Paper 195 Overview: After Pentecost

Peter's preaching on Pentecost established the future policies and plans for how most apostles would proclaim the gospel of the kingdom. While tradition-bound and priest-ridden Hebrews largely rejected Jesus' gospel and the apostles' proclamation of Christ's resurrection, the rest of the Roman Empire proved receptive to these evolving Christian teachings. Western civilization was intellectually developed, war weary, and deeply skeptical of existing religions, making it fertile ground for this new spiritual message that addressed their unfulfilled spiritual longings.

Christianity succeeded through several factors: Paul's organizational skills, the incorporation of Greek philosophy, its presentation of Jesus' life and message, and its willingness to compromise with existing religions like Mithraism and paganism. Although early Christian leaders compromised many of Jesus' ideals to save and spread his ideas, they preserved the essential truths. Through these compromises, Christianity struck a higher note in human morals, expanded humanity's concept of God, established the hope of immortality as religious assurance, and most importantly, gave Jesus of Nazareth to humanity's hungry souls.

The results of Peter's preaching on the day of Pentecost decisively shaped the future policies and direction for most of the apostles in their efforts to proclaim Jesus' gospel. Peter effectively became the true founder of the Christian church, while Paul carried the Christian message to non-Jewish peoples, and the Greek believers spread it throughout the entire Roman Empire. This distribution of roles would profoundly influence how Christianity developed and spread.

Although the tradition-bound Jewish people as a whole rejected both Jesus' original gospel of divine fatherhood and human brotherhood as well as Peter and Paul's proclamation of Christ's resurrection and ascension, the remainder of the Roman Empire proved receptive to the evolving Christian teachings. Western civilization at this time was intellectually sophisticated, weary of constant warfare, and thoroughly skeptical about all existing religions and philosophical systems. Despite their impressive inheritance of philosophical, artistic, literary, and political achievements, the Western peoples lacked a soul-satisfying religion that could fulfill their spiritual needs.

Upon this societal stage, Jesus' teachings, now embedded in the Christian message, were suddenly presented to the spiritually hungry hearts of these Western peoples. This new order of living immediately created conflict with older religious practices, inevitably leading to either victory for one side, defeat for the other, or some degree of compromise. History shows that compromise prevailed, as Christianity attempted to embrace more aspects of life than any population could fully assimilate in just one or two generations. Christianity was not simply a spiritual appeal as Jesus had presented; it quickly developed firm positions on religious rituals, education, magic, medicine, art, literature, law, government, morals, and many other aspects of human society.

The transformation of Christianity into a Greek-influenced religion began in earnest when the Apostle Paul stood before the council of the Areopagus in Athens and told the Athenians about "the Unknown God." Standing in the shadow of the Acropolis, this Roman citizen proclaimed his version of the new religion that had originated in the Jewish territory of Galilee. There were striking similarities between Greek philosophy and many of Jesus' teachings, as both aimed at the emergence of the individual—Greek philosophy focused on social and political emergence, while Jesus taught spiritual liberation leading to religious freedom. Together, these ideas created a powerful charter for human freedom.

Christianity emerged and triumphed over competing religions primarily because the Greek mind willingly borrowed good ideas even from Jewish sources, and because Paul and his successors were shrewd and strategic in their theological compromises. When Paul stood in Athens preaching "Christ and Him Crucified," the Greeks were spiritually receptive, genuinely inquiring and interested in spiritual truth. It's important to remember that initially the Romans opposed Christianity, while the Greeks embraced it enthusiastically. Eventually, it was the Greeks who compelled the Romans to accept this new religion as they had modified it, integrating it as part of Greek culture and making it accessible to the wider Roman world.

The Romans fully adopted Greek culture but replaced government by lot with representative government, a change that ultimately favored Christianity's spread. This shift brought to the entire Western world a new tolerance for diverse languages, peoples, and religions—creating an environment where Christianity could eventually flourish. The religion found space to grow as Roman society evolved toward greater cultural openness.

Much of the early persecution of Christians in Rome stemmed solely from their unfortunate use of the term "kingdom" in their preaching. The Romans were generally tolerant of various religions but deeply resentful of anything suggesting political competition with the empire. When these early persecutions, largely based on misunderstanding, finally ceased, the field for religious propagation was wide open. The typical Roman was primarily interested in political administration, caring little for either art or religion, but maintained an unusual tolerance for both, which ultimately created space for Christianity to spread throughout the empire.

After Roman political rule was consolidated and Christianity became more widespread, Christians found themselves with a coherent religious concept—one God—but without an empire. Conversely, the Greco-Romans possessed a great empire but lacked a suitable religious concept for empire worship and spiritual unification. This complementary situation led to a natural resolution: the Christians accepted the empire, and the empire adopted Christianity, creating a mutually beneficial relationship that would shape Western civilization for centuries.

Christianity gained favor in Rome during a period of intense ideological competition between the disciplined teachings of the Stoics and the salvation promises of the mystery cults. Into this environment, Christianity brought refreshing comfort and liberating power to a spiritually hungry population whose language didn't even contain a word for "unselfishness." This novel spiritual vision addressed fundamental needs that other philosophical and religious systems had failed to satisfy.

What gave Christianity its greatest power and credibility was the extraordinary way its adherents lived lives of service and even faced death for their faith during the earlier periods of harsh persecution. The Christian teaching regarding Christ's love for children also had profound social impact, quickly ending the widespread practice of infant exposure—the abandonment of unwanted children, particularly female infants, to die. These practical manifestations of Christian values demonstrated the transformative power of the new faith in ways that philosophical arguments alone could not achieve.

The church, functioning as an extension of society and allied with political powers, inevitably shared in the intellectual and spiritual decline of what became known as the European "dark ages." During this period, religion increasingly retreated into monasticism, emphasized ascetic practices, and became more legalistic. In a spiritual sense, Christianity entered a state of hibernation, temporarily losing much of its vital connection to Jesus' original teachings while institutional structures dominated.

Throughout these dark and despairing centuries, religion became increasingly secondhand, with individual spiritual experience subordinated to institutional authority. The individual believer was nearly eclipsed by the overwhelming authority, tradition, and dictates of the church hierarchy. A new spiritual problem emerged with the creation of numerous "saints" who were believed to have special influence in divine courts and could therefore, if effectively appealed to, intercede on behalf of ordinary believers before God. This further distanced individuals from direct spiritual experience.

Despite these challenges, Christianity had become sufficiently socialized and adapted to prevailing cultural patterns that, while it could not prevent the onset of the dark ages, it was well-positioned to survive this extended period of moral darkness and spiritual stagnation. The faith persisted throughout the long night of Western civilization and continued functioning as a moral influence when the renaissance finally dawned. Following the dark ages, Christianity underwent a rehabilitation process that produced numerous denominational branches tailored to different intellectual, emotional, and spiritual types of human personality, many of which continue to exist today.

The twentieth century has presented new challenges for Christianity and all other religions to address. As civilization advances, the necessity becomes even greater to "seek first the realities of heaven" in all human efforts to stabilize society and facilitate solutions to material problems. Spiritual foundations become more, not less, important as societies become more complex and technologically advanced.

Truth often becomes confusing and potentially misleading when it is dismembered, segregated, isolated, and over-analyzed. Living truth effectively teaches the truth-seeker only when embraced in its wholeness as a living spiritual reality, rather than as a mere fact of material science or an inspiration of creative art. Breaking truth into disconnected fragments diminishes its power to transform lives and guide societies.

Religion reveals to humans their divine and eternal destiny, offering a purely personal and spiritual experience that must always be distinguished from other forms of human thought. These other valuable but distinct forms include: logical attitudes toward material reality, aesthetic appreciation of beauty contrasted with ugliness, ethical recognition of social obligations and political duties, and even the sense of human morality. Religion specifically addresses values that call forth faith, trust, and assurance, culminating in worship. It discovers supreme values for the soul that exist on a different level than the relative values discovered by the mind.

Scientists have unintentionally prompted humanity into a materialistic panic by initiating an unthinking run on the moral resources accumulated throughout the ages. However, this bank of human experience contains vast spiritual assets that can withstand current demands. Only those who fail to think deeply become anxious about humanity's spiritual resources. When this materialistic-secular panic eventually subsides, the religion of Jesus will demonstrate its ongoing vitality and relevance.

Despite apparent conflicts between materialistic worldviews and Jesus' teachings, we can be confident that the Master's teachings will ultimately prevail. True religion cannot become entangled in controversies with science because religion is not concerned with material things. Religion maintains a position of sympathetic indifference toward science while focusing its concern on the scientist as a person. This distinction allows both disciplines to flourish in their proper domains without unnecessary conflict.

The pursuit of knowledge alone, without the corresponding development of wisdom and spiritual insight from religious experience, inevitably leads toward pessimism and human despair. A limited understanding of reality proves truly disconcerting. At the time of this writing, the worst phase of the materialistic age has passed, and a day of better understanding has begun to dawn. Though the most advanced scientific minds have moved beyond strictly materialistic philosophy, many ordinary people continue to lean in that direction due to earlier scientific teachings.

How unfortunate it is when materially-minded individuals allow vulnerable theories about a mechanistic universe to deprive them of the rich spiritual resources available through personal religious experience. Facts never conflict with genuine spiritual faith, though theories sometimes do. Science would better serve humanity by focusing on eliminating superstition rather than attempting to undermine religious faith—the human belief in spiritual realities and divine values that sustains and uplifts consciousness.

Science should expand people's material horizons just as religion expands their spiritual horizons. True science has no inherent conflict with authentic religion. The "scientific method" serves as an intellectual measuring tool for material investigations and physical achievements, but being entirely material and intellectual, it cannot evaluate spiritual realities and religious experiences, which belong to a different domain of human experience.

The fundamental inconsistency of modern mechanistic thinking lies in its failure to recognize that if this were merely a material universe and humans merely machines, such machine-humans would be entirely unable to recognize themselves as machines or perceive the existence of a material universe. The materialistic despair of mechanistic science overlooks the presence of the spirit-indwelt mind in the scientist whose supermaterial insight formulates these self-contradictory concepts of a purely materialistic universe. The very ability to conceive of materialism requires non-material capacities.

Even after materialism and mechanistic thinking are substantially overcome, the devastating influence of twentieth-century secularism will continue to impair the spiritual experience of millions of unsuspecting individuals. Modern secularism developed through two worldwide influences: its "father" was the narrow-minded, godless attitude of nineteenth and twentieth-century atheistic science, while its "mother" was the totalitarian medieval Christian church that had dominated Western civilization. Secularism emerged as a protest against the nearly complete domination of Western culture by institutionalized Christianity.

At the time of this revelation, the prevailing intellectual and philosophical climate in both European and American life has become decidedly secular and humanistic. For three hundred years, Western thinking has gradually secularized, with religion becoming increasingly a nominal influence and largely ritualistic exercise. The majority of professed Christians in Western civilization have unwittingly become secularists themselves, having lost much of the spiritual vitality that characterized early Christianity.

It required tremendous influence to liberate the thinking and living of Western peoples from the controlling grasp of totalitarian ecclesiastical domination. Secularism successfully broke the bonds of church control but now threatens to establish a new and godless type of mastery over the hearts and minds of modern people. The dictatorial political state is the direct offspring of scientific materialism and philosophical secularism. Having freed individuals from domination by the institutionalized church, secularism now risks delivering them into the tyranny of political and economic slavery, replacing one form of control with another.

Do not overlook the value of your spiritual heritage, the river of truth running down through the centuries, even to the barren times of a materialistic and secular age. In all your worthy efforts to rid yourselves of the superstitious creeds of past ages, make sure that you hold fast the eternal truth. But be patient! when the present superstition revolt is over, the truths of Jesus' gospel will persist gloriously to illuminate a new and better way.

But paganized and socialized Christianity stands in need of new contact with the uncompromised teachings of Jesus; it languishes for lack of a new vision of the Master's life on earth. A new and fuller revelation of the religion of Jesus is destined to conquer an empire of materialistic secularism and to overthrow a world sway of mechanistic naturalism. Urantia is now quivering on the very brink of one of its most amazing and enthralling epochs of social readjustment, moral quickening, and spiritual enlightenment.

The teachings of Jesus, even though greatly modified, survived the mystery cults of their birthtime, the ignorance and superstition of the dark ages, and are even now slowly triumphing over the materialism, mechanism, and secularism of the twentieth century. And such times of great testing and threatened defeat are always times of great revelation.

Religion does need new leaders, spiritual men and women who will dare to depend solely on Jesus and his incomparable teachings. If Christianity persists in neglecting its spiritual mission while it continues to busy itself with social and material problems, the spiritual renaissance must await the coming of these new teachers of Jesus' religion who will be exclusively devoted to the spiritual regeneration of people. And then will these spirit-born souls quickly supply the leadership and inspiration requisite for the social, moral, economic, and political reorganization of the world.

Christianity has indeed done a great service for this world, but what is now most needed is Jesus. The world needs to see Jesus living again on earth in the experience of spirit-born mortals who effectively reveal the Master to all people. It is futile to talk about a revival of primitive Christianity; you must go forward from where you find yourselves. Modern culture must become spiritually baptized with a new revelation of Jesus' life and illuminated with a new understanding of his gospel of eternal salvation. When Jesus becomes thus lifted up, he will draw all people to himself.

Jesus' disciples should be more than conquerors, even overflowing sources of inspiration and enhanced living to all people. Religion is only an exalted humanism until it is made divine by the discovery of the reality of the presence of God in personal experience. The beauty and sublimity, the humanity and divinity, the simplicity and uniqueness, of Jesus' life on earth present such a striking and appealing picture of human salvation and God's revelation that theologians and philosophers of all time should be effectively restrained from creating theological systems that bind the human spirit.

In Jesus the universe produced a mortal human in whom the spirit of love triumphed over material limitations of time and overcame the fact of physical origin. Ever bear in mind—God and human beings need each other. They are mutually necessary to the full and final attainment of eternal personality experience in the divine destiny of universe finality. "The kingdom of God is within you" was probably the greatest pronouncement Jesus ever made, next to the declaration that his Father is a living and loving spirit.

In winning souls for the Master, it is not the first mile of compulsion, duty, or convention that will transform individuals and their world, but rather the second mile of free service and liberty-loving devotion that betokens the Jesusonian reaching forth to embrace others in love and sweep them on under spiritual guidance toward the higher and divine goal of mortal existence. Christianity even now willingly goes the first mile, but humanity languishes and stumbles along in moral darkness because there are so few genuine second-milers—so few professed followers of Jesus who really live and love as he taught his disciples to live and love and serve.