Overview

TOC

Table of Contents

Introduction

1. The Importance of Their Relationship

2. How the Course Approaches the Bible

3. Similarities Between the Course and the Bible

4. Differences Between the Course and the Bible

5. Continuity

6. Qualified Supersession

7. A Coherent Approach to the Bible

8. The Bible and Course Students

Introduction

Introduction by Allen Watson

In other words, I was an extremely devoted, highly motivated Bible student. I expected to spend the rest of my life in its study. Furthermore, I believed it to be the final, only, and completely trustworthy Word of God, without errors. (That is one of the "fundamentals" of fundamentalists.)

Seventeen years ago I abandoned Bible study and began looking for spiritual truth in other places. Six years later I found A Course in Miracles and since that time, for eleven years, I have studied the Course just as assiduously as I used to study the Bible. I think this gives me a sufficient background to be able to speak with a reasonable degree of authority on how the Bible relates to the Course.

You may be wondering, "Why, after so many years of devoted Bible study, did you stop?" That is a reasonable question, and I think, before reading this booklet, it will be helpful to you to know a little more about where I am coming from. There are two sides to the answer.

First, despite many spiritual experiences during my years with the Bible, I was not happy. I had continuous ups and downs, with a preponderance of downs. There were some marvellous experiences of God's Love, but by and large the promises of the Bible, such as "peace that passes all understanding," or "life, and that more abundantly," escaped me. The Bible simply didn't seem to be delivering what it promised.

Second, and perhaps even more important, I was thoroughly disillusioned with every Christian group I had ever encountered. The best church contained only a handful who seemed to take the Christian message seriously. I saw hypocrisy, indifference, lack of any real communion with God, superficiality, and preoccupation with trivial issues of doctrine and practice everywhere I looked. I saw scores of divisions among followers of Jesus, most over the most petty issues—for example, whether or not it was permissible to fraternize with members of other Christian groups, whether you should baptize infants or only adults (and did you sprinkle or pour the water, or immerse people in it? If you immersed, did you do it face down, backwards, once, or three times for the Trinity, in standing or running water?). I saw, and also read of, families permanently torn apart by disagreements over such silly details.

I spent twenty-two years trying to get Christians to acknowledge their unity, and saw the most promising groups splinter and divide. There was even one group who ended up separating themselves from any Christians who did not overtly proclaim Christian unity! Seriously.

So, I had had it. I was at the end of my rope. I felt I was a failure, yet I felt that the church at large was even worse off. Although I retained an enormous respect for the Bible, it was clear to me that its teachings were not working, and rescue attempts seemed to be beyond all hope. I set it aside with great sorrow and regret, and began investigating what other teachings-spiritual and secular—had to say about God, truth and love.

When I first discovered the Course in 1985, God re-entered my life with a vengeance—or I should say, without vengeance. The Course seemed to me to embody everything I had always valued about what the Bible taught, without any of the elements that had dragged me down and divided Christendom. I devoured the Text when I began to read it, and have been studying it almost daily ever since.

I had some problems with the Course during the first few years. I had a lot of Christian baggage to dispose of. When I began to realize that the Course's teaching differed radically from the Bible in certain ways, I was not ready to give up the Bible doctrines. I had held them, unshakeably, for so long that they seemed like immutable truths to me. God didn't create the world? Jesus didn't bear my sins on the cross, suffering God's wrath in my place? Sin does not exist? My mind felt twisted out of shape. Most of all, I could not let go of my belief that the Bible was without error.

I kept reading the Course anyhow, ignoring the parts that I disagreed with. I kept reading because, despite my disagreements, something was happening to me. The joy and peace that had escaped me for my entire life until that point were starting to take hold and to become a more consistent part of my daily experience. My interaction with the Course was doing for me consistently what the Bible had done for me only for brief periods. In terms of the Bible story of the Exodus from Egypt to the Promised Land, I realized that I had finally left the wilderness, crossed the Jordan River, and had begun to possess the land of promise. At last—at long last!—I knew God and knew that I knew Him. I was home.

After about three years of reading the Course with reservations, one day as I was reading a passage that disagreed very pointedly with a central Bible doctrine (the reality of sin), I realized that not only did the logic of the Course on this point make sense to me, but I actually agreed with it. Sin could not be real if the separation never happened. I became aware that, without any struggle on my part, or without anyone's having attacked my biblical beliefs, my dedication to the conservative Christian theology on which I had based my life for so long was simply gone. The Holy Spirit had quietly, gently, changed my mind.

Despite what was a radical change in my beliefs, I never felt as though I had lost anything of value. I never felt a rupture between what I had learned from the Bible and what I found in the Course. For me, the Course seemed to complete the Bible, to explain it more fully, and to fulfill what it promised. My experience of the transition was that the Holy Spirit had simply purified my past learning and kept only the blessing, only what really worked. What was gone were the fears and the distortions. What remained was what the Bible, to me, had always been trying to tell me, but in pure, crystal clarity rather than muddy confusion.

My study of the Bible had led me to the Course. It had been the prelude to the Course; not something I now had to reject, but rather something I looked back on with gratitude for the way it had led me. Over and over again, I felt the Course confirming things I had seen (but only dimly) in the Bible. Then, I had seen "through a glass darkly," as Paul put it in I Corinthians. Now, the smudges and distortions were gone, and the message was as clear as day.

My personal history, obviously, is a powerful factor in determining the way I now see the relationship of the Bible to A Course in Miracles. I see the Bible as a preliminary, imperfect rendition of the truth, truth which has now been presented in a much clearer way in the Course. I retain a strong reverence for the Bible. I believe the truth is in it, but mixed with error. I believe that there can be great value in reading the Bible, for I believe the same Voice for God Who speaks in the Course does also speak in the Bible's pages.

Yet in the Bible, that Voice is muted with men's fears and mixed with men's imperfect perceptions. For nearly two thousand years the Bible was the clearest voice for God (at least in the West). Now, we have the Course—a more precise, more coherent presentation of truth. The Bible, therefore, is no longer necessary. It can, however, still be a valuable aid to our path. When Truth speaks in the Bible, it brings a message wholly consonant with the Course. Yet, in reading it, we need to discern between the Voice of Love and the voice of fear. We need to bring what we read in the Bible to the truth as given in the Course, rejecting the words of fear, and keeping only the clear message of God's love and forgiveness.

That is the general approach taken by this booklet. It is a middle road between two extreme positions I have heard among Course students. One group contends that the Course and the Bible are one hundred percent in agreement, and attempts to reconcile and integrate them into one another. Another group denounces the Bible as nothing but "the ego's religion," unworthy of any attention at all. I see the Course as a logical continuation of the Bible, growing out of it, agreeing with much of it, but gently correcting the Bible's mistakes and superseding it as a source of accurate spiritual teaching.

When I first wrote down the points I wanted to cover in this booklet, I realized I had written the outline for a full-length book, rather than a booklet. Some day, perhaps, I'll write that longer book. For now, however, I have chosen to compress and curtail what I want to say into this shorter form. As a result, some points are presented sketchily, with just enough support to make the point clear. Many examples, and many details of comparison between the Bible and the Course are not discussed at all. If I have omitted your favorite point, or your most burning question, I trust you will understand. I have tried to concentrate on the broader and more general issues, things that can serve all of us as guidelines in helping us, as students of ACIM, to relate to the Bible. I hope my readers will find this skeleton presentation useful and stimulating to their own thought and understanding.

Note on Bible references: Quotations are given from both the King James Version (kjv) and the New American Standard Bible (nasb). The abbreviations are used to identify which version is being quoted.

Excerpts

Excerpt From The Course as Continuing Progessive Revelation

Perhaps you can see where I am heading with all of this talk about the Old and New Testaments. I see the Course standing in relationship to the New Testament almost exactly as the New Testament stands in relationship to the Old. It is a higher, more complete understanding of God's unchanging revelation. It is presenting the same content (the same original revelation from God) in a purer manifestation. In some ways, the new form presented in the Course seems to be a radical change from what the New Testament teaches; it seems to completely contradict that teaching. But in reality, it does not contradict; it fulfills, it uplifts, it augments. It is a more perfect reception of the same truths God has always been trying to impart to us.

When the New Testament teachers declared that Jesus' single sacrifice had rendered any lesser sacrifices unnecessary, completely loosing mankind from all penalty for sin for all time, it was a change no less radical than the one the Course now makes in declaring that no sacrifice at all is needed, because no sin has actually occurred. The discerning reader can see a definite continuity in this progression of teaching, a movement from a lesser understanding to a greater. The new teaching does not make the old teaching wrong; it is simply more complete.

There is a story of four blind monks who encounter an elephant. Each approaches the elephant and grasps a particular part: one the trunk, one a leg, one the tail, and one the elephant's huge abdomen. And each reports on what an elephant feels like:

"An elephant is like a snake." "An elephant is like a tree." "An elephant is like a rope." "An elephant is like a wall."

Were any of the monks "wrong?" No; according to what they had experienced of the elephant, they were all correct. But all of their understandings were incomplete.

The Bible is an imperfect reception of the revelation of God's nature, and the way He interacts with mankind. The revelation that inspired it was correct, but men's egos "mis-received" it and distorted it to some degree. If we accept what the Course is saying, A Course in Miracles is a more complete understanding, a purer expression of the same truth about the same God. Therefore, just as the Apostles did not need to totally invalidate the Old Testament in order to proclaim their new understanding, neither do we, as Course students, need to invalidate the Bible in order to hold to the higher understanding the Course presents. The Bible and its teachings are part of what got us here, part of what prepared us for the Course, just as the Law acted as a tutor, keeping mankind in custody until the later revelation could come through.

Some Examples of Progressive Revelation

In closing this chapter, I think it will be helpful, in order to make the concept of progressive revelation less abstract and more concrete, to look at two specific examples of such progression, from the Old Testament, to the New, and finally, to the Course.

Loving Our Enemies

We have already seen how Jesus in the Gospels extended the Old Testament teaching about loving our neighbors (our countrymen) to a larger and broader teaching about loving our enemies. Elsewhere, in the Parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:25-37), he also expanded our understanding of what "neighbor" meant (see verses 36 and 37); although a Samaritan was despised by most Israelites—not a "countryman"—he was identified as the true "neighbor" in the story.

The same teaching is raised to an even higher level in the Course material. In the Song of Prayer pamphlet, Jesus refers to his own earlier teaching about loving and praying for our enemies, and goes beyond it. In S-1.II.4-5, he teaches that, from a higher point of view, we have no enemies. He tells us that a deeper interpretation of praying for our enemies is that we need to pray for ourselves, that our minds would be changed from their perception of enemies, enabling us to recognize Christ in everyone and see their sinlessness.

Here we see the progression: from attacking our enemies, to praying for them, to realizing that there is no such thing as an enemy!

The Way Out of Guilt

The Law of the Old Testament provided a way for men to handle guilt, and to escape the consequences of their sins, through animal sacrifices, the annual Day of Atonement, and diligent obedience to God's laws. The New Testament expanded that by presenting a way, through faith in Christ, to become entirely free of condemnation and guilt once and for all. The Course now informs us that sin and guilt are simply illusions made up by our own minds. In all three cases, the content is release from guilt and union with God, but in each progressive revelation, the release and union are more complete, and the method easier to grasp.

Summary

Thus, in my opinion, the best way to see the relationship between the Bible and the Course is to understand the Course as the next major step in revelation after the Bible. It is grounded in the Bible, it takes up the truths the Bible was trying to impart to us, but it presents them in a higher form. Some have said the Course might be thought of as "The Third Testament," and that is, in my mind, a title the Course merits, although I believe the Course can stand by itself, apart from the Bible, much more easily than the New Testament could stand apart from the Old.

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