| Evaluation
All in all, the Course is a
masterpiece of spiritual strategy. It claims to be a revelation from
Jesus Christ Himself, and it is intelligently organized and simply
written. It appeals to personal pride and can become almost
addicting emotionally. It is carefully designed to radically
restructure a person’s perception against Christian faith and
toward New Age occultism.
We would say the text was designed
not only for spiritually searching individuals of a secular or
psychic persuasion, but especially for nominal Christians in the
church who have recognized the bankruptcy of theological liberalism
and desire more spiritual "reality" in their lives.
In essence, the course simultaneously
indoctrinates its students in Eastern metaphysics and human
potential psychicism, while it specifically insulates them against
biblical revelation and true Christianity. In achieving this end,
its manipulation of psychological and emotional states is
impressive. It offers carefully thought-out spiritual exercises, one
for every day of the year.
Publisher Robert Skutch observes,
"The concepts of the Course are such that anyone who
studies the material seriously must find that his or her
perceptions are changing.…"1 (Skutch is the author of Messages
from My Higher Self, produced through a form of automatic
writing.)
Theological Content
As noted earlier, Eastern religion,
particularly Hinduism (advaita Vedanta), plays an important part in
the Course. Robert Skutch writes:
What they now had in their
possession was a spiritual document that was very closely related
to the teachings of the non-dualistic Vedanta of the Hindu
religion, and that the profundity of the Vedanta certainly
paralleled the obvious profundity of the Course. He [Thetford]
realized the basic spiritual teachings of both had many striking
similarities to each other, and that the main difference between
them was that the Course was stating the perennial
philosophy of eternal truths in Christian terminology with a
psychological application that seemed expressly aimed at a
contemporary audience.2
In Course philosophy, biblical
words undergo drastic changes of purpose. Often, the new meanings
are the opposite of their biblical meaning. For example,
"atonement" no longer refers to Jesus Christ’s
substitutionary death on the cross for sin. In biblical teaching,
the atonement is based on the fact that man’s sinfulness separates
him from God. Before man can be reconciled to God, there must be a
divine judgment of sin. Christ sacrificed His own life on the
cross—He was judged in our place—to accomplish this. This is
what Christians mean by the word "atonement," or the
atoning sacrifice of Christ (John 3:16,18). In 1 John 2:2 and 4:10
we read, "He is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not
only for ours but also for the sins of the whole world," and,
"This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and
sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins." God tells
everyone, "Your iniquities have separated you from your
God" (Isaiah 59:2), and therefore, because of God’s mercy to
us, "God presented him [Christ] as a sacrifice of atonement,
through faith in his blood [i.e., His death]. He did this to
demonstrate his justice... at the present time, so as to be just and
the one who justifies [those who have] faith in Jesus" (Romans
3:25-26).
But in the Course, the word
"atonement" means the exact opposite: that one is not, and
never has been, separate from God. Therefore, an atoning sacrifice
in the biblical sense is meaningless. For the Course, the
term "atonement" refers to correcting the belief
that men are separate from God, which is presumed to be a false
belief. Hence, because "the atonement" is not yet
completed (i.e., some people still think they are separate from
God), Course students are told they have an important role to
play "in the Atonement."3 In other words, their job is to
help reconcile men to the spiritual truth they are God and therefore
cannot be separate from Him.
According to the Bible, God freely
pardons, or forgives, a believer’s sins on the basis of Jesus
Christ’s atonement: "Who is a God like you, who pardons sins
and forgives the transgression?" (Micah 7:18); and, "[We]
are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came
by Christ Jesus" (Romans 3:24). And consider the important
words of the apostle John, "If we claim to be without sin, we
deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. If we confess our
sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and
purify us from all unrighteousness. If we claim we have not sinned,
we make him out to be a liar and his word has no place in our
lives" (1 John 1:8-10, NIV). But the Course denies this,
just as it rejects the biblical concept of the atonement.
The Course also denies the
biblical teaching on forgiveness. "Forgiveness" does not
pardon sins before God, because sins aren’t even real to begin
with. Therefore, "forgiveness" merely involves the
realization that there never were any sins to pardon. Likewise,
"sinners" do not exist, because "sin" is an
illusion. According to an interview with Course editor and
teacher Kenneth Wapnick:
Wapnick: There’s
a line in the Course that says, God does not forgive
because he has never condemned. Technically, God doesn’t
forgive, God simply loves. Forgiveness in the Course is the
correction for the belief in sin, the belief in separation, the
belief in guilt.
SCP [Spiritual Counterfeits
Project]: Christ did not
die for our sins?
Wapnick: No.
Absolutely not. Because once you see his death in that way, then
you make sin real.... The whole idea of the Course is that
sin is an illusion.... The crux of the whole thing is that our
relationship with God has never been impaired. It’s only in our
thinking that it was. In other words, for the Course, sin
never really happened…. What Jesus did for us was show us that
the separation never really happened.4
As a result of this distorted
theology, the Course approach to "salvation" lies
in understanding that no one requires salvation in the biblical
sense because all men are already divine. "Salvation" is
merely accepting one’s "true" identity as being one in
essence with God. Each individual is the Son of God; each is already
perfect Therefore we need nothing from God because our true nature is
God.5
Sin, guilt death, judgment,
propitiatory atonement and other biblical doctrines are viewed as
"attack" philosophies by the Course. That is, they
are concepts which greatly hinder spiritual "progress" and
severely damage the realization of our "true" divine
nature. Men must become free of these false, enslaving, and evil
ideas if they desire true spiritual freedom. Otherwise, they choose
to "remain in hell" and to "kill" the God of
love.6 In the Course worldview, orthodox Christian beliefs
(biblical teachings given by the one true God) are held to be
"evil," "insane," and "anti-Christ"
We can see just how unbiblical the
instructions of the Course are when we contrast them to what
the Bible teaches:
• The Course explains that
men are not separated from God. The Bible teaches, "Your
iniquities have separated you from your God; your sins have hidden
his face from you, so that he will not hear" (Isaiah 59:1-2,
NASB).
• The Course explains that
there was no atonement for sin and that Jesus Christ did not die on
the cross for our sins. The Bible teaches, "He Himself bore our
sins in His body on the cross..." (1 Peter 2:24, NASB), and,
"Jesus Christ, the Righteous One... is the atoning sacrifice
for our sins" (1 John 2:1-2, NASB). Jesus Himself taught,
"The Son of man did not come to be served, but to serve, and
give His life a ransom for many" (Matthew 20:28, NASB).
• The Course explains that
no one needs to believe on Jesus Christ for forgiveness of sins. The
Bible teaches, "Salvation is found in no one else, for there is
no other name under heaven given to men by which we must be
saved" (Acts 4:12). Jesus Himself warned, "If you do not
believe that I am the one I claim to be, you will indeed die in
your sins" (John 8:24). And, "For God so loved the world
that he gave his one and only Son that whoever believes in him should
not perish but have eternal life" (John 3:16, emphasis added).
In the next article we will present a
chart with a sampling of Course theology to document the
anti-biblical nature of A Course in Miracles.
Notes:
1. James Bolen, "Interview:
William N. Thetford," New Realities, vol. 6, no. 2,
September/October 1984, Part 2, p. 78.
2. James Bolen, "Interview:
William N. Thetford," New Realities, vol. 6, no. 1,
July/August, Part 1, p. 24.
3. A Course in Miracles,
Volume 1, text, Huntington Station, New York: Foundation for Inner
Peace, 1977, p. 10.
4. Dean C. Halverson, Kenneth Wapnick,
" A Matter of Course: Conversation with Kenneth Wapnick," Spiritual
Counterfeits Journal, vol. 7, no. 1, 1987, pp. 13-14).
5. Course, Volume 1, chs.
13,22-23.
6. Ibid., chs. 5-6; pp. 374-78.
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