Rebirth For Christianity

In the domain of religion and theology, the present age is witnessing a phenomenon of extraordinary character and significance. It is now being demonstrated that scholarly research in the field of Christian history and exegesis is at last beginning to be motivated by the spirit of truth-seeking. The amazing discovery in recent times of the Dead Sea Scrolls, and other documents such as the Gospel of Thomas, has lifted a curtain of secrecy ...

Excerpt from the Introduction:

In this powerful book the author confronts the reader with many challenges regarding the orthodox approach to the life of Jesus and the history of Christianity. He points his critical finger at many of the rigid dogmas as well as the literal interpretation of Biblical stories, which he asserts have created bigotry and mental servitude and stifled a real understanding of the Christian message.

For Dr. Alvin Body Kuhn the true meaning of Christianity is to be found in its mystical teaching. He calls for a revival of the effort to discover the esoteric significance of the Christian heritage, to understand the allegorical method of Biblical interpretation, and to find behind the myths, dramas, symbols and allegories, the spiritual vision which they embody. Then there will occur, he says, a new birth for Christianity and a new enlightenment.

This is a controversial work and not all readers will want to agree with the author's views on the historical aspects of Christian origins, although his statements are supported by a great deal of documentation and research. However, anyone who reads this book seriously will find himself re-examining his own beliefs and testing them at the bar of logic and reason.

Dr. Kuhn was a scholar of comparative religion for several decades, and his works reflect the depth of study and research which he spent in this field. This book was his last, having been completed just before his death. His earlier books include The Lost Light, Who is This King of Glory? and The Lost Key to the Scriptures.

This work was completed just prior to the death of Dr. Alvin Boyd Kuhn in 1963. His manuscript, in the form it had reached, did not give all the sources from which quotations and references had been taken. Every effort has been made to check these, but it has not been possible to verify them all.

Excerpt from the Foreward:

In the domain of religion and theology, the present age is witnessing a phenomenon of extraordinary character and significance. It is now being demonstrated that scholarly research in the field of Christian history and exegesis is at last beginning to be motivated by the spirit of truth-seeking. The amazing discovery in recent times of the Dead Sea Scrolls, and other documents such as the Gospel of Thomas, has lifted a curtain of secrecy from the studies and counsels of Christian theology, and has brought out into the open the questions of Biblical history and interpretation. It is a happy circumstance that a scholar can speak out today and publish things relevant to the history, the doctrines and the scriptures of the Christian faith which would have brought upon him the sternest reprobation only a few years ago. It heralds the dawn of a fresh, clear conscience in the mind of Western man.

The most striking manifestation of this new orientation is the sharp, sudden about-face of the Roman Catholic hierarchy regarding Bible interpretation. Some leading Catholic universities and biblical institutes have scheduled courses in such previously banned subjects as Neoplatonic philosophy, Gnostic and Hermetic systems, and movements of theosophic esotericism. Individual Catholic scholars and Catholic journals are publishing pronunciamentos hailing the advent of a new era in Scriptural exegesis, in which, so to say, the Catholic cleric and lay mind alike may find themselves liberated from the shackles of a literal and historical dogmatism in searching the Scriptures for a message of blessed truth, and may range freely through the whole gamut of mystico-spiritual values to be appropriated from the scriptural context.

It is now becoming apparent that ancient religionists held a knowledge of many recondite truths; and commanded an expansive synthetic view of the principles of a science that related the life of consciousness on being's subjective side harmoniously with the life of nature on being's objective side, in something like Kant's predicated "synthetic unity of apperception." This comes close to saying that the sages of old had a clear picture of life as an organic whole in a synthesis of all its component parts. Modern philosophy has always regarded such a comprehensive view as a possibility and a goal of human intellectual attainment, but has been skeptical about its actual realization.

The recognition is dawning that the so-named sacred Scriptures or Holy Writ of past ages were the products of an effort to embody in terms and modes of expression this precious structure of understanding. A thing of such exalted revelation could be expounded only through the medium of poetic imagery, the forms and archetypes of which could be found in and drawn from an objective world which itself was the manifest expression of that soul of the universe in its creational effort. The burden of the message thus delivered was the endeavor to acquaint man with the basic principles of a universal science that would enable him to relate his life commodiously and harmoniously to the demands upon his intelligence and his will.

The history of man's efforts to utilize this code of cryptic wisdom in the ordering of his life activity is the saga of world religion. And this story turns to tragedy when the posterity to which the heritage of arcane wisdom was transmitted proved obtuse to the divine message embodied in archetypal imagery, as well as to the perception of the underlying unity of the whole structure of truth. Thus there followed a general disintegration of this delicate structure, resulting in the weakening and the derationalization of religion, with the fateful results which humanity has been experiencing ever since.

The present break with two thousand years of a literal reading of the cryptograms of arcane wisdom is in every respect the esoteric significance of our scriptural heritage. Science has largely restored to the world the basic knowledge of the constitution of real being, the fiery core of universal life. Now, to accompany this illumination there must come the restoration of the structure of an equally scientific synthesis of truth in the domain of religion and philosophy, revealing the ultimate unity of all knowledge.

The transition now in progress will push the human mind far ahead in its march toward illumination. It will be a stride toward the attainment of a stable balance between the realism of common experience and the fantasy with which man inevitably tends to apostatize the realities of the world conceived to be lying above the range of rational meaning. Man's happiness, his weal or bodily woe, hinges upon his ability to maintain a steady balance between the world of his bodily existence and the one he pictures so irrationally as enticing him into its glories.