Bible Mystery And Bible Meaning

Thomas Troward

• Publisher: Jazzybee Verlag
• Year: 2012
• eBook ISBN: 9783849619138
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Biblical Criticism & Interpretation

It is a great book, simply written, wherein the Christian author dares honestly to face the fact that the words of the bible can not be accepted in their literal meaning, and yet he has been able to preserve for us the deep, underlying spiritual truths of the Good Book.Contents: Chapter 1 - The CreationChapter 2 - The FallChapter 3 - IsraelChapter 4 - The Mission of MosesChapter 5 - The Mission of JesusChapter 6 - The Building of the TempleChapter 7 - The Sacred NameChapter 8 - The DevilChapter 9 - The Law of LibertyChapter 10 - The Teaching of JesusChapter 11 - The Forgiveness of SinChapter 12 - ForgivenessChapter 13 - The Divine GivingChapter 14 - The Spirit of Antichrist

Chapter 1 — The Creation

The Bible is the Book of Emancipation of Man. The emancipation of man means his delivery from sorrow and sickness, from poverty, struggle and uncertainty, from ignorance and limitation, and finally from death itself. This may appear to be what the colloquialism of the day would call "a tall order", but nevertheless it is impossible to read the Bible with a mind unwarped by antecedent conceptions derived from traditional interpretation without seeing that this is exactly what it promises, and that it professes to contain the secret whereby this happy condition of perfect liberty may be attained.

Jesus says that if a man keeps his saying, he shall never see death (John 8:51); in the Book of Job we are told that if a man has with him "a messenger, an interpreter", he shall be delivered from going down to the pit, and shall return to the days of his youth (Job 33:2325); the Psalms speak of our renewing our youth (Psalm 103:5); and yet again we are told in Job that by acquainting ourselves with God we shall be at peace, we shall lay up gold as dust and have plenty of silver, we shall decree a thing and it shall be established unto us (Job 22:2128).

Now, what I propose is that we shall reread the Bible on the supposition that Jesus and these other speakers really meant what they said. Of course, from the standpoint of the traditional interpretation this is a startling proposition. The traditional explanation assumes that it is impossible for these things to be literally true, and therefore it seeks some other meaning in the words, and so gives them a "spiritual" interpretation.

But in the same manner we may spiritualize away an Act of Parliament; and it hardly seems the best way of getting at the meaning of a book to follow the example of the preacher who commenced his discourse with the words, "Beloved brethren, the text doth not mean what it saith." Let us, however, start with the supposition that these texts do mean what they say, and try to interpret the Bible on these lines. It will at least have the attraction of novelty; and I think if the reader gives his careful attention to the following pages, he will see that this method carries with it the conviction of reason.

If a thing is true at all, there is a way in which it is true, and when the way is seen, we find that to be perfectly reasonable which, before we understood the way, appeared unreasonable. We all go by railroad now, yet they were esteemed levelheaded practical men in their day who proposed to confine George Stephenson as a lunatic for saying that it was possible to travel at thirty miles an hour.

The first thing to notice is that there is a common element running through the texts I have quoted: they all contain the idea of acquiring certain information, and the promised results are all contingent on our getting this information, and using it. Jesus says it depends on our keeping his saying, that is, receiving the information which he had to give and acting upon it. Job says that it depends on rightly interpreting a certain message, and again that it depends on our making ourselves acquainted with something; and the context of the passage from the Psalms makes it clear that the deliverance from death and the renewal of youth there promised are to be attained through the "ways" which the Lord "made known unto Moses".

In all these passages we find that these wonderful results come from the attainment of certain knowledge, and the Bible therefore appeals to our Reason. From this point of view we may speak of the Science of the Bible, and as we advance in our study, we shall find that this is not a misuse of terms, for the Bible is eminently scientific; only its science is not primarily physical but mental.

The Bible contemplates Man as composed of "Spirit, soul, and body" (1 Thess. 5:23), or in other words as combining into a single unity a threefold nature — spiritual, psychic, and corporeal; and the knowledge which it proposes to give us is the knowledge of the true relation between these three factors. The Bible also contemplates the totality of all Being, manifested and unmanifested, as likewise constituting a threefold unity, which may be distributed under the terms, "God", "Man", and "the Universe"; and it occupies itself with telling us of the interaction, both positive and negative, which goes on between these three. Furthermore, it bases this interaction upon two great psychological laws, namely, that of the creative power of Thought and that of the amenability of Thought to control by Suggestion; and it affirms that this Creative Power is as innately inherent in Man's Thought as in the Divine Thought.

But it also shows how through ignorance of these truths we unknowingly misuse our creative power, and so produce the evils we deplore; and it also realizes the extreme danger of recognizing our power before we have attained the moral qualities which will fit us to use it in accordance with those principles which keep the great totality of things in an abiding harmony; and to avoid this danger, the Bible veils its ultimate meaning under symbols, allegories, and parables.

But these are so framed as to reveal this ultimate meaning to those who will take the trouble to compare the various statements with one another, and who are sufficiently intelligent to draw the deductions which follow from thus putting two and two together; while those who cannot thus read between the lines are trained into the requisite obedience suited to the present extent of their capacity, and are thus gradually prepared for the fuller recognition of the Truth as they advance.

Involution and Evolution Seen in this light, the Bible is found not to be a mere collection of old-world fables or unintelligible dogmas, but a statement of great universal laws, all of which proceed simply and naturally from the initial truth that Creation is a process of Evolution. Grant the evolutionary theory, which every advance in modern science renders clearer, and all the rest follows, for the entire Bible is based upon the principle of Evolution. But the Bible is a statement of Universal law, of that which obtains in the realm of the invisible as well as that which obtains in the realm of the visible, and therefore it deals with the facts of a transcendental nature as well as with those of the physical plane; and accordingly it contemplates an earlier process anterior to Evolution — the process, namely, of Involution: the passing of Spirit into Form as antecedent to the passing of Form into Consciousness. If we bear this in mind, it will throw light on many passages which must remain wrapped in impenetrable obscurity until we know something of the psychic principles to which they refer.

The fact that the Bible always contemplates Evolution as necessarily preceded by Involution should never be lost sight of, and therefore much of the Bible requires to be read as referring to the involutionary process taking place upon the psychic plane. But Involution and Evolution are not opposed to one another; they are only the earlier and later stages of the same process: the perpetual urging onward of Spirit for Self-expression in infinite varieties of Form. And therefore the grand foundation on which the whole Bible system is built up is that the Spirit, which is thus continually passing into manifestation, is always the same Spirit. In other words, it is only ONE.

These two fundamental truths — that under whatever varieties of Form, the Spirit is only ONE; and that the creation of all forms, and consequently of the whole world of conscious relations, is the result of Spirit's ONE mode of action, which is Thought — are the basis of all that the Bible has to teach us, and therefore from its first page to its last, we shall find these two ideas continually recurring in a variety of different connections: the ONEness of the Divine Spirit and the Creative Power of man's Thought, which the Bible expresses in its two grand statements, that "God is ONE", and that Man is made "in the image and likeness of God".

These are the two fundamental statements of the Bible, and all its other statements flow logically from them. And since the whole argument of Scripture is built up from these premises, the reader must not be surprised at the frequency with which our analysis of that argument will bring us back to these two initial propositions. So far from being a vain repetition, this continual reduction of the statements of the Bible to the premises with which it originally sets out is the strongest proof that we have in them a sure and solid foundation on which to base our present life and our future expectations.

But there is yet another point of view from which the Bible appears to be the very opposite of a logically accurate system built up on the broad foundations of Natural Law. From this point of view it at first looks like the egotistical and arrogant tradition of a petty tribe, the narrow book of a narrow sect, instead of a statement of Universal Truth; and yet this aspect of it is so prominent that it can by no means be ignored. It is impossible to read the Bible and shut our eyes to the fact that it tells us of God making a covenant with Abraham, and thenceforward separating his descendants by a divine interposition from the remainder of mankind; for this separation of a certain portion of the race as special objects of the Divine favour forms an integral part of Scripture from the story of Cain and Abel to the description of "the camp of the saints and the beloved city" in the Book of Revelation.

We cannot separate these two aspects of the Bible, for they are so interwoven with one another that if we attempt to do so, we shall end by having no Bible left, and we are therefore compelled to accept the Bible statements as a whole or reject it altogether, so that we are met by the paradox of a combination between an all-inclusive system of Natural Law and an exclusive selection which at first appears to flatly contradict the processes of Nature. Is it possible to reconcile the two?

The answer is that it is not only possible, but that this exclusive selection is the necessary consequence of the Universal law of Evolution when working in the higher phases of individualism. It is not that those who do not come within the pale of this Selection suffer any diminution, but that those who do come within it receive thereby a special augmentation and, as we shall see by and by, this takes place by a purely natural process res...

Table of contents

• Chapter 1 — The Creation
• Chapter 2 — The Fall
• Chapter 3 — Israel
• Chapter 4 — The Mission of Moses
• Chapter 5 — The Mission of Jesus
• Chapter 6 — The Building of the Temple
• Chapter 7 — The Sacred Name
• Chapter 8 — The Devil
• Chapter 9 — The Law of Liberty
• Chapter 10 — The Teaching of Jesus
• Chapter 11 — The Forgiveness of Sin
• Chapter 12 — Forgiveness
• Chapter 13 — The Divine Giving
• Chapter 14 — The Spirit of Antichrist