Paper 101
The Real Nature of Religion 종교의 실제 본성
1. True Religion 참 종교
2. The Fact of Religion 종교의 사실
3. The Characteristics of Religion 종교의 특성
Twelve illustrations of spiritual faith 영적 신앙의 12 예시
4. The Limitations of Revelation 계시의 한계
5. Religion Expanded by Revelation 계시로 확장된 종교
6. Progressive Religious Experience 진보적 종교 체험
Seven aspects of salvation 구원의 7 양상
7. A Personal Philosophy of Religion 개인의 종교 철학
8. Faith and Belief 신앙과 믿음
9. Religion and Morality 종교와 도덕성
10. Religion as Man’s Liberator 사람의 해방자(解放者)인 종교
101:0.1 (1104.1) RELIGION, as a human experience, ranges from the primitive fear slavery of the evolving savage up to the sublime and magnificent faith liberty of those civilized mortals who are superbly conscious of sonship with the eternal God. 인간의 경험으로서 종교의 범위는 진화하는 야만인의 원시적 공포 노예에서 영원한 하느님의 아들(자녀) 됨을 당당히 의식하는 그런 문명화된 필사자들의 숭고하고 장엄한 신앙 자유까지 이릅니다.
101:0.2 (1104.2) Religion is the ancestor of the advanced ethics and morals of progressive social evolution. But religion, as such, is not merely a moral movement, albeit the outward and social manifestations of religion are mightily influenced by the ethical and moral momentum of human society. Always is religion the inspiration of man’s evolving nature, but it is not the secret of that evolution. 종교는 진보적 사회 진화의 진보한 윤리와 도덕의 조상입니다. 그러나, 인간 사회의 윤리적, 도덕적 추진력이 종교의 외적, 사회적 표현에 대단하게 영향을 미칠지라도, 보통 말하는 그런 종교는 단지 도덕적 운동이 아닙니다. 종교는 언제나 인간의 진화하는 본성에 영감을 주지만, 그것은 그런 진화의 비결은 아닙니다.
101:0.3 (1104.3) Religion, the conviction-faith of the personality, can always triumph over the superficially contradictory logic of despair born in the unbelieving material mind. There really is a true and genuine inner voice, that “true light which lights every man who comes into the world.” And this spirit leading is distinct from the ethical prompting of human conscience. The feeling of religious assurance is more than an emotional feeling. The assurance of religion transcends the reason of the mind, even the logic of philosophy. Religion is faith, trust, and assurance. 종교, 인격(고유성)의 확신-신앙은 믿으려 하지 않는 물질 마음에서 태어난, 표면적으로 모순된 절망의 논리를 언제나 이겨낼 수 있습니다. “태어나는 모든 자를 비추는 참된 빛(요1.9)”이라는 진정으로 거짓 없는 내면의 목소리가 정말로 있습니다. 그리고 이런 영(靈) 인도는 인간 양심의 윤리적 자극과 다릅니다. 종교적 확신의 느낌은 감정적 느낌 그 이상입니다. 종교적 확신은 마음의 이성(판단력), 철학의 논리조차 초월합니다. 종교는 신앙, 신뢰 및 확신입니다.
1. True Religion 참 종교
101:1.1 (1104.4) True religion is not a system of philosophic belief which can be reasoned out and substantiated by natural proofs, neither is it a fantastic and mystic experience of indescribable feelings of ecstasy which can be enjoyed only by the romantic devotees of mysticism. Religion is not the product of reason, but viewed from within, it is altogether reasonable. Religion is not derived from the logic of human philosophy, but as a mortal experience it is altogether logical. Religion is the experiencing of divinity in the consciousness of a moral being of evolutionary origin; it represents true experience with eternal realities in time, the realization of spiritual satisfactions while yet in the flesh. 참 종교는 자연적 증거로 추론되어 입증될 수 있는 철학적 믿음의 체계가 아니며, 낭만적 신비주의 애호가들만 누릴 수 있는 형언할 수 없는 황홀감의 환상적이며 신비적인 경험도 아닙니다. 종교는 이성(판단력)의 산물이 아니지만, 내면에서 볼 때, 그것은 아주 이치에 맞습니다. 종교는 인간 철학의 논리에서 파생되지 않지만, 필사자 체험으로서 그것은 아주 논리적입니다. 종교는 진화로 시작된 도덕 존재의 의식(意識)으로 신성(神性)을 체험하는 것입니다; 그것은 시간 속에서 영원한 실체에 대한 참된 체험, 육신으로 있으면서도 영적으로 만족하는 실감(實感)을 뜻합니다.
101:1.2 (1104.5) The Thought Adjuster has no special mechanism through which to gain self-expression; there is no mystic religious faculty for the reception or expression of religious emotions. These experiences are made available through the naturally ordained mechanism of mortal mind. And therein lies one explanation of the Adjuster’s difficulty in engaging in direct communication with the material mind of its constant indwelling. 생각 조율자는 자기를 표현하는 특별한 수단적 장치가 없습니다; 종교적 감정을 받아들이거나 표현하는 신비한 종교적 기능도 전혀 없습니다. 이런 체험은 자연스럽게 정해진 필사 마음의 장치를 이용할 수 있습니다. 그 점에서 조율자가 언제나 내주하는 물질 마음과 직접적인 소통이 어려운 한 가지 사실이 있습니다.
101:1.3 (1104.6) The divine spirit makes contact with mortal man, not by feelings or emotions, but in the realm of the highest and most spiritualized thinking. It is your thoughts, not your feelings, that lead you Godward. The divine nature may be perceived only with the eyes of the mind. But the mind that really discerns God, hears the indwelling Adjuster, is the pure mind. “Without holiness no man may see the Lord.” All such inner and spiritual communion is termed spiritual insight. Such religious experiences result from the impress made upon the mind of man by the combined operations of the Adjuster and the Spirit of Truth as they function amid and upon the ideas, ideals, insights, and spirit strivings of the evolving sons of God. 신적 영은 느낌이나 감정이 아니라 가장 최고로 영화(靈化)된 생각의 영역에서 필사 사람과 접촉합니다. 너희를 하느님께로 이끄는 것은 너희 느낌이 아니라 너희 생각입니다. 마음의 눈으로만 신적 본성을 감지할 수도 있습니다. 그러나 하느님을 정말로 알아차려서 내주하는 조율자의 음성을 듣는 마음은 순전한 마음입니다. “거룩함이 없이는 아무도 주를 볼 수 없습니다(히12.14).” 그런 모든 내적인 영적 친교를 영적 통찰력이라고 합니다. 그런 종교적 체험은 조율자와 진리의 영이 진화하는 하느님 아들(자녀)들의 생각, 이상(理想), 통찰력과 영적 분투 가운데 그리고 그 위에서 기능하는 그들의 연합 작용으로 인간 마음에 남긴 감명에서 생깁니다.
101:1.4 (1105.1) Religion lives and prospers, then, not by sight and feeling, but rather by faith and insight. It consists not in the discovery of new facts or in the finding of a unique experience, but rather in the discovery of new and spiritual meanings in facts already well known to mankind. The highest religious experience is not dependent on prior acts of belief, tradition, and authority; neither is religion the offspring of sublime feelings and purely mystical emotions. It is, rather, a profoundly deep and actual experience of spiritual communion with the spirit influences resident within the human mind, and as far as such an experience is definable in terms of psychology, it is simply the experience of experiencing the reality of believing in God as the reality of such a purely personal experience. 종교는 시각과 느낌이 아니라 신앙과 통찰력으로 살고 번영합니다. 그것은 새로운 사실의 발견이나 독특한 경험의 결과가 아니라, 인류에게 이미 잘 알려진 사실에서 새로운 영적 의미를 발견하는 데 있습니다. 최고의 종교적 경험은 이전(以前)의 믿음, 전통 및 권위의 행위로 결정되지 않습니다; 종교는 숭고한 느낌과 아주 신비한 감정의 결과도 아닙니다. 오히려 그것은 인간 마음의 내부에 거주하는 영 세력들과 영적으로 교제하는, 심오하게 깊은, 실제 체험이며, 그런 체험을 심리학의 관점으로 정의할 수 있는 한, 그것은 하느님을 믿는 실체를 아주 매우 개인적인 체험의 실체로 경험하는 체험일 뿐입니다.
101:1.5 (1105.2) While religion is not the product of the rationalistic speculations of a material cosmology, it is, nonetheless, the creation of a wholly rational insight which originates in man’s mind-experience. Religion is born neither of mystic meditations nor of isolated contemplations, albeit it is ever more or less mysterious and always indefinable and inexplicable in terms of purely intellectual reason and philosophic logic. The germs of true religion originate in the domain of man’s moral consciousness, and they are revealed in the growth of man’s spiritual insight, that faculty of human personality which accrues as a consequence of the presence of the God-revealing Thought Adjuster in the God-hungry mortal mind. 종교는 물질적 우주론을 합리적으로 추측한 산물이 아니며, 그렇지만, 그것은 사람의 마음-경험에서 비롯된 전적으로 이성적인 통찰의 창조물입니다. 종교는 신비적 명상이나 고립된 관상(觀想)에서 태어나지 않으며, 그렇지만, 그것은 아주 지적인 이성과 철학적 논리의 관점으로 언제나 거의 신비하며, 항상 뭐라고 말할 수 없고 설명할 수도 없습니다. 참 종교의 초기 단계들은 사람의 도덕적 의식의 영역에서 비롯하며, 그것들은 사람의 영적 통찰력의 성장, 즉 하느님을 계시하는 생각 조율자가 하느님을 갈망하는 필사 마음에 임재한 결과로 생기는 인간 인격(고유성)의 기능으로 드러납니다.
101:1.6 (1105.3) Faith unites moral insight with conscientious discriminations of values, and the pre-existent evolutionary sense of duty completes the ancestry of true religion. The experience of religion eventually results in the certain consciousness of God and in the undoubted assurance of the survival of the believing personality. 신앙은 도덕적 통찰력을 양심적 가치 판별력과 하나로 묶고, 기존의 진화 의무감이 참 종교의 유래를 완성합니다. 종교의 체험은 결국 확실한 하느님 의식과 믿는 인격(고유성)의 생존에 대해 의문의 여지 없는 확신으로 끝납니다.
101:1.7 (1105.4) Thus it may be seen that religious longings and spiritual urges are not of such a nature as would merely lead men to want to believe in God, but rather are they of such nature and power that men are profoundly impressed with the conviction that they ought to believe in God. The sense of evolutionary duty and the obligations consequent upon the illumination of revelation make such a profound impression upon man’s moral nature that he finally reaches that position of mind and that attitude of soul where he concludes that he has no right not to believe in God. The higher and superphilosophic wisdom of such enlightened and disciplined individuals ultimately instructs them that to doubt God or distrust his goodness would be to prove untrue to the realest and deepest thing within the human mind and soul — the divine Adjuster. 따라서 종교적 갈망과 영적 충동은 사람들이 하느님을 믿고 싶도록 이끄는 것에 불과한 그런 성격이 아니라 그것들은 사람들이 하느님을 반드시 믿어야 한다는 확신을 그들에게 깊이 새기는 그런 성격과 효력을 가지고 있다는 것이 명백합니다. 계시 조명의 결과로 일어나는 진화 의무 및 책임감이 사람의 도덕적 본성에 깊은 인상을 주어서 그는 결국 자신이 하느님을 믿지 않을 권리가 없다고 결론을 내리는 마음의 입장과 혼의 태도에 도달합니다. 그렇게 깨우쳐 훈련된 개인들의 고등 초(超) 철학 지혜는 하느님을 의심하거나 그의 선함을 믿지 않는 것이 인간의 마음과 혼 내부에 있는 가장 신뢰할 수 있고 가장 깊은 것, 신적 조율자에게 충실하지 않다고 증명하는 것이라고 그들을 궁극적으로 가르칩니다.
2. The Fact of Religion 종교의 사실
101:2.1 (1105.5) The fact of religion consists wholly in the religious experience of rational and average human beings. And this is the only sense in which religion can ever be regarded as scientific or even psychological. The proof that revelation is revelation is this same fact of human experience: the fact that revelation does synthesize the apparently divergent sciences of nature and the theology of religion into a consistent and logical universe philosophy, a co-ordinated and unbroken explanation of both science and religion, thus creating a harmony of mind and satisfaction of spirit which answers in human experience those questionings of the mortal mind which craves to know how the Infinite works out his will and plans in matter, with minds, and on spirit. 종교의 사실은 전적으로 분별 있는 평범한 사람의 종교 체험에 있습니다. 그리고 단지 이런 의미에서, 종교는 언제나 과학적 또는 심리학적으로까지 여겨질 수 있습니다. 계시가 계시라는 증명은 바로 이런 인간 체험의 사실입니다: 계시는 언뜻 보기에 서로 다른 자연의 과학과 종교의 신학을 모순 없이 논리적인 우주 철학으로, 즉 과학과 종교 둘 다 조정하고 연속적인 해석으로 통합하여, 무한자가 물질, 마음, 영으로 자기 의지와 계획을 어떻게 성취하는지 알려고 열망하는 필사 마음의 그런 질문들을 인간 체험으로 답변하는 마음의 조화와 영의 만족을 만들어 냅니다.
101:2.2 (1106.1) Reason is the method of science; faith is the method of religion; logic is the attempted technique of philosophy. Revelation compensates for the absence of the morontia viewpoint by providing a technique for achieving unity in the comprehension of the reality and relationships of matter and spirit by the mediation of mind. And true revelation never renders science unnatural, religion unreasonable, or philosophy illogical. 이성은 과학의 방식입니다; 신앙은 종교의 방식입니다; 논리는 철학을 시도하는 기법입니다. 계시는 마음의 중재로 물질과 영의 실체와 관계를 이해하도록 통일하는 기법을 제공하여 모론시아 관점의 부재를 메워줍니다. 그리고 참 계시는 결코 과학을 부자연스럽게 만들거나, 종교를 비이성적으로 만들거나, 철학을 비논리적으로 만들지 않습니다.
101:2.3 (1106.2) Reason, through the study of science, may lead back through nature to a First Cause, but it requires religious faith to transform the First Cause of science into a God of salvation; and revelation is further required for the validation of such a faith, such spiritual insight. 이성은 과학의 연구를 통해, 자연을 거쳐 첫째 원인으로 돌아갈 수도 있지만, 과학의 첫째 원인을 구원의 하느님으로 변환하려면 종교적 신앙이 필요합니다; 그리고 그런 신앙, 그런 영적 통찰력의 정당함을 인정하려면 계시가 더욱더 필요합니다.
101:2.4 (1106.3) There are two basic reasons for believing in a God who fosters human survival: 인간의 생존을 돌보는 하느님을 믿는 두 가지 기본적 이유가 있습니다.
101:2.5 (1106.4) 1. Human experience, personal assurance, the somehow registered hope and trust initiated by the indwelling Thought Adjuster. 인간의 경험, 개인적 확신, 내주하는 생각 조율자가 개시하여 어떻게든 등록된 희망과 신뢰.
101:2.6 (1106.5) 2. The revelation of truth, whether by direct personal ministry of the Spirit of Truth, by the world bestowal of divine Sons, or through the revelations of the written word. 진리의 영의 직접적인 개인적 사역에 의하든, 신적 아들들의 세상 증여에 의하든, 아니면 기록된 말씀의 계시를 통해서든 여하간 진리의 계시.
101:2.7 (1106.6) Science ends its reason-search in the hypothesis of a First Cause. Religion does not stop in its flight of faith until it is sure of a God of salvation. The discriminating study of science logically suggests the reality and existence of an Absolute. Religion believes unreservedly in the existence and reality of a God who fosters personality survival. What metaphysics fails utterly in doing, and what even philosophy fails partially in doing, revelation does; that is, affirms that this First Cause of science and religion’s God of salvation are one and the same Deity. 과학은 첫째 원인의 가설에서 그 이성적 탐구를 마칩니다. 종교는 구원의 하느님을 확신할 때까지 그 신앙의 비상(飛翔)이 멈추지 않습니다. 식별하는 과학 연구는 절대자의 실체와 존재를 논리적으로 암시합니다. 종교는 인격(고유성) 생존을 돌보는 하느님의 존재와 실체를 기탄없이 믿습니다. 형이상학이 철저히 실패한 것, 철학조차 부분적으로 실패한 것을 계시는 합니다; 즉 과학의 이 첫째 원인과 종교에서 구원의 하느님이 마찬가지 신(神)이라고 확언합니다.
101:2.8 (1106.7) Reason is the proof of science, faith the proof of religion, logic the proof of philosophy, but revelation is validated only by human experience. Science yields knowledge; religion yields happiness; philosophy yields unity; revelation confirms the experiential harmony of this triune approach to universal reality. 과학은 이성으로 증명하고 종교는 신앙으로 증명하며, 철학은 논리로 증명하지만, 계시는 인간 체험으로만 정당성을 입증합니다. 과학은 지식을 낳습니다; 종교는 행복을 낳습니다; 철학은 통일성을 낳습니다; 계시는 우주 실체에 대한 이런 삼자 일체 접근의 경험적 일치를 확증합니다.
101:2.9 (1106.8) The contemplation of nature can only reveal a God of nature, a God of motion. Nature exhibits only matter, motion, and animation — life. Matter plus energy, under certain conditions, is manifested in living forms, but while natural life is thus relatively continuous as a phenomenon, it is wholly transient as to individualities. Nature does not afford ground for logical belief in human-personality survival. The religious man who finds God in nature has already and first found this same personal God in his own soul. 자연을 숙고하면 자연의 하느님, 운동의 하느님을 드러낼 수 있을 뿐입니다. 자연은 단지 물질, 운동 및 활기 즉, 생명만 드러냅니다. 물질에 에너지를 더하면, 특정한 조건 아래에서 살아 있는 형태로 나타나지만, 자연의 생명이 현상으로서 이렇게 상대적으로 끊이지 않아도, 개체들에 관해서 그것은 완전히 일시적입니다. 자연은 인간-인격(고유성) 생존에 대한 논리적 믿음의 근거를 제공하지 않습니다. 자연에서 하느님을 찾는 종교인은 이미 그 자신의 혼 안에서 바로 이 개인적 하느님을 먼저 발견한 것입니다(시19.1).
101:2.10 (1106.9) Faith reveals God in the soul. Revelation, the substitute for morontia insight on an evolutionary world, enables man to see the same God in nature that faith exhibits in his soul. Thus does revelation successfully bridge the gulf between the material and the spiritual, even between the creature and the Creator, between man and God. 신앙은 혼에 하느님을 계시합니다. 계시, 진화 세계에서 모론시아 통찰력의 대체물은 신앙이 사람의 혼에 드러내는 같은 하느님을 사람이 자연에서 볼 수 있게 합니다. 이런 식으로 계시는 물질계와 영계 사이, 심지어 창조물과 창조주 사이, 사람과 하느님 사이의 현격한 차이에 성공적으로 다리를 놓아 길을 만듭니다.
101:2.11 (1107.1) The contemplation of nature does logically point in the direction of intelligent guidance, even living supervision, but it does not in any satisfactory manner reveal a personal God. On the other hand, nature discloses nothing which would preclude the universe from being looked upon as the handiwork of the God of religion. God cannot be found through nature alone, but man having otherwise found him, the study of nature becomes wholly consistent with a higher and more spiritual interpretation of the universe. 자연을 숙고하면 논리적으로 지능적인 안내, 심지어 살아 있는 감독의 방향을 향하게 하지만, 만족할 만하게 자신만의 하느님을 계시하지 않습니다. 반면에, 자연은 우주를 종교의 하느님 작품으로 여기지 못하게 하는 아무것도 드러내지 않습니다. 하느님은 자연만을 통해 발견될 수 없지만, 사람이 다른 방법으로 그를 발견했다면, 자연의 연구는 우주에 대해 고등한 더 영적인 해석과 완전히 일치하게 됩니다.
101:2.12 (1107.2) Revelation as an epochal phenomenon is periodic; as a personal human experience it is continuous. Divinity functions in mortal personality as the Adjuster gift of the Father, as the Spirit of Truth of the Son, and as the Holy Spirit of the Universe Spirit, while these three supermortal endowments are unified in human experiential evolution as the ministry of the Supreme. 계시는 획기적 현상으로 간헐적입니다; 개인적인 인간 체험으로 그것은 연속적입니다. 신성(神性)은 필사 인격(고유성) 안에서 아버지의 조율자 선물로, 아들의 진리 영으로, 우주 영의 성령으로 작용하지만 이런 세 가지 초(超) 필사적 자질은 인간의 경험적 진화에서 최극자의 사역으로 통합됩니다.
101:2.13 (1107.3) True religion is an insight into reality, the faith-child of the moral consciousness, and not a mere intellectual assent to any body of dogmatic doctrines. True religion consists in the experience that “the Spirit itself bears witness with our spirit that we are the children of God.” Religion consists not in theologic propositions but in spiritual insight and the sublimity of the soul’s trust. 참 종교는 실체의 통찰, 즉 신앙-자녀라는 도덕적 의식이며, 어떤 집단의 교리적 교훈에 대한 지적 동의에 불과한 것이 아닙니다. 참 종교는 “영이 친히 우리 영과 함께 우리가 하느님의 자녀임을 증언하는(롬8.16)” 체험에 있습니다. 종교는 신학적 명제가 아니라 영적 통찰력과 혼의 숭고한 신뢰에 있습니다.
101:2.14 (1107.4) Your deepest nature — the divine Adjuster — creates within you a hunger and thirst for righteousness, a certain craving for divine perfection. Religion is the faith act of the recognition of this inner urge to divine attainment; and thus is brought about that soul trust and assurance of which you become conscious as the way of salvation, the technique of the survival of personality and all those values which you have come to look upon as being true and good. 너희의 가장 깊은 본성 – 신적 조율자가 너희 내부에 올바름에 대한 갈망과 열망, 신적 완전에 대해 반드시 일어나는 갈망을 일으킵니다. 종교는 신적인 것에 도달하려는 이런 내적 충동을 알아보는 신앙 행위입니다; 이렇게 너희가 구원의 길, 인격(고유성) 및 네가 참되고 선한 것으로 여긴 그런 모든 가치의 생존 기법으로 의식하게 된 그런 혼의 신뢰와 확신이 생기게 됩니다.
101:2.15 (1107.5) The realization of religion never has been, and never will be, dependent on great learning or clever logic. It is spiritual insight, and that is just the reason why some of the world’s greatest religious teachers, even the prophets, have sometimes possessed so little of the wisdom of the world. Religious faith is available alike to the learned and the unlearned. 종교의 현실화는 결코, 절대로 위대한 학문이나 똑똑한 논리에 의존한 적도 없고, 앞으로도 없을 것입니다. 그것은 영적 통찰력이며, 그것이 바로 세상의 가장 위대한 종교 선생들, 예언자들조차 때때로 세상의 지혜가 거의 없었던 이유입니다. 종교적 신앙은 배운 자와 배우지 못한 자 모두에게 똑같이 열려 있습니다.
101:2.16 (1107.6) Religion must ever be its own critic and judge; it can never be observed, much less understood, from the outside. Your only assurance of a personal God consists in your own insight as to your belief in, and experience with, things spiritual. To all of your fellows who have had a similar experience, no argument about the personality or reality of God is necessary, while to all other men who are not thus sure of God no possible argument could ever be truly convincing. 종교는 언제나 자신의 비평가와 재판관이어야 합니다; 그것은 절대로 관찰될 수 없고, 하물며 외부에서 이해될 수 없습니다. 자신만의 하느님에 대한 너희의 유일한 확신은 영적인 것들에 대한 너희 믿음과 체험에 관한 너희 자신의 통찰력에 있습니다. 비슷한 체험을 한 너희 모든 동료에게는, 하느님의 인격(고유성)이나 실체에 대한 논쟁이 필요 없지만, 그렇게 하느님을 확신하지 않는 다른 모든 자에게는 가능한 어떤 논쟁도 진실로 설득력이 있을 수 없습니다.
101:2.17 (1107.7) Psychology may indeed attempt to study the phenomena of religious reactions to the social environment, but never can it hope to penetrate to the real and inner motives and workings of religion. Only theology, the province of faith and the technique of revelation, can afford any sort of intelligent account of the nature and content of religious experience. 심리학은 사회 환경에 대한 종교적 반응의 현상을 정말로 연구하려고 시도할 수도 있지만 종교의 실제 내적 동기와 작용을 절대로 꿰뚫어 볼 수 없습니다. 신학, 신앙의 부문과 계시의 기법만이 종교 체험의 본성과 내용에 대해 지능적으로 설명할 수 있습니다.
3. The Characteristics of Religion 종교의 특성
101:3.1 (1107.8) Religion is so vital that it persists in the absence of learning. It lives in spite of its contamination with erroneous cosmologies and false philosophies; it survives even the confusion of metaphysics. In and through all the historic vicissitudes of religion there ever persists that which is indispensable to human progress and survival: the ethical conscience and the moral consciousness. 종교는 그토록 생명 유지에 필요해서 학습이 없어도 살아남습니다. 그것은 잘못된 우주론과 거짓 철학으로 오염되어도 살아 있습니다; 그것은 심지어 형이상학의 혼란 상태에서도 살아남습니다. 종교의 모든 역사적 변천 과정에는, 인간 진보와 생존에 절대 필요한 것: 윤리적 양심과 도덕적 의식이 언제나 지속합니다.
101:3.2 (1108.1) Faith-insight, or spiritual intuition, is the endowment of the cosmic mind in association with the Thought Adjuster, which is the Father’s gift to man. Spiritual reason, soul intelligence, is the endowment of the Holy Spirit, the Creative Spirit’s gift to man. Spiritual philosophy, the wisdom of spirit realities, is the endowment of the Spirit of Truth, the combined gift of the bestowal Sons to the children of men. And the co-ordination and interassociation of these spirit endowments constitute man a spirit personality in potential destiny. 신앙-통찰력, 즉 영적 직관은 우주 마음과 생각 조율자가 협력한 자질로 사람에게 주신 아버지의 선물입니다. 영적 이성, 혼의 지능은 성령의 자질, 창조적 영이 인간에게 주신 선물입니다. 영적 철학, 영 실체들의 지혜는 진리 영의 자질로, 증여 아들들이 결합하여 사람의 자녀들에게 주신 선물입니다. 그리고 이런 영적 자질들이 조정하고 상호 연합하여 사람을 잠재적 운명의 영 인격(고유성)으로 만들어 냅니다.
101:3.3 (1108.2) It is this same spirit personality, in primitive and embryonic form, the Adjuster possession of which survives the natural death in the flesh. This composite entity of spirit origin in association with human experience is enabled, by means of the living way provided by the divine Sons, to survive (in Adjuster custody) the dissolution of the material self of mind and matter when such a transient partnership of the material and the spiritual is divorced by the cessation of vital motion.
101:3.4 (1108.3) Through religious faith the soul of man reveals itself and demonstrates the potential divinity of its emerging nature by the characteristic manner in which it induces the mortal personality to react to certain trying intellectual and testing social situations. Genuine spiritual faith (true moral consciousness) is revealed in that it:
101:3.5 (1108.4) 1. Causes ethics and morals to progress despite inherent and adverse animalistic tendencies.
101:3.6 (1108.5) 2. Produces a sublime trust in the goodness of God even in the face of bitter disappointment and crushing defeat.
101:3.7 (1108.6) 3. Generates profound courage and confidence despite natural adversity and physical calamity.
101:3.8 (1108.7) 4. Exhibits inexplicable poise and sustaining tranquillity notwithstanding baffling diseases and even acute physical suffering.
101:3.9 (1108.8) 5. Maintains a mysterious poise and composure of personality in the face of maltreatment and the rankest injustice.
101:3.10 (1108.9) 6. Maintains a divine trust in ultimate victory in spite of the cruelties of seemingly blind fate and the apparent utter indifference of natural forces to human welfare.
101:3.11 (1108.10) 7. Persists in the unswerving belief in God despite all contrary demonstrations of logic and successfully withstands all other intellectual sophistries.
101:3.12 (1108.11) 8. Continues to exhibit undaunted faith in the soul’s survival regardless of the deceptive teachings of false science and the persuasive delusions of unsound philosophy.
101:3.13 (1108.12) 9. Lives and triumphs irrespective of the crushing overload of the complex and partial civilizations of modern times.
101:3.14 (1108.13) 10. Contributes to the continued survival of altruism in spite of human selfishness, social antagonisms, industrial greeds, and political maladjustments.
101:3.15 (1108.14) 11. Steadfastly adheres to a sublime belief in universe unity and divine guidance regardless of the perplexing presence of evil and sin.
101:3.16 (1108.15) 12. Goes right on worshiping God in spite of anything and everything. Dares to declare, “Even though he slay me, yet will I serve him.”
101:3.17 (1108.16) We know, then, by three phenomena, that man has a divine spirit or spirits dwelling within him: first, by personal experience — religious faith; second, by revelation — personal and racial; and third, by the amazing exhibition of such extraordinary and unnatural reactions to his material environment as are illustrated by the foregoing recital of twelve spiritlike performances in the presence of the actual and trying situations of real human existence. And there are still others.
101:3.18 (1109.1) And it is just such a vital and vigorous performance of faith in the domain of religion that entitles mortal man to affirm the personal possession and spiritual reality of that crowning endowment of human nature, religious experience.
4. The Limitations of Revelation 계시의 한계
101:4.1 (1109.2) Because your world is generally ignorant of origins, even of physical origins, it has appeared to be wise from time to time to provide instruction in cosmology. And always has this made trouble for the future. The laws of revelation hamper us greatly by their proscription of the impartation of unearned or premature knowledge. Any cosmology presented as a part of revealed religion is destined to be outgrown in a very short time. Accordingly, future students of such a revelation are tempted to discard any element of genuine religious truth it may contain because they discover errors on the face of the associated cosmologies therein presented.
101:4.2 (1109.3) Mankind should understand that we who participate in the revelation of truth are very rigorously limited by the instructions of our superiors. We are not at liberty to anticipate the scientific discoveries of a thousand years. Revelators must act in accordance with the instructions which form a part of the revelation mandate. We see no way of overcoming this difficulty, either now or at any future time. We full well know that, while the historic facts and religious truths of this series of revelatory presentations will stand on the records of the ages to come, within a few short years many of our statements regarding the physical sciences will stand in need of revision in consequence of additional scientific developments and new discoveries. These new developments we even now foresee, but we are forbidden to include such humanly undiscovered facts in the revelatory records. Let it be made clear that revelations are not necessarily inspired. The cosmology of these revelations is not inspired. It is limited by our permission for the co-ordination and sorting of present-day knowledge. While divine or spiritual insight is a gift, human wisdom must evolve.
101:4.3 (1109.4) Truth is always a revelation: autorevelation when it emerges as a result of the work of the indwelling Adjuster; epochal revelation when it is presented by the function of some other celestial agency, group, or personality.
101:4.4 (1109.5) In the last analysis, religion is to be judged by its fruits, according to the manner and the extent to which it exhibits its own inherent and divine excellence.
101:4.5 (1109.6) Truth may be but relatively inspired, even though revelation is invariably a spiritual phenomenon. While statements with reference to cosmology are never inspired, such revelations are of immense value in that they at least transiently clarify knowledge by:
101:4.6 (1109.7) 1. The reduction of confusion by the authoritative elimination of error.
101:4.7 (1109.8) 2. The co-ordination of known or about-to-be-known facts and observations.
101:4.8 (1110.1) 3. The restoration of important bits of lost knowledge concerning epochal transactions in the distant past.
101:4.9 (1110.2) 4. The supplying of information which will fill in vital missing gaps in otherwise earned knowledge.
101:4.10 (1110.3) 5. Presenting cosmic data in such a manner as to illuminate the spiritual teachings contained in the accompanying revelation.
5. Religion Expanded by Revelation 계시로 확장된 종교
101:5.1 (1110.4) Revelation is a technique whereby ages upon ages of time are saved in the necessary work of sorting and sifting the errors of evolution from the truths of spirit acquirement.
101:5.2 (1110.5) Science deals with facts; religion is concerned only with values. Through enlightened philosophy the mind endeavors to unite the meanings of both facts and values, thereby arriving at a concept of complete reality. Remember that science is the domain of knowledge, philosophy the realm of wisdom, and religion the sphere of the faith experience. But religion, nonetheless, presents two phases of manifestation:
101:5.3 (1110.6) 1. Evolutionary religion. The experience of primitive worship, the religion which is a mind derivative.
101:5.4 (1110.7) 2. Revealed religion. The universe attitude which is a spirit derivative; the assurance of, and belief in, the conservation of eternal realities, the survival of personality, and the eventual attainment of the cosmic Deity, whose purpose has made all this possible. It is a part of the plan of the universe that, sooner or later, evolutionary religion is destined to receive the spiritual expansion of revelation.
101:5.5 (1110.8) Both science and religion start out with the assumption of certain generally accepted bases for logical deductions. So, also, must philosophy start its career upon the assumption of the reality of three things:
101:5.6 (1110.9) 1. The material body.
101:5.7 (1110.10) 2. The supermaterial phase of the human being, the soul or even the indwelling spirit.
101:5.8 (1110.11) 3. The human mind, the mechanism for intercommunication and interassociation between spirit and matter, between the material and the spiritual.
101:5.9 (1110.12) Scientists assemble facts, philosophers co-ordinate ideas, while prophets exalt ideals. Feeling and emotion are invariable concomitants of religion, but they are not religion. Religion may be the feeling of experience, but it is hardly the experience of feeling. Neither logic (rationalization) nor emotion (feeling) is essentially a part of religious experience, although both may variously be associated with the exercise of faith in the furtherance of spiritual insight into reality, all according to the status and temperamental tendency of the individual mind.
101:5.10 (1110.13) Evolutionary religion is the outworking of the endowment of the local universe mind adjutant charged with the creation and fostering of the worship trait in evolving man. Such primitive religions are directly concerned with ethics and morals, the sense of human duty. Such religions are predicated on the assurance of conscience and result in the stabilization of relatively ethical civilizations.
101:5.11 (1111.1) Personally revealed religions are sponsored by the bestowal spirits representing the three persons of the Paradise Trinity and are especially concerned with the expansion of truth. Evolutionary religion drives home to the individual the idea of personal duty; revealed religion lays increasing emphasis on loving, the golden rule.
101:5.12 (1111.2) Evolved religion rests wholly on faith. Revelation has the additional assurance of its expanded presentation of the truths of divinity and reality and the still more valuable testimony of the actual experience which accumulates in consequence of the practical working union of the faith of evolution and the truth of revelation. Such a working union of human faith and divine truth constitutes the possession of a character well on the road to the actual acquirement of a morontial personality.
101:5.13 (1111.3) Evolutionary religion provides only the assurance of faith and the confirmation of conscience; revelatory religion provides the assurance of faith plus the truth of a living experience in the realities of revelation. The third step in religion, or the third phase of the experience of religion, has to do with the morontia state, the firmer grasp of mota. Increasingly in the morontia progression the truths of revealed religion are expanded; more and more you will know the truth of supreme values, divine goodnesses, universal relationships, eternal realities, and ultimate destinies.
101:5.14 (1111.4) Increasingly throughout the morontia progression the assurance of truth replaces the assurance of faith. When you are finally mustered into the actual spirit world, then will the assurances of pure spirit insight operate in the place of faith and truth or, rather, in conjunction with, and superimposed upon, these former techniques of personality assurance.
6. Progressive Religious Experience 진보적 종교 체험
101:6.1 (1111.5) The morontia phase of revealed religion has to do with the experience of survival, and its great urge is the attainment of spirit perfection. There also is present the higher urge of worship, associated with an impelling call to increased ethical service. Morontia insight entails an ever-expanding consciousness of the Sevenfold, the Supreme, and even the Ultimate.
101:6.2 (1111.6) Throughout all religious experience, from its earliest inception on the material level up to the time of the attainment of full spirit status, the Adjuster is the secret of the personal realization of the reality of the existence of the Supreme; and this same Adjuster also holds the secrets of your faith in the transcendental attainment of the Ultimate. The experiential personality of evolving man, united to the Adjuster essence of the existential God, constitutes the potential completion of supreme existence and is inherently the basis for the superfinite eventuation of transcendental personality.
101:6.3 (1111.7) Moral will embraces decisions based on reasoned knowledge, augmented by wisdom, and sanctioned by religious faith. Such choices are acts of moral nature and evidence the existence of moral personality, the forerunner of morontia personality and eventually of true spirit status.
101:6.4 (1111.8) The evolutionary type of knowledge is but the accumulation of protoplasmic memory material; this is the most primitive form of creature consciousness. Wisdom embraces the ideas formulated from protoplasmic memory in process of association and recombination, and such phenomena differentiate human mind from mere animal mind. Animals have knowledge, but only man possesses wisdom capacity. Truth is made accessible to the wisdom-endowed individual by the bestowal on such a mind of the spirits of the Father and the Sons, the Thought Adjuster and the Spirit of Truth.
101:6.5 (1112.1) Christ Michael, when bestowed on Urantia, lived under the reign of evolutionary religion up to the time of his baptism. From that moment up to and including the event of his crucifixion he carried forward his work by the combined guidance of evolutionary and revealed religion. From the morning of his resurrection until his ascension he traversed the manifold phases of the morontia life of mortal transition from the world of matter to that of spirit. After his ascension Michael became master of the experience of Supremacy, the realization of the Supreme; and being the one person in Nebadon possessed of unlimited capacity to experience the reality of the Supreme, he forthwith attained to the status of the sovereignty of supremacy in and to his local universe.
101:6.6 (1112.2) With man, the eventual fusion and resultant oneness with the indwelling Adjuster — the personality synthesis of man and the essence of God — constitute him, in potential, a living part of the Supreme and insure for such a onetime mortal being the eternal birthright of the endless pursuit of finality of universe service for and with the Supreme.
101:6.7 (1112.3) Revelation teaches mortal man that, to start such a magnificent and intriguing adventure through space by means of the progression of time, he should begin by the organization of knowledge into idea-decisions; next, mandate wisdom to labor unremittingly at its noble task of transforming self-possessed ideas into increasingly practical but nonetheless supernal ideals, even those concepts which are so reasonable as ideas and so logical as ideals that the Adjuster dares so to combine and spiritize them as to render them available for such association in the finite mind as will constitute them the actual human complement thus made ready for the action of the Truth Spirit of the Sons, the time-space manifestations of Paradise truth — universal truth. The co-ordination of idea-decisions, logical ideals, and divine truth constitutes the possession of a righteous character, the prerequisite for mortal admission to the ever-expanding and increasingly spiritual realities of the morontia worlds.
101:6.8 (1112.4) The teachings of Jesus constituted the first Urantian religion which so fully embraced a harmonious co-ordination of knowledge, wisdom, faith, truth, and love as completely and simultaneously to provide temporal tranquillity, intellectual certainty, moral enlightenment, philosophic stability, ethical sensitivity, God-consciousness, and the positive assurance of personal survival. The faith of Jesus pointed the way to finality of human salvation, to the ultimate of mortal universe attainment, since it provided for:
101:6.9 (1112.5) 1. Salvation from material fetters in the personal realization of sonship with God, who is spirit.
101:6.10 (1112.6) 2. Salvation from intellectual bondage: man shall know the truth, and the truth shall set him free.
101:6.11 (1112.7) 3. Salvation from spiritual blindness, the human realization of the fraternity of mortal beings and the morontian awareness of the brotherhood of all universe creatures; the service-discovery of spiritual reality and the ministry-revelation of the goodness of spirit values.
101:6.12 (1113.1) 4. Salvation from incompleteness of self through the attainment of the spirit levels of the universe and through the eventual realization of the harmony of Havona and the perfection of Paradise.
101:6.13 (1113.2) 5. Salvation from self, deliverance from the limitations of self-consciousness through the attainment of the cosmic levels of the Supreme mind and by co-ordination with the attainments of all other self-conscious beings.
101:6.14 (1113.3) 6. Salvation from time, the achievement of an eternal life of unending progression in God-recognition and God-service.
101:6.15 (1113.4) 7. Salvation from the finite, the perfected oneness with Deity in and through the Supreme by which the creature attempts the transcendental discovery of the Ultimate on the postfinaliter levels of the absonite.
101:6.16 (1113.5) Such a sevenfold salvation is the equivalent of the completeness and perfection of the realization of the ultimate experience of the Universal Father. And all this, in potential, is contained within the reality of the faith of the human experience of religion. And it can be so contained since the faith of Jesus was nourished by, and was revelatory of, even realities beyond the ultimate; the faith of Jesus approached the status of a universe absolute in so far as such is possible of manifestation in the evolving cosmos of time and space.
101:6.17 (1113.6) Through the appropriation of the faith of Jesus, mortal man can foretaste in time the realities of eternity. Jesus made the discovery, in human experience, of the Final Father, and his brothers in the flesh of mortal life can follow him along this same experience of Father discovery. They can even attain, as they are, the same satisfaction in this experience with the Father as did Jesus as he was. New potentials were actualized in the universe of Nebadon consequent upon the terminal bestowal of Michael, and one of these was the new illumination of the path of eternity that leads to the Father of all, and which can be traversed even by the mortals of material flesh and blood in the initial life on the planets of space. Jesus was and is the new and living way whereby man can come into the divine inheritance which the Father has decreed shall be his for but the asking. In Jesus there is abundantly demonstrated both the beginnings and endings of the faith experience of humanity, even of divine humanity.
7. A Personal Philosophy of Religion 개인의 종교 철학
101:7.1 (1113.7) An idea is only a theoretical plan for action, while a positive decision is a validated plan of action. A stereotype is a plan of action accepted without validation. The materials out of which to build a personal philosophy of religion are derived from both the inner and the environmental experience of the individual. The social status, economic conditions, educational opportunities, moral trends, institutional influences, political developments, racial tendencies, and the religious teachings of one’s time and place all become factors in the formulation of a personal philosophy of religion. Even the inherent temperament and intellectual bent markedly determine the pattern of religious philosophy. Vocation, marriage, and kindred all influence the evolution of one’s personal standards of life.
101:7.2 (1113.8) A philosophy of religion evolves out of a basic growth of ideas plus experimental living as both are modified by the tendency to imitate associates. The soundness of philosophic conclusions depends on keen, honest, and discriminating thinking in connection with sensitivity to meanings and accuracy of evaluation. Moral cowards never achieve high planes of philosophic thinking; it requires courage to invade new levels of experience and to attempt the exploration of unknown realms of intellectual living.
101:7.3 (1114.1) Presently new systems of values come into existence; new formulations of principles and standards are achieved; habits and ideals are reshaped; some idea of a personal God is attained, followed by enlarging concepts of relationship thereto.
101:7.4 (1114.2) The great difference between a religious and a nonreligious philosophy of living consists in the nature and level of recognized values and in the object of loyalties. There are four phases in the evolution of religious philosophy: Such an experience may become merely conformative, resigned to submission to tradition and authority. Or it may be satisfied with slight attainments, just enough to stabilize the daily living, and therefore becomes early arrested on such an adventitious level. Such mortals believe in letting well enough alone. A third group progress to the level of logical intellectuality but there stagnate in consequence of cultural slavery. It is indeed pitiful to behold giant intellects held so securely within the cruel grasp of cultural bondage. It is equally pathetic to observe those who trade their cultural bondage for the materialistic fetters of a science, falsely so called. The fourth level of philosophy attains freedom from all conventional and traditional handicaps and dares to think, act, and live honestly, loyally, fearlessly, and truthfully.
101:7.5 (1114.3) The acid test for any religious philosophy consists in whether or not it distinguishes between the realities of the material and the spiritual worlds while at the same moment recognizing their unification in intellectual striving and in social serving. A sound religious philosophy does not confound the things of God with the things of Caesar. Neither does it recognize the aesthetic cult of pure wonder as a substitute for religion.
101:7.6 (1114.4) Philosophy transforms that primitive religion which was largely a fairy tale of conscience into a living experience in the ascending values of cosmic reality.
8. Faith and Belief 신앙과 믿음
101:8.1 (1114.5) Belief has attained the level of faith when it motivates life and shapes the mode of living. The acceptance of a teaching as true is not faith; that is mere belief. Neither is certainty nor conviction faith. A state of mind attains to faith levels only when it actually dominates the mode of living. Faith is a living attribute of genuine personal religious experience. One believes truth, admires beauty, and reverences goodness, but does not worship them; such an attitude of saving faith is centered on God alone, who is all of these personified and infinitely more.
101:8.2 (1114.6) Belief is always limiting and binding; faith is expanding and releasing. Belief fixates, faith liberates. But living religious faith is more than the association of noble beliefs; it is more than an exalted system of philosophy; it is a living experience concerned with spiritual meanings, divine ideals, and supreme values; it is God-knowing and man-serving. Beliefs may become group possessions, but faith must be personal. Theologic beliefs can be suggested to a group, but faith can rise up only in the heart of the individual religionist.
101:8.3 (1114.7) Faith has falsified its trust when it presumes to deny realities and to confer upon its devotees assumed knowledge. Faith is a traitor when it fosters betrayal of intellectual integrity and belittles loyalty to supreme values and divine ideals. Faith never shuns the problem-solving duty of mortal living. Living faith does not foster bigotry, persecution, or intolerance.
101:8.4 (1115.1) Faith does not shackle the creative imagination, neither does it maintain an unreasoning prejudice toward the discoveries of scientific investigation. Faith vitalizes religion and constrains the religionist heroically to live the golden rule. The zeal of faith is according to knowledge, and its strivings are the preludes to sublime peace.
9. Religion and Morality 종교와 도덕성
101:9.1 (1115.2) No professed revelation of religion could be regarded as authentic if it failed to recognize the duty demands of ethical obligation which had been created and fostered by preceding evolutionary religion. Revelation unfailingly enlarges the ethical horizon of evolved religion while it simultaneously and unfailingly expands the moral obligations of all prior revelations.
101:9.2 (1115.3) When you presume to sit in critical judgment on the primitive religion of man (or on the religion of primitive man), you should remember to judge such savages and to evaluate their religious experience in accordance with their enlightenment and status of conscience. Do not make the mistake of judging another’s religion by your own standards of knowledge and truth.
101:9.3 (1115.4) True religion is that sublime and profound conviction within the soul which compellingly admonishes man that it would be wrong for him not to believe in those morontial realities which constitute his highest ethical and moral concepts, his highest interpretation of life’s greatest values and the universe’s deepest realities. And such a religion is simply the experience of yielding intellectual loyalty to the highest dictates of spiritual consciousness.
101:9.4 (1115.5) The search for beauty is a part of religion only in so far as it is ethical and to the extent that it enriches the concept of the moral. Art is only religious when it becomes diffused with purpose which has been derived from high spiritual motivation.
101:9.5 (1115.6) The enlightened spiritual consciousness of civilized man is not concerned so much with some specific intellectual belief or with any one particular mode of living as with discovering the truth of living, the good and right technique of reacting to the ever-recurring situations of mortal existence. Moral consciousness is just a name applied to the human recognition and awareness of those ethical and emerging morontial values which duty demands that man shall abide by in the day-by-day control and guidance of conduct.
101:9.6 (1115.7) Though recognizing that religion is imperfect, there are at least two practical manifestations of its nature and function:
101:9.7 (1115.8) 1. The spiritual urge and philosophic pressure of religion tend to cause man to project his estimation of moral values directly outward into the affairs of his fellows — the ethical reaction of religion.
101:9.8 (1115.9) 2. Religion creates for the human mind a spiritualized consciousness of divine reality based on, and by faith derived from, antecedent concepts of moral values and co-ordinated with superimposed concepts of spiritual values. Religion thereby becomes a censor of mortal affairs, a form of glorified moral trust and confidence in reality, the enhanced realities of time and the more enduring realities of eternity.
101:9.9 (1116.1) Faith becomes the connection between moral consciousness and the spiritual concept of enduring reality. Religion becomes the avenue of man’s escape from the material limitations of the temporal and natural world to the supernal realities of the eternal and spiritual world by and through the technique of salvation, the progressive morontia transformation.
10. Religion as Man’s Liberator 사람의 해방자(解放者)인 종교
101:10.1 (1116.2) Intelligent man knows that he is a child of nature, a part of the material universe; he likewise discerns no survival of individual personality in the motions and tensions of the mathematical level of the energy universe. Nor can man ever discern spiritual reality through the examination of physical causes and effects.
101:10.2 (1116.3) A human being is also aware that he is a part of the ideational cosmos, but though concept may endure beyond a mortal life span, there is nothing inherent in concept which indicates the personal survival of the conceiving personality. Nor will the exhaustion of the possibilities of logic and reason ever reveal to the logician or to the reasoner the eternal truth of the survival of personality.
101:10.3 (1116.4) The material level of law provides for causality continuity, the unending response of effect to antecedent action; the mind level suggests the perpetuation of ideational continuity, the unceasing flow of conceptual potentiality from pre-existent conceptions. But neither of these levels of the universe discloses to the inquiring mortal an avenue of escape from partiality of status and from the intolerable suspense of being a transient reality in the universe, a temporal personality doomed to be extinguished upon the exhaustion of the limited life energies.
101:10.4 (1116.5) It is only through the morontial avenue leading to spiritual insight that man can ever break the fetters inherent in his mortal status in the universe. Energy and mind do lead back to Paradise and Deity, but neither the energy endowment nor the mind endowment of man proceeds directly from such Paradise Deity. Only in the spiritual sense is man a child of God. And this is true because it is only in the spiritual sense that man is at present endowed and indwelt by the Paradise Father. Mankind can never discover divinity except through the avenue of religious experience and by the exercise of true faith. The faith acceptance of the truth of God enables man to escape from the circumscribed confines of material limitations and affords him a rational hope of achieving safe conduct from the material realm, whereon is death, to the spiritual realm, wherein is life eternal.
101:10.5 (1116.6) The purpose of religion is not to satisfy curiosity about God but rather to afford intellectual constancy and philosophic security, to stabilize and enrich human living by blending the mortal with the divine, the partial with the perfect, man and God. It is through religious experience that man’s concepts of ideality are endowed with reality.
101:10.6 (1116.7) Never can there be either scientific or logical proofs of divinity. Reason alone can never validate the values and goodnesses of religious experience. But it will always remain true: Whosoever wills to do the will of God shall comprehend the validity of spiritual values. This is the nearest approach that can be made on the mortal level to offering proofs of the reality of religious experience. Such faith affords the only escape from the mechanical clutch of the material world and from the error distortion of the incompleteness of the intellectual world; it is the only discovered solution to the impasse in mortal thinking regarding the continuing survival of the individual personality. It is the only passport to completion of reality and to eternity of life in a universal creation of love, law, unity, and progressive Deity attainment.
101:10.7 (1117.1) Religion effectually cures man’s sense of idealistic isolation or spiritual loneliness; it enfranchises the believer as a son of God, a citizen of a new and meaningful universe. Religion assures man that, in following the gleam of righteousness discernible in his soul, he is thereby identifying himself with the plan of the Infinite and the purpose of the Eternal. Such a liberated soul immediately begins to feel at home in this new universe, his universe.
101:10.8 (1117.2) When you experience such a transformation of faith, you are no longer a slavish part of the mathematical cosmos but rather a liberated volitional son of the Universal Father. No longer is such a liberated son fighting alone against the inexorable doom of the termination of temporal existence; no longer does he combat all nature, with the odds hopelessly against him; no longer is he staggered by the paralyzing fear that, perchance, he has put his trust in a hopeless phantasm or pinned his faith to a fanciful error.
101:10.9 (1117.3) Now, rather, are the sons of God enlisted together in fighting the battle of reality’s triumph over the partial shadows of existence. At last all creatures become conscious of the fact that God and all the divine hosts of a well-nigh limitless universe are on their side in the supernal struggle to attain eternity of life and divinity of status. Such faith-liberated sons have certainly enlisted in the struggles of time on the side of the supreme forces and divine personalities of eternity; even the stars in their courses are now doing battle for them; at last they gaze upon the universe from within, from God’s viewpoint, and all is transformed from the uncertainties of material isolation to the sureties of eternal spiritual progression. Even time itself becomes but the shadow of eternity cast by Paradise realities upon the moving panoply of space.
101:10.10 (1117.4) [Presented by a Melchizedek of Nebadon.]