The Science of Religions
(This is an excerpt from a University Of Metaphysical Sciences course at www.umsonline.org, please feel free to visit the school website)
The
six centuries covered in this course was a time when humanity of all
classes delved into religious thoughts or strove for lofty ethical
ideals. Claims to the contrary are often uneducated and misguided. Francis Legge, in Forerunners And Rivals Of Christianity (1964),
writes, “A general notion that, shortly before the coming of Christ,
the Pagans had tired of their old gods, and, lost to all sense of
decency, had given themselves up to an unbridled immortality founded on
aesthetic ideas… is almost the reverse of the truth.” Francis Legge
continues, “The cause of this misconception is, however, clear enough.
Half a century ago, the general public was without guide or leader in
such matters, for having any materials on which to form opinions of
their own. The classical education which was all the majority of men
then got, carefully left…the origins of Christianity on one side.” It
is important to look at historical and scientific evidence as well as
church history, when studying any religion. Outside the regular or
canonical scriptures, most faiths grew from a reservoir of vast
literature of uncertain authorship in which were found the same
stories, repeated again, being introduced into the Christian Apocryphal
Gospels, Acts, and Lives of the Saints. It then began to dawn upon
scholars that the human mind under similar conditions works the same
way. All religions, true or false, very well might have gone through
similar stages of development.
I Am by Dennis Bratcher
demonstrates this principle of the human mind at work. Who is God, he
asks? It replies, “I am.” Yet how do we know? It says, Watch! “Because
I am who I will be in your history. From Messiah to Son of God,
development not only in animal forms, in the intellectual moral
faculties of man, in political and social institutions, and even in
what he called ‘ecclesiastical institutions,’ which included religions
themselves.” This is the likely explanation for John 8:28 in which “I
Am” becomes a functional name for God, “‘I AM has sent me to you.’”
Bratcher tells us that “I Am” is the concept but not a dimension of
time or even tense, and explains that John is proclaiming that this God
revealing Itself to the Israelites at the exodus, is now once again
revealing Itself in human history in Jesus the Christ. Other times in
which God is identified as I am are Moses’ encounter with God at the
burning bush on Mount Horeb. When Moses asked whom he should tell the
people sent him to deliver them from Egypt, God revealed himself as “I
am” or “I will be” (Exodus 3: 14)