Meredith Sprunger's Synopsis of The Urantia Book
Synopsis of Paper 101
THE REAL NATURE OF RELIGION
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 ...The feeling of religious assurance is more than an emotional feeling...Religion is faith, trust, and assurance.
2. True religion is not a system of philosophic belief ...neither is it a fantastic and mystic experience...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 satisfaction while yet in the flesh.
3. 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..
4, 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..
5. The germs of true religion originate in the domain of man's moral consciousness...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.
6. 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...And true revelation never renders science unnatural, religion unreasonable, or philosophy illogical.
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.
8. The contemplation of nature can only reveal a God of nature...The religious man who finds God in nature has already and first found this same personal God in his own 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.
9. Revelation as an epochal phenomenon is periodic; as a personal human experience it is continuous ...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 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.
10. Religion must ever be its own critic arid 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.
11. Genuine spiritual faith (true moral consciousness) is revealed in that it:
1. Causes ethics and morals to progress despite inherent and adverse animalistic tendencies.
2. Produces a sublime trust in the goodness of God even in the face of bitter disappointment and crushing defeat.
3. Generates profound courage and confidence despite natural adversity and physical calamity.
4. Exhibits inexplicable poise and sustaining tranquility notwithstanding baffling diseases and even acute physical suffering.
5. Maintains a mysterious poise and composure of personality in the face of maltreatment and the rankest injustice.
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.
7. Persists in the unswerving belief in God despite all contrary demonstrations of logic and. successfully withstands all other intellectual sophistries.
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.
9. Lives and triumphs irrespective of the crushing overload of the complex and partial civilizations of modern times.
10. Contributes to the continued survival of altruism in spite of human selfishness, social antagonisms, industrial greeds, and. political maladjustments.
11. Steadfastly adheres to a sublime belief in universe unity and divine guidance regardless of the perplexing presence of evil and sin.
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."
12. 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 ...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...The cosmology of these revelations is not inspired ...While divine or spiritual insight is a gift, human wisdom must evolve.
13. 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. 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.
14. Evolutionary religion drives home to the individual the idea of personal duty; revealed religion lays increasing emphasis on loving, the golden rule ...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.
15. 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 assurance of pure spirit insight operate in the place of faith and truth or, rather, in conjunction with, end superimposed upon, these former techniques of personality assurance.
16. 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 super‑finite eventuation of transcendental personality.
17. 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 be traversed the manifold phases of the morontia life of mortal transition from the world of matter to that of spirit.
18. 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. 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 tranquility, intellectual certainty, moral enlightenment, philosophic stability, ethical sensitivity, God‑consciousness, and the positive assurance of personal survival.
19. 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.
20. 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.
21. 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.
22. 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.
23. Belief has attained the level of faith when it motivates life and shapes the mode of living ...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... Living faith does not foster bigotry, persecution, or intolerance.
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 of sublime peace.
24. 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.
25. 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.
26. Never can there be either scientific or logical proofs of divinity. Reason alone can never validate the values and goodness 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.
27. Religion effectually cures man's sense of idealistic isolation or spiritual loneliness; it enhances 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.
Discussion Questions
1. How can thoughts dominate feelings in human experience?
2. Is spiritual growth more closely associated with new insights regarding well known phenomena or in discovering new realities?
3. How does experience validate revelation?
4. How does one explain spiritual faith in the face of difficult and tragic human experience?
5. How important is education and learning to a vital religion?
6. How will the limitations of cosmology in theUrantia Synopsis of Papers effect its spiritual insights?
7. How can we tell whether we are free from all conventional and traditional handicaps and are thinking, acting, and living honestly, loyally, fearlessly and truthfully?
A Service of
The Urantia Book Fellowship