THEOSOPHY CAN HELP DOUBTING CHRISTIANS by Arthur Swan 

Australia is nominally a Christian country, and Christian festivals are marked by public holidays, special postage stamps, etc., but, in common with similar countries overseas, there has been a marked decline in church attendances, and even of interest in the teachings of Christianity. The train of thought seems to be that the Bible stories of miracles, virgin birth, resurrection and other wonders simply do not bear scrutiny in the light of modern knowledge, and that even if one grudgingly conceded that just possibly an All-Mighty Creator did do some one-off acts for a special purpose, such acts have no apparent relevance to our lives today. The latter point can even raise the query why the Creator should, about two thousand years ago, and at no other time, suspend the normal working of the universe and perform these miracles with the aim, allegedly, of “saving” mankind. After all, civilised man had lived for many more centuries before Christ than he has lived since, and a doubter would surely have wondered what happened to all the generations B.C. who were too early to be “saved”. Even one of the Christmas carols remarks “Late in time, behold He come…”. To these and other questions, it seems obvious that the churches today cannot give satisfactory answers, with the unfortunate result that all ideas of religion or philosophy are discarded altogether by such a doubter.             Such a person may not notice any great lack, particularly if the life-style is fairly trouble-free, with an interesting job and adequate recreation. This would apply to most young people, but for them the easy ride can come to an abrupt end by a calamity such as a disabling accident, unemployment or even a bereavement. He asks “Why did this happen to me?” and feels the need to call on any inner resources that may help to sustain him in his trouble. For the older person, the change may come in middle life, when his world ceases to have much novelty for him, and he says, in effect “There must be something more than this”. Both these people are seeking and should be helped to find, and the churches should be the ones to do this but, as already noted, they appear to be unequal to their task.  There is, indeed, a certain irony in this, as the religious message for our race was the Bible, which the churches have preached for nearly two millennia, and it is reputed to be a best-seller among books. It must also be about the least-understood of all books, yet the King James version is one of the literary treasures of our culture, ranking with Shakespeare as a peak of the English language. By contrast, theosophical literature teems with explanations of the hidden meanings of Bible stories, which meanings not only, in many cases, rescue the Bible story from sheer fatuity, but also can shed a flood of light where previously there was only befuddlement. About the only redeeming feature of the present sorry situation is that the Bible is still held in great respect.             This being so, any Theosophist who has the chance of helping a seeker would be well advised to support his advocacy of a theosophical tenet by a reference to the Bible, which can be done as shown later. This approach utilizes a recognised facet of human psychology, beloved by advertising agents and known instinctively by the born salesman, namely Association of Ideas. In other words, you will make much better progress if your case is supported by a source which is already respected by your listener.             The most obvious first subjects would be the twin doctrines of Karma and Reincarnation, which combine to teach us that everything in life is perfectly just and, by corollary, that we must have within us the capacity to master any trial that besets us, otherwise it would not have been put in our path. Surely, this alone will give great encouragement and a new philosophy of life to our seeker.              For a Biblical endorsement to these two wonderful tenets, let us take first KARMA, which would have come first in the divine scheme. As Karma is a Sanskrit word, it does not itself appear in the Bible, but the concept is undeniably there and is usually called the Law. The Bible begins with the Creation story, and we are told that, on its completion, God “saw that it was very good”. (Gen. 1:31). This is a gratuitous statement, which can of course be taken as simply an embellishment of the Creation story, but further reading suggests otherwise – that God had, as it were, wound up the great clock of the universe so that, from then on, the pendulum has swung Cause and Effect, Cause and Effect, relentlessly, implacably, infallibly just. When Adam and Eve first come, it is to the Garden of Eden and, until they eat of the forbidden fruit, they have no knowledge of good or evil, nor even know that they are naked, so they are above the Law, but when they do eat the fruit, their fall is to the human plane, which is ruled by the Law. They had been warned that they would die, and we may note here that their survival on the material plane is explained by the fact that “death” in the Bible usually means the “burial” of divinity in the trammels of the flesh. Thus, the Apostle Paul says (Rom 7:9) “For I was alive without the Law once, but when the commandment came, sin revived and I died”. This text alone could teach us volumes, but only if we have the necessary keys to its cryptic message. Quoting Paul again (Rom.8:6) “For to be carnally minded is death, but to be spiritually minded is life and peace”. For the Karma concept of our getting our just deserts (good and bad), we have Paul (Rom. 12:19) “…Vengeance is mine, I will repay, saith the Lord”. Indeed, a mature understanding of Paul’s Law and the Bible meaning of “death” will eventually replace the erroneous doctrine of Vicarious Atonement, which has done so much damage to Christian thinking over the centuries and has probably greatly troubled our seeker.             Next, let us look at REINCARNATION. Here again, this actual word does not seem to be in the Bible, but application of its principles gives wondrous meaning to some otherwise inscrutable sections. When Jesus himself asked the disciples who people said he was, and they answered that some said he was John the Baptist, Jesus did not condemn the concept. Likewise, in the case of the man born blind, Jesus was asked was this because the man had sinned – if the man was born blind, then his sin must have been in a previous life, yet here again, Jesus did not criticize, so that our only conclusion must be that reincarnation was accepted as a fact by those with sufficient instruction. In the Old Testament, we find in that beautiful 53rd chapter of Isaiah, verse 9 “… and he made his grave with wicked, and with rich in his death…:. It is not generally known that “death” in that verse was plural “deaths” in the original Hebrew, which can only mean more than one incarnation. Indeed, it is worth noting here that the early Christian Church did believe in reincarnation for about the first five centuries A.D., when the doctrine was discarded. While the poor scholarship of the time would probably partly explain this basic change, which has no Biblical authority, it can also be inferred that the Church had begun to have difficulty in getting people to obey orders. It was easier to secure obedience when the subject believed that a terrible punishment could be incurred at the end of this life. This is a good illustration of the reason why pre-Christian scholars kept such truths hidden from those who had not proved themselves worthy to hear them. In contrast to this, the early Church took the stand that everything should be open, not understanding that, when one tries to level anything, it has to be downward, just as the chain is only as strong as its weakest link. It is possible that Jesus had some such idea in mind when he said not to cast pearls before swine. Anyway, as a result of that fifth century action by the church, following generations of Christians have paid a terrible price in disillusionment and misery when, dismayed by the lot into which they were born, they have plaintively asked how a benevolent Heavenly Father could treat them so, and no answer was available to them. We speak of the Dark Ages as spanning about a thousand years, 500-1500A.D., but even today, there are millions of people who are not much better placed, philosophically, and it seems fair to say that this unfortunate state of mind is probably a basis cause of many of our drinking and drug problems today.              The authors of the Bible were either priests or religious leaders, and they followed the pre-Christian practice, noted above, of revealing divine wisdom only to those who had proved themselves worthy and fit to receive it, and Josephus, the Jewish historian born A.D. 38, says that Moses, the reputed author of the first five books of the Old Testament, wrote “some things wisely but enigmatically, and others under a decent allegory, but still explains such things as required a direct explication plainly and expressly”. As later authors would almost certainly take their cue from Moses, there are good grounds for assuming that there is little if any history in the Bible at all. Indeed, there is strong support for this in the categorical statement of the Apostle Paul (Gal. 4:22-24) that the story of Hagar, the bond-woman who bore Abraham’s first child, is an allegory.             One device for veiling the truth was the use of glyphs or symbols, and we have already noted that the term “death” really meant the descent of divinity into matter, where the infant Christ was swathed in swaddling clothes, almost like an embalmed corpse. Another glyph for divinity enclosed in the trammels of the flesh was sleep, and we find Paul writing (1 Cor. 15:20/21) “But how is Christ risen from the dead and become the first-fruits of them that slept. For since by man came death, by man came also the resurrection of the dead”. Perhaps the latter verse would support a proposition that there is in fact no such thing as death in the sense of total extinction or annihilation – it is but a translation which is necessary, salutary, even desirable. Again, we have Paul (1 Cor:15:36) “…that which thou sowest is not quickened, except it die”.              This new perception of death will not only help the seeker in his view of our present life-span, it will also give a logical meaning to what had been previously told to him as miracles, in which the citizen of the twenty-first century usually finds it impossible to believe.              Interpretation of Bible stories is sometimes like trying to open an old chest – you may have to try more than one key. Let us take the first topic of the Bible, that of the Creation, when God in six days made the world, all its wildlife, and even the first man and woman. This human couple had three sons, but no daughters, and the third son eventually takes a wife. Some editions of the Bible even gave the approximate date of all this as 4,000 B.C. Our summary has had to be brief, for reasons of space, but it includes all points necessary for our discussion, and there are two points to be noted. The first one is that of the six days, which does rather strain one’s credulity, though we do know some people would say that, with God, all things are possible. Perhaps that is so, in a strictly legal sense, but it is somewhat out of character in an ordered universe. The second point is that the third son’s wife – where did she come from? The obvious conclusion is that the story simply cannot stand as literal history, in the eyes of people today, so we must resort to whatever key is available.             Taking first the six days, which were followed by a seventh day on which God rested, it is absolutely undeniable that, as a lapse of time in the literal sense, these seven days are simply not believed by millions of people, so either all those people were wrong, or the word “day” is a glyph which has another meaning. Now we must remember that, as these ancient scribes were not, and did not try to be, historians, it is quite possible that they had no interest in the ‘when” of the creation and were solely concerned with the “how”. Let us therefore postulate that “day” in this story does not mean a period of time, but a stage of development. The Genesis account gives brief details of each stage of Creation, and the final act of the great work is the creation of Man himself, in the image and likeness of God. He is named Adam and is given dominion of all other creation.              Man in the divine image, therefore, was the crown and pinnacle of creation, and Theosophists know that Man has seven principles so, in describing The creation of which Man was the supreme product, might not these ancient scribes have been really referring to Man’s seven principles, but, to veil the truth, they said “seven days”? Let us test this theory. The line dividing Spirit and Matter can for convenience be called the horizon, and below this we have the three lower or material principles, namely Mineral, Vegetable, and Animal. When creation reached this stage, there was a race of animal man which lacked the potential to become god-like. Their only interest to us here is that they provided the wife for Adam’s son. When, in the fullness of time, God decided that animal man could be given access to the Spiritual principles, this was a great lift to animal man. From his original three principles, he now had a fourth, the Human, which bestrode the horizon, so that he then had contact with the three higher principles, Manas, Buddhi, and Atma, who may be likened to the three Wise Men who came to worship the Babe in the Christmas story. Therefore, Man in the divine image then had three Material principles, the Human principle, making four, Manas and Buddhi, making six, to correspond with the six “days” on which God laboured, then comes the seventh principle, Atma, which being pure spirit needed no creation, so that on the seventh “day”, God was able to rest. This interpretation has a timeless grandeur which could commend itself to you all.              In conclusion, there is need for some further comment on the fourth or Human principle, as this is the area in which we conduct most of our everyday life. Here, we must arbitrate between the desires, which sometimes conflict, of our higher and lower selves, and this will be the scene of the last great battle, Armageddon. We must preserve a reasonable balance, rendering unto Caesar those things that are Caesar’s, and to God those things that are God’s  In the Egyptian Book of the Dead, the soul of the deceased is brought before a deity and has to show that he has ploughed equal areas on either side of the horizon. This showed a mature understanding of the need for balance, if we are to progress spiritually. Our physical body is an animal, which our higher self must discipline and train, but the body, which Paul called a temple, is entitled to respect in its own right. For spiritual renewal, we must temporarily still the animal and go into our inner room in the higher mind. The Bible warns that narrow is the way and strait is the gate that leadeth to the Father, but all are eligible, irrespective of education or social class. In trying to describe their ineffable experiences, the Old Testament prophets refer to a time and times and a dividing of time, meaning the three and one half principles above the horizon, while John, the author Revelations makes several references, e.g. three and a half days, forty and two months, which equals three and one half years, and a thousand two hundred and three score days, which also equals three and one half years, all to the same meaning.              I hope that these few thoughts on interpretation of the Bible have been of some help to you and, perhaps, improved your opinion of that great old book.  

This is the text of a lecture given by the author at a public meeting of the Theosophical Society (Pasadena) in Melbourne, Australia. The ideas expressed in all our public meetings are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of the TS (Pasadena). 

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