I might add:
* The writings of Julian of Norwich, late 14th century
* The writings of St Teresa of Avila, 1515-1582 and St John of the Cross, 1542-1591
* The Zodiac messages (1921-1957)
* The Stephen experience (1973-1980)
* The Medjugorje messages
* The Quaker and Anabaptist movements
* The 'Emerging Church' movement
There's a common thread here, through Christian Science, Christian Spiritualism, Roman Catholic (Trappist/Cistercian/Benedictine and Carmelite) monasticism, Latter Rain Pentecostalism, Charismatic Anglicanism, and no formal religious alignment at all (ACIM, which paradoxically is the writing which most strongly asserts itself as being the actual voice of Jesus), and it intrigues me the more because it crosses such steep denominational boundaries.
It also challenges me deeply because there's a very high standard of life, thought and conduct set which I'm not sure how to live up to.
October 2nd, 2008 - 22:40
We can’t live up to anything. We don’t know ourselves and are much weaker than we think we are. That is why Jesus had to die for us.
October 2nd, 2008 - 22:45
Too much theology, too little of Christ!
October 3rd, 2008 - 10:42
A PATH TO EGYPTIAN MYSTERY……….Why not stay on the High Way and avoid treacherous Egyptian byways?…………….”And you shall say before the Lord your God, A wandering and lost Aramean ready to perish was my father Jacob, and he went down into Egypt, and sojourned there” (Deut.26:5……this is where the Book opened this morning)
October 4th, 2008 - 08:33
If you are interested in healing, I always meant to take a look at Johann Christoph Blumhardt of Bad Boll, where I lived for a while.
October 4th, 2008 - 14:18
http://healingandrevival.com/BioJBlumhardt.htm
One of the important lessons that Blumhardt learned, was that when people confessed their sins, it was important for him to speak out forgiveness to them. He would see a weight lift off of them as he laid hands on them, and spoke forgiveness. He saw how sin would grip people when it operated in secrecy, but vanished when exposed to the light. Salvation was not something we should walk in alone, it was important that we walked in openness with others. Many times people would be healed in his meetings when they confessed and were forgiven. Everywhere people were under conviction. Disagreements were settled, stolen goods returned, alcoholics released, and even the smallest shortages made up.
Interesting guy. Seems to me to be very much part of the same pattern, particularly the mid-19th century wave of ‘awakenings’ and revivals which for me includes the Holiness movement (which led to Pentecost), Christian Science and Christian Spiritualism.
In A Course In Miracles and The Healing Light, healing, forgiveness and repentance are all seen as part of the same thing: we release the past or our false ideas about God, and in so doing release both our debts and our debtors.
The healing that accompanies such forgiveness is more of a byproduct than the miracle itself, which explains why people who are familiar with this (such as Blumhardt) don’t put the emphasis on the healing but on Christ.
He seems to have a connection with the Bruderhof communities which is also intriguing, as they are one of the historic Peace Churches (practicing nonviolence).
I can draw a line between nonviolence, healing, forgiveness, mediumistic and visionary phenomena (of the voluntary and non-scary kind), and social change (concern for the poor and restructuring of economic systems) as part of what seem to me to be the works of Christ.
October 4th, 2008 - 14:37
That same site (www.healingandrevival.com) has a good timeline of healing movements in the Pentecostal/Charismatic lineage here: http://healingandrevival.com/Timeline.htm
But as is usual for the Pentecostal/Charismatic community, it’s completely unaware of parallel developments such as Christian Science and Christian Spiritualism, which when you stand back and look from a century on, stand out very strongly as part of the same move of the Spirit. And apart from Agnes Sanford, not much in the way of pre-Charismatic healing movements in the Anglican, Catholic and Orthodox world.
October 4th, 2008 - 14:59
A cool Blumhardt quote from The Awakening
“Is it really true that we have God’s spirit? The Holy Spirit is supposed to be one, yet how many thousands of spirits, all priding themselves on being the spirit of truth, rule in ChrisÂtendom! Who then has the Holy Spirit? The churches? But which of the innumerable shades among them, all at loggerheads with each other? I cannot understand how one can say that the Holy Spirit is present without being able to say where it is.
Much is known about the spirit of contention and wanting to be in the right – where one thinks one has the spirit of truth and others do not have it. But where is the other, the Comforter, the personal representative of God and Christ, who is to remain with those who have Christ…When I look at what we have, I cannot help sighing, “O Lord Jesus, is that the promised spirit for which you hung on a tree?â€? Where is the spirit that penetrates nation after nation as swiftly as at the time of the apostles and places them at Jesus’ feet? And when we open our mouth to proclaim the gospel, where is the spirit that shakes people so deeply that they cry out, “What shall we do to be saved?â€?
The Holy Spirit must be tangible, even visible, as coming personally from God. It must drive out the forces of darkness from humankind, raise the disfigured human race to something better, and restrain all evil, even in the most corrupt people. That is how the Holy Spirit once showed
itself, even if it does not seem to show itself now. If people want to close their eyes and think that the Holy Spirit is here, we have to let them talk. But they should kindly allow me to think differently.
October 4th, 2008 - 15:05
And another one:
A time will come when everybody will realize that they do not have what they ought to have. They will feel a painful emptiness and crave for something they don’t even know. All of a sudden it will hit them: “How poor and weak we are, how miserable and depraved! How little certainty we have in what we think, believe, and hope!� Then they will look to those who appear to have what they lack.
That is how conversion begins. When the time is ripe, it will one day spread through the whole world. Then those who have what is right and true will be inundated by a flood of people yearning to have it, too. Oh, that this time might come soon!
October 4th, 2008 - 16:36
I like this one by C.F. Blumhardt (Thy Kingdom Come):…….Everyone must concede that the kingdom of God comes not through logical concepts but through surprises.
October 7th, 2008 - 12:22
“The ‘spirit’ that channelled through Mrs. Schucman wrote that Jesus Christ did not die on the cross for our sins”……(Helen Schucman-Background-4th paragraph) ……Like Anthroposophy, ACIM denies the Blood Atonement. Without it there is no salvation.
October 7th, 2008 - 21:22
I don’t actually agree that that statement made in that Wikipedia article (which does not provide a footnote) is an accurate portrayal of the theology of A Course In Miracles.
As I understand it, it says that sin is both something which does not *exist*, because it is not created by God, and that sin does not separate *God* from us (though it can separate *us* from God). Both of which I believe are perfectly orthodox Christian doctrines.
October 7th, 2008 - 22:04
If sin does not “exist”, what is there to worry about? Then we do not need a Saviour.
October 10th, 2008 - 11:29
“If sin does not “existâ€?, what is there to worry about? Then we do not need a Saviour.”
No, we still need a Saviour, and all that goes along with that; though I believe that Jesus is more than just a saviour, because ‘save’ is a negative word (in the sense that it means to reverse a temporary condition of danger); Jesus’ role is not defined by sin. Sin, being something that is not created by God, will pass away. Jesus saves because sin is presently there and that’s what’s needed, but that’s not the main point of who he *is*.
(In the same way that a doctor is not defined by disease, and a disaster-relief worker is not defined by disaster. When the disease is cured and the disaster is past, the doctor and relief worker will go on to other, more rewarding, careers. The healthy doctor does not feed off sickness or create it and is not addicted to fighting it.)
Sin is very dangerous precisely *because* it doesn’t exist. Not existing means to be separate from God, because God is the source of all life and truth and existence. Something that ‘doesn’t exist’ means something that fundamentally *ought* not to exist, something twisted and wrong, that *cannot* eternally exist. Becoming attached to / believing in / causing something that doesn’t exist causes us to not exist also. Hence why sin means death.
But sin only ‘exists’ in us, not in God; it doesn’t even exist in *God’s view of us*. He sees who we really are – his children – even though we don’t. So sin and the form of existence where sin is even imaginable is like a terrible dream that has to run its course. It exists in a temporary, limited, sense, but not in any ultimately real one; it will destroy itself soon. I don’t think we can stop this happening, but I think we can possibly delay our salvation by making wrong choices; but even those will be cancelled out and forgiven eventually, because who can stand against God forever? Are we so powerful as to eternally deny God the satisfaction of seeing us saved?
In the real world – God’s view of things, which is the only correct view that ‘actually exists’ – we are all joined with Christ, because that’s what Christ’s role is to be (and Jesus is the expression of Christ as a human). Living the Christian life is about discovering what this means and making it real ‘for us’ in our life.
(At least that’s how I currently understand things.)
October 10th, 2008 - 13:29
O.K. I qualify: If there is no sin, then Jesus’ suffering and death was unnecessary. He Himself knew it was necessary, because otherwise He would not have voluntarily laid down His life.
October 11th, 2008 - 15:38
ACIM-”The actual voice of Jesus”?????He sounds very confused. Must be NY-city.
October 13th, 2008 - 18:12
“O.K. I qualify: If there is no sin, then Jesus’ suffering and death was unnecessary.”
Or another way of looking at it is that ‘if sin is not permanent, then Jesus’ death was also not permanent.’
October 13th, 2008 - 18:49
It has permanent effects though, does it not?
October 14th, 2008 - 11:09
I think the *life* of Jesus has permanent effects, yes, and everything he did and continues to do. The way he shared and endured and conquered the human experience of death was I think the most significant event in his life after his birth. It was a revelation to us of who he is and a promise that he will never leave us and that nothing that happens to us in this world can change the relationship between us and his Father.
But I think that we should be more interested in his life than his death. Otherwise we risk becoming death-focused and morbid and hardened to the suffering of others because ‘it’s good for them’ — and I don’t think that’s what Jesus taught or how he lived.
October 14th, 2008 - 11:35
Sorry, I did not say things clearly: Where I said:”It has permanent effects though, the “It” is supposed to refer to sin.
October 16th, 2008 - 12:24
In that case, I would be even more definite: I think in the Christian view, sin is the *one* thing in the whole universe which does NOT have permanent effects.
If sin were permanent (real), it would be both impossible and immoral for anyone, God included, to ever forgive it.
I think the fact that God forgives ALL sin was demonstrated by Jesus’ death and resurrection, not caused by it. God was not one person before the crucifixion and another after it. Neither is God’s attitude toward us one of hatred before we acknowledge Jesus and love afterwards. God’s love for us never changes; he always accepts us; he always hates our sin; he never sees our sin as part of us.
I believe the Christian understanding of sin and forgiveness is that God does not acknowledge sin’s existence at all, either to tolerate it in our lives or to remember and hold it against us. It exists for us only as long as we ourselves allow it to exist, and any punishment or separation from God it causes is caused by the sin itself not by God.
I believe Jesus lived that understanding of God perfectly, and was the first person in human history to do so, but that he then calls us to join him in his life – in some extremely literal sense of joining that we still don’t really understand.
October 16th, 2008 - 13:31
The fact that certain sins of mine are forgiven does not eraze the effects they had on other people’s lives. ..Exactly because it would be immoral for God to forgive these sins, the atonement He supplied was necessary.
October 16th, 2008 - 15:50
Jesus’ death was not permanent, but the atonement is. Strangely enough even at the very end of the Book of Revelation sin still seems to exist: Rev.:21:27
October 16th, 2008 - 16:08
Re: COHERENT CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY………There are lots of things that call themselves Christian, which are far from it. How can you possibly reach a coherent Christian theology, if you mix Christian with Non-Christian material???………and even if you had Christian material only, you can’t figure God out. Job could not. Paul tells us in Romans 9 that we can’t………But we’ve been there before, see: Ps.:131
October 17th, 2008 - 15:06
“The fact that certain sins of mine are forgiven does not eraze the effects they had on other people’s lives.”
Healing, however, *does* literally erase the effects of the past – because healing, repentance and forgiveness *are the same thing*.
What do you think the line from Revelation “he shall wipe away all tears from their eyes” means?
To me, it means that *all of the effects of sin* will be erased. Nothing caused by it will remain. Otherwise, heaven would not be heaven.
October 17th, 2008 - 15:12
“How can you possibly reach a coherent Christian theology, if you mix Christian with Non-Christian material???”
I couldn’t, if I were – but I don’t believe I am. As I’ve said many times before and stand by, I believe that A Course In Miracles *is* an accurate and orthodox and faithful rendition of Christian theology, because it agrees with what many other Christian sources teach (who come from completely different Church traditions so have no reason to lie).
That Jesus decided to give it to someone who didn’t think they were a Christian at the time has absolutely no bearing on *what the message says*. Nobody is a Christian before they encounter Christ – how could they be?
As Jesus said in the parable of the vineyard, the important thing is not whether we *say* we are obeying him, but whether we *are*. Someone who says “I am not a Christian” yet does what Christ says – are they a disciple of Christ? I believe Jesus would say yes, because to be a disciple means to follow someone’s teachings, not just to take their name.
“and even if you had Christian material only, you can’t figure God out.”
Do you believe that God is self-contradictory and illogical and that one can’t use reason with the word of God?
Wouldn’t that be the same as believing that God is a liar?
October 17th, 2008 - 15:35
“We know in part” right? We don’t have the whole story. If someone does not tell you everything there is to know about themselves, that does not make them a liar.
October 17th, 2008 - 15:48
“Wipe away all tears from their eyes”. Whose eyes? The eyes of the Redeemed, if it is read in context. So not everybody’s eyes. The people I have sinned against might be redeemed or not. It could even be that they aren’t because of my sin against them. So even though I might have my tears wiped away, they might not.
October 17th, 2008 - 15:57
Have you had a closer look at Helen Schucman? And Thetford, who did a transscription. He seems to have had Chr. Science influence in his background. Is there an original, directly coming from Mrs. Schucman? What about Mrs. Schucman makes you believe she is a disciple of Christ?
October 17th, 2008 - 16:22
” ACIM is a faithful rendition of Christian theology because it agrees with many other Christian sources”? Like which?
October 18th, 2008 - 09:40
““We know in partâ€? right? We don’t have the whole story. If someone does not tell you everything there is to know about themselves, that does not make them a liar.”
Correct. But what started this conversation was me saying I was looking for a ‘coherent theology’, by which I mean one without obvious contradictions, and you saying that that wasn’t important.
It is very important to me, because as you also observe, there are theologies preached in the name of Christ which are wrong. So I am looking for the ones which don’t contradict.
“The people I have sinned against might be redeemed or not. It could even be that they aren’t because of my sin against them. So even though I might have my tears wiped away, they might not.”
Then that’s where we disagree. I don’t believe that it’s possible for my sin against someone to cause God not to accept them. I don’t believe that’s even thinkable if we are to believe that God is good. We are all judged for our *own* actions (though I believe it’s far more subtle than what we’d humanly consider ‘judgement’).
But in the end, I believe that *everyone* will be redeemed, because God’s love is infinite and His patience outlasts our capacity to keep sinning.
“Have you had a closer look at Helen Schucman? And Thetford, who did a transscription. He seems to have had Chr. Science influence in his background.”
Again you say that like it’s a strange and bad thing. As I’ve also said, I like Christian Science very much and think it also is an important work of theology which fills in a lot of the gaps in Christian healing. Many people who have taught and experienced Christian healing in the Pentecostal and Charismatic churches say much the same things as Mary Baker Eddy did.
“Is there an original, directly coming from Mrs. Schucman? ”
There is, in fact – it is called the ACIM ‘Ur-text’ and is the first draft. I have glanced at it, but not studied it in depth.
“What about Mrs. Schucman makes you believe she is a disciple of Christ?”
Again, that question is completely irrelevant. I have seen Christ speak through many different people in history, some of whose lives I do not want to imitate.
Rick Joyner’s ‘Harvest’ is one such example: what he claimed to see in a vision and later wrote in a pamphlet and then book, is almost diametrically opposed to what he now writes. I do not share his politics, but I agree with that one specific vision, because I feel it was not Joyner but Christ speaking through him.
The question that should be asked is: What about A Course In Miracles, the text itself, makes me think that it is consistent with the spirit and nature of Christ?
October 18th, 2008 - 09:50
“â€? ACIM is a faithful rendition of Christian theology because it agrees with many other Christian sourcesâ€?? Like which?”
The ones I list above, for one.
* Thomas Merton
* Julian of Norwich
* Teresa of Avila and John of the Cross
and a lot more, but I’d include Johann and Christoph Blumhardt as well.
Look, to fully answer your question would require me to write a work of exhaustive comparative theology. I’m up for that, but it may take a couple of years — and you don’t seem to be a fan of theology to start with. But for starters:
The comparisons are stronger with the Christian *mystics* than anyone else: so look for saints and practicing faith-healers (Pentecostal / Charismatic groups) rather than academics. Also Christian missionaries, as they have experienced miracles and the supernatural. Anyone who has experienced a near-death experience or afterlife vision of Heaven; their stories tend to agree. Also look for Quakers and Anabaptists and anyone with a non-violence focus.
If you’re really interested in following this up, Thomas Merton is the most recent and most literate practicing Christian mystic that I’ve read whose theology is very similar to A Course In Miracles.
October 18th, 2008 - 12:16
I am not looking to compare one group’s theology with that of another. I am interested in seeing how they stack up against their original origin, which should be the bible, if they call themselves Christian….It is obvious that there are commonalities between them all, but these do not necessarily validate their whole teaching. What if one claims reincarnation to be true, for example, and the other does not? Which is the truth? But where it comes really down to the crunch is what is said about Christ. Who is He? Just another prophet? Did He really die? Did He really rise again. These kind of questions are where the spirits part.
October 18th, 2008 - 12:31
” I don’t believe that it is possible for my sin against someone to cause God not to accept them.”…………I did not mean it that way. What I did mean is: It could be that someone I have sinned against might have been affected in such a negative way that he will never come to God at all….. God accepts everyone, who comes to Him. But it is everyone’s free will choice to come or not to. Nobody is saved, who does not want to be saved.
October 18th, 2008 - 12:38
Regarding Christian Science: I haven’t looked at that in a long time, but there was something that bothered me and I forgot what. So I cannot really say I am against it right now. …However what I was trying to imply was that Thetford’s transcription of Schucman’s Urtext could have possibly been coloured by his Christian Science background. What I have against ACIM is pretty well, though not perfectly, expressed in the bibleprobe article I mentioned.
October 19th, 2008 - 09:35
“But in the end, I believe everyone will be redeemed”……….What is the scripture for this?
October 19th, 2008 - 09:54
It is not, that I don’t agree with most of the things you are saying, but I feel that there are a few things about which to be right is crucial.
October 19th, 2008 - 16:25
““But in the end, I believe everyone will be redeemedâ€?……….What is the scripture for this?”
How about “God is not willing for anyone to perish” and “God so loved the world”, for starters.
Here’s a quotation from Christoph Blumhardt (page 63 of Thy Kingdom Come):
Eternal damnation is not biblical; it is only a notion of the churches…What the dear Lord will finally do with the disobedient is his business. Here and now the main thing is the battle of history; we should stick with this. What have we to do with the dear Lord’s action in an entirely different age? Our concern is solely with what God wants of us in the fight that is in progress here on earth; and that, my friends, we should take seriously.
October 19th, 2008 - 16:27
“But where it comes really down to the crunch is what is said about Christ. Who is He? Just another prophet?”
A Course In Miracles says that Jesus is the One in charge of the Atonement. That’s more than ‘just another prophet’.
“Did He really die?”
ACIM agrees with this.
“Did He really rise again. ”
ACIM agrees with this also.
“These kind of questions are where the spirits part.”
Sorry, but it appears that you’re misinformed on that point.
October 19th, 2008 - 16:32
“What I did mean is: It could be that someone I have sinned against might have been affected in such a negative way that he will never come to God at all”
That’s what I thought you were saying, and that is what I disagree with. I don’t believe such a belief is either Biblical or Christian. I believe that God takes everyone’s experiences into account and does not allow one person’s sin to ’cause’ another to sin without their own free will choice.
(And I believe it’s a different thing *again* to say that just because someone sinned, that they can’t ever repent.)
October 19th, 2008 - 16:40
“What I have against ACIM is pretty well, though not perfectly, expressed in the bibleprobe article I mentioned.”
My problem with that is that from my reading of A Course In Miracles, it seems that the Bibleprobe people haven’t actually *read* it. The book they are angry about appears to be a completely different one to the one I read, because the criticisms they are making are not valid – they do not reflect the actual teachings themselves. Their criticisms are, in a word, false.
So I’m sorry, but I’m not going to take your arguments seriously either unless you *read* the book yourself. That’s a basic requirement for any kind of literary or theological criticism, right? You wouldn’t give a passing mark to a book review student who hands in something they just copied and pasted from the Web, would you? And would you judge anything else you read merely by passing judgement on the lives of the people who wrote it, without even meeting them or checking to see if the accusations made against them are true?
If you yourself have taken the time to read some of these books that I mention, and then coming from that, you have some specific criticisms of specific theological points that those books make — then I’d be interested in discussing them with you.
Am I being grumpy? Perhaps. I do get angry when I see people repeating false accusations without taking the time to check them out for themselves.
October 19th, 2008 - 19:18
There are still some misunderstandings, but maybe I should wait till you are back to your ‘real’ nongrumpy self again.
October 19th, 2008 - 19:43
In the meantime, regarding eternal damnation, Christoph Blumhardt seems to have deviated to some extent from his father’s views. His father was the one who had the healing ministry and to me he is the one I FEEL more positive about.What his father had to say on the subject I don’t know right now. … The two scriptures you mention I would say are perfect proof of eternal damnation, that is they actually imply eternal damnation. Of course God does not want it for anyone, but as said before, it is up to every single person himself……What about Rev.:20:10,14+15 and Rev.:21:8
October 19th, 2008 - 21:32
Kenneth Wapnick, founder of Foundation for a Course in Miracles, in an interview on YouTube about ACIM:……..”It’s a Christianity that has practically nothing to do with the teachings of 2000 years ago. It certainly has nothing to do with the Jesus of the Bible”……….Must be another Jesus then.
October 22nd, 2008 - 15:46
“There are still some misunderstandings, but maybe I should wait till you are back to your ‘real’ nongrumpy self again.”
It’s not a mood thing, I’m afraid. I’m not going to change my mind because this *is* the real me. I remain angry with the spreading of falsehood by people who ought to know better, though I would like to think I could separate that from my feelings toward the people who are involved.
“Kenneth Wapnick, founder of Foundation for a Course in Miracles, in an interview on YouTube about ACIM:……..â€?It’s a Christianity that has practically nothing to do with the teachings of 2000 years ago. It certainly has nothing to do with the Jesus of the Bibleâ€?”
Yes, Wapnick did say this, and unfortunately he has contributed greatly to the confusion over ACIM by doing so. In my opinion, he is quite wrong and his scholarship is in doubt. However, his personal views *about* ACIM do not necessarily reflect on the *content* of ACIM itself, which clearly states itself to be the words of *that* Jesus and not another.
There have been New Age groups associated with ACIM who have wanted to distance themselves from its Christian origins, and I believe either Wapnick was trying to play to this audience by saying ‘don’t worry, it’s not those nasty Christians’, or else he had personally been traumatised by abusive Christian groups and couldn’t cope with the idea that ACIM might legitimise them — or both. I don’t understand his reasons for misrepresenting ACIM, I just know that in my strong opinion, he is flatly wrong.
Wapnick is a character I know little about but unfortunately have little respect for, because he was responsible for the secondary editing of ACIM which mangled the first few chapters, confused the language, and removed a lot of the overt Christian references (this is why I strongly recommend the 1972 ‘Hugh Lynn Cayce’ version, also distributed as ‘Jesus’ Course In Miracles’, because it predates Wapnick’s editing).
Wapnick’s Foundation for A Course In Miracles was also responsible, as far as I can tell, for strictly policing the copyright over the material and preventing groups giving it away or making the early unedited versions available.
So for that reason, I think his writings and comments are best avoided, as though he was very close to the material, he was not involved in its direct transmission and I don’t think he understood it at all — and all of his contributions that I’m aware of appear to me to be misguided at best.
October 22nd, 2008 - 15:55
For instance, I have read his ‘Christianity and A Course In Miracles: A Dialogue’ and found it very disappointing, as both he and the Catholic priest he was conversing with seemed to make statements about Christianity which were trivially disprovable with some reference to the Christian mystics (many of them Catholics).
It seems that at least one Amazon reviewer agrees with me
I don’t know what else Wapnick teaches as I’ve felt absolutely no interest in reading him, but it seems to me that he has added to and subtracted many things from ACIM to make his version of it much less Christian than the original.
October 22nd, 2008 - 16:00
This sort of thing — the confusion and misrepresentation arising from secondary sources who set themselves up as teachers and interpreters of mystical writings — is why I strongly recommend that anyone wanting to study such things read the *originals* wherever possible.
A lot of mystical and revealed theology (including Christianity, as a religion with its whole base in revelation) deals with concepts that don’t map neatly onto all of our prejudices about how the world works, and the further we get away from the original revelation and interpose human theological filters in between, the more the message can be distorted.
(The Pentecostal world is very aware of this problem and talks a lot about ‘the spirit’ versus ‘the flesh’, or ‘spiritual’ versus ‘soulish’ doctrines.)
October 22nd, 2008 - 16:03
I actually don’t feel like I was spreading falsehood. I only said what I was convinced of. If I was wrong anywhere and you show me the opposite, I’d be more than happy.
October 22nd, 2008 - 16:10
I’m sorry to be so blunt — but yes, by copying and passing on falsehood from another source, you *are* spreading that falsehood, whether or not you yourself are convinced of its truth.
I’ve shown you via the link above that I’m not the only person who disagrees with Wapnick and who believes that yes, ACIM is compatible with orthodox Christianity. I’ve argued that Bibleprobe are also incorrect in their representation of ACIM’s doctrine.
Do you want me to write a deeper analysis of the Bibleprobe page to point out exactly where I feel they are misrepresenting the truth?
(For instance, if you agree with me that Wapnick is NOT a reliable source for describing ACIM’s theology, then you would need to discard any arguments Bibleprobe make based on referencing him alone, and not the ACIM text.)
October 22nd, 2008 - 16:27
All this aside, what would you call ACIM? Is it channelled material or not?
October 22nd, 2008 - 16:53
As far as I can see, Wapnick is not mentioned in the bibleprobe article.