Type 1 religion says that man is an immortal and eternal spiritual being. He can raise himself into a higher awareness of his own divine nature. He can also reduce himself into a deeper state of degradation and suffering.
Type 2 religion says that man has been created by God. God reveals himself to man. Man’s duty is to believe the revealed doctrines and to obey the revealed commands of God. Belief and obedience are rewarded after death by eternal life in Heaven. Disbelief and disobedience are punished after death by eternal life in Hell.
Examples of Type 1 religion are Hinduism and Buddhism. Examples of Type 2 religion are Christianity, Judaism, and Islam.
Many people do not like the Christian doctrines about an angry God threatening them with hellfire to gain obedience to “commandments”, many of which seem highly questionable. Enormous gains in scientific and astronomical knowledge make these doctrines much less believable than they were two thousand years ago, or even one thousand years ago.
So many people throw out these Christian ideas. They throw out the idea of God. They are impressed with science and technology. So they become materialists. They believe that only matter exists. There is no God. There are no gods. There are no spiritual beings. There is none of that hocus-pocus stuff. Matter is real. Matter is solid. Nothing else is real, except as an appearance.
In the West, there is not much awareness of Type 1 ideas. In the last century, knowledge of Hinduism and Buddhism has become much greater in the West. So there is a lot more awareness of Type 1 ideas than there was in earlier centuries, when there was almost no awareness of such ideas. In the West, these ideas are very loosely known as “New Age Philosophy”.
“New Age Philosophy” rejects both Christian doctrines and materialism. Man is a spiritual being. Psychic phenomena are real. Reincarnation is real. Man does have a relationship with a Supreme Being, and this relationship can become closer than it is. Higher states of consciousness do exist.
Often in “New Age Philosophy”, Jesus Christ is considered one savior among many. This idea is a nice theory. It makes Christianity consistent with the Hindu idea that all religions are basically the same. But it is not faithful to the basic and original doctrines of Christianity as taught by Saint Paul in the New Testament, and as reaffirmed by the early Church Fathers in the early Church Councils. A thousand years later, these same basic and original doctrines of Christianity were again reaffirmed in the Protestant Reformation by Martin Luther and by John Calvin.
The idea that all religions are the same makes it possible to embrace Christianity and Hinduism both. It is an attempt to reconcile Type 1 religion and Type 2 religion. It can’t be done. But many people try. There is a great deal of muddy thinking on the subject.
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