This thesis explores various concepts of 'Christ' within the liturgy of the Liberal Catholic Church, focusing on the services of the Holy Eucharist, solemn benediction, and healing. It contextualizes these notions through experiences of being, fellowship, understanding, tradition, expression, and encounter, while addressing the philosophical and theological roots of the church. The author argues for a rediscovery of the true Jesus and advocates for the church to synthesize ancient wisdom with modern disciplines to ensure its future.

1. VISIONS OF THE REAL PRESENCE OF CHRIST IN THE LITURGICAL CELEBRATION OF THE HOLY EUCHARIST AND THE SERVICES OF SOLEMN BENEDICTION AND HEALING ACCORDING TO THE LIBERAL CATHOLIC RITE
IAN ELLIS-JONES PhD (UTS)
Copyright © Ian Ellis-Jones 2009 – All Rights Reserved
A thesis submitted in fulfilment of the requirements of The Liberal Catholic Institute of Studies (Australian Campus) for a Diploma in Religious Studies
The Liberal Catholic Church in the Province of Australasia (Including Indonesia) This thesis is not an official document of The Liberal Catholic Church in any of its provinces or jurisdictions.
The views expressed by the author are those of the author and must not be taken as necessarily those of The Liberal Catholic Church in any of its provinces or jurisdictions.

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CONTENTS
Page
PREFACE iii
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS v
ABSTRACT vi
INTRODUCTION: EXPERIENCING THE CHRIST THROUGH JUST BEING
The Meaning and Purpose of Religion 1
CHAPTER 1: EXPERIENCING THE CHRIST THROUGH FELLOWSHIP
The Liberal Catholic Church 13
CHAPTER 2: EXPERIENCING THE CHRIST THROUGH UNDERSTANDING
The Philosophical and Theological Roots of the Liberal
Catholic Church 33
CHAPTER 3: EXPERIENCING THE CHRIST THROUGH TRADITION
Christ in the Liberal Catholic Church Tradition 89
CHAPTER 4: EXPERIENCING THE CHRIST THROUGH LIBERAL CATHOLIC
EXPRESSION
Christ in the Liberal Catholic Liturgy 127
CHAPTER 5: EXPERIENCING THE CHRIST THROUGH ENCOUNTER
The Christ of the Author’s Personal Encounter and
Experience and the Future of the Liberal Catholic Church 174
BIBLIOGRAPHY 211

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PREFACE
The primary focus of this thesis is an examination and exploration of the various notions or concepts of “Christ” as understood in The Liturgy According to the Use of the Liberal Catholic Church (“The Liturgy”), especially in the context of the services of the Holy Eucharist, the Benediction of the Most Holy Sacrament, and Healing, as contained in The Liturgy. However, in order to fully comprehend and appreciate the former, it is necessary to provide a context, that is, contextualize the subject-matter. Accordingly, the thesis will provide the reader, in successive chapters, with various opportunities to experience the Christ through “just being”, fellowship, understanding, tradition, expression and encounter.
It has been said that "words are only pictures of ideas on paper".1 Unfortunately, words have their inherent limitations, and, as Professor John Anderson co nstantly said, nothing can be meaningfully defined by reference to the relations it has with other things.2 The difficulty is even worse when it comes to matters pertaining to spirituality and what may be referred to as the ineffable, for that is ultimately indescribable and inexpressible … but it can be experienced, albeit as “Mystery Present”, provided one always keeps in mind that “[t]he mind is the great slayer of the Real ... Let the disciple slay the slayer.”3
On a more mundane note, references in this thesis to page numbers of The Liturgy are references to the 5th (1983) edition of The Liturgy. By way of special note, full points in contractions and between the letters of acronyms and abbreviations consisting of initial capitals, together with any superadded punctuation marks (eg full points commas), have been omitted from all textual material including quotations, case extracts and all other excerpted material. Some other very minor stylistic word and spelling changes to excerpted and quoted material have been made either to assist in reading or for consistency’s sake. Unnecessary capitalization has been avoided as far as practicable, except when referring to God or, depending upon the context, certain attributes or qualities ordinarily associated with or deemed equivalent in meaning to God (eg Love, Wisdom, Truth, Power, Presence, Personality, the Absolute, and so forth). For the most part,
1 Fell v Fell (1922) 31 CLR 268 at 276 per Isaacs J, citing Wilmot CJ in Dodson v Grew (1767) Wilm 272 at 278, 97 ER 106 at 108.
2 See, eg, “Realism and Some of its Critics”, in Anderson (1962:42).
3 H P Blavatsky, “Fragment One”, The Voice of the Silence, in J Algeo (intro), Inspirations from Ancient Wisdom: At the Feet of the Master/Light on the Path/The Voice of the Silence (Wheaton IL: Theosophical Publishing House (Quest Books)), p 73.

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original spellings have been retained. This has resulted in some otherwise unavoidable inconsistency of expression.
Scriptures quotations in this thesis are primarily from the King James (Authorized) Version of the Bible. In some cases, the Revised Standard Version of the Bible and certain other versions of the Bible have been used.
Penultimately, although the author is committed to the use of gender-neutral language, quotations from writings (particularly older ones) in which one gender is used have been printed as originally written.
Finally, the views and opinions expressed by the author in this thesis are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views or opinions of, and should not be attributed to, the Liberal Catholic Church in any of its various provinces.
Ian Ellis-Jones
14 June 2009

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
My deep gratitude goes to those who offered support and encouragement on the project, particularly my dear wife Elspeth, my three children Fiona, Simon and Peter, and my son-in- law Mark.
I also wish to thank, most especially, the Right Reverend Pedro Oliveira, and the Very Reverend Dr Ronald A Rivett, the latter a former Vicar-General of the Liberal Catholic Church in Australia, who have believed in and inspired me, and who have shared with me so much of their wisdom and knowledge over the years.
Very special and heartfelt thanks are also due to the Reverend Dr Arthur F Mowle, Director, Liberal Catholic Institute of Studies, for suggesting the title and topic areas of this thesis as well as the wording of the various chapter headings, and for furnishing invaluable reading material. I will always be grateful for his encouragement, kind words, wise counsel and advice during the preparation of this thesis and otherwise. I also wish to thank most sincerely the Right Reverend Graham Preston, Regionary Bishop of the Liberal Catholic Church in the Province of Australasia (including Indonesia) for his encouragement, support and wise counsel.
I have also learned much from my many friends at the Liberal Catholic Church of Saint Francis, Gordon NSW in the years since I first started attending services there on a regular basis in 1985.
Thanks are also due to my good friends Ross Bowey, Peter Hutchison and Michael Martin, all of whom know that there is more to life than the temporal and the visible, and to Melinda Aitkenhead for her IT technical assistance.
This thesis is dedicated to my late parents, Harry and Phyl, who believed in me and taught me to be honest and always to strive for the best. From them I learned that there can be true religion, faith and objective moral values without dogmatism, fundamentalism, cant and hypocrisy.

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ABSTRACT
The aim of this thesis is to examine and explore the various notions or concepts of “Christ” as understood in The Liturgy of the Liberal Catholic Church, especially in the context of the services of the Holy Eucharist, the Benediction of the Most Holy Sacrament, and Healing, as contained in The Liturgy. That is the primary focus of the thesis. However, in order to fully comprehend and appreciate the former, it is necessary to contextualize the subject- matter. Accordingly, the thesis will provide the reader, in successive chapters, with various opportunities to experience the Christ through “just being”, fellowship, understanding, tradition, expression and encounter.
As we have and receive our be-ing, our very livingness, from God which is the source and substance of all life and the ground of all being, the thesis begins with an examination of the meaning and purpose of religion, and regard is had to what a number of persons have had to say about that matter over the centuries. Insofar as the Liberal Catholic Church is concerned, the Church’s first Presiding Bishop James I Wedgwood wrote that the “purpose” of religion was “to ‘bind us back’ to God, the source of our being; to bring us back into conscious relation with our spiritual self and to open for us the resources of our own higher and spiritual consciousness”. As regards the object of church worship Bishop Wedgwood referred once again to the “binding back” to God and to our spiritual nature, but he went further, making the point that religion was “concerned with the awakening of those higher powers of consciousness which are still chiefly latent within man, with the instruction of his mind and even with the fashioning of the physical body”. In what is a distinctive, and perhaps unique, Liberal Catholic perspective on the object and purpose of church worship, Wedgwood wrote that a church service is a “service” rendered both to God and to the whole world in which we live in which we “take our share in His work of pouring out strength and blessing upon the world”.
In the first chapter of the thesis, the nature of the Liberal Catholic Church is examined and explored. The Liberal Catholic Church is not only a church but also a Christian church and denomination, an independent Catholic and Apostolic church, a sacramental church in the Catholic tradition, a liberal church, a mystical church, and a church in the Platonic and Neoplatonic traditions. Each of those features or distinguishing characteristics of the Liberal Catholic Church is addressed seriatim.

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The second chapter of the thesis explores the philosophical and theological roots of the Liberal Catholic Church, which has sought to recover and establish to its rightful place in Catholic Christianity what was described by the third Presiding Bishop of the Church, Frank W Pigott, as the “lost Gnosis”. The view of the present writer is that the so-called “lost gnosis”, the true Ancient Wisdom underlying all religion properly interpreted, when freed of carnalization, literalism and various external accretions and corrupting influences, is to be found most immediately and directly in early Greek patristic philosophy and theology, especially that rooted and grounded in the philosophical and theological traditions of Platonism and Neoplatonism, which themselves were built upon the foundations of the Ancient Mysteries.
Theosophy may have been the means by which the Liberal Catholic Church came into being, and arguably the inspiration for its coming into being, but it is not Theosophy that underpins and provides a theological foundation for the Church being a church, and a Christian one at that, but the very roots of Christianity itself as expressed by those Christians whose theology was rooted in Platonism and Neoplatonism. The early Greek Church Fathers, like modern day Liberal Catholics, had a high vision of humankind and expounded our innate divinity and potential. They believed in the oneness of all life, and their philosophical and theological system explained how the One becomes the many so that the many may know themselves to be one, and in time come to know the Self as one.
In the third chapter of the thesis there is a fulsome exposition of the different senses in which the word “Christ” is, and has been, used in the Liberal Catholic Church. Consistent with its Platonic and Neoplatonic roots, and its esoteric approach to the interpretation, construction and application of Sacred Scripture, the Christ can mean any one or more of the following Persons, Beings or Principles in the Liberal Catholic tradition, all of which may be seen as manifestations of the Godhead through a process of emanations in a successive diversity of being while maintaining its essential unity: the “Historical Jesus”, the “Historical Christ”, the “Mythic (or “Pagan”) Christ”, the “Cosmic Christ”, the “Mystic Christ”, and the “Anonymous Christ”. Those mentioned are certainly not mutually exclusive. Indeed, many overlap and coalesce. Each of the above is considered in turn, both in the third chapter of the thesis and in the fourth chapter as well relating to the Liturgy of the Liberal Catholic Church. There is also what is known as the “Eucharistic

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Lord” whose Real Presence in the Sacrament of the Altar and in the service of Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament is also considered in Chapter 3 of the thesis. Finally, there is the “Christ of Personal Encounter and Experience”, which forms a substantial part of the subject of Chapter 5 of the thesis.
The writer does not eschew esoteric approaches to understanding and encountering Christ (in particular, what is often referred to as the “indwelling Christ” or “Christ within”). However, without the historical Jesus we have no real way of conceptualizing the more esoteric approaches to Christ. In the words of one Liberal Catholic priest of yesteryear, “We cannot follow a God, we can only follow a man.” Jesus authenticates, actualizes and makes real and possible for us what is otherwise not only inscrutable but unattainable. This has so often been overlooked or even openly repudiated by Liberal Catholics, yet the Church’s second Presiding Bishop Charles W Leadbeater made it clear that the life of Jesus Christ is “the prototype” of the life of all of his followers, and that each of us must “pass through those stages, those steps, those initiations through which Christ [himself] passed”.
In the fourth chapter of the thesis the writer examines and explores the various senses in which the Christ is referred to in the Liturgy of the Liberal Catholic Church. As already mentioned, the Liberal Catholic Church is a sacramental church, and one of the major aims or objectives of sacramental worship is to assist in one’s spiritual growth and development, as well as that of others, indeed (especially, but by no means exclusively, in the Liberal Catholic tradition) the whole universe. Further, what makes the Liberal Catholic Church very special is the emphasis it gives as a church in its Liturgy to the eastern wisdom tradition whilst also retaining much of the language, thought forms and teaching of the Western tradition. This is, in the opinion of the writer, altogether appropriate, given that the real Jesus was a man of the East who belongs as much to Asia as to the West.
For the Liberal Catholic, the sacraments are an integral part of “the mysteries of God" (1 Cor 4:1), and the Ancient Wisdom itself. Special regard is had to the services of the Holy Eucharist, Solemn Benediction and Healing. Each is seen to be a ritual-drama in which words or rather “The Word” becomes flesh and empowers all who reverently seek, not just for themselves but for others, the experience of the Living Christ offered by the services. Indeed, it is only in self-surrender, in moving from a sense of self to a sense of non-self,

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that there is any hope of spiritual and emotional growth and development, let alone healing of body, mind, soul and spirit.
In the fifth and final chapter of the thesis the writer expresses his own understanding of the Christ, who is both the Jesus of history and the Christ of faith as well as the Indwelling Presence of God, the very livingness and self-givingness of Life Itself in whom we all live and move and have our being. The writer then goes on to discuss the future of the Liberal Catholic Church and discusses two important things the Church needs to do in order to survive, especially in Australia. First, the Liberal Catholic Church needs to rediscover, or perhaps discover the first time, the true Jesus, and the true meaning of the Kingdom of God, without simply being another liberal Christian Church. Secondly, the Church needs to remain a mystical, sacramental and healing Christian church in the Catholic tradition but in a way which not only provides a vehicle for the continuance and promulgation of the Ancient Wisdom or gnosis but which more fully takes into account and synthesizes such matters as the “new physics”, psychology and other disciplines and techniques such as transpersonal psychology.

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INTRODUCTION
EXPERIENCING THE CHRIST THROUGH JUST BEING The Meaning and Purpose of Religion*
It is often said, in various ways in different religions, that we come from God, however described or understood, we belong to God, we are a part of God in the sense that we live and move and have our being in God, and we are on our way back to God. It has also been said that the One (“Being-Itself” or “Life-IT-self”) becomes the many in order that the many may know themselves to be One. In short, God is - we are. As Swami Vivekananda1 wrote ([1976] 2002:109), “Religion comes when that actual realization in our own souls begins.”
Bishop James Ingall Wedgwood, the first Presiding Bishop of the Liberal Catholic Church, who understood with great clarity that as we have our be-ing in God, religion has everything to do with the Ground of Being in all of its various manifestations, wrote (1929:16):
We penetrate straight to the essential core of religion if we study its etymology. The word [religion] itself has a wonderful significance. There is little doubt amongst authorities as to its origin, but opinions reduce themselves to two likely derivations, with the balance of probability resting on the former. Both are capable of the same interpretation. These are (1) religare = to bind back (2) relegere, which bears the sense of “sailing back over the same waters.”
Wedgwood is right to stress the fundamental importance of studying the etymological meaning and derivation of the word “religion” in order to gain insight into the object, purposes, functions and endpoint of religion. Regrettably, the derivation of the English word "religion" is by no means as clear as the learned bishop would have us believe,2 but we do
* Some of the material contained in this Introduction first appeared in Ellis-Jones (2007).
1 Swami Vivekananda, one of the most influential and beloved interfaith leaders of all time, spoke at the Parliament of the World’s Religions held in Chicago USA in 1893. In his speech Vivekananda quoted, among other things, the following two passages from the Bhagavad-Gîtâ: "As the different streams having their sources in different places all mingle their water in the sea, so, O Lord, the different paths which men take, through different tendencies, various though they appear, crooked or straight, all lead to Thee!"; "Whosoever comes to Me, through whatsoever form, I reach him; all men are struggling through paths that in the end lead to Me."
2 “Concerning the etymology of [religio], various opinions were prevalent among the ancients.” Lewis and Short Latin Dictionary, viewed December 16 2004, <http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/cgi- bin/ptext?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.04.0059%3Aentry%3D%2340976>. The word religio refers to “what attaches or retains, moral bond, anxiety of self-consciousness, scruple”: see McCarson (2002:Online). Religio also refers to “supernatural constraint, sanction, religious practice”. “Initially used for Christianity, the use of the word religion gradually extended to all the forms of social demonstration in connection with sacred.”

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know that the current English word is derived from the Middle English word religioun which comes from the Old French word religion.3
Now, according to Julia Cybele Lansberry (2003:Online) the Latin word religio4 (a word used to refer to “respect, devotion or superstition”5 as well as “supernatural constraint, sanction, religious practice”6) has affinities with three separate Latin verbs:
 religare, to restrain, bind, bind back, bind up, bind fast together, tie back (especially to oneself again), from ligare, to tie, close a deal, cement an alliance, unite in harmony
 relegare, to banish, from legare, to depute, commission, send as an emissary, bequeath, entrust
 relegere, to gather, collect again, review, re-read, re-examine carefully, from legere, to read, recite, or choose.7
Birnbaum (1964:588) has this to say about the matter:
The term [religion] is usually derived from the Latin verb, religere: the conscientious fulfillment of duty, awe of higher powers, deep reflection. The related noun religio refers to both the object of such inner preoccupation, and the goal of the activity associated with it. Another, later, Latin verb has been cited as a source of the term: religare, implying a close and lasting relationship to the supernatural. The scriptures of the various religions hardly contain general terms for religion.
However, the Roman philosopher, lawyer and statesman Marcus Tullius Cicero derived religion, not from religere, religio or religare, but from relegere [root “leg-“] (to treat carefully, referring to re-reading):
Those who carefully took in hand all things pertaining to the gods were called religiosi, from relegere.8
3 Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary, viewed 30 November 2004, <http:///www.m-w.com/cgi- bin/netdict?Religion>.
4 In poetry also relligio, to lengthen the first syllable. Bouquet (1942:15) has correctly noted that “from very early times scholars have been divided as to its basic meaning”.
5 JRV Marchant and JF Charles, eds, Cassell's Latin Dictionary, London: Cassell and Co, p 478.
6 Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary, viewed 30 November 2004, <http:///www.m-w.com/cgi- bin/netdict?Religion>.
7 Julia Cybele Lansberry, “De Religione Romana”, viewed 21 December 2004, <http://www.aztriad.com/religio1.html>. Confirmatory support for the etymology of all three (viz ligare, legare, and legere, cf re: back) can be found in Merriam-Webster Online: see the entries for the English words “rely”, viewed 21 December 2004, <http://www.m-w.com/cgi-bin/dictionary?book=Dictionary&va=rely>, and “legate”, viewed 21 December 2004, <http://www.m-w.com/cgi-bin/dictionary?book=Dictionary&va=legate>, “legible”, viewed 21 December 2004, <http://www.m-w.com/cgi-bin/dictionary?book=Dictionary&va=legate>, respectively.

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Fowler (1998:Online) has written in relation to relegere:
Some have suggested that "religion" may be derived from the Latin word relegere, which refers to re-reading. There is no doubt that "religion" is often associated with repetitious rites of liturgy and litany, and the reproduction of creedal formulas and expressions. …
However, Fowler goes on to note:
… Most etymologists, however, regard the English word "religion" to be derived from the Latin word religare which is closely aligned with the root word religo. [John Ayto, Dictionary of Word Origins, New York: Arcade Pub, 1990, p 438.] The prefix re- means "back" or "again," and the word ligare refers to "binding, tying or attaching." Other English words such as "ligature," referring to "something that is used to bind," and "ligament" which "binds things together," evidence the same root in the Latin word ligare. The Latin word religare, from which our English word "religion" is most likely derived, meant "to tie back" or "to bind up."
Support for that view comes from the Roman grammarian Maurus Servius Honoratus,9 as well as the early Christian scholar Lucius Caelius Firmianus Lactantius, who derived religion from religare [root “lig-“] (to bind, in the sense of bind back or together):10
We are tied to God and bound to Him [religati] by the bond of piety, and it is from this, and not, as Cicero holds, from careful consideration [relegendo], that religion has received its name.11
Bishop Wedgwood, writing on the Latin word religare, says (1929:17)
It is worth noticing the special significance of the prefix “re-” in “religare.” The Concise Oxford Dictionary gives a number of meanings which the prefix bears, of which the ninth is:- “Back, with return to previous state after lapse or cessation or occurrence of opposite state or action.” What could be more apposite?
8 De natura deorum, II, xxviii, 72. According to Lewis and Short this is “an etymology favored by the verse cited ap Gell 4, 9, 1, religentem esse oportet, religiosum nefas”. Lewis and Short Latin Dictionary, viewed 16 December 2004, <http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/cgi- bin/ptext?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.04.0059%3Aentry%3D%2340976>.
9 Ad Verg A, 8, 349. See Lewis and Short Latin Dictionary, viewed 16 December 2004, <http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/cgibin/ptext?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.04.0059%3Aentry%3D%2340976>.
10 Religare also means to restrain, tie back: see Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary, viewed November 30 2004, <http:///www.m-w.com/cgi-bin/netdict?Religion>. “The root word in Latin, however, has nothing to do with organizations and systems; those are the structures which have developed from some religious experience and which often as not lose the true meaning of the word religion in becoming too concretized and rigid. The Latin word ‘religare,’ from which ‘religion’ is derived, simply means ‘to bind back.’ Thus, the religious function in the truest sense of the word is that which binds us back to the original wholeness from which we came.” McCarson (2002:Online).
11 Divine Institutes, IV, xxviii. For this derivation Lactantius cites the expression of Lucretius (1, 931: 4, 7): religionum nodis animos exsolvere. See Lewis and Short Latin Dictionary, viewed 16 December 2004, <http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/cgi-bin/ptext?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.04.0059%3Aentry%3D%2340976>. Tertullianus also saw the origin of the word in religare.

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The expert on comparative religion A C Bouquet (1942:15), after citing both the views of Cicero (root “leg-“) and Servius (root “lig-“), states:
Subsequently it seems to have carried both meanings, for St Augustine the Great uses it in both senses. It is, however, most likely that the earlier one (whether or not we dislike it) was the original, since it is the exact counterpart of a Greek word (paratērēsis) which means “the scrupulous observation of omens and the performance of ritual”. …
Be that as it may, Saint Augustine of Hippo appears also to have derived religion from religere (which refers to, among other things, recovering):12
having lost God through neglect [negligentes], we recover Him [religentes] and are drawn to Him.13
Later, however, Augustine abandoned that view in favour of the derivation previously given by Servius and Lactantius (viz religare).14 In On the True Religion Augustine says:
Religion binds us [religat] to the one Almighty God.15
H P Blavatsky, who cofounded the Theosophical Society in New York City in September 1875, acknowledges both the derivations relegere and religare:
… whether this term be derived from the Latin word relegere, “to gather, or be united” in speech or in thought, from religens, “revering the gods,” or, from religare, “to be bound fast together.”16
The scholarly Saint Thomas Aquinas, one of the Doctors of the Church, lists the derivations relegere, religare and religere without favour.17 However, according to The Catholic Encyclopedia the correct one “seems to be that offered by Lactantius [viz religare]”:18
12 Yinger (1970:10) writes that the word religere also means to rehearse, to execute painstakingly, suggesting “both group identity and ritual”.
13 City of God, X, iii.
14 See Retractions, I, xiii. The Collins English Dictionary states that “religion” derives one of its meanings from the root words re and ligare, meaning “to bind or tie back to oneself again”: Hayward (1995:17).
15 On the True Religion. Larue (2003:Online) writes: “The idea may reflect a concept prominent in biblical literature. Israel was said to be in a ‘covenant’ (berith) relationship with its God (Yahweh). In a sense, the nation was ‘covenanted’ or ‘bonded’ to the deity.”
16 Lucifer, January/February 1891.
17 See Summa, II-II, Q lxxxi, a 1.
18 Religion: I Derivation, Analysis, and Definition, The Catholic Encyclopedia, viewed 1 December 2004, <http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/12738a.htm>. “Modern etymologists mostly agree with this later view, assuming as root lig, to bind … .” Lewis and Short Latin Dictionary, viewed 16 December 2004, <http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/cgi-bin/ptext?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.04.0059%3Aentry%3D%2340976>.

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Religion in its simplest form implies the notion of being bound to God; the same notion is uppermost in the word religion in its most specific sense, as applied to the life of poverty, chastity, and obedience to which individuals voluntarily bind themselves by vows more or less solemn. Hence those who are thus bound are known as religious.19
The Theosophist De Purucker (1996:148) favours the root derivation religio:
It is usual among modern Europeans to derive the word religion from the Latin verb meaning “to bind back” -- religare. But there is another derivation ... from a Latin root meaning “to select,” “to choose” ... [Derived] from the Latin religio, [religion] means a careful selection of fundamental beliefs and motives by the higher or spiritual intellect, a faculty of intuitional judgment and understanding, and a consequent abiding by that selection, resulting in a course of life and conduct in all respects following the convictions that have been arrived at. This is the religious spirit.20
Fowler (1998) has written this about the word religio:
Religio was a recognition that men are often tied or bound to God in reverence or devotion. It can also convey the meaning of being bound or tied to a set of rules and regulations, to rituals of devotion, to a creedal belief-system, or to a cause, ideology, or routine.21
The rationalist Thomas Paine (2004:Online) had earlier favoured the related cognate word religo:
The word religion is a word of forced application when used with respect to the worship of God. The root of the word is the Latin verb ligo, comes religo, to tie or bind over again, to make more fast - from religo, comes the substantive religo, which, with the addition of n makes the English substantive religion.
19 Religion: I Derivation, Analysis, and Definition, The Catholic Encyclopedia, viewed 1 December 2004, <http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/12738a.htm>.
20 Webster’s New Twentieth Century Dictionary of the English Language Unabridged (Cleveland and New York, The World Publishing Company, 1950), after noting the French religion, also cites the Latin religio (-onis), stating: “… from religare, to bind back; re, and ligare, to bind, to bind together. Others derive religio from relegere, to gather, to collect, making the primary meaning a collection, and then more specifically a collection of religious formulas”. The Concise Oxford Dictionary, 3rd ed (Oxford, 1934) agrees (“L religio perh[aps] connected w[ith] re(ligare bind)”). What does seem clear is that religio itself comes from something else, either religare or relegere: see Wedgwood (1929:16).
21 According to Lewis and Short religio has the following meanings (among others): “I. Reverence for God (the gods), the fear of God, connected with a careful pondering of divine things; piety, religion, both pure inward piety and that which is manifested in religious rites and ceremonies; hence the rites and ceremonies, as well as the entire system of religion and worship, the res divinae or sacrae, were frequently called religio or religions (cf our use of the word religion) … II. Transf. A. Subject, conscientiousness, scrupulousness arising from religion, religious scruples, scruples of conscience, religious awe, etc (cf sanctimonia) … 2. In gen., a strict scrupulousness, anxiety, punctiliousness, conscientiousness, exactness, etc. … B. Object. 1. Abstr, the holiness, sacredness, sanctity inhering in any religious object (a deity, temple, utensils, etc; cf sanctitas) … 2. Concr, an object of religious veneration, a sacred place or thing … (b). A system of religious belief, a religion (late Lat) …” Lewis and Short Latin Dictionary, viewed December 16 2004, <http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/cgibin/ptext?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.04.0059%3Aentry%3D%2340976>.

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The French use the word properly: when a woman enters a convent she is called a novitiate, that is, she is tied or bound by that oath to the performance of it. We use the word in the same kind of sense when we say we will religiously perform the promise that we make.
But the word, without referring to its etymology, has, in the manner it is used, no definite meaning, because it does not designate what religion a man is of. There is the religion of the Chinese, of the Tartars, of the Brahmins, of the Persians, of the Jews, of the Turks, etc.22
Birnbaum (1964:588) has astutely observed that:
The complex etymology of the term is not fortuitous: the complexity and diversity of human religions, as well as the profound and ambivalent feelings they arouse, have produced a heterogeneous set of scientific definitions of the phenomenon. Usually, and perhaps inevitably, these definitions include evaluative assumptions: many emphasize unduly one aspect of religious systems. …
Baker’s Dictionary of Theology (Harrison 1960:441) makes the point:
The etymology of the term does not help, both because it is uncertain and because neither religare nor religere throws much light on the present meaning of religion.
Nevertheless, when one considers the meanings of the various suggested derivations (viz, relegare, relegere, religare, religere, religio, and religo) there appear to be some common elements or at least similar themes:
1. Religion involves, at one or more levels, the notion of “binding together” or “binding back”, whether to oneself (in the sense of one’s true or spiritual nature), one’s ultimate “source” (eg God, Be-ing) or to other people as some sort of response to life, with a sense of awe, reverence, “fear”, devotion, veneration and respect, whereby meaning is gained.
2. Religion involves, at one or more levels, the notions of “return”, “recovery”, “restoration” and “re-encounter” (whether to one’s own self, some condition or way of life, or one’s ultimate home or resting place, hence Bishop Wedgwood’s references to “sailing back over the same waters” (1929:16), and to the object and purpose of religion being “to restore to man the knowledge of what he really is” (1929:17)), with an attendant and consequential sense of value and importance.
22 The word religo means “to tie or fasten” (see J R V Marchant and J F Charles (eds), Cassell's Latin Dictionary, London: Cassell and Co, p 478) refers to regulation and control, “good faith”, “rite” and “ritual” as well as having other meanings. Noah Webster, in his American Dictionary of the English Language, was also of the view that the English word “religion” was derived from “Religo, to bind anew”.

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3. Religion involves the selection and systematization of fundamental beliefs and motives and a consequent abiding by that selection with some degree of regulation and control (eg in the form of codes of conduct) as well as conscientiousness and scrupulousness arising from the religion and inherent as well in its practice.
4. Religion involves the notion of ties in the sense of the fulfillment of duties and commitment.
5. Religion also involves practices and activities to give effect to the foregoing including but not limited to repetitious rites and the reproduction of formulas and expressions.
6. Religion involves notions of holiness, sacredness and sanctity (including but not limited to sacred places or things and objects of veneration) and often involves supernaturalism or superstition.
Thus, Birnbaum (1964:588) has concisely written:
… Religions are systems of belief, practice, and organization which shape an ethic manifest in the behaviour of their adherents.
The present writer has elsewhere concluded (see Ellis-Jones 2007) that, ultimately, any given religion comprises an amalgam of faith-based ideas, beliefs, practices and activities which include:
 doctrine, dogma, teachings or principles to be accepted on faith and on authority,
 a set of sanctioned ideals and values in terms of expected ethical standards and behavior and moral obligations, and
 various experientially based forms, ceremonies, usages and techniques perceived to be of spiritual or transformative power,
all of which are based upon faith in a Power, Presence, Being or Principle,
and which are:
 directed towards a celebration of that which is perceived to be not only ultimate but also divine, holy or sacred, and
 manifest in and supported by a body of persons (consisting of one or more faith-

17. 8
based communities) established to give practical expression to those ideas, beliefs, practices and activities.
Although it is always dangerous to reduce a religion, or any type of belief system for that matter, to the functions it supposedly serves, partly because any belief system tends to serve a considerable number of functions, partly because functionalism by its very nature is inherently reductionistic, and also because there would not appear to be any clear-cut line separating religion from non-religion, it is generally agreed (see, especially, Yinger 1970:7, 15, 33) that religion serves many functions. The present author is primarily concerned with how some prominent Liberal Catholics have seen and described the functions of their religion.
Bishop Wedgwood discusses a number of them in his helpful book The Larger Meaning of Religion (1929). First, he writes of the “purpose” of religion per se (1929:17):
It is the purpose of religion to “bind us back” to God, the source of our being; to bring us back into conscious relation with our spiritual self and to open for us the resources of our own higher and spiritual consciousness.23
In essence, that is also the primary, but not the only, object of church worship itself. Wedgwood (1929:47) has this to say about that matter:
I take it that the object of church worship is to “bind back” (Lat. = religare) man to God, and to his spiritual nature which represents what is godlike in himself. The church services are designed to this end ... [for it is] the instinct natural to man to give praise and to lift himself up to God.
However, Wedgwood also makes the point that (1929:21)
Religion is not only an affair of devotion and religious aspiration. It is concerned with the awakening of those higher powers of consciousness which are still chiefly latent within man, with the instruction of his mind and even with the fashioning of the physical body. The perfected man would be the finished product of religion, rightly understood, would have a physical body trained to express as adequately as possible the whole gamut of emotions, thoughts, intuition, creative energy and so forth. It is evident, therefore, that religion is concerned even with the good health of the bodily vehicle, and with fashioning it into a proper expression of the indwelling spirit.
The purpose of all this goes beyond what might be referred to as enlightened self-interest. Indeed, it is very doubtful whether the latter would be religious in any true sense of the word at all. Thus, Wedgwood stresses the point that worship “does not concern the individual alone”
23 Emphasis added.

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(1929:58). He goes on to make the point that worship is also for the benefit of the “outside world” as well, saying (1929:58-59):
It is not entirely a question of giving “worth-ship” to God, or of deriving strength, encouragement, love and illumination for oneself. It is also a matter of worship for the outside world, and, let me add, of working very hard, if one really understands what a prodigious work one is enabled and entitled to do.
Wedgwood also writes of the nature of a church “service” (1929:59):
We could use no better word than “service.” A church service is a “service” rendered to the world in which we live, and it is equally a “service” rendered to God because we are privileged in being able to co-operate with Him, and to take our share in His work of pouring out strength and blessing upon the world.
Theosophist and Liberal Catholic priest Geoffrey Hodson has made the same point, expressing the view (1930:19) that
... the Church must be regarded as the most powerful agent for good in the life of a nation – the nation’s greatest asset – and its work as of paramount importance to every member of the race. The mission of the Church must no longer be regarded as limited to the performance of a certain number of ceremonies on certain days, but rather to the establishment everywhere of spiritual centres, whose radiant power and blessing shall illumine and enrich the national life, inspire every good work, and ceaselessly exert an influence for the spiritualizing of mankind.
Similarly, Bishop Charles W Leadbeater, the second Presiding Bishop of the Liberal Catholic Church, wrote that every time the Service of the Holy Eucharist is celebrated in a Liberal Catholic Church “there passes forth into the world a wave of peace and strength, the effect of which can hardly be overrated”, and that such was the “primary object” of the Service (Leadbeater [1920/1929/1967] 1967:3). He went further, saying that each of the great services of the Church (but most especially the Eucharist) “was originally designed to build up a mighty ordered form, expressing and surrounding a central idea – a form which would facilitate and direct the radiation of the influence upon the entire village which was grouped round the church” (1967:7).24
24 It would appear that Bishops Wedgwood and Leadbeater, and many other Theosophists and metaphysicians of that era (not to mention some to the present day), were influenced to a large extent by not only the philosophy of idealism (in either or both of its subjective and objective forms) but also neo-vitalism, that is, the revival of vitalism that occurred particularly in the second half of the 19th century at least in part as a reaction to what was otherwise an increasing materialism, rationalism and positivism in matters pertaining to the sciences and philosophy in general. Platt (1982:114) refers to Leadbeater’s belief in “the monistic principle of the vital being present in all things” as expounded in The Science of the Sacraments.

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The present writer is reverently agnostic with respect to some of the foregoing, but is prepared to accept, with certain reservations, what is not otherwise self-evidently or intuitively true as a working hypothesis, and as what Wedgwood referred to as “revealed knowledge”, that is, knowledge that “has to be accepted on faith, because it transcends the limitations of our minds” (Wedgwood 1929:10), whilst ever remaining open to “the experience of the divine ... of the ultimate, of reality, of life, of truth, [that] is beyond all discussion” (van der Leeuw 1930:Online) that may well contradict or supersede the supposed revealed knowledge. Early “foundational” Liberal Catholics tended to view their Church in overly optimistic, euphoric, and even apocalyptic, terms. Sadly, if we judge by present day appearances, we Liberal Catholics appear to have failed spectacularly as a church, but we are cautioned by Holy Scripture to “judge not according to the appearance, but judge righteous judgment” (Jn 7:24). Further, our main concern ought to be that “Christ may dwell in [our] hearts through faith ... being rooted and grounded in love” (Eph 3:17), for “Except the Lord build the house, they labour in vain that build it” (Ps 127:1a; cf Liturgy 224) ... words that perhaps have become overly familiar to us to the point where we have lost sight of their true significance and meaning.
One of the major tasks of any religion is, or at least ought to be, to provide opportunities for members and adherents, and even others as well, to experience this sense and power of oneness and the numinous. Ritual (or “ceremonial”)25 has been shown to have enormous transformative power (see, eg, Watts 1968; Williamson 1994), and the present writer has found in The Liturgy According to the Use of the Liberal Catholic Church26 that the words (or “Word”) contained therein, when read, spoken, intoned or sung, possess and release a transformative and ennobling Power that is truly “divine”, even in the sense used by the great Humanist Sir Julian Huxley (1964:223):
For want of a better, I use the term divine, though this quality of divinity is not truly supernatural but transnatural – it grows out of ordinary nature, but transcends it. The divine is what man finds worthy of adoration, that which compels his awe.
In a similar vein, Dr N T Wright, a most eminent Anglican bishop and Biblical scholar who is a conservative evangelical,27 is one of many current religionists who seek to avoid
25 Wedgwood consistently preferred the word “ceremonial”, which he defined as “the intelligent use of forms that they may be the best expression of the life” (1928b:Online).
26 “Liturgy” means “public work”, or public work with “energy”: see Blanch (1971:8).
27 N T Wright is the Anglican Bishop of Durham in England.

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altogether notions of supernaturalism because of their inherent problems.28 He writes (1992b:80):
The great divide between the “natural” and the “supernatural”, certainly in the way we use those words today, comes basically from the eighteenth century, bringing with it the whole debate about “miracles”.
Bishop Wright goes on to say (1992b:81):
But what if the God who made the world has remained active within the world? What if the word “God” itself might refer, not to this distant, remote, occasionally- intervening Being, but to a God who breathed with the breath of the world? … This is a very different picture from the eighteenth-century one; it is much more Biblical. It puts the question of “God” acting within the world into quite a different dimension.
In other words, if the God of Wright’s understanding does, in fact, exist, and is active in our world, then anything done by that God would not be supernatural at all. In a similar vein, but from a very different religious perspective, namely that of New Thought, Nona L Brooks writes “there is no supernatural, for the natural is God in action” ([1924] 1977:Online).29
The nature of our experience of the Divine is a complex and much debated one. Some (see, eg, Jenkins (1966:59-60)) see it as “existential” in nature, whilst others (see, eg, Mouroux (1954:9-15)) view it as “experiential”. Both Jenkins and Mouroux refer to this experience as being an “interpersonal” (albeit primordial) one - which, in the view of the present writer, tends to imply anthropomorphic and anthropopassionate notions of God - although both of the above mentioned writers are at pains to point out that our experience of the Divine is not one of the usual empirical (subject/object) kind because God is not an object, but a Presence. Thus, our experience of the Divine is an inner and spiritual one of “creaturehood” with attendant notions of awe, reverence, wonder, gratitude, humility, devotion and love. Both of these ideas are, as will be seen, very much in the Liberal
28 For example, to say that something is "supernatural", that is "not natural", says nothing. It is simply stating what the supposed entity is not. It says nothing about what it supposedly is. Further, how is it possible to speak meaningfully about the supposed "infinite" acting in the finite, the non-temporal acting in time? The philosopher John Anderson (1962) explains why there can be only one order or level of reality in terms of "the “problem of commensurability", that is, any notion of there being different orders or levels of reality or truth is "contrary to the very nature and possibility of discourse". Indeed, any concept of there being some higher or lower order or level of reality is strictly meaningless and unspeakable, and if in fact there were more than one order of reality, how could there be connections between them? The inherent weakness of so much esotericism (other than those ideas and concepts which can readily be seen by ordinary persons as intuitively self-evident, eg the oneness of all life), is that ideas and purported teachings of so-called supernatural beings or entities, as well as the beings and entities themselves, cannot be shown to have any objective referent. See van der Leeuw (1930:Online). See, generally, Ellis-Jones (2001).
29 See “The Mystery of Healing”, <http://www.angelfire.com/wi2/ULCds/nona1.html> (viewed 2 April 2009).

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Catholic tradition, for the God we worship is both transcendent and immanent, with the experience of God being both intimate and ultimate in nature,30 for, as the Apostle Paul wrote, “in him we live, and move, and have our being” (Acts 17:28). Those words describe what is referred to as panentheism.31
In Chapter 1 of this thesis (entitled “Experiencing the Christ Through Fellowship”) the writer will look more closely at the nature of the Liberal Catholic Church. In Chapter 2 (“Experiencing the Christ Through Understanding”) the focus will be on the philosophical and theological roots of the Liberal Catholic Church, which, in the view of the writer, are to be found in the Platonic and Neoplatonic32 traditions of philosophical and theological thought. In Chapter 3 (“Experiencing the Christ Through Tradition”) the focus will be on the various senses in which the word “Christ” is and has been used throughout the years in the Liberal Catholic tradition. In Chapter 4 (“Experiencing the Christ Through Liberal Catholic Expression”) the special focus will be on the presence and meaning of “Christ” in The Liturgy, particularly in the context of the services of the Holy Eucharist, the Benediction of the Most Holy Sacrament, and Healing. In Chapter 5, the final chapter of the thesis, entitled “Experiencing the Christ Through Encounter”, the writer will discuss the Christ of his own personal encounter and experience as well as the future of the Liberal Catholic Church.
30 Unitarian Universalist theologian and author James Luther Adams (1901-1994), who taught at Meadville Lombard, Harvard and Andover Newton seminaries, came up with two things that, he said, permit appreciation or recognition of a thing being a religion, or being religious: ultimacy, that is, a place to seek meaning about the ultimate questions of life and death, and intimacy, that is a place to belong. See Small (2003).
31 Panentheism (from the Greek πάν (“pan”), meaning “all”; en, meaning “in”; and theos, meaning “God”), that is, "all-in-God". Panentheism is the theological position that God, the ground of and for all being, is not only immanent within the Universe but also transcends the Universe in such a way that not only is God in all things but all things are also in God, but not such that all things are God. Panentheism is essentially a combination or conciliation of theism (God is the Supreme Being) and pantheism (God is everything).
32 Throughout this thesis the words “Neoplatonic”, “Neoplatonism” and other cognate words will be spelled as such, that is, non-hyphenated, for the sake of consistency of expression. This has required a number of changes to quoted material.

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CHAPTER 1
EXPERIENCING THE CHRIST THROUGH FELLOWSHIP The Liberal Catholic Church
Introduction
The Liberal Catholic Church,33 first and foremost, is a “church”.34
In the New Testament of the Christian Bible the word “church” is translated from the Greek word ekklēsia. That word comes from two words, ek meaning “out”, and kaleo meaning to “call”, “call out” or “invite”. Baker’s Dictionary of Theology (see Harrison [1960] 1972:123) states that the New Testament uses the word ekklēsia to refer to a congregation assembled by and called out by the Living God about Jesus, as well as “the spiritual family of God, the Christian fellowship created by the Holy Spirit through the testimony to the mighty acts of God in Christ Jesus”.
An ekklēsia is thus no mere assembly or place of public assembly or public meeting,35 but a centre of worship of people who have been especially “called out” by God for Divine purposes. As sometime Australian Liberal Catholic priest and Theosophist Brian Parry has pointed out (1967:10), “A church is not a body separate from those comprising it.”
The Liberal Catholic Church is not only a church but also:
33 The Liberal Catholic Church, which is one of some 30 or more Catholic Churches throughout the world which are independent of Rome, came into existence as a result of a complete re-organization in 1915-16 on a more liberal basis of the Old Catholic Church in Great Britain, the holy orders of which were derived from the Old Catholic Church of Holland which had disapproved of the papal dogmas of the immaculate conception in 1854 and papal infallibility in 1870, but which was otherwise able to transmit its Apostolic Succession to the Old Catholic churches of Germany and Switzerland, and also to Great Britain. In the early years of the Liberal Catholic Church, the church was often referred to as “The Movement”, that is, a “movement within Catholic Christianity, not a new Church” (Wedgwood 1976b:133, fn 1). Except where otherwise stated, a reference in this thesis to the Liberal Catholic Church is a reference to that church, known as such, the current Presiding Bishop of which is the Most Reverend Graham S Wale, and which has as one of its provinces throughout the world the Province of Australasia (including Indonesia).
34 The English word “church”, along with its cognate forms kirche, kerk, kirk, comes from the Greek adjective, to kuriakon, “used first of the house of the Lord, then of his people”: Baker’s Dictionary of Theology (see Harrison [1960] 1972:123).
35 There are other Greek words such as agora, paneguris, heorte, koinon, thiasos, sunagoge and sunago that can be used to refer to a mere assembly as such.

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 a Christian church and denomination
 an independent Catholic and Apostolic church
 a sacramental church in the Catholic tradition
 a liberal church
 a mystical church
 a church in the Platonic and Neoplatonic traditions.
Each of the above features or distinguishing characteristics of the Liberal Catholic Church will be addressed seriatim.
The Nature of the Liberal Catholic Church
A Christian Church and Denomination
The Liberal Catholic Church sees itself as both a “Christian church” and a “Christian denomination” - “part of the historical [Christian] Church” - which “seeks to work in amity with all other Christian denominations”,36 and which “emphasises the values of corporate Christian life and worship”.37 It is “a living Christian Church, both progressive and historical”,38 that seeks “not only to commemorate a Christ who lived two thousand years ago” but also “to serve as a vehicle for the eternal Christ who lives as a mighty spiritual presence in the world, guiding and sustaining his people”.39 Liberal Catholic Bishop Marijn Brandt wrote (nd [but c1965]:Online):
The Liberal Catholic Church ... has brought us a Christianity with freedom of belief, without fear, without exploitation, and with priests who have no power over people, and who do not receive any money, but who are only servants of their fellow-men.40
Brandt (as above) also wrote that Bishops Charles W Leadbeater and James I Wedgwood, the Founding Bishops - as they are often so described - of the Liberal Catholic Church saw
36 See Section 14 (Other Churches & Communions), [Final Draft] Statement of Principles & Summary of Doctrine, 9th ed (London: St Alban Press, 2006).
37 See Section 3 (Overall Perspective), [Final Draft] Statement of Principles & Summary of Doctrine, 9th ed (London: St Alban Press, 2006).
38 See Section 10 (Philosophical Background), [Final Draft] Statement of Principles & Summary of Doctrine, 9th ed (London: St Alban Press, 2006).
39 See Section 3 (Overall Perspective), [Final Draft] Statement of Principles & Summary of Doctrine, 9th ed (London: St Alban Press, 2006).
40 Emphasis added.

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their “mission”, as regards the bringing into existence of what was to become known as the Liberal Catholic Church, as having been as follows:
Theosophy inspired them to bring about this regeneration of Christianity ...41
Bishop Wedgwood was in no doubt that the Liberal Catholic Church was a Christian church, stating not only that the Liberal Catholic Church “is a Christian Church” but that “its work lies with Christianity” and “it is with the teaching and humble practice of this Christian heritage that the Liberal Catholic Church is chiefly occupied” (1919:13-14). Wedgwood defined, or rather described, the religion of Christianity as follows (1929:54):
Christianity is essentially a religion of fellowship. It took over the idea of corporate worship from the Jewish usages, and from the beginnings it practiced it. Except for gatherings at great festivals, Hinduism and Buddhism have nothing in common with this, and neither Hinduism, Buddhism nor Islam, have the same corporate singing and liturgical worship. Moreover, Christianity is a sacramental religion ... .
In one publication of the Liberal Catholic Church it is stated:
The Liberal Catholic Church seeks to give the world the best elements of Catholicism with the best of Protestantism.42
Bishop Frank W Pigott, the third Presiding Bishop of the Liberal Catholic Church, succeeding Bishop Leadbeater in that office, in the course of writing about various aspects of the “ancient wisdom of the East” (such as the “oneness of life - God’s life and ours” and reincarnation) that Bishop Leadbeater had, according to Pigott, introduced into the Liberal Catholic Church, stated (1934:Online) that Leadbeater
presented them in Christian form and so made clearer the great Christian doctrines which were becoming or had become meaningless to many a modern mind in the West. Thus through his work the Wisdom of the East flows into the great Christian religion as still another affluent.43
41 Emphasis added. Admittedly, the Liberal Catholic Church was established as a special type of “Adventist” Church, formed to prepare for the coming of the World Teacher (the Lord Maitreya, the Christ) and to make itself available for use by the World Teacher as a special means by which the World Teacher would help the world when He came, with the Church “putting itself wholly into His hands as an instrument to be used at His Will”. However, whilst Theosophy, or a certain type of it, may have inspired the two Founding Bishops to bring into its modern incarnation the Liberal Catholic Church, that does not means that the Church is, or was ever intended to be, a Theosophical church. That issue is addressed elsewhere in this thesis.
42 What is the Liberal Catholic Church? (Ojai CA: St Alban Press, nd), np.
43 Emphasis added.

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A former Presiding Bishop of the Liberal Catholic Church, Ian R Hooker, has written (2000:Online):
Notwithstanding his heavy reliance on the members and resources of The Theosophical Society, [Bishop] Wedgwood was not building a church just for theosophists. From the beginning he saw the [Liberal Catholic Church] as a haven for open-minded, liberally inclined Christians, no longer comfortable in mainstream churches. In time, he believed, these people would form the majority of Liberal Catholics.
A “Christian” church? Yes, most definitely so, but not, as we shall later see, a “Theosophical church”. Parry, himself a Theosophist, nevertheless expressed it rightly when he wrote (1967:10):
The Christian community exists to serve the world; it can flourish only when it is aware of what is happening in the world and responds creatively. Christian history is the history of great men who responded to the challenge of the present – men like Aquinas, Wesley, Wedgwood and Leadbeater – and of faithless men who did not.
Yes, the Liberal Catholic Church is a Christian church with a special focus and an understanding of the nature and purpose of all true religion. Thus, C B Hankin writes (1945:17):
Christianity was given to the world, as indeed all religions have been given, not simply as a guide-post straight from the pomps and vanities of this world to the perfection of a hereafter. It is a prime fault of our present religious system that so much stress has been laid upon belief, and so little upon knowledge; so much upon the merit of the Atonement, and so little upon the working out of our own salvation. We have developed a teaching which has externalised spirituality, and which has led us to place our reliance upon something outside ourselves for the attainment of perfection within.44
In addition, right from its very beginnings, the Liberal Catholic Church, whilst professing its Christian roots and foundation, made it clear, often in very strong, even polemic, language, what it saw as true and false Christianity respectively. Thus, in an early edition of the Church’s hymnal we read (Liberal Catholic Church 1921:5):
[The Liberal Catholic Church’s] central and paramount teaching is that God is Love and Light, and that in Him there is no darkness at all. Consequently it regards as blasphemous all assertions of hell and damnation, all prayers for salvation by blood, all ignoble cries for mercy, all expressions showing fear or doubt of the Loving Father. It holds that heaven is not a place but a state of consciousness, and
44 Emphasis in the original.

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that death is not a plunge into a dim unknown, but simply a passage into a higher and beautifully familiar life.
As mentioned above, the Liberal Catholic Church sees itself as being a Christian “denomination”. Over the years, but more so in earlier years, various scholars on religion have referred to the Church as being a “sect”. For example, Warren Christopher Platt, an American Episcopalian (Anglican) priest, in his doctoral dissertation on the Liberal Catholic Church (1982), took the position that the Liberal Catholic Church was a “sect”, as opposed to a “denomination”, and a hybrid one at that, being part “catholic” and part “Gnostic” (or Theosophical).45 The word “cult” is inherently pejorative, and in the eyes of the law all religions are equal and are “cults”. In any event, as Emile Durkeim46 rightly pointed out ([1912] 1954:47, 63), religion is “an eminently collective thing” and a religious organization was a “cult” in the true sense of the word:
In reality, a cult is not a simple group of ritual precautions which a man is held to take in certain circumstances; it is a system of diverse rites, festivals and ceremonies which all have this characteristic, that they reappear periodically. They fulfil the need which the believer feels of strengthening and reaffirming, at regular intervals of time, the bond which unites him to the sacred beings upon which he depends.
An Independent Catholic and Apostolic Church
The late Sten von Krusenstierna, a former Presiding Bishop of the Liberal Catholic Church, has written (1963:1):
We are a Catholic Church. Catholic – first taken in its meaning of universal. Secondly in its acquired meaning of the traditional Christian Church administering the Seven Sacraments, and founded on Apostolic Succession.
As just mentioned, the Liberal Catholic Church is a “Catholic” church in the original, universal sense of that word, being part of the “one holy catholic and apostolic church” (The Creed, Liturgy 210, 230). In A Concise Dictionary of Ecclesiastical Terms Eckel has this to say about the word “catholic” (1960:15):
45 Platt had regard to such factors as the Liberal Catholic Church’s eclecticism and esotericism, its early adventist stance, the Church’s own self-perspective, its sense of mission (as regards being the custodian of the co-called “lost Gnosis), its sometimes self-imposed isolationism from mainstream Christian churches, and so forth.
46 Emile Durkheim (1858-1917) taught sociology at the University of Bordeaux and later educated on education and sociology at the Sorbonne from 1902 until his death. In his monumental work The Elementary Forms of Religious Life, which was first published in 1912, Durkheim used ethnological evidence from the Australian tribes to support and explain his theories. The bulk of The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life is a detailed study of primitive religion, more particularly indigenous Australian forms of cults and beliefs.

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CATHOLIC. Means universal, all-embracing. The church is described in the creeds as catholic “because it is universal, holding earnestly the faith for all time, in all countries, and for all people, and is sent to preach the gospel to the whole world.” It is incorrect to refer to the Roman Catholic church exclusively as “The Catholic church,” for there are other catholic churches – the Uniat, Anglo-catholic, Greek, etc.
The Liberal Catholic Church sees itself as being one limb of the “one holy catholic and apostolic church” which is also known and referred to as the Mystical Body of Christ47 of which Christ is the founder, living head and eternal high priest. Bishop Pigott referred to the Liberal Catholic Church as being “distinct from other parts of the Catholic Church” but “not separate from that Church” ([1925] 1927:8). He went further, stating that the Liberal Catholic Church was “not so much a new Church as a new part of the old Church” ([1925] 1927:8). The Church, in its Statement of Principles and Summary of Doctrine, makes it clear how it sees itself in the sense referred to by Bishop Pigott:
From its inception, The Liberal Catholic Church has sought to combine Catholic forms of worship - stately ritual, deep mysticism and witness to the reality of sacramental grace - with the widest measure of intellectual liberty, and respect for the individual conscience.48
The Liberal Catholic Church, although a Catholic church, is “independent” in that the Church is neither Roman Catholic nor Protestant nor Orthodox. However, the Church does claim to derive its holy orders from the Roman Catholic Church, via the Old Catholic Church in Great Britain, which derived its orders from the Old Catholic archiepiscopal see of Utrecht in the Netherlands. The Liberal Catholic Church claims to have the benefit of unbroken Apostolic Succession, having “carefully preserved this succession of orders” throughout the ensuing years.49 That doctrine, traditionally expressed, “asserts that the Gospel is preserved in the Church by means of a lineal succession of bishops who have handed down the truth from the beginning and who possess the teaching authority of the Apostles themselves” (Enloe: Online), that is, that the original twelve apostles (or disciples) passed on their authority to their successors and so on throughout the centuries.
47 Many Liberal Catholics also use the phrase “the Mystical Body of Christ” to refer to the universe itself.
48 See Section 1 (Introduction), [Final Draft] Statement of Principles & Summary of Doctrine, 9th ed (London: St Alban Press, 2006).
49 As respects Liberal Catholic apostolic succession, see Wedgwood (1920; nd), Burton (nd), Rumble (1958), Liberal Catholic Church (1967), Liberal Catholic Church of Ontario (1986), Langley (1998) and Kersey (2007). Despite not infrequent ongoing Liberal Catholic Church statements to the contrary, the Roman Catholic Church does not accept the Liberal Catholic Church’s assertion of unbroken Apostolic Succession (see Rumble 1958), nor does the Anglican Communion whose own orders, in any event, were declared null and void by Pope Leo XIII in 1896. The Anglican Lambeth Conference held in 1920 cast doubt on all Liberal Catholic orders descending from Old Catholic Bishop Arnold H Mathew: see Encyclical Letters from the Bishops with the Resolutions and Reports, 2nd ed (London: SPCK, 1920), p 155.

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In Roman Catholic descriptions of the doctrine the reference to the “Gospel” is often replaced by a reference to the “doctrines of sacred tradition”, combined with the dogma that Saint Peter was the first leader of the apostles and the first Bishop of Rome (Pope) and that Peter’s successors were accepted by the early Christian Church as having supreme authority of the Church and thus over other apostles or Christians. However, even the eminent Roman Catholic scholar Raymond E Brown, author of such texts as Antioch and Rome: New Testament Cradles of Catholic Christianity and The Churches the Apostles Left Behind, confirms what so many other Christian, and even other Catholic Christian, scholars have stated over the years, namely, that “Peter never served as the bishop or local administrator of any church, Antioch and Rome included” (Brown, as quoted in Wills 2006:80). Wills, himself a Roman Catholic, and the author of such books as Why I Am a Catholic, What Paul Meant and What Jesus Meant, writes that there were “no bishops in Peter’s lifetime, and none in Rome till the second century (as the letters of Ignatius of Antioch prove)” (Wills 2006:80). Wills even goes so far as to say that there is no evidence that Peter was a priest, let alone a bishop.50 This does not sound like a very firm foundation on which to build a doctrine of Apostolic Succession of any sort, especially the traditional Catholic one that asserts that Saint Peter was the first Pope and then retrospectively creates a papal lineage from there onwards right down to the present pope.
The present writer does not question the importance of this doctrine of Apostolic Succession to great numbers of Christians of various denominations including but not limited to many Roman Catholics as well as Liberal Catholics, and recognizes the validity of many diverse traditions (including the Liberal Catholic tradition) which have sought to carefully preserve the succession of their orders. However, the writer prefers to interpret the doctrine more esoterically or metaphorically such that the “authority”, as well as the “message” or gnosis passed down throughout the centuries, is a certain body of teaching as opposed to an “office replete with successors” (Enloe: Online).51
Now, the New Testament itself refers to the Church being “built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus Himself being the cornerstone” (Eph 2:20; cf Liturgy
50 See 1 Pet 5:1.
51 Emphasis in the original. See, in particular, what the Apostle Paul had to say about the matter in, for example, 1 Tim 1:3, 18; 2:14-15; 4:6, 11, 16; 5:21; 6:13-14, 20-21; 2 Tim 1:13-14; 2:1-2; 3:14-17; Titus 1:5, 9; 2:1, 15).

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224). Despite the Roman interpretation given to Matthew 16:18 (“thou art Peter [Petros], and upon this rock [petra]52 I will build my church ...”),53 a foundation, whether in the form of Christ himself or otherwise, can have no “successors” as such, but there can be a passing down or transmission of a body of teaching which Bishop Pigott referred to as the “lost Gnosis”, more particularly, “the original depositum, perhaps; the Creed within the Creeds and the Gospel within the Gospels” (1925:35).54 Such an interpretation and understanding of the doctrine of Apostolic Succession is supported by the writings of such early Church fathers as Clement of Alexandria and Origen. For example, Clement wrote in 208 CE:
Well, they preserving the tradition of the blessed doctrine derived directly from the holy apostles, Peter, James, John, and Paul, the sons receiving it from the father (but few were like the fathers), came by God’s will to us also to deposit those ancestral and apostolic seeds. And well I know that they will exult; I do not mean delighted with this tribute, but solely on account of the preservation of the truth, according as they delivered it. For such a sketch as this, will, I think, be agreeable to a soul desirous of preserving from loss the blessed tradition.55
Origen wrote in 225 CE:
Although there are many who believe that they themselves hold to the teachings of Christ, there are yet some among them who think differently from their predecessors. The teaching of the Church has indeed been handed down through an order of succession from the apostles and remains in the churches even to the present time. That alone is to be believed as the truth which is in no way at variance with ecclesiastical and apostolic tradition".56
Thus, it is the true “teachings of Christ” and “the tradition of the blessed doctrine” that are handed down, by the successive ceremonial laying on of hands with due ecclesiastical authority that constitutes, in the respectful opinion of the present writer, the true inner meaning and ongoing significance of the doctrine of Apostolic Succession. True apostolicity then becomes something of incalculable value and worth inherent in both the Ancient Wisdom itself as well as a trait inherent in all people who seek to know the Self as one, as opposed to a lineate succession of Popes throughout the centuries with succession after
52 A fragment of a rock.
53 Wills (2006:80) states that in the same Gospel (Matthew) the power to “bind and loose” (cf Mt 16:19) is not conferred upon Peter exclusively “but to the followers as a body” (see, relevantly, Mt 18:18). Protestants have traditionally taken the view that what Jesus is actually saying in Mt 16:18 - assuming for the moment the authenticity of the verse - is that it is Peter’s profession of faith upon which will serve as the basis for the Church. Whether Jesus actually intended to found a church, as opposed to a kingdom (the “Kingdom of God”), is another contentious issue. One thing is clear – the Church itself is not the Kingdom of God. See Wills (2006:80-84 et seq).
54 Emphasis in the original.
55 See Miscellanies 1:1.
56 See The Fundamental Doctrines 1:2.

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succession of bishops of various denominations, the majority of which, in any event, are not in communion with the Pope of the day whoever that Pope may be.
Clearly, there is considerable disagreement among the various churches that hold themselves out as being “Christian” as to what actually constitutes the the true “teachings of Christ” and “the tradition of the blessed doctrine”, that is, the so-called “apostolic doctrine” itself. That sorry state of affairs is further complicated by the fact that not only is there considerable disagreement among the various Christian churches as to what the doctrine of Apostolic Succession actually means,57 there is also considerable, and at times quite acrimonious, disagreement among various denominations as regards the vexed issue as to whether or not certain churches have “broken” the doctrine. Finally, there is no escaping the fact that the world’s largest Christian denomination, Roman Catholicism, insists that much more is required to preserve Apostolic Succession than mere lineal succession from the original Saint Peter.58
However, be all that as it may, the Liberal Catholic Church can rightly claim to have preserved Apostolic Succession by its being faithful to the true teachings of the Living Christ and to its being a vehicle by means of which “the wisdom underlying all religions when they are stripped of accretions and superstitions ... teachings [that] aid the unfoldment of the latent spiritual nature in the human being, without dependence or fear” (Besant ([1909] 1984:60) can be faithfully transmitted to the present generation as well as to future generations. Jesus himself made clear his understanding of Apostolic Succession, even though he never used those words, in a passage recorded in Luke 9:49-50:
And John answered and said, Master, we saw one casting out devils in thy name; and we forbad him, because he followeth not with us. And Jesus said unto him, Forbid him not: for he that is not against us is for us.
57 In addition, there are at least two different schools of thought as to how to carry out the actual “requirements” of Apostolic Succession – one Eastern (grounded in the teaching of Saint Cyprian) and the other Western (based on the teachings and writings of Saint Augustine).
58 St. Irenæus states the theory and practice of doctrinal unity as follows: “With this Church [of Rome] because of its more powerful principality, every Church must agree, that is the faithful everywhere, in this [i.e. in communion with the Roman Catholic] the tradition of the Apostles has ever been preserved by those on every side (Adv Haereses, III). In addition, the Western Church (and not just the Roman Catholic Church) adopt an Augustinian fourfold criterion to determine the validity of a bishop’s consecration in the historic apostolic succession, the four criteria being “form”, “matter”, “minister” and “intention”. The first three of those criteria are exterior” and the fourth is “interior”.

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The present writer is confident that Our Lord would adopt an inclusive, as opposed to exclusive, approach to the matter in question, as he did on so many other occasions when he said things such as the following:
“Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven.” (Mt 7:21)
“And other sheep I have, which are not of this fold: them also I must bring, and they shall hear my voice; and there shall be one fold, and one shepherd.” (Jn 10:16)
“In my Father's house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you.” (Jn 14:2)
The Liberal Catholic Church is also “independent” of all other Christian Churches in the sense that, as a Church, it is self-governing and autonomous. Further, there is “no central See, each province being independent under its Regionary Bishop” (Parry and Rivett [1969] 1985:4).59
The Liberal Catholic Church is also “independent” in that it has adopted “freedom of belief as a cornerstone of its foundations”,60 thus allowing its members and adherents “freedom in the interpretation of Creeds, Scriptures and Traditions, and of its Liturgy and Doctrine”.61 Therein lies the true and quite unique catholicity, that is, universality, of the Liberal Catholic Church, in that it understands that
... Christianity must henceforth become acceptable for its universality, not for its exclusiveness.
If Christianity is to do its work as a world power among men of all nations, it must change, and it must recognize certain deep fundamental truths which I hold are from Christ Himself. Of these, the first is that there is one truth and one alone in all religions, one Christ’s truth, but manifest in all religions of the world. The second truth is that there exists but one Christ principle, one LOGOS, one Word made flesh, manifest in all the Teachers of the past, the present and to come, one Immanence and Power of God working through all ages, linking all worlds visible and invisible into one manifestation. There cannot be a division between God and man and nature, for there is ever but one Unity and that is God Himself.62
59 However, as Parry and Rivett rightly point out, the Church “maintains its own cohesiveness through a General Episcopal Synod consisting of its bishops, and its unity with the whole Catholic Church through its Apostolic Succession” ([1969] 1985:4).
60 See Section 11 (Science & Religion), [Final Draft] Statement of Principles & Summary of Doctrine, 9th ed (London: St Alban Press, 2006).
61 See Section 2 (Freedom of Thought), [Final Draft] Statement of Principles & Summary of Doctrine, 9th ed (London: St Alban Press, 2006).
62 Jinarājadāsa ([1924] 1947:210).

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Notwithstanding the above, the Liberal Catholic Church, whilst allowing its members “perfect freedom of opinion ... has at the same time a definite doctrine to offer to those who feel themselves able to accept it, though it does not exact adherence to it or to any other dogma as a condition of access to its altars” (Liberal Catholic Church 1921:5).
A Sacramental Church in the Catholic Tradition
Being a church in the Catholic tradition, the Liberal Catholic Church is a sacramental church that seeks to perpetuate the historical sacramental tradition instituted by Christ himself. Roman Catholic priest, professor of sociology and novelist Andrew M Greeley, in his book The Bottom Line Catechism, succinctly explains the “Catholic” approach to the sacraments ([1982] 1983:293):
The Catholic approach to the presence of grace is sacramental, that is to say, it assumes God reveals himself/herself (Grace manifests itself) through creatures, through the world, through the events of human life. Indeed, whatever one’s Christological explanations might be, Catholics still must believe that while Jesus must be the most adequate, the most perfect, and the highest self-revelation of God, he is still a revelation which is made manifest through the created nature of Jesus and through the audible words and visible deeds of the Lord.
The Catholic approach to religion is sacramental not because the church has a system of seven sacraments; rather, the opposite is the case. There exist seven sacraments precisely because Catholicism, like prophetic Judaism, which is its ancestor, takes a sacramental view of the world, believes that God reveals himself/unveils herself through created things and the events of ordinary life.
The sacraments,63 which, in the Liberal Catholic Church at least, are made easily and freely available to all who reverently seek them, are both means of grace and powerful “tools” for spiritual growth and development, as they help people “to reach their destiny – the peace, the power, the love and bliss of conscious union with God” (Sheehan [1925] 1977:39).64
As Samuel Angus, a leading authority on the origins and environment of early Christianity points out (Angus [1925] 1975:viii), the ancient Mysteries were not only “an important background to early Christianity”, they were also “the chief medium of sacramentarianism to
63 “The Liberal Catholic Church recognises and administers the seven traditional sacraments, which are: Baptism, Confirmation, the Holy Eucharist, Absolution, Holy Unction, Holy Matrimony, and Holy Orders.” Summary of Doctrine, numbered para 7, in [Final Draft] Statement of Principles & Summary of Doctrine, 9th ed (London: St Alban Press, 2006).
64 The nature of the sacraments and, in particular, the Holy Eucharist will be considered in detail in Chapter 4 of this thesis.

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the West”. Dean Inge (1899:354) also confirms that Catholic Christianity owes to the Mysteries, among other things, the notion of “sacramental grace”. Thus, for good reason, the sacraments are called “mysteries” in the Eastern Church.
Frank Stanton Burns Gavin (1928 and 1930) also attests in his various scholarly writings to the non-Jewish mystery cults being the primary source of Christian sacramentalism, but Gavin is also at pains to point out that Christianity, and particularly Catholic Christianity, is still very much indebted to Judaism both as regards sacramentalism and in many other respects as well – something the “History of Religions” proponents such as Samuel Angus tended to overlook or ignore. Wedgwood ([1928] 1984:42; 2009:24) correctly notes that there seems “much evidence ... that some of the foundations of the Eucharist are to be found in the Jewish tradition”.65
The Liberal Catholic Church is committed to a belief in the essential oneness and sacredness of all life. Roman Catholic priest Andrew M Greeley makes the valid point that “[s]ome things can be Sacraments only if one has a world-view that sees everything as having the potential for sacramentality” ([1982] 1983:294). However, whilst all life is sacramental in character, and although there are clearly many ways in which the essential oneness and sacredness of all life can be appreciated and experienced, churches in the Catholic tradition have always regarded the seven historic sacraments of the Catholic Church as spiritual means by which we can truly experience most wonderfully and powerfully that sense of oneness and sacredness, and thereby change for the better.
In the words of Bishop James I Wedgwood (1928c:Online), “the only way to bring about permanent peace [is] when you awaken the real passion for peace and brotherhood and the recognition of the One Life”. Individually, as well as collectively, the sacraments are a powerful means for positive transformation when they are approached in the right frame of
65 Wedgwood ([1928] 1984:42; 2009:24), if anything, played down the influence of the Greco-Roman mystery cults, stating: “There seems no real evidence for the theory ... that the Christian sacraments, as we know them, were incorporated into the faith at a later period, having been taken over from the mystery-cults of the Mediterranean basin.” See also Dix (1945) who, in his book The Shape of the Liturgy, provided much probative material to support his proposition that the Christian Liturgy had “its first formation in the semi-Jewish church of the apostolic age”, and that, as regards the Holy Eucharist, the Christian rite “exactly” and “ostentatiously” conformed to the rabbinical rules of the chabûrah supper (Rodd 1972:6). However, Rodd goes on to point out that Dix’s own book “is [sic] now considered by his critics to be more literature than scholarship”. The present writer is of the opinion that the Holy Eucharist, as we now have it, shows evidence of both Jewish and non- Jewish sources.

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mind and heart. Dr Nona L Brooks, cofounder of Divine Science, has written ([1924] 1977:Online), albeit in a different context (namely, the “Mystery of Healing”):
Form is the expression of God; it is Spirit manifest, and Spirit is perfect, true, and harmonious.66
The words are, however, directly applicable to all of the sacraments, and the nature of their working and connection with Ultimate Reality, or Spirit.
A Liberal Church
The Liberal Catholic Church is a “liberal” Christian church. In that regard, as mentioned previously the Church offers its members, adherents and all others complete liberality and freedom of thought and belief so that each may seek, in their own individual respective ways, a greater reality than self.67
There has always been much misunderstanding about the word “liberal”. The word “liberality” [from the Latin liber, a free person] is the noun derived from the word “liberal”, as opposed to the word “liberty” which implies freedom of one kind or another. Liberality, on the other hand, refers to munificence, that is, an abundant, non-literal, open-minded and unprejudiced quest for spiritual truth, enlightenment and, if you like, initiation into the Ancient Mysteries.
Ferm, in his Concise Dictionary of Religion, states that liberalism is “not so much a school of thought as it is a spirit” (1951:142). Ferm was referring to Protestant Liberalism but what he wrote is, it is submitted, still applicable to the Liberal Catholic Church as well. Ferm, again writing about the liberal Protestant, says that such a Christian “trusts reason as the only tool by which to measure truth, although he may weigh tradition and authority with the respect to which they are due” (1951:142-143). The Liberal Catholic places great value on the use of reason as well. However, unlike most liberal Protestants, Liberal Catholics tend to be mystically-minded, acknowledging that insight into such matters as the nature of the
66 See <http://www.angelfire.com/wi2/ULCds/nona1.html> (viewed 2 April 2009).
67 See, in particular, Sections 2 (Freedom of Thought), 4 (The Sacraments), and 9 (Mysticism and the Wisdom Tradition), [Final Draft] Statement of Principles & Summary of Doctrine, 9th ed (London: St Alban Press, 2006).

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Cosmos and our innate divinity can be derived by means of mystical experience as well as what may be called “spiritual intuition”.68
The Liberal Catholic Church encourages people to think for themselves, and to search for truth in whatever ways they think best, whilst showing respect, tact and tolerance for those who, in good faith, see things differently and seek to follow different paths of faith. As a liberal church, albeit a Christian one, the Liberal Catholic Church does not claim, and ought not to claim, any exclusive revelation or status for itself or its members, notwithstanding the assertions of some over the years that the Church’s leaders continue to receive and be informed by communications from the supposed “Masters”.
The Church’s position as regards its liberality is formally stated in these words:
The Liberal Catholic Church leaves to its members freedom in the interpretation of Creeds, Scriptures and Traditions, and of its Liturgy and Doctrine. It asks only that differences of interpretation shall be courteously expressed. It takes this attitude, not from any indifference to truth, but because it holds that belief should be the result of individual study and intuition. Truth is not truth, nor revelation a revelation, until it is seen to be so.69
The Liberal Catholic Church believes that in religion, as in science, truth is the ultimate goal to which we should all aspire. Absolute truth rests with God and cannot be known in full by humans. Life is therefore a constant progression from less true to more true. That is why The Liberal Catholic Church has adopted freedom of belief as a cornerstone of its foundations. It has a body of teaching, but recognises that individuals must find their own truth from within, rather than adopt beliefs second-hand from without. The Church must also constantly review the doctrine that it teaches. For these reasons extreme tolerance is expected from Church members.70
The General Constitution of the Liberal Catholic Church, the authorized Liturgy of the Church, and the authorised Statement of Principles and Summary of Doctrine constitute the only official documents of the Church.71 However, the Church has never made the acceptance of any creed, article or profession of faith as a condition of membership of the
68 See Section 9 (Mysticism and the Wisdom Tradition), [Final Draft] Statement of Principles & Summary of Doctrine, 9th ed (London: St Alban Press, 2006).
69 See Section 2 (Freedom of Thought), [Final Draft] Statement of Principles & Summary of Doctrine, 9th ed (London: St Alban Press, 2006).
70 See Section 11 (Science & Religion), [Final Draft] Statement of Principles & Summary of Doctrine, 9th ed (London: St Alban Press, 2006).
71 See Section VII, para 41, General Constitution of the Liberal Catholic Church (London: Liberal Catholic Church, 2004), [Online version] <http://kingsgarden.org/English/organizations/LCC.GB/Publications/OfficialDocuments/2004GeneralConstitution.pdf>.

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Church. Indeed, the very existence of a Summary of Doctrine, as opposed to a mere statement of principles,72 is, with respect, questionable for a Church that holds itself out as being a “liberal” church. As our own Bishop Allan Bradley said many years ago (1964:np [8]):
A liberal church can have no doctrines, no dogmas and no articles, for each man’s path to God is his own. There can be no heresies in a liberal church, for we can never stand in judgment upon another’s belief.
When we have found the love of Christ transforming our hearts our whole outlook will become full of the divine positive and not the restrictive negations of creedal belief. A new deep respect develops for those fellow members of the enormous human family, for we know it to be God’s family, and our care will not be the conversion of the world to our outlook, but a deep active concern for all men of all races and religious outlooks.
To state it briefly, the Liberal Catholic Church stands in ideal not for a set of its own truths, nor for a rule of life, personal habits or moral standards. Our church stands for a NEW APPROACH TO LIFE AND RELIGION.73
Bradley refers to what he calls “our grand charter as laid down in the front of every copy of our Liturgy” (see Liturgy 7) wherein reference is made to “the widest measure of intellectual liberty and respect for the individual conscience”. To a not insignificant extent, we have fallen short of the liberal ideals we supposedly hold so dear, and we are far from being progressive as a church. Indeed, we are frightfully conservative in so many ways. In an article entitled “Are We Still Progressive?” and published in The Australian Liberal Catholic in June 1967, the contents of which are still vitally relevant today, more than 40 years later, Brian Parry wrote (1967:10-11):
To be progressive means being responsive to the changing needs of mankind. It is an attitude of mind – not a party label; it means openness to life. ...
...
What are the needs of our world now? As Australians we live in an affluent, secularized society, which nevertheless lives uneasily without God. We need a renewed sense of God immanent in the universe and in ourselves. We need an understanding of life in all of its aspects as the material expression of a spiritual reality.
...
Our contribution to the world’s present need must be informed, intellectual and understandable – but if that is all, we will only be one more voice in a crowd. Without intellect we will never be heard, but without spirituality, we will not be worth hearing.74
72 See, eg, the Statement of Principles of the Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations (UUA): Online copy, viewed 26 May 2009, <http://www.uua.org/visitors/6798.shtml>.
73 Emphasis in the original.
74 Emphasis in the original.

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These are serious matters that we need to address. However, in an ongoing spirit of liberality which, for the most part, we have been able to maintain throughout the years despite some unfortunate schisms and more than a little unhealthy dissension, it still remains the case that all who “strive to live in the spirit of love with all mankind and manfully to fight against sin and selfishness” and “strive to show forth in [their] thoughts, [their] words and [their] works, the power of God which is in [them]” (Liturgy 421) are welcome to become members of the Church.75 Further, the seven historic sacraments are offered to all who reverently seek them - not just members - and the Church erects no barriers around its altars.
In essence, what “binds” Liberal Catholics together is not a rule book, a creed, a set of principles, a summary of doctrine, or the like, but the willingness to participate in a common liturgy.
A Mystical Church
The Liberal Catholic Church also sees itself as a mystical church, and it specifically recognises that mystical76 experiences are “part of our spiritual heritage as children of the Most High” and that the recorded accounts of such experiences over many centuries are “remarkably consistent”.77 The Church sees its role as being “the mystical awakening of the individual and the Body of Christ to reality, that Christ may be manifest in them to the full” (Parry and Rivett [1969] 1985:3).
The term “mysticism”, in a Christian context, derives from a small work entitled The Mystical Theology written by the Neoplatonic Dionysius the Areopagite, also known and more
75 Admission to the Church is either by way of baptism and confirmation (absolute or conditional) or by way of the making and acceptance of an application for membership with or without a service of admission. As to the latter, see “A Form of Admission to the Liberal Catholic Church” (Liturgy 421-422).
76 The word “mysticism” comes from the Greek mystikos (“of mysteries”) and root word mou (“to conceal”). Etymologically, the cognate Greek word muein stands for “closing the eyes and the lips” (Oliveira 2007b:207), “with the probable primary sense of ‘one vowed to keep silence,’ and hence ‘one initiated into the Mysteries” (Parrinder [1976] 1995:8). Ebner (1976:13) notes that mystery, in a theological context, “stresses the silence and invisibility of the Ultimate that is also unlimited and undecipherable”. Further, mystery is inherently “holy” (1976:36).
77 Section 9 (Mysticism and the Wisdom Tradition), [Final Draft] Statement of Principles & Summary of Doctrine, 9th ed (London: St Alban Press, 2006). As the Apostle Paul wrote: “... we impart a secret and hidden wisdom of God, which God decreed before the ages for our justification” (1 Cor 2:7). The writer of Luke’s Gospel refers to “the mysteries [or secrets] of the kingdom of God” (Lk 8:10).

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correctly referred to as Pseudo-Dionysius, a man who was unquestionably the greatest Christian writer of the 6th century CE. However, it is important to bear in mind that Pseudo- Dionysius was not the "founder" of Christian mysticism. That honour belongs to none other than Jesus himself who uttered those immortal words, “I and my Father are one” (Jn 10:30).
The Christian Church, even in its multiplicity of discordant forms, is first and foremost a mystical church, despite the efforts of many who would rather have it otherwise. It was the Christian mystical writer Evelyn Underhill who said, quite rightly, “It is not Christian to leave the Mystery out.”
Mysticism has been defined as being
... in general, an immediate knowledge of God attained in this present life through personal religious experienced. It is primarily a state of prayer and as such admits of various degrees from short and rare Divine “touches” to the practically permanent union with God in the so-called “mystic marriage”.78
Manly P Hall described mysticism in similar terms as being “the belief in the possibility of direct personal participation in truth, through the extension of consciousness towards union with the gods, or Divine Being” (1945:179).
Felix Adler (1913:4), who was neither a Liberal Catholic nor a mystic in the usual sense of that word, eschewing, as he did, all notions of supernaturalism, nevertheless wrote of the powerful, transformative emotional aspects of the spiritual experience of a sense of oneness with all life and with others:
The fact that there is a spiritual power in us, that is to say, a power that testifies to the unity of our life with the life of others, which impels us to regard others as other selves – this fact comes home to us even more forcibly in sorrow than in joy. It is thrown into clearest relief on the background of pain.
In The Idea of the Holy Otto ([1917] 1977:6-7) expressed his opinion that, at the heart of the so-called mystical experience, there was a sense of the numinous or the holy. The numinous experience was, according to Otto, “inexpressible, ineffable" ([1917] 1977:5). Otto saw the numinous or holy as a mysterium tremens et fascinans, that is, a tremendous
78 See “Mysticism”, in Cross (1958). The Apostle Paul writes: “Even the mystery which hath been hid from ages and from generations, but now is made manifest to his saints” (Col 1:26).

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(read, awe- and fear-inspiring) and fascinating mystery. The experience of the numinous or holy is, according to Otto (as cited in McCarty 2006:4):
a unique experience of confrontation with a power … “Wholly Other,” outside of normal experience and indescribable in its terms; terrifying, ranging from sheer demonic dread through awe to sublime majesty; and fascinating, with irresistible attraction, demanding unconditional allegiance.
Further, the experience, writes Otto ([1917] 1977:12-13):
grips or stirs the human mind. … The feeling of it may at times come sweeping like a gentle tide, pervading the mind with a tranquil mood of deepest worship. It may pass over into a more set and lasting attitude of the soul, continuing, as it were, thrillingly vibrant and resonant, until at last it dies away and the soul resumes its "profane," non-religious mood of everyday experience. It may burst in sudden eruption up from the depths of the soul with spasms and convulsions, or lead to the strongest excitements, to intoxicated frenzy, to transport, and to ecstasy. It has its wild and demonic forms and can sink to an almost grisly horror and shuddering.
Jung (1938:4) stated that religion involves “a careful and scrupulous observation of what Rudolf Otto aptly termed the ‘numinosum,’ that is, a dynamic existence or effect not caused by an arbitrary act of will”, and that this numinosum was “either a quality of a visible object or the influence of an invisible presence causing a peculiar alteration of consciousness”. Such an experience evokes and inspires paroxysmal feelings all the way from awe to ecstasy and to terror. The first Presiding Bishop of the Liberal Catholic Church James I Wedgwood (1928c:Online) refers to the “tremendous radiation of power through the service of the Church, which goes out on all levels”. Thus, Rivett ([1972] 2008:36) affirms that “the essence of religion, the purpose and motivation and activity of religious life, must for ever be mystical”. Further, as Blanch (1971:7) points out, “it has been said that ‘religion is the nearest approach to reality’”. Amen.
The essence of the mystical experience is the experience of oneness, which can only be experienced in what has been described as the Eternal Now. In the words of Luong Sĩ Hăng (1992:4):
There is no more ego. When our spiritual heart is related with the universe, the ego ceases to exist. Our fundamental capital is “nothingness.” … When I know this principle, then I can begin to detach myself from the physical body and material matters on earth.

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Many years earlier Plotinus (as cited in Burnier 1985:72), who is generally regarded as the founder of Neoplatonism,79 described this mystical experience of oneness in very similar terms:
For how can one describe as other than oneself that which, when one saw it, seemed to be one with oneself.
It is not possible to see it or to be in harmony with it, while one is occupied with anything else. The soul must remove from itself, good and evil, and everything else, that it may receive the One alone, as the One is alone. When the soul is so blessed and is come to it, or rather when it manifests its presence, when the soul turns away from visible things … and becomes like the One … And seeing the One suddenly appearing in itself, for there is nothing between, nor are they any longer two, but one, for you cannot distinguish between them, while the vision lasts. … When is this state, the soul would exchange its present condition for nothing, no, not for the very heaven of heavens … .80
In our own day, Krishnamurti (1970a:130) expressed it this way, when he said that religion is “the sense of comprehension of the totality of existence, in which there is no division between you and me”. Words have great vibratory power and energy, and The Liturgy, with its associated ritual, is not only a collection of mystery dramas but also a powerful vehicle to help us experience inner and outer transformation at very deep levels. However, in the most simple terms, “The Church is a purifying influence” (Wedgwood 1928c:Online), and that must never be forgotten. Wedgwood (1928c:Online) has also written:
Spiritual upliftment is reproduced by the services; and then we get inspired with the idea of producing that experience by our own self-initiated efforts from within that which the power has awakened within us. And growing more accustomed to it, we find we can more or less produce those modes of consciousness for ourselves from within.
True mysticism ought not to be focused on "experiences", which come and go, but on the lasting personal experience of “ultimate reality”. Canon C F Harman, an Anglican priest, wrote of the importance of Christian mysticism (1964:12):
... Mysticism is something which has now got to come out of the monastery into the open and I believe that every Christian should be in some sense a mystic.
The Church in the past has been afraid of mysticism and I don’t wonder, because the mystics, of course, leave the rational for the intuitional, and take the Church beyond the rational and the dogmatic to the super-rational.
79 See Chapter 3 (“Encountering the Christ Through Tradition”) of this thesis.
80 See The Six Enneads vi. 7. 34.

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But the time has now come when mysticism must become part and parcel of our ordinary everyday Christian life.
The Liberal Catholic Church is well-placed to provide opportunities for people to come to know the Self as one.
A Church in the Platonic and Neoplatonic Traditions
In his Concise Dictionary of Religion Vergilius Ferm writes that the Liberal Catholic Church “combines liberal thought with the ancient forms of sacramental type of worship” (1951:142). It is often said that Theosophy or Gnosticism, or a combination of the two, provides the basis of and for that “liberal thought”, but the present writer does not hold that view. Indeed, despite the Liberal Catholic Church having been founded by Theosophists, the true roots of the Church, as a Christian Church, lie not in Theosophy per se but in early Greek patristic philosophy and theology, that is, in early Christianity as expounded by those Church Fathers versed in the Platonic and Neoplatonic traditions. This has been officially and consistently acknowledged by the Church in its several editions of its Statement of Principles and Summary of Doctrine. In the final draft of the 8th edition of that publication one reads:
The Christian church has always contained within itself differing schools of thought. The mediaeval schoolmen who systematized theology in the Western church followed the method of Aristotle, but the earliest among the Church Fathers of philosophic bent were Platonists, and The Liberal Catholic Church, whilst not undervaluing the clarity and precision of the scholastic systems, has much in common with the Platonic and Neoplatonic schools of Christian tradition.81
What the present writer sees as the true position as regards the philosophical and theological roots of the Liberal Catholic Church are the subject of special focus in the next chapter of this thesis.
81 Statement of Principles and Summary of Doctrine (London: St Alban Press, 1986), pp 6-7. In Section 10 (Philosophical Background), [Final Draft] Statement of Principles & Summary of Doctrine, 9th ed (London: St Alban Press, 2006), it is stated: “The Liberal Catholic Church has identified, from among the various schools of Christian thought, the Platonic and Neoplatonic as being those most closely attuned to the Wisdom Tradition.”

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CHAPTER 2
EXPERIENCING THE CHRIST THROUGH UNDERSTANDING The Philosophical and Theological Roots of the Liberal Catholic Church
Introduction
Bishop Frank W Pigott wrote that the Liberal Catholic Church has a very special role and that is “to recover the lost Gnosis, and to establish it in its rightful place as true teaching and, therefore, essential to the Catholic [indeed, Christian] religion” (Pigott 1925:35),82 but what exactly is this “lost Gnosis”?
Is the “lost Gnosis” Gnosticism? If so, what form or variety of Gnostic thought are we talking about, as there were numerous competing Gnostic sects formerly in existence? Murray (1935:162) writes that “there were Gnostic sects scattered over the Hellenistic world before Christianity as well as after”. Many of these sects mimicked Christianity or were simply mystery-versions of Christianity.83 Others were quite independent of the latter, and made no claim of any connection whatsoever with either the teachings of Jesus Christ or Christianity. As the former Liberal Catholic priest and Theosophist J J van der Leeuw pointed out in his book The Dramatic History of the Christian Church from the Beginnings to the Death of St Augustine (1927a:61):
… [T]he splendid esoteric wisdom of the Gnostics was clouded over by the ravings of those whom Gnosticism was restricted to the name they abrogated.
Further, there are numerous modern “reincarnations” of Gnosticism and Gnostic sects present in the world today, several of which purport to be Christian in orientation. Is the Liberal Catholic Church a Gnostic Christian church, and, if so, in what respects?
82 Mowle (2007:183) has written: “Throughout the early centuries of the Church there were many different Gnostic groups, and all were not the same, and most certainly there was definitely a form of Gnostic Christianity in existence; but it would be most unwise to call our modern Liberal Catholic Church a remnant of that which existed back then.”
83 For example, Valentinus (also known as Valentius) (c100-c160 CE) founded a mystical version of Christianity in Rome, Valentinianism, which had a large following in southern Gaul in the 2nd century CE. Valentinus’ version of Christianity, along with other forms of Gnosticism, were the subject of a vitriolic attack by Irenaeus, then Bishop of Lugdunum in Gaul (now Lyon, France), in his Adversus Haeresies (Against Heresies) written in c180 CE.

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Is the “lost Gnosis” Theosophy? If so, what do we mean by that expression?84
Is Theosophy “the experience of the divine, in distinction to theology which is discussion about God … [noting that this] experience of the ultimate, of reality, of life, of truth, is beyond all discussion”? Is it what was described “in an early theosophical manifesto as ‘the archaic system of esoteric wisdom in the keeping of the brotherhood of adepts’’’? Is it the “system of doctrines put forward in literature or lectures since the beginning of the Theosophical Society”? Finally, does Theosophy embrace the “practice in important centres of theosophical work, where, in the work actually done and in the aims held before people, we can see what is looked upon as valuable”?85
It is easy to throw around the word “Theosophy” but, like so many things in life, the word means different things to different people. Anglican priest Canon C F Harman has written ([1963] 1964:10):
Theosophy, as the name implies, is the wisdom of God. But it is something more than that; it is wisdom in God. It has God for its subject matter and its principle. It embraces the philosophy of man and also of the Cosmos and History. It includes what we call Theology, eve dogmatic Theology, but much more – Mystical Theology; it also goes beyond them.
Harman goes on to stress that “Christian Theosophy must be carefully distinguished from the modern Theosophical Movement”, the latter (“Theosophy as understood by Adyar”86) being a reaction to the rationalism and positivism of the 19th century and “too much attached to Indian thought” ([1963] 1964:10).87 Harman refers to Saint Paul as “the first Christian Gnostic” and “a theosophist in the true sense of that word” ([1963] 1964:10). He goes on to write ([1963] 1964:11):
So Christian theosophy goes right back to St Paul himself. Later on Clement of Alexandria, Origen and Gregory of Nyssa are unquestionably theosophical in their outlook and doctrine; so that we have some of the Christian Fathers laying the foundation of the Christian theosophical movement. Dionysius the Areopagite and mediaeval mysticism show a strong leaning in this direction; and let it be clearly
84 The word “theosophy” literally means “divine wisdom” (from the Greek theos [god], and sophia [wisdom]).
85 All of the quoted material in this paragraph comes from Van der Leeuw (1930:Online) who offers these competing, but not necessarily mutually exclusive, definitions of Theosophy. Blavatsky (1879:Online) refers to Theosophy as “the archaic Wisdom-Religion, the esoteric doctrine once known in every ancient country having claims to civilization” [emphasis in the original].
86 See Tillett (2005:Online).
87 The theosophy to which Harmon refers, in objective contradistinction to what he refers to as “Christian theosophy”, is the eclectic body of ideas and beliefs promulgated by the Theosophical Society, founded by H P Blavatsky and others in New York City in 1875. The Society’s maxim is “There is no religion higher than Truth”.

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understood that Christian theosophy, although it does include a certain amount of dogmatic theology, is more concerned with mystical theology.
The view of the present writer is that, insofar as the Liberal Catholic Church exists as a distinctive Christian Church in the historic Catholic sacramental tradition, the so-called “lost gnosis” is to be found most immediately and directly in early Greek patristic philosophy and theology, especially that rooted and grounded in the philosophical and theological traditions of Platonism and Neoplatonism, which themselves were built upon the foundations of the Ancient Mysteries.88 (Thompson (1963:9) writes that the Greek Orthodox Church89 “claims to be the Mother Church of Christendom from which the Roman Church seceded”. There is more than a little truth in that statement.90)
The uniqueness, beauty and wonder of the Liberal Catholic Church is that the Church manages to successfully combine these various traditions - Catholic, Platonic and Neoplatonic - with complete liberality and freedom of though and belief. However, it must be stressed, forcefully, that the Liberal Catholic Church was formed not as a “Theosophical Church” per se (for such is an oxymoron in any event - a matter that will be further discussed shortly below) but as a liberal Christian church in all three of the Catholic, Platonic and Neoplatonic traditions, namely a church which:
 is open to the wisdom contained in the world’s other religions as well, sensibly interpreted, largely but not exclusively as a result of the influence, that is, the “distinctive contribution” (Wedgwood 1926) of Theosophy,
 is committed to recovering the “lost Gnosis”, and to establishing it in its rightful place as true Christianity,91 and
88 Parrinder ([1976] 1995:8) writes: “The origins of the word mysticism were in the Mysteries of ancient Greece.”
89 The “Greek Orthodox Church” is the common name for the Eastern Orthodox Church, which is a fellowship of several different communions related by association with certain patriarchs in various regions, originally associated with what was known as the Eastern Roman Empire, and then with churches established by the original patriarchal churches.
90 The original 4 patriarchates were Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch and Jerusalem. The Church of Antioch was the most ancient church after that of Jerusalem. The patriarchs originally included the Patriarch of Rome before the Roman see fell out of fellowship with the others, finally in 1054, after some serious earlier breaches of fellowship over matters pertaining to Christology. See Jenkins (2000:Online).
91 Cooper (1996:xi) makes the very valid point that Christianity, for the most part, has not been a religion that finds it easy to accommodate dissent, let alone “other gods”, writing that when the Christians gained ascendancy, they “destroyed all the liturgies of other gods”.

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 embraces mystical theology and what Harmon has referred to as “Christian theosophy”, which had its beginnings in the Apostle Paul and was later developed by some early Greek Church Fathers.
As regards the latter, that is, the recovery of the “lost Gnosis”, Bishop Pigott, wrote in his most helpful little book The Parting of The Ways (1925:34-35):
There is some reason for believing that the teaching (Oriental rather than Semitic) of the divinity of all men and man's continual progress or evolution through countless ages of time from the One to the One, had its place in the Christian teaching in the first few centuries of our era. It was the teaching promulgated by some of the Gnostic teachers, and to some extent by such teachers as Origen and Clement of Alexandria, though little of this teaching has survived in documentary form.
… The Gnostics truly so-called seem to have had the light of the true knowledge, the deeper teaching already referred to, and, when excluded from the Church, the Gnostic tradition seems to have been handed on, somewhat furtively because of the persecutions, from generation to generation … Even in the Church itself, there have usually been some teachers in every generation who have known the esoteric teaching, but their voices have rarely been heard above the din of those theological controversies from which the Church since its first beginnings has never been entirely free. It is, perhaps in the providence of God, one of the functions of the Liberal Catholic Church to recover the lost Gnosis, and to establish it in its rightful place as true teaching and, therefore, essential to the Catholic religion - the original depositum, perhaps; the Creed within the Creeds and the Gospel within the Gospels.92
“The true knowledge or ‘Gnosis’ of the early church”
As others, such as Parry and Rivett ([1969] 1985:8) have been quick, and correct, to point out, this emphasis on gnosis,93 and on the Liberal Catholic Church being a “Gnostic” church, means “not any perpetuation of certain extravagances of early Christianity, but an attitude of aiding its members to reach for themselves [a] certainty of knowledge”94 that is duly acquired
92 Emphasis in the original.
93 Pagels (1979) translates the word gnosis as “insight”, being “a term denoting both psychological and metaphysical cognition arrived at intuitively” (Hoeller, in introduction, Hall 2000:12). The Liberal Catholic Church, in its [Final Draft] Statement of Principles & Summary of Doctrine, 9th ed (London: St Alban Press, 2006), describes gnosis or Sophia in terms of “each individual’s quest for spiritual understanding based upon personal experience” (see Section 10: Philosophical Background).
94 Emphasis added. Parry and Rivett are obviously seeking to distance Liberal Catholic gnosis from the various Gnostic controversies and competing sects of the 2nd and 3rd centuries CE. Indeed, the preponderance of recent research and scholarship (see, especially, Bock 2006, and the various authorities he cites), whilst supporting the view that there certainly was “diversity” of opinion, doctrine, belief and practice in the earliest years of Christianity, does not lend support for any wholesale “rehabilitation of the Gnostics” or “reimaging of Christianity” (Bock 2006:213) as Pagels ([1979] 1988) and others would like to see occur.

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“by a process of inner illumination”, namely, what the present author has elsewhere (see Ellis- Jones 2007a:199) referred to as “the treasures of wisdom and knowledge”:
... Gnosis refers to knowledge of God that is gained, not through intellectual discovery but through illumination derived from real personal experience and in- depth acquaintance with things spiritual such that one may be said to have been “initiated” into inner or spiritual mysteries. Paul says that we impart a “secret and hidden wisdom of God, which God decreed before the ages for our glory” (1 Cor 2:7). This is true knowledge of God and things spiritual, and it is more than just knowledge of Biblical or spiritual things. It is sophia, the wisdom of God. I think that sophia and gnosis are really a pair, the feminine and masculine aspects of true, godly wisdom and knowledge, known collectively as “the treasures of wisdom and knowledge” (Col 2:3).
Saint Augustine,95 in an oft-cited statement, referred to this Wisdom which has always existed but which is now rightly or wrongly referred to as Christianity:
The identical thing that we now call the Christian religion existed among the ancients and has not been lacking from the beginnings of the human race until the coming of Christ in the flesh, from which moment on the true religion, which already existed, began to be called Christian.96
Thus, Bertram A Bidwell, a former vicar of the old Saint Alban’s Pro-Cathedral, in Regent Street, Sydney, said (quoted in McGarry 1966:18) that the future task for the Liberal Catholic Church was “[n]ot to expound orthodox theology” but “to continue the unique teaching handed us by our great founders”, namely, “the true knowledge or ‘Gnosis’ of the early church, who showed us so clearly that the Christ spirit is the true self in EVERY MAN and that vicarious atonement is a gross error which has harmed the true faith and violated reason”.97 Bidwell (again, as quoted in McGarry 1966:18) went on to say that what the Liberal Catholic Church had to do, if it were to survive, was this:
... to expound “the mysteries” in the sacraments and in scripture, hidden in the New Testament but clearly to be seen by the unshackled mind. These are the mysteries
95 Saint Augustine, along with many of the other fathers of the early Church (eg Origen), was a Platonist in philosophy, despite the fact that he became known as the “Father of Latin theology”. Augustine was of Lebanese origin (Punic or Phoenician) and had been educated in the Phoenician school of Carthage - something which appears to have left a lasting impression on him.
96 See Retract I. XIII, 3. St Vincent of Lerins reportedly said something very similar, namely, "That let us hold which everywhere, always and by all has been believed: for this is truly and rightly catholic."
97 Emphasis in the original. Whilst traditional notions of vicarious atonement (penal substitution) have proven unpalatable to Liberal Catholics, there are other forms and ways of understanding the nature and character of Jesus’ sacrifice on the Cross (eg in terms of the “moral influence theory” of the atonement, vicarious spirituality, and so on), some of which will be considered and discussed throughout this thesis. See also Chryssavgis (1991).

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which are not exclusive to Christianity but which stretch back through history to the Greek, Egyptian and Indian civilisations.98
However, given the disparate and often disharmonious, indeed irreconcilable, plethora of views, opinions and beliefs that have over many centuries been said to be gnostic, what, in the context of the Liberal Catholic Church, exactly is this gnosis? The present writer accepts, as both a working hypothesis and an ideal, the description (as opposed to a definition) offered by Dr Besant ([1909] 1984:60), namely, “the wisdom underlying all religions when they are stripped of accretions and superstitions ... teachings [that] aid the unfoldment of the latent spiritual nature in the human being, without dependence or fear”. Manly P Hall referred to this wisdom as comprising “one ageless spiritual tradition” (1945:19). Thus, Liberal Catholic priest Raymond J Blach (1971:89) uses the words “Esoteric Christianity” to refer to
... the underlying “Gnosis” which was in the early days of the Church the heart and core of Christian philosophy, but [which] has been largely lost or discarded during the passage of the years. It is part of the “mysteries of the Kingdom of God” of which both Jesus and St Paul spoke.
In his book The Transcendental Unity of Religions (1953) Frithjof Schuon (as quoted in Mehta [1955] 1957:27) wrote of the presence over time of an “esoteric nucleus” in any given civilization:
The presence of an esoteric nucleus in a civilization possessing a specifically religious character guarantees to it a normal development and a maximum of stability; this nucleus, however, is not in any sense a part, even an inner part, of the exotericism, but represents, on the contrary, a quasi-independent dimension in relation to the latter.
More particularly, Aldous Huxley ([1946] 1994), in his seminal book The Perennial Philosophy, enumerates and fully discusses what he refers to as the “four fundamental doctrines” that underpin the “Divine Wisdom”, also known as the Wisdom of the Ages or Gnosis. First, the phenomenal world, that is, all that is, is a manifestation of what Huxley refers to as a Divine Ground (cf the “God above God” or “Ground of all Being”: Paul Tillich (1952)) within which all things live and move and have their, albeit, partial dwelling. Secondly, we human beings have the ability to come to know this Divine Ground, not just by inference but more importantly by direct intuition. Thirdly, we possess a “double nature”, namely, an ego (or “little self or “false
98 See also Tettemer (1951). Tettemer, an American Liberal Catholic bishop, and former Roman Catholic monk, saw the greatness of the Liberal Catholic Church as its ability to combine the Ancient Wisdom of the East and the greatness and beauty of Catholic sacramentalism, provided the Catholic beliefs, traditions and rituals were properly understood having regard to their “deeper meaning”: Brown (1960).

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self”) as well as a “real” or “true” self (“the Self), that latter being our true self, our god-self, the spark of divinity within each of us.99 Finally, the end-purpose of our life (or lives) on earth is for each us to identify with the eternal Self, thereby becoming one, in knowledge and spiritual actuality, with the Divine Ground. (Ann K Elliott in Higher Ground refers to this experience as “what occurs when the ego is superseded by the Self as the new center [sic] of the total psyche, its glory now illuminating the total being” (Elliott 2000-2003:Ch 6:Online).) Huxley makes the point that it is only in “dying to [ourselves]” that we become “capable of perpetual inspiration ... and instruments through which divine grace is mediated to those whose unregenerate nature is impervious to the delicate touches of the Spirit” ([1946] 1994:364). In summary, in the oft-cited word of Lady Emily Lutyens (1926:89), “The One becomes the many that the many might know themselves as One.” In his seminal little book Gods in Exile the Dutch Theosophist and Liberal Catholic priest of yesteryear J J van der Leeuw writes ([1926; 1940] 2001:13):
Man is essentially divine; as a son of God he partakes of the nature of his Father and shares His Godhead. Man’s own and true home is therefore the world of the Divine; there we live and move and have our being “from eternity to eternity”.100
For the present writer, who is a very much a religious liberal in the Christian tradition, but someone who is also open to multiple sources of wisdom and inspiration including but not limited to the world’s religions, sensibly interpreted, the Liberal Catholic Church honours the totality of our human experience, with the journey being the important thing. Bishop Wedgwood expressed it so beautifully when, in a sermon first delivered in 1921, he said (1928:163):
That is the work which we set before our people in the Liberal Catholic Church. It is for this reason that we do not seek to fetter the intellect, even though we have certain definite teachings to lay before our people. These can only be verified as they grow in spirituality. And there is no greater help to grow into the reality of things than the power which flows through the sacraments, especially through the Blessed Sacrament of Christ’s love which is celebrated Sunday by Sunday in this church. As we open ourselves to the love of Christ which flows through the Holy Sacrament, we shall find his Spirit opening in our natures, and we shall begin to comprehend things which before were only matters of intellectual theory.
99 As Parry ([1971] 2007:155) has written, “Each one of us, as an eternal being made in the image of God, was created by [God the Son, our Lord Jesus Christ]”; cf Col 1:16.
100 See also van der Leeuw’s The Fire of Creation (1927).

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There we have it. The spirit of the Living Christ flows through the sacraments, especially through the Holy Eucharist, and that Spirit, which is Love, changes our lives and the lives of others to the extent to which we “open ourselves” to that great love.
As regards the emphasis placed by the Liberal Catholic Church on complete liberality and freedom of thought and belief, such a stance is entirely consistent with “the esoteric tradition of the mystery schools in the Christian revelation” (Hall 2000:50). Manly P Hall had this to say about the Gnostics (referring to them in a very general sense, being very much aware that there were numerous competing Gnostic sects formerly in existence):
They had no interest in an ecclesiastical system, for they realized that no man can be saved by addicting himself to a theology. The value lay in the soul experience.
The emphasis placed by the Liberal Catholic Church on what Hall referred to as “soul experience” has meant that, for the most part, there has been little or no interest to date within the ranks of the Liberal Catholic Church in developing a distinctive theology of its own (cf Parry (1965b); Burton [1971] 2008; Oliveira 2006). The emphasis in some quarters has been on “teaching”, whilst retaining in varying degrees Christian language and thought forms, just plain Theosophy (with the latter being rather narrowly defined, at least by some “conservative” Theosophical members of the Church, as that “archaic system of esoteric wisdom in the keeping of the brotherhood of adepts”, complete with belief in the Ascended Masters, their teachings, and so forth).101
The present writer seeks to encourage an intermediate position, eschewing any need for systematic or dogmatic theology of any kind but seeking to promote, as the Eastern Christian churches have done so well, what has been described as a “theological anthropology” in which the human being is seen as a “fundamental unity of body and soul and should be understood as an ‘embodied soul’ or an ‘ensoulded body’” (Smith 2006:xi), with the ultimate aim of our earthly existence being theosis (deification) as a result of a progressive divinization or unfoldment of our innate spiritual gifts and divine nature. Our Statement of Principles and Summary of Doctrine is, in the opinion of the present writer, a sufficient statement of theology when understood and interpreted in light of the Platonic and Neoplatonic traditions in early Christianity.
101 That is, “Theosophy as understood by Adyar” (Tillett 2005:Online).

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Developments in theology such as process theology, predicate theology and enactment theology are to be applauded because they are consistent with the above mentioned traditions and do not “compartmentalize the spiritual from the theological” (Smith 2006:x) as so much of Western (as opposed to eastern) Christianity has done over the centuries with its Aristotelian and Augustinian foundations. We need to present and promote our Church as being a non-ethnic bound Eastern-leaning Western Christian Church in the Catholic, Platonic and Neoplatonic traditions. We have more in common with Eastern Christian churches, and certain other Eastern-leaning Western Christian churches (for example, the Maronite Catholic Church102) than we realize or care to admit. Vladimir Lossky, in his book The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church (1976), stresses the importance of not separating the spiritual from the theological, and of the importance of living one’s theology (1976:8-9):
We must live the dogma expressing a revealed truth, which appears to us as an unfathomable mystery, in such a fashion that instead of assimilating the mystery to our mode of understanding, we should, on the contrary, look for a profound change, an inner transformation of spirit, enabling us to experience it mystically. Far from being mutually opposed, theology and mysticism support and complete each other. If the mystical experience is a personal working out of the content of the common faith, theology is an expression, for the profit of all, of that which can be experienced by everyone. Outside the truth kept by the whole Church personal experience would be deprived of all certainty, of all objectivity. It would be a mingling of truth and falsehood, of reality and illusion: “mysticism” in the bad sense of the world. On the other hand, the teaching of the Church would have no hold on souls if it did not in some degree express an inner experience of truth, granted in different measure to each of the faithful. There is, therefore, no Christian mysticism without theology; but, above all, there is no theology without mysticism.
A Christian, but not a Theosophical Church
When it is written that “the scriptures, creeds and traditions of the Church as the means by which the teachings of Christ have been handed down to us ... partake of the nature of a theosophy”, as opposed to a theology, it is the submission of the present writer that Liberal
102 The Maronite Catholic Church is an Eastern-leaning Western Christian Church in the Catholic tradition which, although it has its own patriarch and its own distinctive rite (the “Maronite Rite”, in Syriac Aramaic), is otherwise in full communion with the Catholic Church centred in Rome under the authority of His Holiness the Pope. The Maronite tradition predates the Roman, tracing its lineage to the very church that St Peter and St Paul founded in Antioch before they went to Rome: see Acts 11:19-26. The disciples were first called Christians in Antioch: see Acts 11:26. The Church of Antioch (now known as the Antiochian Orthodox Church, although there are other churches with similar names) is the most ancient church after that of Jerusalem. St Maro (Maron/Maroun) (350-410 CE), who later became the patriarch of the Maronites, was one of the early Antiochian Christians in North Syria. The Maronite Rite came to Lebanon directly from the Church of Antioch. See, generally, Abraham (1931) and The Maronite Rite: Questions on the Maronites ([August] 1978).

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Catholic teachings and writings can be best understood against a backdrop of the Platonic and Neoplatonic traditions in Christianity as expounded by a number of the early and prominent Church Fathers, “the Platonic and Neoplatonic ... being those most closely attuned to the Wisdom Tradition”.103 That is where we should look if we wish to discover and recover the “lost Gnosis” to which Bishop Pigott referred.
Theosophy may have been the means by which the Liberal Catholic Church came into being, and arguably the inspiration, at least in part, for its coming into being, but it is not Theosophy that underpins and provides a theological foundation for the Church being a church, and a Christian one at that, but the very roots of Christianity itself as expressed by those Christians whose theology was rooted in Platonism and Neoplatonism. We are talking about what the German church historian and liberal theologian Harnack described as “the acute Hellenization of Christianity”.104 Harnack labelled that phenomenon Gnosticism, but more recent students of Gnosticism, whilst not doubting for one moment the phenomenon which Harnack described, say that he was wrong in labelling it Gnosticism: see, eg, Churton (2005:5).
Now, the present writer is not purporting to assert that the Wisdom Tradition began with the Platonists and the Neoplatonists, and with what Harnack referred to as “the acute Hellenization of Christianity”, because that is simply not the case. However, what is being asserted is that “from among the various schools of Christian thought, the Platonic and Neoplatonic are those most closely attuned to the Wisdom Tradition”.105 As the American Liberal Catholic priest Donald K Burda pointed out:
From my study of the original mystical roots of the Church, I concluded that the [Liberal Catholic Church’s] approach was closer aligned to the traditions held so dear by the Fathers of the Church: traditions based on Truth, and not on superstition.106
Accordingly, as a Church which holds itself out to the world as being a “Christian” church, it is incumbent upon us to look closely at what the Christian Platonists and Neoplatonists had
103 See Sections 6 (Scripture) and 10 (Philosophical Background), [Final Draft] Statement of Principles & Summary of Doctrine, 9th ed (London: St Alban Press, 2006), passim.
104 Harnack (1908), quoted in Jonas (1958:36).
105 See Section 10 (Philosophical Background), [Final Draft] Statement of Principles & Summary of Doctrine, 9th ed (London: St Alban Press, 2006).
106 “Fr Burda Ordained”, 207 Ubique, 21 June 1980, p 18.

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to say about Christianity, whilst resisting both the attempt to construct any form of rigid theology and all that is contrary to the teachings and spirit of Jesus Christ. As van der Leeuw points out, the writings of Irenaeus show that “already in the second century the essentials of Christ’s teaching were obscured by dogmatic non-essentials, belief in which Christ Himself never demanded of any man” (1927a:64). So much of the “Paganism” of so- called traditional or conventional Christianity, such as the doctrine of vicarious atonement (in terms of penal substitution and the like), and the idea that Jesus is purportedly the only way to God the Father, comes not from Jesus himself, nor from Judaism, but from Greco- Roman mystery religion,107 but not the sort of mystery religion that is worth preserving. Indeed, Liberal Catholic Bishop Lawrence W Burt (1945a:1) had good reason to speak, as he often did, of “false theology”, saying:
To demand of educated people belief in many of the Articles of Faith, places upon them the choice either of honest rejection, or of acceptance with mental reservation. The latter choice is the highway to hypocrisy and self-deception.108
Burt (1945a:1) went on to refer, disapprovingly, to such traditional Christian doctrines as the above mentioned doctrine of vicarious atonement109 - a doctrine “which blasphemes God the Loving Father ... outrages all sense of justice, and represents all mankind as creatures of iniquity” - the doctrine of the Deity of Jesus, “which doctrine places an unbridgeable gulf between Our Lord and ourselves, and was refuted by Christ Himself”,110 the dogma of physical resurrection (“merely a contradiction in words”),111 and the supposed infallibility of Scripture. Elsewhere (Burt 1960) the late bishop also made it clear that there “is no place in Liberal Catholic teaching” for various other traditional Christian doctrines such as “Original Sin ... Salvation by Faith, Eternal Punishment, and all that such dogmas imply”. In the view of the present writer, Burt’s attacks on traditional Christianity remain as fresh and as valid today,
107 The doctrine of vicarious atonement, as traditionally understood and expounded, has more in common with Mithraism, with its baptism in the blood of bulls, than it does with Judaism. The latter had notions of blood sacrifice, but did not endorse human sacrifice, and the idea that God could become man, or that man could become God, are totally foreign to Judaism.
108 Emphasis in the original.
109 Burt (1945a:9) notes that the doctrine of vicarious atonement was “unknown to the first century Christianity”. Corelli (1966:423), after referring to a “world [that] goes to church and asks a Divinity to save its soul”, goes on to write of the “blasphemy of sham religion [which] has insulted the majesty of the Creator more than any other form of sin, and He has answered it by His Supreme Silence”.
110 Thus, Jesus is reported to have said, among other things, “Is it not written in your law, I said, Ye are gods?”(Jn 10:34; cf Ps 82:6); “The Son can do nothing of himself, but what he seeth the Father do” (Jn 5:19); “I can of mine own self do nothing” (Jn 5:30); “I am in my Father: and you in me, and I in you” (Jn 14:20).
111 The present writer is in full accord with what then the American Liberal Catholic priest (and later bishop) Charles Hampton wrote is his book Reincarnation: A Christian Doctrine (1925), namely that the resurrection of Jesus was “a mystical resurrection, consistent with a mystic birth of Christ within the heart” (1925:25).

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even more so, than they did when he first delivered his address some 60 or more years ago. Sadly, the “defensive theology” espoused by traditional Christianity has “done so much to estrange thinking [people] from the Church” (van der Leeuw 1927a:70).
As mentioned above, the Liberal Catholic Church is a Christian church, in the sense of being true to the teaching and spirit of Christ Jesus, and that has been acknowledged by prominent Liberal Catholic bishops who were also leading Theosophists (see, eg, Burt 1960). However, any talk of it being, or of its having been founded as, a “Theosophical Church” must be firmly rejected. As van Driel (in preface, Leadbeater [1902] 2007:Online) points out:
This new body [namely, the Liberal Catholic Church] was not a Theosophical church, but rather one where the Catholic understanding of the Christian faith was combined with the Wisdom Tradition in complete freedom of conscience and belief.
An editorial in Theosophy in Australasia in 1918 stated:
Actually the Old Catholic Church and the Theosophical Society are entirely unconnected. The Theosophical Society as such has no more interest in the Old Catholic Church than in the Anglican, Roman, or Greek Churches.112
This view is supported by numerous utterances from successive international presidents of the Theosophical Society. By way of example, the then international president of the Theosophical Society C Jinarājadāsa, in a letter dated 5 November 1951 to the editor of The Canadian Theosophist, made it clear that “there is no Theosophical Church” and further that “there never has been any affiliation between the Theosophical Society and the Liberal Catholic Church”.113
With the greatest of respect to those who have viewed it differently over the years, the whole idea of a “theosophical church” is oxymoronic, for Theosophy is not a religion, or at least it does not ordinarily claim to be one. Thus, Blavatsky (1950 10:163) writes:
… Theosophy is not a Religion, we say, but RELIGION itself, the one bond of unity, which is so-universal and all-embracing that no man, as no speck – from gods and mortals down to animals, the blade of grass and atom – can be outside of its light.
The only senses in which the Liberal Catholic Church can be said in any truthful and meaningful way to be a “theosophical” church are as follows:
112 Theosophy in Australasia, April 1918, as cited in Rumble (1958:565).
113 See <http://theosophy.katinkahesselink.net/canadian/Vol-32-10-Theosophist.htm>.

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 The Liberal Catholic Church is a church which seeks to preserve and promulgate the Divine Wisdom (the “Divine Mysteries”) in an otherwise Christian context and tradition and continuing Christian revelation. Thus, the American Liberal Catholic Bishop William H Pitkin, in his “supplementary notes” to Bishop Wedgwood's history of the beginnings of the Liberal Catholic Church (see Wedgwood 1938) writes:
[The Liberal Catholic Church] was to be a theosophical church in the true meaning of that word - Divine Wisdom. And since Divine Wisdom is unlimited it can never be the exclusive possession of any individual or any organisation. It is ever to be sought for, but ever receding. "Veil after veil will lift, but there must be veil upon veil behind." This Church was to be a church of and for "seekers for the Light" of Divine Wisdom; therefore it must be a church of religious and philosophic freedom so to speak, whether the seeker belongs to any school of philosophy or to none, to any Christian denomination or none, to any religion or none.
 The Liberal Catholic Church “brings Theosophy into Christianity”,114 and it cannot be denied that Theosophy that was highly significant in inspiring the church’s Founding Bishops to bring about what they hoped would turn out to be a “regeneration of Christianity”115 (see Brandt nd [but c1965]:Online).
The theosophy that we speak of, when we refer to the “teachings” of the Liberal Catholic Church are those teachings
… [which] may be said to partake of the nature of a theosophy. Theosophy (Greek for “divine wisdom”) differs from theology in emphasising the importance of each individual’s quest for spiritual understanding based upon personal experience (gnosis or sophia) as opposed to dogmatic imposition of particular interpretations of scripture, which may be limited by man’s knowledge of the world at any one time.116
In an article entitled “The World’s Most Precious Gift”, published in 1960 in what was then the official organ of the Liberal Catholic Church in the Province of Australia,117 A H Brown had this to say about what may be called “Liberal Catholic Christianity”:
Christianity therefore is not merely a study of Scriptures, but the discovery and practical application of the truth of Christ’s teaching concerning the Kingdom of God within man [cf Lk 17:21]. The birth and unfoldment of man’s Inmost Self – “Christ in
114 See “C W Leadbeater - A Self-illumined Man by Some of His Pupils”, in Hodson and van Thiel (nd [but c1965]: Online).
115 Emphasis added.
116 See Section 10 (Philosophical Background), [Final Draft] Statement of Principles & Summary of Doctrine, 9th ed (London: St Alban Press, 2006), passim.
117 See 11:8 Provincial News, September 1960.

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you the hope of glory” [Col 1:27] – can be achieved only by one’s own self-disciplined efforts – no one can do this for us.118
In short, the Liberal Catholic Church “occupies a very distinct position among the Churches in the Christian world” (Oliveira 2007b:207). Further, whilst Christian mystics have been a vital part of Christianity right from its earliest origins, the Liberal Catholic Church is one of the few churches who seek to give expression to the mission of both St Paul and Jesus as purveyors of the Ancient Wisdom. Paul described our mission and raison d'être in the most practical,, yet mystical terms as follows (see Col 2:2 [Amplified Bible]):
(For my concern is) that their hearts may be braced (comforted, cheered and encouraged) as they are knit together in love, that they may come to have all the abounding wealth and blessings of assured conviction of understanding, and that they may become progressively more intimately acquainted with, and may know more definitely and accurately and thoroughly, that mystic secret of God (which is) Christ. the Anointed One.119
The Platonic and Neoplatonic Traditions and Roots of Christianity Van der Leeuw wrote (1927a:61) that “[e]very great movement begins with inspiration and ends in dogma”. Regrettably, Christianity is no exception. Although Christianity began its life as a Jewish sect it cannot be stressed enough that several of its key “building block” Christian concepts such as Christ as the Logos, and even the Doctrine of the Holy Trinity itself, came not from Judaism nor from Gnosticism, let alone from any one or more of the many different competing Gnostic sects, as is often (wrongly) asserted, but from mainstream Greek philosophy.120 Indeed, the whole concept of the Logos, as well as the concept of the Trinity in its more Christian form at least,121 are of
118 Emphasis in the original.
119 Emphasis added.
120 There were many fundamental differences between the Gnostics and the Alexandrians. For example, Gnostics saw no need for faith whereas Clement and other Alexandrians regarded knowledge (gnosis) as being the result and perfection of faith, the latter having primacy as a “first principle” for the foundation of knowledge.
121 Insofar as the Trinity is concerned, although notions of a divine trinity, triplicity or triad can be found in many other religions, its most immediate and temporal connection with what became mainstream Christianity was via Greek philosophical thinking. The history and source of the Christian Doctrine of the Holy Trinity are not to be found in Christian revelation but in Platonic philosophy. Indeed, the very language of the doctrine comes from classical Greek philosophy. It was Origen who set out on a doctrinal basis the Holy Trinity based upon standard Middle Platonic triadic emanation schemas. The word, as opposed to the concept, of the Trinity was actually created by the Christian apologist Tertullian (c160-220 CE) as a shorthand expression to refer to what he saw as the triune nature of the Godhead as expressed in the Bible. It was not until “the last quadrant of the 4th century ... that what might be called the definitive Trinitarian dogma 'One God in three Persons' became thoroughly assimilated into Christian life and thought”: The New Catholic Encyclopedia, vol 14, p 295.

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Greek philosophical origin,122 and their incorporation into mainstream Christianity is very much associated with the so-named Alexandrian School of Theology. Sadly, certain other ideas, that still form the backbone of conventional, traditional Christianity, such as the doctrine of vicarious atonement, also came not from Judaism but from Greco-Roman mystery religion but were unfortunately carnalized and literalized by those sections of the Church which would in time become dominant to such an extent that the original religious understanding and significance became almost unrecognisable in the process. As regards the influence of Greco-Roman mystery religion, the prominent Baptist minister and civil rights activist, the late Martin Luther King, Jr, in his study of the influence of the Greco- Roman mystery religions, especially Mithraism, upon Christianity, wrote (1949-50:Online):
The Greco-Roman world in which the early church developed was one of diverse religions. The conditions of that era made it possible for these religions to sweep like a tidal wave over the ancient world. The people of that age were eager and zealous in their search for religious experience. The existence of this atmosphere was vitally important in the development and eventual triumph of Christianity.
These many religions, known as Mystery-Religions, were not alike in every respect: to draw this conclusion would lead to a gratuitous and erroneous supposition. They covered an enormous range, and manifested a great diversity in character and outlook, "from Orphism to Gnosticism, from the orgies of the Cabira to the fervours of the Hermetic contemplative." [Angus, The Mystery Religions and Christianity, p vii.] However it is to be noticed that these Mysteries possessed many fundamental likenesses; (1) All held that the initiate shared in symbolic (sacramental) fashion the experiences of the god. (2) All had secret rites for the initiated. (3) All offered mystical cleansing from sin. (4) All promised a happy future life for the faithful. [Enslin, Christian Beginnings, pp 187, 188.]
It is not at all surprising in view of the wide and growing influence of these religions that when the disciples in Antioch and elsewhere preached a crucified and risen Jesus they should be regarded as the heralds of another mystery religion, and that Jesus himself should be taken for the divine Lord of the cult through whose death and resurrection salvation was to be had. That there were striking similarities between the developing church and these religions cannot be denied. Even Christian apologist had to admit that fact.
...
There can hardly be any gainsaying of the fact that Christianity was greatly influenced by the Mystery religions, both from a ritual and a doctrinal angle. This
122 Even the idea of the immortality of the human soul was not derived by the Jews from the Hebrew Bible (the “Old Testament” of the Christian Bible) but rather was taken from Plato. Both the Jewish communities of antiquity as well as the early Christian churches were deeply influenced by Greek philosophical ideas. The New Testament of the Christian Bible provides no scriptural basis for belief in an "immortal soul" surviving consciously after death. The words “immortal soul” are found nowhere in the Bible. The word “immortal” occurs only once in the entire Christian Bible (see 1 Tim 1:17), where it refers specifically to God. Only God has immortality.

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does not mean that there was a deliberate copying on the part of Christianity. On the contrary it was generally a natural and unconscious process rather than a deliberate plan of action. Christianity was subject to the same influences from the environment as were the other cults, and it sometimes produced the same reaction. Whatever the origins of the various doctrines and dogmas of what became conventional, traditional, mainstream Christianity - and some of those doctrines and dogmas did arise out of Judaism Christianity – the Christian Church as a whole (unlike the Liberal Catholic Church) continues to affirm the Jewish roots and flavour of the Gospel stories and teachings and of the Church’s fundamental doctrines and seeks to downplay the influence of the philosophies and religions of the Greco-Roman world. Like most things in life, the true position is much more complex. Professor Samuel Angus, sometime Professor of New Testament and Historical Theology, St Andrew’s College, University of Sydney, and a leading authority on the environment of early Christianity and, in particular, the Greco-Roman mystery religions (see, especially, Angus [1925] 1975; 1929; 1931) wrote that
... Greek religion is that of the most cultured people who ever lived on this earth of ours. Religion deals with the ageless quest of the spirit – man’s effort to base his life on some enduring foundation. We must approach the religion of the Greek in the spirit of sympathy. God is the god not of the Jews only, but of the Greeks. Clement of Alexandria said, “There were two revelations of God – one the revelation of Philosophy to the Greeks, and one the revelation of religion among the Hebrews”.123 Manly P Hall has written that if, as we Liberal Catholics generally assert to be the case, there is an underlying unity of the true wisdom of the world’s religious traditions and teachings, esoterically understood, then the philosophical basis of what Hall refers to as “the doctrine of religious unity” originates in “the most mature and convincing of Plato’s conclusions” (1945:19). The Athenian-born Plato (c427-347 ECE), who Dean Inge in his book Christian Mysticism rightly described as “the father of European Mysticism”, wrote124 and spoke of “The One” and “The Good”. Plato saw philosophy as being “a kind of logos[,] and Plato’s notion of logos125 may be analysed in modern terms as ‘the reasonable use of words in thinking’” (Urmson and Rée 1989:242). Consistent with his doctrine of generals
123 Extracted from notes of Angus’s 1933 lecture on Greek religion, as quoted by Ernest H Vines in Parer (1971:23).
124 Hall (1945:78) writes that the “most important and least known” of Plato’s writings are his Five Books on Theology, which, fortunately, were preserved by Proclus of Alexandria, surnamed the Platonic Successor.
125 The word Logos refers not only to the expression of the Divine but also to its intelligibility: see Mitchell (2006:66).

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and particulars, with religion being a “general”, and the world’s different religions being specialized “particulars”, Plato wrote and spoke of the existence of two different worlds, the first (but not in time or origin) being our phenomenal or physical world of visible things. However, there is another world of ideas126 and forms, each of which (the “Ones Themselves”) made manifest in our everyday supposedly material world as things visible, in which these ideas and forms are “visible only to the mind itself, or rather not visible but intelligible, grasped only by the pure intellect using bare words” (Urmson and Rée 1989:243). So, according to Plato, there is a world of being, in which everything exists, “always is”, “has no becoming” and “does not change” (the world of forms), and there is a world of becoming, which “comes to be and passes away, but never really is” (the physical world or cosmos).127 Accordingly, we have such things as Goodness, which is distinct from things which are good in themselves, and Beauty, which is also distinct from things which are beautiful, and so forth. However, there is only one Goodness, one Beauty, and so forth. This Platonic idealism is found in many parts of our Liberal Catholic Liturgy, but most especially in the Act of Faith when we speak of God being “Love and Power and Truth and Light”. Unless there be One which Itself is Beauty, Justice, as well as such other things as Love, Power, Truth and Light, “there would be no sense in calling anything beautiful” (Urmson and Rée 1989:243), just, loving, powerful, true or full of light. From Plato’s theory of forms - that the real world originates in the realm of ideas, that ideas shape and create reality, that what we see as the so-called material world is only a shadow of the real word - these ideas can easily be seen in the writings of Bishop Leadbeater, especially in The Science of the Sacraments, which is essentially a treatise of the power of the mind to generate ideas and then translate those ideas into thought forms of great transformative power.128 Plato’s concept of “The One” also had a powerful impact on Christian metaphysics and mysticism and coalesced perfectly with Jewish monotheism (see, eg, “Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God is one Lord” (Deut 6:4)).
126 For Plato the word “idea” meant first visible form and then form in general.
127 See Plato’s Timaeus, 28a.
128 See also Thought-Forms by Besant and Leadbeater.

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For Plato, human improvement was “the supreme good, toward which all learning should actively trend” (Hall 1945:79). We see this emphasis on the need for human improvement in the services in The Liturgy pertaining to the Holy Orders. Examples include the following, extracted from various services of Holy Orders:  “[Y]ou must learn self-control and acquire additional powers. Instead of allowing your body to direct and enslave you, you should endeavour to live for the soul. Wherefore as a first step you must learn in this grade of cleric to control, and rightly to express yourselves through, the physical body ... “ (The Ordination of Clerics, 359)  “In this order, you learn control of the emotions and passions, as before you learned to master the crude instincts of the physical body. ... If through carelessness or selfishness the emotions have been allowed to become self-centred, it is our duty not to kill them out, but to purify and raise them; to substitute for devotion to our own pleasure devotion to God and humanity; to put aside, as far as may be, affection for self for the affection that gives, caring nothing for any return; not to ask love, but to give love.” (The Ordination of Doorkeepers, 362)
 “As you had to learn to purify emotion, so also must your mind be pure. As you learned to perceive the necessity for physical cleanliness, or to throw off with repugnance the lower emotion, so also must you thrust away unworthy thought, remembering that all thought is unworthy that is impure, selfish, mean or base; such, for example, as would seek for flaws instead of gems in thinking of the character or work of another. ... Wherefore as readers it is your duty to train and develop the powers of your mind, to study and fit yourselves that you may help to train and develop the minds of others.” (The Ordination of Readers, 364-365)
 “In this grade of exorcist it is your duty by strenuous effort to develop the power of the will and by its exercise to cast out from yourselves the evil spirit of separateness and selfishness. Having learned to control your own evil habits, you will have greater power to help others to cast out the evil from themselves, not only by example but by precept and even by direct action on your part.” (The Ordination of Exorcists, 367)
 “From ancient times, also, it has been required of those who enter this order that they strive to acquire certain virtues of character, such as are typified by the vestments delivered unto them. By the amice, control of speech; by the maniple, the love of service or diligence in all good works; by the tunicle, the spirit of joy and gladness, or freedom from care and depression, that is to say, confidence in the good law, which may be interpreted as a recognition of the plan revealed by almighty God for the perfecting of his creation.” (The Ordination of Subdeacons, 378) The above are more than just moral exhortations. In each grade or order grace or spiritual power is conferred to the extent to which the candidate is open to it and does what is required, invoking the help of the One who has, and is, all Power. By such means, personal transformation, especially in the form of ego deflation at great depth, takes place. Plato’s idealism was dominated not just by the importance of striving for human improvement at all levels but also by the “supremacy of the mind ... with the possibility of

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the intellect accomplishing through proper cultivation all that is necessary to the security of man” (Hall 1945:79). In the opinion of Plato, a philosophic and contemplative life was a necessity in order for there to be any participation in the Divine life. Our Liturgy makes it clear (see, for example, the above excerpts) that more than proper use and control of the intellect is required, and, further, that there is a Mind that is above all human minds of which our individual minds form but a small part. Plato’s idea that the universe is “the body of a blessed god”, that “the earth itself is an eternal animal crawling endlessly through space, ever living, but ever changing its appearances” (Hall 1945:78), had a powerful influence on early Christian thinking and undoubtedly played a key role in the development of the Christian notion of the “mystical body of Christ” as well as Leadbeater’s understanding of the importance of building a “Eucharistic temple”. Indeed, it is not overstating things to say that the Liberal Catholic understanding of the Holy Eucharist being a means by which divine power can be spiritualized and brought to descend to and upon the so-called material world, for the purpose of quickening and hastening the evolution of not only the congregants but indeed the inhabitants of the whole world is very Platonic in its philosophical idealism. We can also see Plato’s influence in our Liberal Catholic understanding of the descent of spirit into matter, and all that ensues thereafter, namely, “the ineffable sacrifice of thy Son, the mystery of his wondrous incarnation and passion, his mighty resurrection and his triumphant ascension” (Liturgy 217). This teaching may have come to our Church most immediately from Theosophy but, again, it was Plato who in his writings “set forth the descent of human souls out of the mystery of the milky way, like seeds falling into the matrix of generation” (Hall 1945:78). The process of involution, according to Plato, proceeds as follows, as described by Hall (1945:78): Arriving within the seminal humidity of the sub-lunary sphere, the souls become intoxicated with the effluvium of matter and take upon themselves bodies, by which process they die out of their spiritual estate in order to be born as physical beings. Thus, birth is truly death; and each man is locked within the sarcophagus of his own body. Here he must remain until he is liberated by the philosophic disciplines. The “progress of human consciousness”, according to Plato, was achieved by two means, writes Hall (1945:79):

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By the first, release from matter was the result of a slow evolutionary process; the human being grew by experience alone, following the difficult course of trial and error. The second, or philosophic approach, was unfoldment through personal effort. The mind was weaned from its attachments to purely physical pursuits by discipline and the study of the sciences, especially geometry. Over the gate of Plato’s academy [Mouseion] in Athens was carved the inscription: “Let no man ignorant of geometry enter here.”129 Hall (1945:79) writes of the significance of Plato in these terms: The scope of the Platonic teachings can be estimated from the statement of Jowett, the English translator of the collected works of Plato. This learned, if somewhat mid-Victorian translator said, “The germs of all ideas, even most Christian ones, are to be found in Plato.” Voltaire observed that in pure point of doctrine, Plato should have been the first canonized saint of the Christian Church. Ferrier, in the Institutes of Metaphysics, summed up a considerable learning in this terse statement: “All philosophic truth is Plato rightly defined; all philosophic error is Plato misunderstood.” Plato also developed the idea of a “World-Soul”, the creation of which, according to Platonic cosmology, is as follows (as described by Ferguson 1976:Online): The Divine Craftsman is good and desires all things to be like himself. So he brings order out of chaos and fashions a world-soul; the cosmos is thus a living creature endowed with life and intelligence. The material universe includes fire and earth to make it visible and tangible, and the other elements to give it proportions. The father creates the divine heavenly bodies, the visible gods, and entrusts to them the fashioning of the mortal part of man; he himself creates form what is left over from the creation of the world-soul souls equal in number to the stars.130 Now, prior to the Christian era, Athens reigned supreme over Alexandria131 as a centre for the study of philosophy and higher learning. However, Athens was “too intimately associated with the faded glories of polytheism to dispute with [Alexandria] the supremacy”, writes the United Free Church minister the Rev William Fairweather in his book Origen and Greek Patristic Theology (1901:3). In time, in the earliest centuries of the Christian era, “there flourished in Alexandria many schools of philosophy” (“Fr John” 1963:13):
129 Ageometretos medeis eisito (“Let not one destitute of geometry enter my doors"). Plato also wrote, "The knowledge of which geometry aims is the knowledge of the eternal": Resp, VII, 52. However, it was Plutarch, and not Plato, who wrote, "God geometrizes", and "Plato said God geometrizes continually": see Plutarch, Convivialium disputationum, liber 8,2. “God geometrizes”, said the mystics and occultists in the Middle Ages, partly out of self-protection for fear of persecution which did in fact occur, and partly because what was being spoken of was otherwise seen to comprise a coherent system of symbols, albeit in the nature of a mystery.
130 J Ferguson, An Illustrated Encyclopaedia of Mysticism and the Mystery Religions, as quoted in “Platonic Dualism”, [Online] viewed 1 May 2009, <http://www.mystae.com/restricted/streams/gnosis/dualism.html>.
131 Alexandria, in Egypt, was built by Alexander the Great in 332 BCE.

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Amongst them we find the Jewish school (Philo); the Gnostics, the School of the Christian Apologists (Clement of Alexandria and Origen), the Neoplatonic School organized by Plotinus and Porphrey. The early Christian Fathers associated with these Schools aimed mainly at achieving a scientific exposition of the revealed truths of religion, but from the nature of the case they could not fulfil their task of defence against “paganism” with which they were everywhere surrounded without touching on most of the questions that belong to the domain of philosophy. Greek philosophy was never entirely abandoned, and the school of Aristotle, who had been a disciple of Plato, continued to exercise great influence on the minds and deliberations of the early Fathers of the Church.132 As Moussa (nd:Online) has pointed out, Alexandria had become, by the middle of the Second Century CE, “one of the intellectual capitals of the Roman Empire”, in large part as a result of the hard work of the Ptolemies. The city had a large Jewish community, which, in many ways, paved the way for the growth and developemnt of Christianity in the city. Then, in time, there were a number of Christian communities. Most of the Christians in Alexandria were native Egyptians who had little or no interest in Greek philosophy and intellectlualizing. There was, however, a smaller, highly educated, community of Christians in Alexandria who were very familiar with Greek philosophy. When an Alexandrian school of philosophy of the Christian kind finally developed, the school that eventuated reflected the mysticism found throughout the Middle East and tended to interpret Sacred Scripture allegorically133 rather than literally – an approach that would later find favour with many prominent Liberal Catholics, especially Fr Geoffrey Hodson.134 As mentioned elsewhere in this thesis, the very early Christian church, especially the Church of Antioch, the most ancient church after that of Jerusalem, having been founded by Saints Peter135 and Paul themselves, was highly mystical in its spirituality, and this was certainly true of the Alexandrian Church Fathers as well. Fairweather has written of some of the more important
132 “Fr John” (1963:13).
133 See, especially, Gal 4:24 (“Now this is an allegory ...”). Grant and Freedman ([1960] 1993:27) write that Clement and Origen were of the view that “the synoptic provided a literal, historical account of Jesus’s work, while John composed an allegorical version which gave the inward, spiritual meaning of Jesus”. The writers also note that “Origen sometimes argued all four gospels were partly historical and partly symbolical” (also at 27).
134 See, eg, The Hidden Wisdom in the Holy Bible, vols 1-4 (vols 1-2, 1967; vol 3, 1971; vol 4, 1981) (Wheaton IL: Theosophical Publishing House (Quests Books), and The Christ Life from Nativity to Ascension (Wheaton IL: Theosophical Publishing House (Quests Books), 1975). Philo is noted for his allegorical interpretation of the Septuagint (the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible). This translation was “made in the first instance for the use of Greek-speaking Jews living in Alexandria” (A Concise Bible Dictionary, London: Cambridge University Press, nd, p 138).
135 St Peter is reputed to have been the first among the Bishops of Antioch, the Church of Antioch itself having been established in, it is generally believed, 33 CE. In 325, at the First Council of Nicea, the bishopric of Antioch was recognized as a Patriarchate as were those of Rome, Alexandria and Jerusalem.

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factors that led to Alexandria becoming the important place that it did become for early Christianity (1901:2): Everything combined to mark out Alexandria as the place most likely to take the lead in any great intellectual movement. Many currents of thought met and mingled in this cosmopolitan city, which witnessed not only the first attempts at a scientific theology, but also the simultaneous rise of the last great system of ancient philosophy. As a result of the syncretism of the period, a remarkable spirit of toleration prevailed in the community; the adherents of different cults and creeds lived side by side in mutual goodwill.
It was not a Christian but the Hellenized (and more particularly, Alexandrian) Jewish philosopher Philo, also known as Philo Judaeus as well as Philo of Alexandria (20 BCE - 50 CE), a contemporary of Jesus, who is generally credited with having developed the teachings about the Logos in the first century CE. The Jewish Encyclopedia refers to the distinctive and idiosyncratic manner in which Philo developed the concept of the Logos:
This name [Logos], which he borrowed from Greek philosophy, was first used by Heraclitus and then adopted by the Stoics. Philo's conception of the Logos is influenced by both of these schools. From Heraclitus he borrowed the conception of the "dividing Logos" (λόγος τομεύς), which calls the various objects into existence by the combination of contrasts ("Quis Rerum Divinarum Heres Sit," § 43 [i. 503]), and from Stoicism, the characterization of the Logos as the active and vivifying power. But Philo borrowed also Platonic elements in designating the Logos as the "idea of ideas" and the "archetypal idea" ("De Migratione Abrahami," § 18 [i. 452]; "De Specialibus Legibus," § 36 [ii. 333]). There are, in addition, Biblical elements: there are Biblical passages in which the word of Yhwh is regarded as a power acting independently and existing by itself, as Isa. lv. 11 (comp. Matt. x. 13; Prov. xxx. 4); these ideas were further developed by later Judaism in the doctrines of the Divine Word creating the world, the divine throne- chariot and its cherub, the divine splendor and its shekinah, and the name of God as well as the names of the angels; and Philo borrowed from all these in elaborating his doctrine of the Logos.136
136 C H Toy, C Siegfried and J Z Lauterbach, “Philo Judaeus”, in JewishEncylopedia.com, viewed 12 May 2009, <http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/view.jsp?artid=281&letter=P#1056>. See also Churton (2005:43) who also refers to the Stoic background of the Logos. Tatian the Assyrian (c110-180 CE), who was an early Christian theologian, apologist and writer who had been trained in Greek philosophy and who may have later established a school of his own in Mesopotamia, is said by some to have been the first Christian writer to declare that God created matter by the power of the Logos: see Studer (1992). (Tatian took and combined the four Gospels of the New Testament in his Diatessaron. According to Grant and Freedman ([1960] 1993:27) “he retained the order of none of them, though for the Galilean ministry of Jesus he relied primarily on Matthew, and for the story of the Crucifixion, on John”.) As mentioned, the pre-Socratic Greek philosopher Heraclitus of Ephesus (c535-475 BCE) also spoke of the eternal Logos, by which he meant Godly Wisdom from whom everything received its existence.

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Philo, a Middle Platonist,137 who greatly admired both the Essenes as well as the Pythagoreans (but especially the latter),138 is sometimes referred to as having been a Gnostic, but “although some of the raw material of Gnosticism can be found in Philo, he is not, except in the vaguest sense, himself a Gnostic” (Chadwick 1967, as quoted in Churton 2005:42). There is certainly room for confusion and disputation, for Philo did indeed combine and synthesize Jewish religious ideas with Greek (both Stoic and Platonic) philosophy in a highly idiosyncratic fashion. Indeed, the Jewish Encyclopedia goes so far as to say that Philo’s God was “not the God of the Old Testament, but the idea of Plato designated as Θεός, in contrast to matter”:139
Nothing remained, therefore, but to set aside the descriptions of God in the Old Testament by means of allegory. Philo characterizes as a monstrous impiety the anthropomorphism of the Bible, which, according to the literal meaning, ascribes to God hands and feet, eyes and ears, tongue and windpipe ("De Confusione Linguarum," § 27 [i. 425])140
Philo, according to Churton (2005:40)
wrote polemics against those who taught two gods; at the same time, Philo himself called the Logos (the divine instrument of creation) “a second god,” “archangel,” “Lord,” and “Name.”
Nevertheless, Philo, whose “soul [was] athirst for God” and entire aim was to “see God” (Kirk [1934] 1966:21), always described “God as One, or, in Greek terms, as the Monad” (Churton 2005:43), this God being “beyond all being”. This was a truly transcendent God which, according to Philo, was even “beyond the Monad”. According to the Jewish Encyclopedia “Philo's transcendental conception of the idea of God precluded the Creation as well as any activity of God in the world”.141 This God brought the cosmos into being in two ways, first, by means of a pure act of the will, and then by means of his Logos (or word) the physical world or cosmos was brought forth. (This idea forms the basis of the thinking of those Liberal Catholics of a Theosophical mindset, and others as well, who make a distinction between the God who is Absolute and Beyond Being on the one hand, and the
137 Middle Platonism refers to the development of Platonism, or ideas associated with Plato, during the period from roughly 130 BCE up to the late 2nd century CE. Philo was a later Middle Platonist, and perhaps the most prominent one of the lot. Middle Platonism was followed by Neoplatonism which took shape in the 3rd century CE.
138 The ancient Pythagoreans had an evening ritual or mediation in which they would reflect upon their individual acts and omissions of the past day, asking themselves the following three questions: (1) In what I have failed? (2) What good have I done? (3) What have I not done that I ought to have done?
139 Toy, Siegfried and Lauterbach (Online).
140 Toy, Siegfried and Lauterbach (Online).
141 Toy, Siegfried and Lauterbach (Online).

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“God or Logos (Word) of the Solar System to which this planet belongs” (Pigott 1925:21) on the other. This last mentioned God, who is God at least in the fullest sense in which we, with our own limited understanding, can conceive of such a Being, is analogous to what Plato and the Stoics referred to as the World-Soul (of which the human soul is an emanation). Indeed, Philo also embraced “the Stoic doctrine of the immanence of God”.142 In short, God is both “entirely outside of the world” as well as “the only actual being therein”.143
Philo was “perhaps the first to see the Platonic Ideas as God’s thoughts” (Churton 2005:43). He wrote of redemption in terms of “losing self in something higher”, with “the goal of spiritual life as being the vision of God” (Churton 2005:46 and 47, respectively), something which was also, in Philo’s words, a “vision of peace”, for God alone is perfect peace” (see Kirk [1934] 1966:21). This vision of God could be experienced only in moments of ekstasis (ecstasy). We cannot see God with ordinary physical sight, but only with the “eye of the soul” (Kirk [1934] 1966:22), and that requires a special kind of asceticism, self- mortification and purity of body, mind and spirit:
Who, then, shall be the heir? Not that reasoning which remains in the prison of the body according to its own voluntary intentions, but that which is loosened from those bonds and emancipated, and which has advanced beyond the walls, and if it be possible to say so, has itself forsaken itself. "For he," says the scripture, "who shall come out from thee, he shall be thy heir." Therefore if any desire comes upon thee, O soul, to be the inheritor of the good things of God, leave not only thy country, the body, and thy kindred, the outward senses, and thy father's house, that is speech; but also flee from thyself, and depart out of thyself, like the Corybantes, or those possessed with demons, being driven to frenzy, and inspired by some prophetic inspiration. For while the mind is in a state of enthusiastic inspiration, and while it is no longer mistress of itself, but is agitated and drawn into frenzy by heavenly love, and drawn upwards to that object, truth removing all impediments out of its way, and making everything before it plain, that so it may advance by a level and easy road, its destiny is to become an inheritor of the things of God.144
At the same time Philo wrote that the root of sin was the lust to become equal to God.145 He saw the so-called Fall (as it is known in conventional Christianity) as being simply the result of creation or involution into a lower world, for there was still an “unbroken union with God
142 Toy, Siegfried and Lauterbach (Online).
143 Toy, Siegfried and Lauterbach (Online).
144 “Who is the Heir of Divine Things?”, Ch 17, 14:68-70, in Yonge (Online).
145 “Legum allegoriae”, 149; “De cherubim”, 58-64, in Philo (1973).

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in love” with the soul being God’s bride.146 This is very much the Liberal Catholic position. Philo wrote of the importance of silent contemplation and the meditative state, which will bring about not just emotional equanimity but also peace and union with the Divine:
When therefore the soul is made manifest in all its sayings and doings, and is made a partaker of the divine nature, the voices of the external senses are reduced to silence, and so likewise are all troublesome and ill-omened sounds, for the objects of sight often speak loudly and invite the sense of sight to themselves; and so do voices invite the sense of hearing; scents invite the smell, and altogether each varied object of sense invites its appropriate sense. But all these things are put at rest when the mind going forth out of the city of the soul, attributes all its own actions and conceptions to God.147
Philo translated the Jewish Scriptures in light of the language and thought forms of a number of different stands of Greek thought (in particular, Stoic, Platonic and Neopythagorean). In the process, he gave a “spiritual interpretation of the Jewish scriptures and taught his Logos-doctrine which afterwards was to prove such a useful receptacle for the doctrine about Christ” (van der Leeuw 1927a:67). Philo used the word Logos (which he described as the “Idea of Ideas”) to refer to both the “governing principle of [the] relation between transcendent God and lower world” as well as “God’s image” (Churton 2005:43 and 44), hence his reference to the “divine man” (cf Moses at the burning bush) being indwelled by the Logos. To Philo the idea of the Logos was central and had a mystical power, for he was in no doubt that “contemplation of and speculation about the works of the Logos [would] reveal secrets” (Churton 2005:45). He also spoke of the “power” of God mediating between God and the world as “mysteries” and, in various places, as “esoteric”.148
Philo had an enormous impact on the thinking and theology of the Christian Greek Fathers who were shortly to make their own mark in Alexandria. Fairweather writes (1901:3):
Philo and his predecessors had to a great extent paved the way for a systematized expression, in terms of Greek philosophy, of the contents of Jewish-Christian tradition. Under the influence of philosophical and Oriental ideas the jagged edges of Judaism had been toned down, and elements of a metaphysical and mystical nature assumed. In the doctrine of the Logos a meeting-point had been found between Jewish monotheism and Gentile philosophy.
146 “De posteritate Caini”, 12; “De cherubim”, 42-53, in Philo (1973).
147 “Allegorical Interpretation III”, Ch 4, 14:44, in Yonge (Online).
148 “De scrificiis Abelis et Caini”, 60, 131-32; “De Abrahamo”, 122; “De fuga et inventione”, 95; “De cherubim”, 48, in Philo (1973).

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As mentioned earlier, the concept of the Logos was of great importance to Philo but he did not actually invent the concept. Insofar as the Doctrine of the Trinity is concerned, although notions of a divine trinity, triplicity or triad can be found in many other religions, its most immediate and temporal connection with what became mainstream Christianity was via Greek philosophical thinking. The history and source of the Doctrine of the Trinity are not to be found in Christian revelation per se but in Platonic philosophy. Indeed, the very language of the doctrine comes from classical Greek philosophy. It was Origen (c185-254 CE) who set out on a doctrinal basis the Holy Trinity based upon standard Middle Platonic triadic emanation schemas. The word, as opposed to the concept, of the Trinity was actually created by the Christian apologist Tertullian (c160-220 CE) as a shorthand expression to express what he saw as the triune nature of the Godhead as expressed in the Bible. It was not until “the last quadrant of the 4th century ... that what might be called the definitive Trinitarian dogma 'One God in three Persons' became thoroughly assimilated into Christian life and thought”.149 Significantly, when polytheism began to displace monotheism in Ancient Greece in about 600 BCE, it was the philosophers who objected most vehemently and eloquently to what they saw as a distortion, indeed corruption, of the true Ancient Wisdom. For example, Xenophon (570-466 BCE) said: Among gods and people there exists one Most High God, Who does not resemble them either mentally, or externally. He is all sight, all thought, all hearing. He eternally and immovably resides in one place ... With His thought He governs all without difficulty.150
The preponderance of historical records supports the view that it was in the 2nd century (c190 CE) that the Christian Church decided to establish what might be called a “Christian School” in the City of Alexandria. “At first it was a school for children only”, but out of this school emerged “the famous Catechitical [sic] School [of Alexandria]”,151 also known as the “Alexandrian School of Theology” or simply the “Alexandrian School”. The Church’s aim, both in setting up this School and otherwise, was to demonstrate that “true philosophy led
149 See The New Catholic Encyclopedia, vol 14, p 295.
150 As cited in Bishop Alexander (Mileant), trans N and N Semyanko (ed D Shufran), “The One God Worshipped in the Trinity”, viewed 5 April 2009, <http://www.orthodoxpr.com/Orthodox/OneGod.html>.
151 See “Great Theosophists: Ammonius Saccas” (Online).

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the way to Christianity and not to Paganism”.152 Fairweather writes that the “moulding of Christian theology according to the Greek type is specially identified with the Catechetical School of Alexandria” and that the School arose “out of the necessities of the Alexandrian Church” itself (1901:8).
The first director of, and “the principal exponent of Christianity” (van der Leeuw 1927a:67) in, the Catechetical School of Alexandria153 was, according to Bishop Eusebius, a converted Sicilian-born Stoic named Pantaenus154 (died c212 CE) who, as a result of his travels to and throughout India, had acquired an understanding of the “doctrines of Indian religious philosophy” (van der Leeuw 1927:67) which be brought to Alexandria.155 We are told that the “venerable” (Farrar 1886:183) Pantaenus discovered that “true philosophy is found, not in the Porch, but in Nazareth, in Gethsemane, in Gabbatha, in Golgotha; and he set himself to make it known to the world”.156 Regrettably, “only a few fragments” of his writings remain (Farrar 1886:183). However, there is no doubt that under Pantaenus’ leadership the Catechetical School of Alexandria became quite well-renowned, such that it has been said that “[a]ll the learning of Christendom may be traced to this source”.157
The Catechetical School was a “Christian school ... honourably distinguished from the pagan schools of the period by making a virtue a subject for practice, and not merely for definition and discourse” (Fairweather 1901:11-12). Furthermore, the theology that emerged from this Alexandrian School of Theology was a “constructive” one as opposed to the “defensive theology substituted for the living teaching of Christ” (van der Leeuw 1927a:66 and 70) that was elsewhere developing in Christianity around about the same time. Van der Leeuw writes (1927a:66-67):
152 See “Great Theosophists: Ammonius Saccas” (Online), quoting from Fr George Stebbing’s The Story of the Catholic Church (1915). However, according to St Jerome, the school “existed as a catechetical school from the Apostles’ time”: see “Pantaenus The Alexandrian Philosopher” (Online).
153 The Catechetical School of Alexandria made special use of the method of teaching known as “Socratic dialogue”, a method designed “for the expulsion of ignorance and error, and for the cultivation of a genuine love of truth” (Fairweather 1901:11). Socratic dialogue is used to this day as a teaching and learning method in many law schools throughout the world, especially in the United States of America.
154 Later Saint Pantaenus.
155 Pantaenus, with whom Clement of Alexandria became closely associated, first as master and pupil respectively, and later as colleagues, was the head, if not the actual founder, of the Alexandrian School, which was founded in around 190 CE. He may have been the head of the Alexandrian School before he went to India.
156 “Pantaenus The Alexandrian Philosopher” (Online). Pantaenus is quoted by Eusebius in Hist Eccl, VI.14.2.
157 “Pantaenus The Alexandrian Philosopher” (Online).

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Alexandria has always been one of the most remarkable of the Christian churches; here Egypt, Greece, Israel, Rome and the Orient met, not only in commerce, but also in intellectual and spiritual intercourse. Nowhere did the new faith find a richer ground to develop. ... Naturally the Christian church in Alexandria became with Rome the leading Church of the Christian religion. Here from the earliest days the instruction of members in the Christian doctrine was organised better than anywhere else; here for the first time we find a critical study and arrangement of the Christian scriptures.
Fairweather has written (1901:1-1): The Greek patristic theology was the result of the application of the specific methods of Greek philosophy to the new material supplied by the Christian history, with the view of constructing a reasoned theory of God and the universe. As such it was “the last characteristic creation of the Greek genius.” In the New Testament God is represented from a religious point of view; but for the Greek mind, which conceived God metaphysically as abstract Being, a scientific theology was indispensable. The facts of Christianity had to be so interpreted as to yield a conception of God which would at once conserve His unity, and yet admit of His organic connection with man as Lord and Saviour. Naturally this result was reached only through a process of development.
It has been mentioned already that, early in the Christian era, the Jewish philosopher Philo emphasised the mystical quality of our relationship with the Divine, the latter being seen by Philo to be “supra-rational” in nature and which can only be contacted and experienced through and in moments of ekstasis (ecstasy). As such, he was a forerunner of Neoplatonism, which otherwise took shape in the 3rd Century CE, and which will be the subject of more detailed consideration later in this chapter of this thesis. Philo himself had a direct and very profound influence upon both the Athenian-born Clement of Alexandria158 (c150-215 CE), a convert to Christianity from paganism159 who would in time succeed Pantaenus as the head of the Catechetical School of Alexandria,160 and his pupil and protégé Origen of Alexandria (c185-254 CE), each of whom were late Second Century Greek Fathers of the early Christian Church, with the latter (Origen) undoubtedly being one of the greatest of all Christian theologians.161 Fairweather writes (1901:13):
158 Titus Flavius Clemens, but known as Clement of Alexandria (cf Clement of Rome).
159 Fairweather (1901:12) writes that Clement’s own studies in religion led him to “forsake paganism and embrace Christianity”.
160 Clement, who studied under Pantaenus, was also a pupil of Tatian the Assyrian. He was a convert to Christianity.
161 Alexander, later bishop of Jerusalem, was also a pupil of Clement at the Catechetical School. Other notable Alexandrian theologians include Saint Cyril of Alexandria (c378-444), a Doctor of the Church and once “Pope of Alexandria” when that city was at the height of its influence and power in the Roman Empire, and Saint Athanasius of Alexandria (c293-373) (one of four great Doctors of the Eastern Church). Mention should also be made of Athenagoras (c133-190), an Athenian philosopher who converted to Christianity and became an important Christian apologist and who almost certainly had some connection with the catechetical school in

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In the great work of winning the Greek world for Christianity, Clement was the immediate precursor of Origen, the forerunner without whom Origen, as we know him, could not have been.
Clement of Alexandria, himself a student of and successor to Saint Pantaenus, was highly knowledgeable in both Greek162 and Egyptian philosophy which led him to conclude that “truth could be found even in the heathen systems”.163 For Clement, philosophy was “no work of darkness, but in each of its forms a ray of light from the Logos, and therefore belonging of right to the Christian” (Fairweather 1901:14). Clement “combined in himself the nobility of Greek culture with the depth of Christian faith” (van der Leeuw 1927a:67-68), and was largely responsible for developing what can only be described as an eclectic form of “Christian Platonism”.164 Although “no systematic theologian in the modern sense, Clement may be said to have laid the foundation of a true scientific dogmatic” (Fairweather 1901:24). Van der Leeuw writes (1927a:68):
He considered Greek philosophy and Jewish law to be the paedagogus meant to lead man to Christ, and believed that the Logos directed and inspired the philosophy of Greece until He could be fully manifested in Christ. Thus Christianity was shown as the natural and necessary consummation of Greek and Jewish culture ...
As mentioned earlier, the Christians in Alexandria were not all of one mind and accord. The majority of Christians in the city, those who were Egyptian-born and bred, had little or no interest in Greek philosophy. Then there was a smaller group of Christians who were very “Greek”, and espcially Platonic, in their philosophising. Clement sought to expound a “middle way” between the views of these two different groups of Christians. Fairweather has spoken of how Clement was able to successfully combine the best of Greek philosophy with the revealed wisdom from the Hebrew Bible and the prophets culminating in Jesus’ incarnation (1901:86-87):
Alexandria (although he was probably never its head, as has been claimed by some writers). Cyril taught that there was “one (mia) nature of the incarnate Logos” (mia fusij tou qeou Logou sesarkwmenh). Sadly, Cyril’s organized campaign of attacks, some extremely violent in nature, on those whom he saw as dissenters or heretics ultimately “brought an end to the teaching of Greek philosophy in Alexandria” (Bushby 2004:263). As regards the teaching of philosophy in Athens, that came to an end as a result of an edict of the Emperor Justinian “who prohibited its teaching and caused all schools closed” (Bushby 2004:263).
162 Clement saw much of value in Platonic metaphysics, Stoic ethics and Aristotelian logic (Chadwick [1967] 1993:97).
163 See “Great Theosophists: Ammonius Saccas” (Online).
164 Clement himself admitted to being an eclectic: see his Stromata, I:37. See Hoyland (1928) for an inter- relationship between Platonism and Christianity; the otherwise scholarly study is, however, marred by a praeparatio evangelica style of approach, that is, seeing Plato’s views and teachings as a preparation for a similar expression of teaching in the Gospels purportedly proclaimed by Jesus himself.

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The true goal of the Greek philosophy, as well as of the revealed wisdom proclaimed by the prophets, was the incarnation of Jesus, which focussed [sic] all previous self-communications of the Eternal Reason. A knowledge essentially devoid of error is thus guaranteed to us. ... Clement held that a man’s life is likely to be virtuous in proportion to his knowledge of the truth. ... By the union of the divine and human natures in His own person, Christ has become the source of the new life of humanity.
Fairweather has also written of how Clement saw philosophy as the divine precursor to Christianity (1901:15):
What philosophers of all schools had been aiming at was also the aim of Christianity, viz a nobler life. The difference, according to Clement, was this: while the ancient philosophers had been unable to get more than glimpses of the truth, it was left to Christianity to make known in Christ the perfect truth.
Clement’s writings, which display his “profound indebtedness to Middle Platonism” (Churton 2005:117), perhaps best exemplify what our own Bishop Frank Pigott had in mind when he wrote of the “lost gnosis” in his book The Parting of The Ways (1925:35), for, as Churton has pointed out (2005:115):
[Clement] was not declared to be a heretic, and his works have therefore survived in the orthodox circles. Of all the extant writings of the first centuries of the Christian era, it may be that those of Clement conform most closely to what Bishop Irenaeus of Lyons might have called the gnosis “truly so-called.”
Clement, who attained the rank of presbyter in the Church of Alexandria (Fairweather 1901:13), is famous for having written, “There is one river of truth, but many streams fall into it from this side and that.”165 Bishop Pigott (1934:Online) has written concerning Clement’s statement:
Judaism is one such tributary; Hellenism is another; the genius of the Latins has also poured in in very large measure; and more recently the Nordic races, chiefly but not wholly through Protestantism, have added their special contribution. And now there comes another tributary bearing the ancient wisdom of the East. It is as yet but a trickle but it may be destined to flow in greater and greater fullness. Charles Leadbeater is mainly responsible for that.
Clement was “a Christian who [also] called himself a Gnostic”, indeed a “self-confessed Gnostic” (Churton 2005:115 and 117, respectively). He saw himself as a “true Gnostic”. Indeed, he spoke, quite unashamedly, of the Christian being a “Gnostic”, whilst making it clear that he was referring not to any of the various schools and sects which were active in
165 Clement of Alexandria, Stromata, I:5.

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the 2nd century and which called themselves “gnostic” but rather to that true or “ecclesiastical gnosis” (Farrar 1886:185) which the Apostle Paul referred to as “my knowledge in the mystery of Christ” (Eph 3:4).166 Clement railed against what he labeled “the Apostlic orthodoxy” and “the evangelical canon” (Farrar 1886:185) which, in his view, had perverted and corrupted the true religion and teachings of Jesus.
R F Horton, in his book The Mystical Quest of Christ, writes (1923:9) that, insofar as Clement was concerned
What was revealed in Christ was the utmost that we could know; and the additions made by the Gnostic systems were fictitious.
As a Gnostic Christian whose “inquiring spirit caused him ... to travel through many lands in search of the most distinguished Christian teachers” (Fairweather 1901:12-13), Clement affirmed that “the true wisdom or gnosis was that inner illumination to which the true Christian could attain if he lived the life of purity and love which our Lord had taught” (van der Leeuw 1927a:69). He believed that there were differences in knowledge (gnosis) between Christians. The more enlightened ones were those who had methodically devoted themselves to living a highly moral life, along Platonic lines, in their acquisition of a deeper knowledge and understanding of the Divine. Clement’s aim was “to bring his students to a state of spiritual vision, not as a single experience so much as a dynamic, growing movement, of which this life on earth formed only a part” (Churton 2005:117). Fairweather writes (1901:15):
As the world must needs go through several stages preparatory to the coming of Christ, so must a man advance by degrees from faith (πιστις) to love, and from love to knowledge (γνῶσις), to the position of a perfect Christian.
Faith was thus only the first step toward gnosis, for, according to Clement, the Christian “must advance from faith to knowledge by the path of simple obedience and rectitude” (Fairweather 1901:31). In his Stromateis Clement has this to say about faith and gnosis:
Faith then is a compendious knowledge of the essentials, but gnosis is a sure and firm demonstration of the things received through faith, being itself built up by the Lord’s teaching on the foundation of the faith, and carrying us on to unshaken conviction and scientific certainty. ... [T]here seems to me to be a first kind of saving change from heathenism to faith, a second from faith to gnosis; and this
166 Clement especially opposed those Gnostics who taught that the material world or the created order was alien to and from Almighty God.

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latter, as it passes on into love, begins at once to establish a mutual friendship between that which knows and that which is known. And perhaps he who has arrived at this stage has already attained equality with the angels.
At any rate, after he has reached the final ascent in the flesh, he still continues to advance, as is fit, and press on through the holy Hebdomad [the seven planetary spheres] into the father’s house, to that which is indeed the Lord's abode, being destined there to be, as it were, a light standing and abiding forever, absolutely secure from all vicissitude.167
The reference to “the holy Hebdomad [the seven planetary spheres]” is significant, as we are familiar with the “seven days of creation”, the “seven rays”, the “seven mighty spirits before the throne” (cf Rev 1:4), and so forth. Hodson in his book The Seven Human Temperaments writes (1952:2):
The One becomes Two or androgyne. These Two interact to produce the Third Aspect of the threefold manifested Logos. These Three in turn unite in all their possible combinations to produce seven groups of three. In three of these groups, one of the three predominates; in three others, two predominate and in the seventh, all are equally manifest. Since divine consciousness is focused and active in each of these Emanations, they are regarded as finite Beings or "Persons".
From the Three Persons of the Blessed Trinity, the Seven emerge, who are known in Christian Cosmogony as the Seven Mighty Spirits before the Throne, in Judaism as the Seven Sephiroth and in Theosophy as the Seven Planetary Logoi, each the Logos of a Scheme of seven Chains of globes.168
All of this is beautifully captured in the Ascription in the Liberal Catholic Church’s service of Benediction of the Most Holy Sacrament (see Liturgy 262):
To the most holy and adorable Trinity, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, three Persons in one God; to Christ our Lord, the only wise counsellor, the Prince of peace; to the seven mighty spirits before the throne; and to the glorious assembly of just men made perfect, the Watchers, the Saints, the Holy Ones, be praise unceasing from every living creature; and honour, might and glory, henceforth and for evermore.
Not only did Clement take from Greek philosophy the concept of the Logos, he “divinised” it such that both the Son and the Holy Spirit were also “first-born powers and first created”. In that regard, Clement distinguished the so-called Son-Logos from the Logos itself. Thus, the Liberal Catholic/Theosophical understanding of Christ as the World Teacher, expressing
167 Stromata, VII.
168 In cosmic numerology or “sacred geometry” the number “seven” represents such things as fullness, individual completeness (the number “twelve” representing corporate completeness), the perfection of the human soul, and grace. It is considered to be the “divine number” and thus the most spiritual of all numbers.

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himself through, among others, the person and personality of Jesus, has its origins and finds early expression in Clement. Churton (2005:117) writes:
Clement saw Christ the Logos as the implicate, unifying factor of all the projected archetypes. This also meant that Clement saw all religions as being the sacred expressions of the divine archetypes, while the divine Logos-Christ, present (if unseen) in all, united the All.
In the writings and teachings of Clement, God “is manifested through the Son, by whose grace as Logos He has in some degree been known to the nobler spirits of every age and country” (Fairweather 1901:26). These ideas are reflected in various parts (for example, in the “Prayers of Intent” and in “The Commemoration of the Saints”) of the Service of the Holy Eucharist in The Liturgy (217 and 219; 235 and 237)
Wherefore, O Lord and heavenly Father, we thy humble servants, bearing in mind the ineffable sacrifice of thy Son, the mystery of his wondrous incarnation, [his blessed passion,] his mighty resurrection, and his triumphant ascension, do here make before thy divine majesty the memorial which our Lord hath willed us to make …
…
And we join with them in worship before thy great white throne, whence flow all love and light and blessing through all the worlds which thou hast made.
For Clement the Christian gospel was “the highest revelation of the Logos, who has given indication of his presence wherever men rise above the level of the beasts and of the uncivilised savage” (Fairweather 1901:24). “The eternal Word has appeared as man in order to become our Teacher and Saviour” (Fairweather 1901:29).
Clement, like Liberal Catholics, had a high vision of humankind, and its innate divinity and potential. His philosophy and theological system recognised the reality of sin, but there was no place for any Calvinistic-type sin-sodden view of our innate total depravity or the like. Thus, Clement rejected and denied the doctrine of “original sin” - something the Jews have always repudiated as well - but he was still nevertheless of the view that “fallen man [was] powerless to restore himself to good” (Fairweather 1901:29). We needed the help of Christ to achieve that. Having said that, Clement was very much a Universalist, being a firm believer in the doctrine of apocatastasis. He would have had no difficulties at all in agreeing with that part of the Liberal Catholic Act of Faith that states that “all his sons shall one day reach his feet, however far they stray” (Liturgy 210; 229). Any “punishments” meted out by

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God were, according to Clement, “saving and disciplinary, leading to conversion”.169 Fairweather writes (1901:33):
… Clement held that after death perfect blessedness will be reached through a further process of further development, accepted the Pauline doctrine of a glorified resurrection body, and allowed the possibility of repentance and reformation until the last day, when probation would cease.170
God was thus not an angry, vengeful god that needed to be appeased. It was simply a case of our impurity which needed “to be overcome, so that unity with the Divine may be attained” (van der Leeuw 1927a:70). We “wander from the path which leads to righteousness” (Confiteor, Liturgy 204; 224) out of ignorance of who and what we really are. All of this was, for Clement, part and parcel of the Christian doctrines of creation and redemption.
Clement saw Jesus, not so much as Saviour, but as Way-Shower and Exemplar, with the way being one of self-sacrifice and selfless self-giving. Only by such means could one be initiated into the “Mysteries of the Kingdom of God”. Clement spoke of those Mysteries in these terms:
But the Mysteries are delivered mystically, that what is spoken may be in the mouth of the speaker; rather not in his voice, but in his understanding. "God gave to the Church, some apostles, and some prophets, and some evangelists, and some pastors and teachers, for the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ."
The writing of these memoranda of mine, I well know, is weak when compared with that spirit, full of grace, which I was privileged to hear. But it will be an image to recall the archetype to him who was struck with the Thyrsus.171
Van der Leeuw writes (1927a:70) that Clement understood Christ’s self-giving as being a living allegory172 of the need for our own crucifixion of our egos:
The message which Christ brought to man was not that life meant a crucifixion, but that through the crucifixion of our earthly self the spirit within could attain to the new birth.
169 See Stromata, VII, 2; Pedagogue, I, 8. Quoted in Hanson (1899), ch 9. See also “Apocacatastasis”, New Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge, vol 1, [Online] viewed 9 April 2009, <http://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/encyc01.html?term+Apocatastasis>.
170 See Stromata, VII, 2, 16.
171 Stromata, 1, 1. Online version: viewed 28 April 2009, <http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/text/clement- stromata-book1.htm>.
172 Fairweather writes (1901:18 fn 1) that, according to Clement, “Scripture [had] even a fourfold sense – the literal, the mystic, the moral, and the prophetic”. See Stromata, 1, 28.

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As regards the nature of the “mysteries” that Clement saw as his duty and responsibility to expound, Clement’s approach was very much in the esoteric tradition which was followed by Jesus himself who said, “To you has been given the secret of the kingdom of God, but for those outside everything is in parables” (Mk 4:11). Thus, Fairweather writes (1901:19):
Founding on Col 1:25 ff, Clement holds that hidden mysteries received by the apostles from the Lord had been handed down in direct succession until those who possessed the tradition of the blessed doctrine “came by God’s will to us also to deposit those ancestral and apostolic seeds (Strom I 1, vi 8). These Christian mysteries were not disclosed to the general body of the pupils attending the Catechetical School ... They had the fundamental dogmas of the Church expounded to them, but not the abstruser speculations about “the being of God, the origin of the world, the last things, the relation of reason to revelation, of philosophy to Christianity, of faith to knowledge,” which were reserved for the enlightened.173
In Clement’s system of theology, salvation did not depend upon any notions of vicarious atonement or propitiation or expiation as traditionally understood by conventional, mainstream Christianity. Fairweather writes (1901:30) that:
When all is said … there is no doubt that, in the general view of Clement, salvation hangs not upon Christ’s finished work as a sacrificial victim for the sins of men, but merely upon the fact of a spiritual transformation wrought in us by the Word as the world’s Instructor.
The Christian life therefore becomes one of imitating God, especially Christ Jesus. For Clement, that is the basis of Christian morality and ethics. Fairweather writes (1901:32):
This is the one great principle running through his often very detailed treatment of Christian ethics. By the aid of the incarnate Word we are enabled to become imitators of God.
We find this idea reflected in the Service of the Holy Eucharist in The Liturgy (221; 239):
Under the veil of earthly things now have we communion with our Lord Jesus Christ; soon with open face shall we behold him and, rejoicing in his glory, be made like unto him. Then shall his true disciples be brought by him with exceeding joy before the presence of his Father's glory.
173 Col 1:25-30 reads as follows: “Whereof I am made a minister, according to the dispensation of God which is given to me for you, to fulfil the word of God; Even the mystery which hath been hid from ages and from generations, but now is made manifest to his saints: To whom God would make known what is the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles; which is Christ in you, the hope of glory: Whom we preach, warning every man, and teaching every man in all wisdom; that we may present every man perfect in Christ Jesus: Whereunto I also labour, striving according to his working, which worketh in me mightily.”

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Fairweather (1901:26) writes that one of the “merits” of Clement is that “he grasps so firmly the doctrine of the Trinity”, and then goes to on to describe the God in whom Clement believed (1901:26):
God is inexpressible, having neither parts, qualities, nor relations. “He is formless and nameless, though we sometimes give Him titles which are not to be taken in their proper sense,- the One, the Good, Intelligence or Existence, or Father, or God, or Creator, or Lord” (Strom v 12). This idea of God whom he further speaks of as the great “depth” or “abyss,” would hardly be distinguishable from the abstraction of Philo and the Alexandrian Platonists, were it not for the qualifying declaration that to the Son of God there is nothing incomprehensible. God is therefore not absolutely, but only relatively, incomprehensible.”
Thus, according to Clement, although the Father was essentially unknowable, the Son “as the mood or consciousness of the Father may become the object of knowledge” (Fairweather 1901:27).174 Clement also wrote of the “essential unity” between the God and the Father and God the Son. Further, there was also the Holy Spirit, for Clement wrote, “O mystic marvel, the universal Father is one, and One the universal Word, and the Holy Spirit is one and the same everywhere.”175
Churton refers to Clement’s “system” of thought and teaching as being “one of the earliest formulations of a type of Neoplatonism” (2005:117), the latter being “a partly gnosticized form of Platonic tradition” (2005:417). Neoplatonism, which “took for its religious ideal the direct apprehension of the divine essence” (Fairweather 1901:23), will shortly be the subject of separate consideration. As for Clement, he may or may not have been a self-confessed Gnostic Christian, but even the modern day Gnostic scholars are quick to point out that he avoided the excesses and extravagances of much of the thinking of early Gnostics sects, refusing, for example, “the temptation of some Gnostics to sunder the whole within a dynamic of precosmic conflict” (Churton 2005:117).
Clement was, above all, a believer in reason and intellectual freedom, something of immense importance to Liberal Catholics. Fairweather writes (1901:16-17):
Clement further maintained that, in order to be a full-grown Christian manhood, practical piety must be combined with intellectual freedom. There must, he held, be scope for reason as well as for faith, for knowledge as well as for love. This led him to attach less importance to mere historical facts than to the underlying ideas. The
174 Clement referred to God the Son as the “Name, Energy, Face, etc, of God” (Fairweather 1901:27).
175 Paedogogus I, 6.

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letter of revelation he brought under the judgment of reason. But not so as to make reason independent of faith, which he declared to be as necessary for spiritual as breath for physical life.
Regrettably, but not surprisingly, Clement’s eclecticism met with some opposition, and in 203 CE he was deposed as head of the Catechetical School of Alexandria and replaced by his pupil Origen.
Origen, “the great teacher of the Greek Church” (Fairweather 1901:viii), indeed the greatest early Christian theologian and church father, and one who was extremely well-versed in Greek philosophy, succeeded Clement as head of the Alexandrian School of Theology. He was a prolific writer on Christian teachings who “valued dogma [but] abjured dogmatism” (Fairweather 1901:1x). Among his various writings, De Principiis, Origen’s treatise of systematic theology, was “the first constructive theology the [Christian] Church had yet produced” (van der Leeuw 1927a:77). It is no wonder that even John Cardinal Newman could say of Origen, “I love the name of Origen.”176 F W Farrar, in his Brompton Lectures compiled and published with the title History of Interpretation, also paid high tribute to the significance of Origen as a Christian theologian and philosopher (1886:188):
Like the influence of Socrates in Greek philosophy, so the influence of Origen in Church history is the watershed of multitudes of different steams of thought.
Origen, like Clement and others of the early Christian era in the Platonic and Neoplatonic tradition, believed in the essential oneness of all life and, in particular, “the indestructible unity of God and all spiritual essence” (Fairweather 1901:96). Origen never doubted that the word of God was “the sole source of absolute certitude, and the sole repository of essential truth” (Fairweather 1901: ix-x), and that the Gospel was “the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth” (Rom 1:16), but he “attache[d] the greatest value to a scientific conception of Christianity ... [h]ence the union in him of the Platonic philosopher with the orthodox traditionalist” (Fairweather 1901:89). According to Origen, all Christian doctrine had to be subjected to the light of reason and not simply accepted on faith at face value. Fairweather writes (1901:89):
As the revelation of the highest reason, Christianity must lend itself to elucidation by the science of reasoning, and, in fact, it admits of being stated in clear dogmatic propositions.
176 Newman, as cited in Fairweather (1901:v).

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Such an approach to the construction, interpretation and application of Christian doctrine and dogma has been a cornerstone of Liberal Catholic writing and thought throughout the years. For example, Parry and Rivett ([1969] 1985:3) write:
The [Liberal Catholic] Church’s official attitude is simply to bestow the fullness of all those teachings and sacraments that may broaden the understanding, whilst allowing the right to non-literal and unprejudiced interpretation of doctrine and scripture, and the right to be open-minded.
Origen affirmed and expounded both the transcendence of God as the one eternal Essence and the immanence of God in the whole of creation, with the latter being revealed in Christ. We see the influence of this thinking in various parts of The Liturgy, but perhaps never more beautifully than in this portion of the Service of the Holy Eucharist (see Liturgy 218; 236):
All these things do we ask, O Father, in the name and through the mediation of thy most blessed Son, for we acknowledge and confess with our hearts and lips that ++ by him were all things made, yea, all things both in heaven and earth; ++ with him as the indwelling life do all things exist, and ++ in him as the transcendent glory all things live and move and have their being:
Fairweather sums up Origen’s position on the matter with these words (1901:96):
We live and move and have our being in God because by His power and reason He fills and holds together all the diversity of the world. The task to which Origen addresses himself resembles in certain respects that attempted by the Neoplatonists; for him as for them the problem is how to establish the organic unity of God and the world, and counteract the dualism of Oriental theosophies.177
Not surprisingly, Origen, like Clement, was also a firm believer in Christian Universalism,178 the pre-existence of the human soul179 (with the latter, the human soul, being seen to be a “mirror” of the Deity), and the final salvation of all human beings, but this should come as
177 Cf Acts 17:28 (“For in him we live, and move, and have our being; as certain also of your own poets have said, For we are also his offspring”). The reference to the One in whom we live and move and have our being is, according to several scholars, “based on an earlier saying of Epimenides of Knossos (6th century BC[E])” (Note, The New American Bible [Fireside Study Edition/Catholic]). Epimenides of Knossos was a Greek seer, philosopher and poet. The saying “For we are also his offspring” comes from Aratus of Soli, a 3rd century BCE poet from Cilicia (Note, The New American Bible). Aratus (c315 BCE/310 BCE-240 BCE) was a Greek didactic poet. In this and other verses of his writings the Apostle Paul displays his intimate familiarity with Greek writings and teachings. Also of interest is that Mithraism came to the West when Cilician pirates were settled in Greece in the first century BCE. One of the major cities in Cilicia was Tarsus from which Paul came some 180 years after the Cilician pirates had been resettled. Paul was demonstrably familiar with Greco-Roman mystery religion and his concept of the indwelling cosmic Christ often bears little resemblance to or connection with the historical Jesus.
178 See De Principiis, II, x:3, 4.I, I; Against Celsus, iv, 13; VIII. Lxxii. Quoted in Hanson (1899), ch 10.
179 "In the temporal world which is seen, all beings are arranged according to their merits. Their place has been determined by their conduct" (De Principiis 3.3.5).

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no surprise to students of the history of the early Church. John Wesley Hanson, the scholarly author of Universalism: The Prevailing Doctrine of the Christian Church During Its First Five-Hundred Years ([1899] Online), has written this about the Early Christian Church’s almost universal belief in “universal salvation”:
Universal Restitution was the faith of the early Christians for at least the First Five Hundred Years of the Christian Era. ...
The surviving writings of the Christian Fathers, of the first four or five centuries of the Christian Era, abound in evidences of the prevalence of the doctrine of universal salvation during those years.180
Thus, Origen believed that although “the created spirit in the exercise of its own free will shall fall away from God, it must still return to being in him”. These are sentiments, indeed deep convictions that receive eloquent expression in The Liturgy of the Liberal Catholic Church (see, especially, the Confiteor and the Act of Faith). Fairweather writes (1901:96) that the “ultimate deification of humanity is a leading idea in the Greek theology”, something which is reflected in both the Old and New Testaments of the Bible. For example, Our Lord himself affirmed, “Is is not written in your law, I said ye are gods” (Jn 10:34; cf Ps 82:6).181
Van der Leeuw (1927a:80) points out that Origen - just like Jesus himself who spoke in parables to the masses but to his “inner group” revealed “the secret of the Kingdom of God” (see Mk 4:11) - in his various lectures and writings gave “teachings such as the majority could understand” but it was “only in the company of a small group of closer disciples that he could expound the deeper doctrines and be understood”. Origen, like Clement, spoke and wrote of his belief in the “mysteries of Jesus”, participation in those mysteries, and of “the wisdom hidden in a mystery”.182 In several passages of Contra Celsum, Origen’s famous refutation of Celsus’ attack on Christianity, Origen makes it clear that he “not only believed in the existence of the Christian mysteries ... he knew and spoke of them with the authority of one who had been initiated into them” (van der Leeuw 1927a:85). One such passage from Contra Celsum is as follows:
... whoever is pure not only from defilement, but from what are regarded as lesser transgressions, let him be boldly initiated in the mysteries of Jesus, which properly are made known only to the holy and pure. ... The initiated of Celsus accordingly
180 See <http://www.tentmakerorg/books/Prevailing.html> (viewed 9 April 2009). See also Stetson (2008).
181 One of T S Eliot's most memorable poems "East Coker" begins with the words, "In my beginning is my end", and concludes with the words, "In my end is my beginning" (see M Roberts (ed), The Faber Book of Modern Verse, London: Faber and Faber, 1960, pp 126, 133) – in all, a most apt poetic expression of the position expounded by both early Greek Patristic thought and Liberal Catholic theology.
182 Contra Celsum, III, 61.

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says, “Let him whose soul is conscious of no evil come.” But he who acts as initiator, according to the precepts of Jesus, will say to those who have been purified in heart, “He whose soul has, for a long time, been conscious of no evil, and especially since he yielded himself to the healing of the world, let such an one hear the doctrines which were spoken in private by Jesus to His genuine disciples.” ... [Celsus] does not know the difference between inviting the wicked to be healed, and initiating those already purified into the sacred mysteries!183
Fairweather, in his book Origen and Greek Patristic Theology, writes (1901:70):
According to Origen, the Spirit’s chief object in Scripture is to communicate ineffable mysteries regarding the affairs of men, ie souls inhabiting bodies. [De principiis iv 11.] But, passing forthwith into the region of the transcendent, he remarks that among those matters which relate to souls we must rank as primary the doctrines bearing upon God and His only-begotten Son, namely, “of whose nature He is, and in what manner He is the Son of God, and what are the causes of His descending even to the assumption of human flesh, and of complete humanity: and what also is the operation of this Son, and upon whom and when exercised.”
The Alexandrian theologians were also eminent philosophers, believing that philosophy was “of divine origin” (Philip 1998:Online). In particular, as has already been pointed out on a number of occasions, the Alexandrian School of Theology had a special focus on both Christian and pagan (Greek) writings,184 and Alexandria itself (which was in its heyday one of the intellectual capitals of the Roman Empire) also had more than a passing acquaintance with Buddhism,185 which itself had an influence upon Greek thought.186 Insofar as Origen’s system of theology was concerned, his “philosophy of revelation accounts for the Gnostic and Neoplatonic features mixed up with it” (Fairweather 1901:87).
Origen, who was “speculative to the verge of audacity” (Fairweather 1901:ix), and “even more of an idealistic philosopher than Plato himself” (Fairweather 1901:87), gave us a “key” which, if used wisely and intelligently, enables us to find the “lost gnosis”, the true theosophia, or what Besant ([1909] 1984:60) referred to as “the wisdom underlying all religions when they are stripped of accretions and superstitions ... teachings [that] aid the unfoldment of the latent spiritual nature in the human being, without dependence or fear”.
183 Contra Celsum, III, 60. See also Contra Celsum, III, 59, 61 and 62.
184 Clement, in particular, was extremely well versed in the writings and teachings of persons such as Marcion, Plato, Aristotle and Socrates as well as the works of many “gnostic” scholars.
185 Buddhist gravestones from the Ptolemaic period have been found in Alexandria.
186 Clement of Alexandria wrote concerning the Buddha, Buddhism, and the influence of Buddhism on Greek thought in his Stromata (Miscellanies), Book 1, Chapter 15, at a time when there already were in existence (and had been for some time) several active Buddhist communities in the Hellenistic world. Indeed, there appears to have been more than a little syncretism between Buddhism and Greek philosophical thought. Many of the ancient Greek philosophers (eg Hegesias of Cyrene, who lived c300 BCE) appear to have been attracted to Buddhist asceticism and teachings.

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The key is this – every religion, according to Origen, has a body, a soul, and a spirit. Van der Leeuw describes it this way (1927:82-83):
Origen’s conception of the Scriptures was that they could be interpreted in three different ways, the first according to the letter or the body of the Scriptures, the second according to the soul, giving the allegorical meaning of the different passages, and the third according to the spirit, giving the esoteric interpretation.
Origen found the scriptural basis for his tripartite method of interpretation in the Hebrew Bible, relevantly, among other parts of the Tanakh, in Proverbs 22:20-21:
Have not I written to thee excellent things in counsels and knowledge, That I might make thee know the certainty of the words of truth; that thou mightest answer the words of truth to them that send unto thee?187
When one applies this key to the sacred scriptures of the world’s great religions one finds that, when they are interpreted literally, they are for the most part at odds with each other, and largely, if not entirely, irreconcilable. Thus, a passage of scripture such as “Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me” (Jn 14:6) leads Christian fundamentalists to say things such as, “God has spoken his final word in Jesus Christ”, and “If Christianity is right, all other religions are wrong”.188 The result – a truly horrible state of affairs which has resulted in thousands of years of acrimony, needless division, wars, inquisitions, heresy trials, witch hunts, martyrdoms, executions, and so forth.
Now, when one starts to interpret scriptures allegorically,189 that produces a vast improvement, and we start to see enormous similarities between the world’s various sacred scriptures. However, the allegorical method of interpretation has its limitations and involves a lot more subjectivity and intuitive guesswork than its proponents care to admit, and
187 Fairweather writes (1901:74 fn 2) that the word translated (in the KJV and the RV) “excellent things” literally means “three” or “in triple form” and is so rendered by the Greek Septuagint (τρισσως) and the Vulgate (tripliciter), “perhaps with the idea of repetition to emphasise the truth”. In any event, Origen used Prov 22:20 as support for his threefold interpretation of sacred scripture.
188 In logic, a statement of the last mentioned kind is not an argument at all, but only what is known as a “conditional statement”, as it does not state the premises necessary to support its conclusion. In short, it is a fallacy.
189 Although Origen was certainly not the first to expound the allegorical method of interpretation, he was certainly “the first who attempted to give it a scientific basis” (Fairweather 1901:73). According to Origen, the function of allegorism was to “discover, exhibit, and expound the deeper sense of Scripture” (Fairweather 1901:76).

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suffers from an unavoidable ex post facto and somewhat mechanical superimposition of an already adopted system of metaphysical or esoteric belief system
The third method of interpretation - the “spiritual” one - leads one to conclude that, despite the many obvious differences in the contents of the world’s religions, there is, if one is honest enough to admit it, some underlying common message, namely that all life is one, that the One becomes the many so that the many may know themselves to be one, that we all come from God (whether we care to use that word or not to describe the Sacred or the Holy and the Ineffable One), that we belong to God, and live, move and have our being in God, and are godlike in nature, and are each on our way back to God, that as we sow, so shall we reap, that what belongs to us by right of consciousness can never be lost, and so forth. All of this is affirmed and embraced by the Liberal Catholic Church and is given abundant expression in The Liturgy. Origen expressed it this way:
Since then Scripture itself also consists as it were of a visible body, and of the soul in it that is perceived and understood, and of the spirit which is according to the patterns and shadow of the heavenly things - come, let us call on Him who made for Scripture body and soul and spirit, a body for them that came before us, a soul for us, and a spirit for them that in the age to come shall inherit life eternal, and shall attain to the heavenly and true things of the law; and so let us for the present search not the letter but the soul. And if we are able, we shall ascend also to the spirit, in our account of the sacrifices whereof we have just read.190
For Origen, the Scriptures were “a mine of speculative truths” even though he “never depart[ed] from the position that the Bible is the sole guide to those higher truths which, however they may vary as regards the form of their presentation, remain always the same in substance” (Fairweather 1901:71). Nevertheless, there was indeed a divine purpose as respects “the concealment of spiritual truths under cover of some narrative of visible things or human deeds, or of the written legislation” (Fairweather 1901:71), for although “the letter of Scripture is capable of edifying ‘the multitude,’ who cannot investigate the mysteries … [t]he great instrument for discovering and interpreting the deeper mysteries underlying the letter of Scripture is the allegorical method” (Fairweather 1901:71, 73).
Origen also shared Clement’s views on the interrelationship, but also the contradistinction, between faith and gnosis. Fairweather has this to say about Origen’s views on this matter (1901:94-95):
190 Origen, In Lev Hom, V.

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Faith Origen views as a whole-hearted belief manifesting itself in a ready obedience. While accepting the doctrine of justification by faith alone, he holds that the faith which does not influence conduct is dead. A living faith cannot consist in sin, but changes the whole walk and conversation. ...
...
Faith … gradually develops into knowledge, and the life of faith advances with every increase in the number of doctrinal propositions the truth of which is recognised.
Although the “mystic element [was] not predominant” in Origen, it was “certainly present” (Fairweather 1901:93). Thus, Origen, consistent with his mystical understanding of the Logos (which, according to Clement, is always actively working in the responsive human soul, ever revealing new spiritual truths to the disciple on the path), placed little weight or significance upon “the Crucified One” (that is, Jesus Christ) except as a divine teacher and special manifestation of the Logos. Fairweather writes (1901:91):
To the perfect, Christ is nothing more than the manifestation of the Logos who has been from eternity with the Father, and whose activity has also been eternal. It is not as the Crucified One, but merely as a divine teacher that He is of consequence to the wise. “He was sent indeed as a physician to sinners, but as a teacher of divine mysteries to those who are already pure, and who sin no more.” (Contra Celsum, iii 63).
Fairweather has written of the importance of these early Church Fathers (1901:4):
The special task, then, to which the Christian theologians of Alexandria addressed themselves, was that of harmonising the apostolic tradition concerning Christ with the theological conclusions of the Jewish-Alexandrian philosophers – a task which necessarily involved considerable modification of absolute statement on the one side or the other.
Thus, the early Greek Fathers of the Church saw Christianity as embodying all that was good and noble in Greek philosophy and pagan religion. Indeed, they went further than that, stating that whatever “elements of truth” were contained in the former reached their completion or had their culmination in Christian doctrine. Fairweather writes (1901:92) of the hybrid or heterodox nature of at least certain elements of Origen’s system of theology:191
The moral and religious ideal set forth in the system of Origen is one which has its roots partly in Neoplatonic mysticism and partly in Holy Scripture.
191 Elsewhere in his book Origen and Greek Patristic Theology Fairweather refers to what he regards as Origen’s “essentially heterodox [theological] system” (1901:97) in which Origen incorporated “so many philosophical doctrines with those of Scripture, [so as] to weave them into one heterodox system” (1901:94).

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Fairweather sums up Origen’s views and contribution to Christian thought with these words (1901:93):
For him the ideal to be sought by the human spirit is “the state without sorrow, the state of insensibility to all evils, of order and peace – but peace in God.” The way to attain this is through self-knowledge, repression of the sensuous, and due cultivation of “the meditative hour”: but in all this he sees nothing inconsistent with the most active endeavours to promote the kingdom of God.
Archdeacon F W Farrar, who certainly did not approve of Origen’s “version” of Christianity, nevertheless could not, and did not, deny the immense impact Origen had on the early Church. Farrar writes (1886:201):
The influence of Origen was wide and deep [(fn 1:) Gieseler says that “his exegetical writings were the model and source for all succeeding Greek commentators” (i. 232); he might have added, and for most Latin ones also], and all the more so because he did not expand and systematise in the Christian Church, as Philo had done in the Jewish, the principles which [were] at work in the writings of [other Church] Fathers.
Over time, the religious and mystical philosophy later known as Neoplatonism192 evolved. The term is problematic and controversial in that several of those most intimately associated with this school of philosophy, especially the Egyptian-born Plotinus (204-270 CE) and Porphyrey (c234-c305 CE), would have seen themselves as being Platonists, and can still be seen to this day to have been Platonists,193 notwithstanding that as time went by the movement increasingly became a synthesis of not only a number of distinct schools of Greek thought and philosophy (in particular, Platonism, Aristotelianism, Stoicism and Pythagoreanism)194 but also esoteric elements from such places as Egypt and India. It would later become the foundation and backbone of Christian mysticism, and otherwise had a profound influence upon early Christian thinkers such as Augustine and Pseudo- Dionysius.195 Also, several notable early Christian philosophers (for example, Justin and Athenagoras) wrote unashamedly of the connections between Christianity on the one hand and Platonism and Neoplatonism on the other.196
192 The term Neoplatonism (neuplatonisch in German) was first coined by a German historian.
193 This was certainly the view of the eminent Thomas Taylor who was the first to translate the works of Plotinus into English (see Mead (1914)) as well as that of the classical scholar John D Turner.
194 Despite what the German philosopher, scholar and literary critic Friedrich Schlegel wrote, albeit in relation to the question of “universals” (see Benn 1 1882:283), namely, “Every man is born either a Platonist or an Aristotelian”, there has always been synthesisation and syncretisation.
195 Neoplatonism also had an influence upon Islamic and Jewish thinkers.
196 Christian Gnostics, such as Valentinus, did likewise, albeit highly selectively.

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Neoplatonism built upon many of the foundations already laid down by Platonism itself, especially the core idea that “Man originally by the power of the Divine Image within him could control all Nature, but gradually lost this power through his own fault” (Corelli 1966:421) (cf the traditional Christian doctrine of the Fall). For the Neoplatonist, the human mind was a noble thing - indeed the very throne of the Godhead Itself. The emphasis was not on our “total depravity” but on our high calling and innate potential as the image and very likeness of God. Alexandrian Christology may be said to have begun with Origen, who believed not only in the pre-existence and multiple ages of the human soul197 but, more importantly, in an eternal, as opposed to a once-only in time, generation of the Son, the Logos, by means of which God communicates Itself from and throughout all eternity.198 It was also Origen who wrote the decisive and seminal text of Christian Neoplatonism known as De Principiis (On First Principles). Neoplatonism, as a religious philosophy, is a special form of idealistic monism,199 asserting that all reality is ultimately mental, that the physical world is produced by the mind, and that we experience the physical world through the medium of ideas … and not directly. Neoplatonism has been described as being “the basic philosophy of Plato with special emphasis upon its mystical content” (Hall 1945:27) – in other words, Platonic mysticism.200 As such, Neoplatonism postulates one infinite and primeval Source of Being, which is the
197 Belief in the pre-existence of the soul was “not peculiar to Pythagoras and Plato, but was also current in the East, and may well have been suggested to Origen by certain Jewish apocrypha in which there was a large admixture of Oriental ideas” (Fairweather 1901:87-88). As to whether or not Origen actually believed in reincarnation, the evidence from Origen's own extant works (see, eg, his Commentaries on Jn 6:7 [229 CE] and Mt 10:20 [248 CE]: see “Reincarnation” [Online]) tends to suggest that Origen did not actually believe in reincarnation per se or not at least as the doctrine was generally understood. A local synod (not being an ecumenical council as such) condemned Origen’s teachings on pre-existence of the soul held in 543 CE. What was subsequently condemned at the Second Council of Constantinople held in 553 CE - an ecumenical council which was not primarily concerned with the issue of reincarnation but with an issue known as “The Three Chapters” - was not Origen’s supposed belief in reincarnation but the actions of certain Origenists (namely Evagrius and the Isochrists) who had redefined and reformulated (and thereby distorted) Origen's original Christology so that it came to read like a defence of reincarnation. We may never know what Origen’s precise views actually were on the matter of reincarnation. For example, in Contra Celsum it is unclear whether Origen is asserting his own personal association with Plato’s belief in transmigration of souls (reincarnation) or simply referring to Celsus as having made such an association. See also Weatherhead (1957:4, fn 1) who refers to, among other material, certain statements contained in an article written by the Liberal Catholic priest G N Drinkwater that had been published in an issue of The Liberal Catholic. See, generally, Hampton (1925) and Cooper (1927).
198 The Alexandrian School of Theology also laid the foundations for the development of Christian humanism.
199 The Liberal Catholic philosophical orientation is highly monistic in nature. Tettemer ([1951] 1974:252) describes monism in these terms: “I could no longer see how the source of all things, Being, Itself, could create anything outside itself, as the dualism of Christianity teaches; for outside Itself there could be only non-being, or nothing.”
200 Neoplatonists drew inspiration from, and meditated upon, not just the writings of Plato but also the teachings of Pythagoras.

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source of all life as well as absolute causality, and the only real existence in which all things subsist and have their being. Unity is reality, not just the underlying reality behind all appearances of diversity. Indeed, according to Neoplatonists, diversity is an illusion in any event. The “key” to all Neoplatonic thinking is, firstly, that all life is one, and secondly, that good is co-eternal with unity (Hall 1945:40). This understanding of life needs to be experienced, not just intellectually, but at the deepest levels of one’s being. Neoplatonists placed a special emphasis on “the attainment of the state of enlightenment”, meaning “the individual attainment of the philosophic state” (Hall 1945:37 and 38) such that the “eternal prisoner”, our spirit long buried in the tomb or sepulchre of matter or substance - the very essence of Life Incarnate - can rise to perfected glory by means of an ongoing process of purification, knowledge and service to others. The Neoplatonists were also Universalists, affirming not only their belief in the “oneness of life - God’s life and ours - [which] is distinctly an Eastern teaching” (Pigott 1934:Online) but also embracing the view that whilst the One ever seeks perfect Self-conscious expression by becoming and taking the form of the many, the many (indeed, all) will eventually find their way back to the One Source of Being. This is beautifully reflected in the Act of Faith of the Liberal Catholic Church (see Liturgy 210, 229):
We believe that God is love and power and truth and light; that perfect justice rules the world; that all his sons shall one day reach his feet, however far they stray. We hold the fatherhood of God, the brotherhood of man; we know that we do serve him best when best we serve our brother man. So shall his blessing rest on us + and peace for evermore. Amen. Such optimism, especially as regards the idealistic manner in which God is described, together with the notions of the perfectibility of all human beings, and the idea that perfect justice rules the word, are very Platonic, and that Platonism carried through to the Neoplatonism of the 3rd century and, many centuries later, in the revival of Neoplatonism that occurred, first during the Renaissance,201 and later in the 19th century, re-manifesting itself, especially in the United States of America, in such movements as Transcendentalism, New Thought, Christian Science, Theosophy and other metaphysical movements, but not unfortunately in mainstream conventional Christianity. Manly P Hall writes that Neoplatonism was “too broad and profound a system of philosophy to gain general
201 During this period Greek and Arabic Neoplatonic texts were acquired, translated and disseminated, resulting in a revival of interest in the philosophy.

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acceptance” (1945:18). This is not at all surprising, for, as Fairweather points out (1901:23), the Neoplatonists “borrowed whatever appeared to them good from every possible source”. Fairweather goes on to say (1901:23): They contemplated nothing less than the introduction of a universal religion, constructed on principles so broad that the wise of all the earth could adhere to it. It was their aim to set matters right between philosophy and theology, between doctrine and life, and to satisfy the needs of the soul on a scale to which Christianity could make no pretension.
H P Blavatsky supports the view that the “Ancient Wisdom” entered Christianity in a prominent way by means of Neoplatonism. She writes (1879:Online):
There were Theosophists before the Christian era, notwithstanding that the Christian writers ascribe the development of the Eclectic theosophical system to the early part of the third century of their Era. Diogenes Laertius traces Theosophy to an epoch antedating the dynasty of the Ptolemies; and names as its founder an Egyptian Hierophant called Pot-Amun, the name being Coptic and signifying a priest consecrated to Amun, the god of Wisdom. But history shows it revived by Ammonius Saccas, the founder of the Neoplatonic School. It was the aim and purpose of Ammonius to reconcile all sects, peoples and nations under one common faith -- a belief in one Supreme Eternal, Unknown, and Unnamed Power, governing the Universe by immutable and eternal laws.
Ammonius Saccas,202 who was referred to immediately above by Madame Blavatsky, was an Alexandrian-born philosopher and “Philalethian, lover of truth”,203 who “received his early education in the children’s school which preceded the Catechitical [sic] School”,204 and who “never committed anything to writing”.205 Hall writes that Ammonius’ convictions were “the direct result of internal inspiration rather than formal study and disputation” (1945:179). Perhaps most importantly, he was the teacher for some eleven years of Plotinus,206 to whom “the work of recording the Neoplatonic teachings was taken up”.207 Although many writers (and not just Blavatsky) refer to Ammonius Saccas as having been the founder of Neoplatonism, it is Plotinus who is generally credited with having been the principal founder
202 Also known as Ammonius of the Sack, he died between 240 and 245 CE. He was the first person to use the term “theosophy” (von Krusenstierna 1977:28).
203 See “Great Theosophists: Ammonius Saccas” (Online).
204 See “Great Theosophists: Ammonius Saccas” (Online). Many assert that Ammonius Saccas was largely self- taught.
205 See “Great Theosophists: Plotinus” (Online). 206 Origen was another pupil or “disciple” of Ammonius Saccas.
207 See “Great Theosophists: Plotinus” (Online). It is said that Saccas started the Neoplatonic School in Alexandria in 193 CE: See “Great Theosophists: Ammonius Saccas” (Online).

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(in the sense of his having been the developer and perfector) of Neoplatonism,208 indeed “the greatest exponent of Neoplatonism” (von Krusenstierna 1977:28), although it is clear that Ammonius Saccas was the biggest single influence on Plotinus in terms of the development of his philosophy of Neoplatonism. Plotinus was also associated with the Alexandrian School of Theology. His system of metaphysics and cosmology was quite complex involving three hypostases, namely the One, the Intelligence or Mind (Nous),209 and the Soul – a veritable trinity of sorts, in which the Intelligence (cf the Son, in the Christian religion) derives and acknowledges its source in and from the One, as a result of the self-reflection of the latter. The relationship has been described as being as follows (Moore 2008:Online): The Intelligence may be understood as the storehouse of potential being(s), but only if every potential being is also recognized as an eternal and unchangeable thought in the Divine Mind (Nous). ... The being of the Intelligence is its thought, and the thought of the Intelligence is Being.
In Christian terms, God thinks but one thought, and that thought is God’s Son. Roman Catholic archbishop Fulton J Sheen, after referring to Plato’s question, “If there is only one God, what does He think about, for if He is an intelligent being He must think of something?”, gave this as an answer in his book The Divine Romance: God does not think one thought, or one word, one minute and another the next. Thoughts are not born to die, and do not die to be reborn, in the mind of God. All is present to Him at once. In Him there is only one Word. He has no need of another. That Thought or Word is infinite and equal to Himself, hence a Person unique and absolute, first-born of the spirit of God; a Word which tells what God is, a Word from which all human words have been derived, and of which created things are but merely the broken syllables or letters; a Word which is the source of all the wisdom in the world.210 The wording and the thought forms employed by Fulton Sheen in many of his writings211 show the influence of Platonic and Neoplatonic thought on Christian thought – even within mainsteam Christianity.
208 Others, such as Proclus, also played an important role in developing and perfecting the teachings of Ammonius Saccas.
209 Plotinus also refers to the Intelligence as Being, God (theos), as well as the Demiurge (the latter being a more “Gnostic” concept).
210 Sheen (1930:Online), viewed 5 May 2009, <http://www.catholicculture.org/culture/library/view.cfm?id=3782>.
211 See also Three to Get Married (New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1951), in which Sheen writes (1951:Online): “The Trinity is the answer to the questions of Plato. If there is only one God, what does He think about? He thinks an eternal thought: His Eternal Word, or Son. If there is only one God, whom does He love?

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Plotinus was not a traditional theist nor a pantheist, and is probably best referred to as a panentheist. He described the path of spiritual realization as a “flight of the alone to the Alone” (Mehta [1955] 1957:12). As for the human soul itself, Plotinus saw it as being comprised of two parts, namely a higher or divine part, which by its very nature is unchangeable and eternal (cf the notion of “the Self”), and a lower part being the seat of the personality (the “false self”, if you like, comprising the various “I’s” and “me’s” that give the appearance of being the real person but which have no real existence in and of themselves whatever). Plotinus’ concept of the One, which is entirely self-sufficient and omnipresent, from which everything else emanates and has its being, is very “eastern”, and finds much expression in and throughout the Liberal Catholic Liturgy. For example, in the service of the Holy Eucharist, we find the following beautiful passage in the Prayer of Consecration (Liturgy 215):
… [W]e lift our hearts in adoration to thee, O God the Son, who art consubstantial and coeternal with the Father, who, abiding unchangeable within thyself, didst nevertheless in the mystery of thy boundless love and thine eternal sacrifice send forth thine own divine life into the universe and thus didst offer thyself as the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world, dying in very truth that we may live.
Omnipotent, all-pervading, by that self-same sacrifice thou dost continually uphold all creation, resting not by night or day, working evermore through that most august hierarchy of thy glorious saints, who live but to do thy will as perfect servants of thy wondrous power, to whom we ever offer heartfelt love and reverence. All of the notable persons referred to above who were associated in one way or another with the Alexandrian School of Theology were not content simply to believe. They wanted to know. That should be our aim, both individually and as a Church, today. Despite censure, hostility and charges of heresy and so forth, much of the mysticism of the Alexandrian School, being part of what Besant ([1931] 2002) has referred to as an otherwise unbroken and continuous “Universal Wisdom Tradition”,212 along with other associated ideas and
He loves His Son, and that mutual love is the Holy Spirit.” What Sheen is either unable or unwilling to acknowledge are the Greek roots of the Trinity, although he does state, rather patronisingly, that “The great philosopher [viz Plato] was fumbling about for the mystery of the Trinity ... [but] it was Jesus Christ, the Son of God, Who revealed to us the inmost life of God”.
212 The Wisdom Tradition (or the so-called “Ancient Wisdom”) can be traced in, inter alia, the Upanishads, the writings of Lao-tze, The Book of the Dead of ancient Egypt, the Kabbalah, various Gnostic writings, the Pythagorean, Platonic and Neoplatonic schools of philosophy (and, as regards the latter, especially Dionysius the Areopagite, also known and more correctly referred to as Pseudo-Dionysius), Plotinus, the Rosicrucians, the Knights Templar, Freemasonry, Scandinavian and Celtic folklore, the great Christian mystics such as Meister Eckhart, St John of the Cross and Mother Julian of Norwith, Hawaiian Huna, Native American spirituality, Maori traditions, Australian Aboriginal dreamtime stories, and so forth.

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concepts such as theosis (or “divinisation”), finding the “Hidden God” in our very own lives, and “waking up to mystery”, were absorbed into some forms and expressions of Christian thinking, and can be found to this day in Christian churches such as the Maronite Catholic Church, the Antiochian Orthodox Church213 - even though those two churches have their origins in the Church of Antioch - and the Liberal Catholic Church. All these churches lay special emphasis on the idea that the Son of God became man so that we might become God. This is a very Eastern perspective. Regrettably, mainstream traditional Christianity has, for the most part, moved in an altogether different direction. As the American Liberal Catholic Bishop John M Tettemer ([1951] 1974:211) writes: It is interesting to speculate on what would have been the development of Christianity if the Arabs had not brought Aristotle to the Western World in the ninth century, and if the Platonism of Augustine, or even the Neoplatonism of Plotinus, had become the prevailing philosophy in Europe, during that period in which the Church’s doctrines were to receive their final form.214
Sadly, as Hall (1945:172) pointed out:
Neoplatonism could not compete successfully with the rising tides of Christian Aristotelianism, therefore it never became a popular school of thought. For some reason, the negative emotions and attitudes come easier to men than do the more constructive impulses. It is easier to dislike than to like, and we are far more likely to distrust than to trust. We hope for the best, but we prepare always for the worst. We talk of the brotherhood of man, but develop elaborate systems to prove the inequality of nations and the perfidy of individuals. We talk of the fatherhood of God, and then preach of the gentile and the constant menace of heathenism. In business there is much mouthing of such words as ethics, cooperation, and fair- play, but ceaseless practice of ruthless competition.
The literalist Christians in the Roman and later Protestant traditions ultimately won out. The regrettable history of the Christian Church, at least in its so-called more traditional and conventional forms, is one of increasing dogma, control and dependency. Creativity, autonomy and freedom of belief on the part of the individual were progressively discouraged. Dissent was not tolerated. Even the use of violence was justifiable if it assisted in maintaining orthodoxy. For the most part Christian theology was systematized along Aristotelian, as opposed to Platonic or Neoplatonic, lines, which was the “best” way to
213 The Antiochian Orthodox Church (also known as The Greek Orthodox Church of Antioch and All the East) is one of the five churches that comprised the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church before the East-West Schism (the “Great Schism”). Over time, the rise in power of the See of Constantinople, and later Rome itself, reduced the importance of the Church of Antioch, and much that was mystical in Christianity (in particular, early Christianity) was lost as a result.
214 Re-Quest edition of I Was a Monk.

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achieve the desired result – uniformity, consistency, fidelity to the “one true faith” ... and obedience … especially the latter. All of this is the very antithesis of Platonism and Neoplatonism. Max Freedom Long, in What Jesus Taught in Secret, expressed it this way (1983:113):
Christianity, once its basic pattern had been rather completely set, by about 400 [CE], became fixed, and, in a static condition, droned on and on through the Dark Ages.
Douglas Lockhart in his book Jesus the Heretic explains how Christianity “borrowed” from Greek philosophical thought and Gnosticism much of its doctrinal and ethical teaching, before proceeding to literalise and carnalize it to the point of absurdity, thereby totally distorting the religion of Jesus, that is, the religion which he taught and by which he lived his life. Lockhart writes (1997:264):
The Church Fathers tell us that the doctrines of the Gnostics had their foundations in Plato and Pythagoras, Aristotle and Heraclitus, and in the mysteries and initiations of the surrounding nations – in fact, in just about everything but Christ. So was there no actual connection with Christianity? Was Gnosticism just a parasitical body attached limpet-like to the body of the Faithful? Well, not quite. As we have seen from our survey of Paul’s interaction with the Samaritan gnosis, and the evolution of his Christology in alignment with religious ideas from Samaria and Arabia, the Christology eventually borrowed from Paul by the emerging orthodoxy at Rome was replete with Gnostic images and conceptions which they timorously interpreted back into absurd literalisms ... When merged with the heavily camouflaged history surrounding Jesus’ life and teachings found in the gospels, this muddle took on stupendous proportions and began to turn into the topsy-turvy theological nightmare modern thinkers are still trying to make sense of. Having popped Jesus physically into the sky, orthodoxy got rid of the primary influence on Paul’s conception of the “mystic Christ”, ended up believing its own manufactured propaganda virtually by accident, and then made it anathema for anyone to disagree with this cutely concocted system of compulsory beliefs. And it really can’t be argued that all of this was done in innocence – that is academic foot-shuffling.215
The Liberal Catholic Church, as already mentioned, formally and proudly identifies itself, from among the various schools of Christian thought, with the Platonic and Neoplatonic “as
215 Emphasis in the original. Evidence of Paul’s panentheistic and cosmic Christology can be found in innumerable New Testament verses including but not limited to the following: “In Christ were created all things in heaven and on earth everything visible and everything invisible.... Before anything was created, he existed, and he holds all things in unity” (Col 1:15-17); “In him we live, and move, and have our being.... ‘We are his offspring’” (Acts 17:28); “For from him, and through him and to him are all things” (Rom 8:36); “There is one God who is father of all, over all, through all and within all” (Eph 4:6). See also the complementary Johannine version of Christological panentheism: “Through him all things came to be, not one thing had its being but through him. All that came to be had life in him and that life was the light of men, a light that shines in the dark, a light that darkness could not overpower” (Jn 1:2-5); “God is light, and in him is no darkness at all” (1 Jn 1:5); “God is love, and anyone who lives in love, lives in God, and God in him” (1 Jn 4:16).

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being those most closely attuned to the Wisdom Tradition”216 which, as a Christian church, the Liberal Catholic Church believes represents all that is true, valuable and original in Christianity. Thus, the Liberal Catholic Church is therefore committed to preserving and promulgating the truths contained in the Platonic and Neoplatonic philosophical and theological traditions. It would not be overstating the point to assert that most Liberal Catholics see subsequent theological developments (in particular, the theological writings of Saint Thomas Aquinas - a person who was fundamentally an Aristotelian in philosophy – and whose writings laid the foundation for the development of Catholic Christianity in a highly restrictive and regulative manner)217 in what may be termed mainstream or traditional Christianity as constituting an aberration, indeed a corruption, of Christ’s original teachings and principles. As one writer on early Christian history puts it:
It’s rather odd, then, that a movement which likely started as a mystery religion would eventually reject all of its own “mystical” content, and go after other faiths, based on that rejection. This is one of many paradoxes that surround the origins of Christianity. Unfortunately, later Christians destroyed many records of the period, so we may never know precisely why this happened.
The reason for Christianity’s victory is both obvious and simple: Politics. It so happened that it became popular among the intelligentsia of the eastern imperial cities — especially in places such as Antioch, Alexandria, Nicaea, Carthage, etc. These cities had managed to ride out the turbulence of the first three centuries of the Empire. Roman Emperors, beginning with Constantine, needed the support of the eastern cities, if they were to make the Empire work. So Constantine, in 313, declared tolerance for Christianity, making it safe to be a Christian. Later Emperors added even more favours to the young religion (with the exception of Julian “the Apostate” who made an abortive attempt to make Mithras the state religion of Rome).
Once they had Imperial favour, Christians began ruthlessly stamping out all other religions. In other words, they did to others what had been done to them for nearly
216 Section 10 (Philosophical Background), [Final Draft] Statement of Principles & Summary of Doctrine, 9th ed (London: St Alban Press, 2006). Neoplatonism, in its theology, is panentheistic. Plotinus taught that there was an ineffable transcendent God (The One) of which subsequent realities were emanations. From the One emanates the Divine Mind (Nous) the Cosmic Soul (Psyche), and the World (Cosmos), in contradistinction to many Gnostic sects which held the inverse idea of panentheism. For them, matter was evil and ultimately flawed, and thus not part of God. This resulted in a dualistic nature of the universe, seen most clearly, and rigidly, in the teachings of Manichaeism. (Saint Augustine of Hippo passed through stages of Platonic philosophy and Manichaen theology before embracing Catholic Christianity at the age of 32.)
217 Even though the Protestant Reformation broke with the natural law theology of St Thomas Aquinas, which had been the ruling legal and moral ideology of Catholic Europe for many centuries, and replaced it with what is known in law as legal positivism (which should not be confused with the philosophy known as “logical positivism”), the Protestant reformers remained Aristotelians for the most part in their basic theological orientation, despite their opposition to and fundamental break with Rome.

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three centuries! They coerced conversions, and destroyed texts and monuments which were sacred to other religions.218
At this juncture, it is appropriate to mention Nestorius (386-c451) who was Archbishop of Constantinople from 428-431 CE. He was a disciple of the School of Antioch219 which was opposed to two so-called heresies, Arianism220 and Apollinarianism.221 However, Nestorius is best remembered for a so-called heresy and Eastern Orthodox schismatic belief named him, namely Nestorianism, even though it now seems that he probably never personally held the actual belief.
Nestorianism, which had its roots in the Antiochene tradition, affirmed that Jesus had two (that is, dual) natures such that there was the human Jesus, as well as the divine Jesus, with both of these natures being real and of equal importance, but each totally independent of the other – in effect, tantamount to two persons living in the same body.222 At first glance, it would seem that the Christology223 of the Liberal Catholic Church is Nestorian in nature,
218 See “Christianity and the ‘Mystery Religions’” (Online).
219 As previously mentioned, the Church of Antioch was the most ancient Christian church after that of Jerusalem.
220 Arianism, being the belief attributed to Arius (c256-336 CE), held that the divine Jesus (God the Son) was not co-eternal with, but was otherwise created by, God the Father. The schismatic belief, which had also been opposed by Athanasius, was condemned at the Council of Nicea in 325 CE.
221 Also known as Apollinarism, this belief held that Christ had a human body and a human “living principle”, but his divine nature (the Divine Logos) had taken the place of and otherwise supplied the functions of his nous (“thinking principle”, soul, mind, “higher self”). Such a belief is monophysite in nature, but not exclusively so. Monophysitism, an Eastern Orthodox schismatic belief condemned by the Council of Chalcedon held in 451 CE, contended that Jesus had only one completely fused nature, which was divine, as opposed to two natures, one human and the other divine. Monophysitism is not to be confused with Monothelitism, another Christological doctrine and schismatic belief which was officially condemned at the Third Council of Constantinople in 680-681 CE, that some say nevertheless developed from the monophysite position, that affirmed that Jesus had two natures but only “one will”. Maronites have been accused (wrongly, it would seem) of having once held Monothelitism. If anything, the Christology of Maronites tended to be Miaphysite, holding firm to the teaching and wording of Cyril of Alexandria - who spoke of “one (mia) nature of the incarnate Logos” (mia fusij tou qeou Logou sesarkwmenh) - but taking the view that this one nature had both a divine character and a human character whilst retaining all of the characteristics of both of those natures. Miaphysitism (also known as henophysitism) has, for centuries, been the basic Christology of the communion of Christian Churches known as the Oriental Orthodox Churches (also known as the Old Oriental Churches or the Non-Chalcedonian (Orthodox) Chuches). Those Churches include the Armenian Apostolic Church, the Syriac Orthodox Church, the Indian Orthodox Church, and the Coptic Orthodox Church – but not the Antiochian Orthodox Church (although the latter is in communion with the Syriac Orthodox Church). In recent years, there have been a number of important agreed statements between representatives of the Oriental and Eastern Orthodox Churches on various matters including Christology: see, eg, Middle Eastern Oriental Orthodox Common Declaration (2001), [Online version] viewed 14 April 2009, <http://sor.cua.edu/Ecumenism/20010317oomtg4.html>.
222 Nestorianism, which also affirmed that Mary was the mother of the human Jesus (Christotokos) but not the Mother of God (Theotokos), was officially rejected at the First Council of Ephesus held in 431 CE, which officially declared that Jesus, although divine as well as human, was still only one person. The above mentioned Council of Chalcedon held in 451 CE officially declared that Jesus had two complete natures, one human and the other divine.
223 To the extent, that is, to which it truly can be said that the Liberal Catholic Church has a definite Christology. See, in particular, Sections 3 (Overall Perspective) and 10 (Philosophical Background), [Final Draft] Statement

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what with its traditional emphasis on Jesus the man on the one hand, and the Living Christ or World Teacher overshadowing and otherwise expressing himself through the personality of Jesus on the other.
However, Nestorius refused to admit the existence of two Christs or two Sons, asserting, as he often did, the union of the prosopon224 (person), and, upon a careful analysis of the Treatise of Heracleides225 makes it clear that, if anything, his actual views were not Nestorian as such (as that term has come to be understood and applied, for the most part perjoratively by mainstream Christianity) but were otherwise very similar to those held by many Christians in various traditions, especially Eastern and liberal ones, over the years. Nestorius said of Christ, “the same one is twofold”, thus affirming his belief in a union of the Divine Logos (God the Word) and the human nature or manhood (usia) of Jesus of Nazareth. These two natures - the usia of God and that of Jesus - were said by Nestorius to be “alien to each other” but otherwise formed a union in the one prosopon of Jesus Christ.
This was no ordinary union of prosopa, and ought not to be described or viewed as such, but rather a communication idiomatum (a transfer of attributes) in which the Logos became the prosopon of Jesus Christ’s human nature - a view that is not dissimilar to the early Liberal Catholic teaching of Christ, admittedly as the World Teacher, uniting himself with Jesus”. Early Liberal Catholics and Theosophists who held this view of Christ (eg Besant and Leadbeater) believed this union or overshadowing took place at the time of Jesus’ baptism. Nestorius was of the view that the union, giving rise to the God-Man, took place at and from the moment of conception,226 with Mary subsequently giving birth to the incarnate Christ as opposed to the Divine Logos which existed even before Mary and all other human beings were conceived or born ... indeed, before time itself. Such a view is not the Nestorianism that was declared schismatic, even heretical. Nestorius was correct – humanity and divinity are inseparable, such that Jesus, the embodiment of the power of
of Principles & Summary of Doctrine, 9th ed (London: St Alban Press, 2006). All teachings of the Liberal Catholic “may be said to partake of the nature of a theosophy ... [which] differs from theology in emphasising the importance of each individual’s quest for spiritual understanding based upon personal experience (gnosis or sophia) as opposed to dogmatic imposition of particular interpretations of scripture, which may be limited by man’s knowledge of the world at any one time”: Section 10 (Philosophical Background).
224 Nestorius used the word prosopon in two different but otherwise intertwined senses: first, to refer to the external appearance of a person or thing, and secondly, in the sense in which we use the word “person”” as a distinct, individual natural person, with the end result being that there can be no separation of the name of a person from the actual person himself or herself.
225 Also known as the Bazaar of Heracleides, this 16th century text was discovered in 1895.
226 See Anastos (1993:202-206), quoting from the Treatise of Heracleides.

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suffering love, was at his most divine when he was at his most human, living, as he did, a life of selfless self-sacrifice – a life which reached its culmination and fulfillment in his death on the Cross. Hence, “he that hath seen me hath seen the Father” (Jn 14:9).227
Traditional Christians present a picture of early Christianity as being one of order, organization and, for the most part, uniformity of doctrine and teaching, whilst acknowledging, of course, that there were some sects and cults that tried, in vain, to present “alternative” but otherwise heretical forms of Christianity. Nothing could be further from the truth, and we now know that there were competing and discordant forms of Christianity, with their own respective jurisdictions, schools and doctrinal authorities, during the first few centuries of the Christian Church. Even The Catholic Encyclopedia quotes sources that make it clear that, for no less than the first three centuries of its existence, “the primitive church had no organization ... nor had [the clergy] a special title”.228 The Roman Catholic Church continues to assert its right to have been the church formed by the Lord Jesus Christ himself when he reportedly spoke those oft-cited words, “And I say also unto thee, That thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it” (Mt 16:18).229 However, the New Testament scriptures do not give any sort of supremacy to Rome. For example, at the Apostolic Council of Jerusalem (see Acts 15:1-29) it was James, who is “appropriately considered the first bishop of Jerusalem, the mother church [of all Christendom]” (Kushiner 1986:Online),230 was the presiding elder.
The First Council of Nicea held in 325 CE sanctioned the primacy of three dioceses, namely Alexandria, Antioch and Rome. The bishop of Rome did not assume the title of Pope, at least in the sense in which that title is used and understood today, until toward the end of
227 On the other hand, a Nestorian would take the view that Jesus’ sacrificial, suffering love “an act of Jesus in his humanity but not in his deity” (Grenz, Guretzhi and Nordling [1999] 2000:86).
228 See Van Hove (1907:Online).
229 Knight (1960:180; Online) writes: “The post-Pauline author of Eph 2: 20 is well aware that the Church did not begin with Peter. This we see in the following statement, ‘We are built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief comer stone’” (cf Liturgy 224). Knight makes the point that “neither Apostolic Succession [in the Roman Catholic sense] nor Protestant individualism [in the form of one’s profession of faith in Christ] is to be discerned in the answer which our Lord gave to Peter” (1960:178; Online). The “rock” on which the Christian Church rests is, according to Knight, “the faithfulness of God, the reliability, the rocklike trustworthiness of God, onto which Peter steps, as when he was sinking in the Lake of Galilee” (1960:178; Online).
230 Clement of Alexandria himself wrote that James the Just, as he was known, was chosen as bishop of Jerusalem: see Kushiner (1986:Online).

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the 4th century (more precisely in 384 CE).231 The Roman diocese would later gain prominence and preeminence for a number of reasons discussion of which goes beyond the scope and purpose of this present thesis. However, it is sufficient, for present purposes, to simply state that the early Christian churches in Asia Minor did not accept either the primacy of Rome or the supremacy of the Roman bishops.
So, what went wrong with the Christian Church, a collection of churches none of which is in full communion with all other churches, which for the most part has regrettably repudiated its roots and carnalized the teachings of its founders? Lockhart sums it up as follows (1997:352-353):
Circumstances favoured the growth of a predominantly Hellenistic viewpoint within the late first-century and early second-century Church, and this viewpoint eventually overcame the old Nazarene vision of Jesus as Jewish Messiah through an astute use of Paul’s Christological vision. Now the idea of Paul’s vision being usurped and made bend to orthodoxy’s utilitarian purposes will not be accepted by Christian apologists – in fact it will be cried down as a rank misinterpretation of those events which led to the formation of the Catholic Church. ... With the benefit of a false continuity set up between Nazarene, Petrine and Pauline viewpoints, the Catholic Church has been able to legitimize all of its historical moves since roughly the end of the first century.
W R Inge, sometime Dean of St Paul's, London, wrote, “To become a popular religion, it is only necessary for a superstition to enslave a philosophy.”232 Right at the very beginning of the Liberal Catholic Church, when it became known as such, Annie Besant wrote that the new church “has in it the essence of the divine teaching for the people, freed from some of the incongruities which have grown around the teaching of Christ and His message transmitted by His disciples" and "should be at the very heart of the teaching that the Christ will give" (Besant, as cited in Norton 1990:14-15). Leaving aside for the moment the last mentioned reference to what was then and later referred to as “the expected Coming” (which did not eventuate in the way some had imagined it would), Dr Besant’s words, sensibly construed, remain appropriate for us today. The challenge for the Liberal Catholic Church in today’s world is to present the true message transmitted to Jesus’ disciples without the distortions and corruptions in theology, and the rewriting of Church history, that have occurred over the past 2,000 or so years.
231 There is historical evidence to show that the title “Pope” had been applied (albeit with a different understanding from that generally held today) to bishops of Rome even in the 2nd century CE, but that was also the case with respect to the bishops of Jerusalem, Antioch and Alexandria who were also called “Pope”.
232 W R Inge, Outspoken Essays, 2nd ser, II:iii, “The Idea of Progress”.

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CHAPTER 3
EXPERIENCING THE CHRIST THROUGH TRADITION Christ in the Liberal Catholic Tradition
Introduction
The Liberal Catholic priest Charles B Hankin (1945:17) has written of both the function of all true religion and our “dual task” in life:
In our life we have a dual task. One is the inner development of ourselves – our spiritual, mental and moral growth, to which Christ referred when He said: “Be ye perfect.” [cf Mt 5:48] The other is that turning of our powers outwards into a relationship with all others. Those two tasks can neither be separated nor avoided – both are essentially our duty.
Now, “The Liberal Catholic Church exists to forward Christ’s work in the world.”233
All very well, but who or what is this “Christ”?234
Liberal Catholic priest Raymond J Blanch wrote (1971:72):
Christianity is a cult of the Second Person of the Trinity. The approach to the Father is made through the Son: “No man cometh to the Father except by Me.”235
Consistent with its Platonic and Neoplatonic roots and its esoteric and metaphysical approach to the interpretation, construction and application of Sacred Scripture, the word “Christ” can mean any one or more of the following Persons, Beings, Principles or propositions in the Liberal Catholic tradition, all of which may be seen as manifestations of the Godhead “through a process of emanations in a successive diversity of being while maintaining its unity” (“The God Beyond God”:Online):
 the “Historical Jesus”236
233 Section 1 (Introduction), [Final Draft] Statement of Principles & Summary of Doctrine, 9th ed (London: St Alban Press, 2006).
234 The word "Christ", from the Greek, means Lord or king, and was used long before the birth of Jesus. In Hebrew the word "Christ" is translated to mean "Messiah" (referring to the “anointed one” [of God], or God identified as the perfect human being).
235 See Jn 14:6.

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 the “Historical Christ”
 the “Mythic (or “Pagan”) Christ”
 the “Cosmic Christ”
 the “Mystic Christ”
 the “Anonymous Christ”.
Those mentioned in the list are certainly not mutually exclusive. Indeed, many overlap and coalesce. Most importantly, all of the above are essentially one, as all life is one. Each of the above will be considered in turn, both in this chapter of the thesis and in the next chapter as well relating to The Liturgy. At the outset, it is perhaps sufficient for present purposes to say that, consistent with metaphysical and esoteric approaches to Christianity generally, the Liberal Catholic Church has a very mystical concept of Christ, which refers primarily to the Divine Sonship of every person, at least in potentiality, and, when embodied in a person who is very much aware of and otherwise in tune with their Divine Sonship, the embodiment of that Christ, who is not so much a person or principle but a Universal Presence ... indeed, the universal image of God (Itself an ineffable Mystery) present in all human beings as well as in all created things.
There is also what is known as the “Eucharistic Lord” whose Real Presence in the Sacrament of the Altar and in the service of Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament will also be considered in Chapter 3 of this thesis.
Finally, there is the “Christ of Personal Encounter and Experience”, which will be the subject of Chapter 5 of this thesis.
The Holy Trinity
However, at the outset, before proceeding to examine the different senses in which “Christ” is used and understood in Liberal Catholic thought and tradition, and in its Liturgy, some mention needs to be made of the fact that the Liberal Catholic Church is a “Trinitarian”
236 Mention should also be made of what may be termed a “Mythical Jesus” in the context of the “demythologizing”” treatment by Rudolf Bultmann (1956) and others of the New Testaments accounts of Jesus’ life and teachings.

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church in that it believes that God (the Logos,237 the ground of all being, indeed “Being” Itself, and “Mystery Present” (Ebner 1976:13)) manifests Itself in the universe as a trinity or triplicity (the Logoi) – in traditional Christian terms, Father, Son and Holy Spirit (or Holy Ghost), being, respectively, the First, Second and Third Persons of the Blessed Trinity. God in Three Persons - Blessed Trinity.238 As respects the word “God”, Wedgwood (1928b:Online) wrote:
We are so full of theosophical speculations, or reactions to prejudices which have come from childhood, that the word “God” is not real to us; it is often only an intellectual theory. We talk about “the Logos”, because we do not like saying “God”. Try to realize that we are living in a great sea of light which responds to every action of ours. That is the Divine Life and the laws of Nature are the manifestations of the Divine Will in the Universe.
In many (especially early) Liberal Catholic writings, at least those written from a fairly explicit or at times even implicit Theosophical perspective, the word “God” is used in two different but interconnected senses. First, there is the unknowable God, the Absolute One, the Being (indeed, Being-Itself) beyond all notions of traditional theism that the noted Protestant theologian Paul Tillich referred to as the “God above God” (1952:190) or the “God beyond God” – that is, pure “Absolute Divine Essence, as understood in the eastern traditions” (Platt 1982:122). Then there are the “various Solar Logoi (Solar Gods) each of whom is in charge of a different solar system” (Platt 1982:122). As regards our own particular solar system, God, in traditional Liberal Catholic thought, teaching and writing, has been referred to as the “God or Logos (Word) of the Solar System to which this planet [Earth] belongs” (Pigott [1925] 1927:21). This Solar God calls into existence our solar system, and “manifests in His universe as a Trinity, called in the Christian religion Father, Son and Holy Spirit”.239 This God of whom we now speak is “less” than the Absolute but is
237 Mitchell (2006:66) writes: “Creative expression and intelligibility come together, in God, in the Holy Spirit, through Christ, the Word of God.” Mitchell also notes that Logos “means not only the ‘expression’ of God but also the ‘intelligibility’ of God”.
238 Christianity is certainly not unique in asserting the existence of a Holy Trinity. For example, in Hinduism there is what is known as the Brahmanical triad, Brahma being the first member of that triad, Vishnu the second, and Shiva the third. Brahma is traditionally accepted as the creator of the entire universe, Vishnu its preserver, and Shiva its maintainer. In Mahayana Buddhism we find what is known as the “three bodies of the Buddha” (the trikaya), namely, the dharmakaya, the body of ultimate reality, the sambhogakaya, the body of joy, and the nirmanakaya, the Buddha’s conditioned, human body of flesh and blood. Similar triads or triplicities can also be found in most pagan religions, especially the old Greco-Roman mystery religions. In Theosophy, the Logoi (three in number) correspond to the three Persons of the Trinity in both Christianity and Hinduism: Krusenstierna, in Hodson (1977: 59).
239 See numbered para 2, “Summary of Doctrine”, in [Final Draft] Statement of Principles & Summary of Doctrine, 9th ed (London: St Alban Press, 2006).

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still “nevertheless so great that He is to us God in the fullest sense of that mysterious word” (Pigott [1925] 1927:21).
The present writer, a Christian from a non-Theosophical background but who is otherwise a proud member of the Theosophical Society,240 who vigorously and unashamedly supports the status of the Liberal Catholic Church as a Christian church, accepts all of the viewpoints expressed above as working hypotheses and on the basis of spiritual intuition, but favours the composite description - note, description, not definition - of God offered by the late Liberal Catholic Bishop (and sometime Presiding Bishop) Eric S Taylor in his publication The Liberal Catholic Church: What Is It? (1966:18), provided the “God” described is understood as being not the God of traditional theism (the latter being, in the view of the present writer, a totally outmoded, even discredited, notion):
[God] is transcendent and immanent, the highest self in each, yet not divided into fragments, but in omnibus totis.
As regards the Doctrine of the Trinity, whilst the Liberal Catholic Church prides itself on being a “Trinitarian church”, the fact remains that, throughout much of its relatively short history in its modern, liberal reincarnated form, “the trinitarian principles of the Athanasian Creed [have been] accepted in the light of theosophical teaching” (Platt 1982:123). In addition, the Liberal Catholic Church has never construed the Doctrine of the Trinity in a manner that would require or even endorse belief in the man Jesus as God in any unique and exclusive sense: see, eg, Burt (1945a:9). To that extent, and in certain other respects that are not relevant for present purposes, the Liberal Catholic Church’s trinitarian position is not dissimilar to the tradition Unitarian Christian understanding of Jesus which makes a distinction between the “divinity” and the “deity” of Jesus, accepting the former but not the latter, as we are all gods in the making and inherently divine in nature.
Liberally and esoterically interpreted, but otherwise in the light of a continuing Christian revelation (albeit a progressive one), the doctrine of “three co-equal and co-eternal persons
240 The present writer is in total accord with the three stated objectives of the Theosophical Society, and affirms the belief that there is a common and universal “wisdom underlying all religions when they are stripped of accretions and superstitions ... teachings [that] aid the unfoldment of the latent spiritual nature in the human being, without dependence or fear” (Besant’s definition of Theosophy, in Besant [1909] 1984:60), but does not see himself as a Theosophist per se, at least not in the sense of being a believer in or exponent of “Theosophy as understood by Adyar” (Tillett 2005:Online).

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[or hypostates] in one God”241 can be interpreted, described and applied in a variety of ways and in different senses, including but not limited to the following:
 the Father242 – God “above” us, “One God and Father of all, who is above all, and through all, and in you all” (Eph 4:6); the principle of generation (the source of all life); Absolute Being (the essential constituent or substance of all relative life); the Absolute, the One, the Tao, the “Unknowable Godhead, the Father of all, only [approachable] through the humanly knowable Christ” (Rivett 2008c:85);243 “the ‘God above God’ …the God who appears when God has disappeared in the anxiety of doubt” (Tillich 1952:190); the “individual Monad, from Whom we derive our existence” (Wedgwood: 1976b:3);244 Mystery, indeed Absolute Mystery, “seen of none” (Liturgy 260); That which “never was not, and never will not be” (Nurbakhsh 1982:101); the Eternal Spiritual Will, being the immense, absolute vastness and ultimate indestructibility of cosmic fullness and unity beyond our ordinary, limited notions of time and space (or, perhaps more correctly these days, “spacetime”), and dwelling outside our otherwise perceptible world; the Cosmic Logos in its First Aspect, being the progenitor of countless universes (not just this present one) and myriads of suns and planets that continue to issue forth into manifestation, but which ever remains in all of its pristine fullness and essential unity; the living principle of evolution and law; Beingness,245 or Life, in the sense of the very “livingness” of Life itself (as opposed to some vague New Age notion of some supposed separate and independent “life force” in addition to “life” itself);
241 Dutch Theosophist and Liberal Catholic priest E Francis Udny (1927:36) refers to what he describes as “holy Four, the Three and the One – God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost, and the One God (Lord of Hosts) who is within and above even Them, as He is in various degrees in every one of the Hosts, the innumerable individual lives which are evolving in His system”. This “Lord of Hosts” is the inconceivable, and otherwise unknowable, God beyond God (cf Paul Tillich), the indescribable Ultimate in both transcendence and immanence – Being-Itself, or Life IT-self. Pope John Paul II (2005:9) referred to God, as the Ground of Being, as that “fully self-sufficient Being (Ens subsistens) ... the necessary ground of every ens non subsistens, ens participatum, that is, of all created beings, including man”.
242 The material listed as relating to “God the Father” also includes references, variously described, to the more Theosophical concept of Absolute Divine Essence, the Unknowable Godhead or “God above God” which is said to manifest in the universe as the three Solar Logoi (Father and Son and Holy Spirit, in the Christian religion).
243 In the Gnostic tradition God is not only inconceivable but also incapable of being known directly, hence the need to approach God through that which is otherwise “humanly knowable” (namely, the Son). In some traditions of Buddhism Mahavairocana (the “Great Shining One”) - in Japanese, Dainichi Nyorai (the "Great Sun Buddha" ) - referring to the Great Buddha of Heaven, who does not manifest on earth, but from whom all other Buddhas emanate, may be said to correspond to the Christian concept of God the Father.
244 Thus, Wedgwood (1928:160) writes that “it is not very clear how the aspect of the Father works because that stage lies so far beyond us that little stress has been laid upon it in conventional Christian teaching”.
245 Tettemer ([1951] 1974:159) makes the point that if God, as he asserts, is beingness, then “everything, to exist, must participate in His nature; otherwise it would be outside of being, or nonbeing, nothing. Therefore a contingent or created being could not exist, and dualism, which is fundamental to Christianity, [is] false.”

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 the Son – God “with” us; the term of generation (the Word “made flesh”, the illumined person, “Christ in [us], the hope of glory”), “manifesting the Father’s plan in time and space, and making the Father known to his Creation” (Rivett [c1994] 2007:205);246 the “only begotten Son”; “God the Son, Who makes the heaven His throne and the earth His footstool” (Udny 1927:4); the Cosmic Logos in its Second Aspect breathing (or sounding) forth Divine Life into the universe; Spirit descended into and crucified on the cross of matter, with all things being created by this Christ, ensouling and constituting the indwelling life of all that is, whose work is “to preserve” (Wedgwood 1928:160); “our Lord Jesus Christ ... the beginning, the source of everything” (Parry [1971] 2007:155); the Consciousness [or “Christ- Consciousness”] in which “we live and move and have our being” (cf Acts 17:28); Love; Wisdom (Sophia);247 the Universe itself248 brought into being by the creative interface and interaction of God the Father and the Mother of God (the Great Depth); the Universal Saviour (including but not limited to those special epiphanies, eg World Teachers, the Holy Ones, the Saints, etc, who have descend into incarnation at various times throughout human history in order to help us forward on our way); Love, in the sense of the “self-givingness” of Life to Itself in order to perpetuate Itself; Wisdom; and
 the Holy Spirit – God “in” us; the manifestation of generation (the life giver and inspirer); the Cosmic Logos in its Third Aspect, being the whole Spirit of God moving through all that is as all things, whose special work is “to sanctify us” (Wedgwood 1928:160); Creative Intelligence; Action, or the active principle; Wisdom made manifest, as well as “the mutual love which unites the Father and the Son” and “the manifestation of their Love” (Rivett [c1994] 2007:206).
Hall (2000:51) sums it all up in these words:
In the Gnostic system, wisdom was the second Logos which came forth out of the eternal will which is the first Logos. Will emanates wisdom, and wisdom in turn, engenders action of the active principle. Action is the third Logos called the Holy Ghost, represented by a dove beating the air with its wings.
246 Emphasis in the original.
247 Rivett ([c1994] 2007:205-206) notes that although the Second Person of the Holy Trinity is sometimes spoken of in terms of Wisdom or even Sophia, “usually it is the Third Person, the Holy Spirit of God, that is considered as God’s Wisdom made manifest, and also as God in action within his Creation”.
248 Burt (1945b:2) wrote that “this universe is the Word, or God Immanent, by it God is revealed to us and through us” [emphasis in the original].

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Now, as regards the Trinity, Wedgwood (1928:160) has written, “[as] man is made in the image of God, as God Himself is a triplicity of Persons so also that triplicity is reflected in man”. Thus, microcosmically, the Holy Trinity can be construed as referring to the spirit, soul and body of each human being,249 as well as a description of the creative process through which all manifestation takes place, including human thought (thus, mind, idea and expression; thinker, thought and act; conscious, unconscious and super-conscious; consciousness, desire and expectancy; spirit, soul and body; life, truth and love; and so forth). In the words of Wedgwood (1928:160), “Man has therefore within himself the power of knowing these three aspects of the Deity”.
One can go even further, metaphysically. For example, as there is only One, everyone of us is “begotten” of the Only One (cf Jn 3:16). As Murphy (1971:27; [1972] Online) points out, one’s “only begotten son”, spiritually speaking, is one’s desire. Realization of one’s desire (eg one’s desire for for health, wisdom or knowledge of spiritual things), “the solution to your problem or salvation, [is] the God-Presence within” as well as “your saviour” (Murphy 1971:27).250
Having said all of the above, “there is but one life – the Life of God which maintains all things” by virtue of which “we are all dependent on one another” (Wedgwood 1928:5), and further “the whole of life is interdependent, linked together in one chain of being” (Wedgwood 1976b:16-17), but, for all that, God is and remains a mystery in the true sense and meaning of the word. Thus, Rahner (1974:105-106) writes:
[T]here is, and there can be, only one single absolute mystery in the strictest sense of the term, namely God himself and in relation to him all those aspects under which man with his finite knowledge are specified in the same manner by this character of the mysterium.
Seely Beggiani,251 a chorbishop of the Maronite Catholic Church, the divine liturgy252 of which, due to the early Eastern Christian status of the Maronite Church, has a beautiful
249 Mathews (1981:23) notes that the ancient Greeks first spoke of man as a microcosm of the macrocosm, the latter being the universe (that is, all that is). He goes on to say: “This was their way of saying man is made in the image of God.” Mathews then turns his attention to the Hebrew Scriptures, saying (again, on p 23), “In Genesis Elohim refers to macrocosmic powers shaping the cosmic and telluric environment in which man finally appears as the crown, the essence, of all that has gone before.”
250 G R S Mead held a similar view, revealing in many of his published articles the “inner meaning” of the phrase “the Alone-begotten Son of God”: see Goodrick-Clarke (2005).
251 Seely Beggiani is the rector of Our Lady of Lebanon Maronite Seminary, and a professor at the Catholic University of America, both of which are located in Washington DC. He is a world authority on early Christianity.

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“mystical” quality and flavour to it that at times is very close to The Liturgy of the Liberal Catholic Church, writes (Beggiani 1991:13):
God as God is always mystery. The idea of mystery is not defined by saying that we are dealing with things that are beyond our human or intellectual understanding. As the Holy One and Creator, God is mysterious reality itself. He is beyond space and time.253
Beggiani (1991:13) refers to the spiritual teaching of St Ephrem, a Syrian theologian of the 4th century, whose theology “can be summarized by the two themes of God as mystery and the call to become like God (this latter concept of Eastern theology was later to call [sic] ‘divinization’)”.254
As regards the notion of God as Mystery, our own Bishop Wedgwood would concur, for he wrote (1928:160):
... [I]t is not very clear how the aspect of the Father works because that stage lies so far beyond us that little stress has been laid upon it in conventional Christian thinking.
That is the true, inner meaning of the words of Sacred Scripture, “No one knows the Father except the Son” (Mt 11:27).
The Historical Jesus
There are some who say that the person Jesus of Nazareth never existed.255 Indeed, outside the synoptic gospels, what very few references there are to Jesus do not establish his historicity. Indeed, there is not so much as one single piece of demonstrably authentic evidence (whether archaeological, forensic or documentary), and certainly not even one demonstrably authentic piece of writing written as history within the first 100 years of the Christian era, that shows that the person referred to as Jesus of Nazareth, and called the
252 The Divine Liturgy of the Maronite Church (see Beggiani:1998), also called the “Service of the Holy Mysteries”, belongs to the Antiochene Tradition and is a West Syro-Antiochene Rite.
253 This is very much the Maronite Catholic position regarding the Deity. Maronites see God as being a mystery, indeed “Absolute Mystery”, whose inner life is beyond our limited understanding and knowledge. Thus, as is the case with the Liberal Catholic Church, anthropomorphic and anthropopassionate notions of God (other than God as Love, etc) are for the most part eschewed. Similar to Liberal Catholics, Maronite Catholics seek, through their distinctive liturgy and otherwise, mystical union with God by means of God’s Self-revelation. Also, being an Antiochian Syriac church, the Maronite Catholic Church, consistent with the Antiochian school of theology (cf the mysticism of the Alexandrian school of theology, and Liberal Catholicism), stresses the humanity of the Son of God, and our need to be united to God, in all of His mysteriousness, through Jesus’ humanity: see Beggiani 2008:Online. The essence of both Maronite and Liberal Catholic spirituality is that the Mystery made known in Christ is none other than our own very participation in the Divine Life.
254 Or Theosis.
255 See, eg, Wells (1988 and 1992) and Doherty (1999).

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Christ, was ever alive. There is some dubious material attesting to the fact that certain people apparently believed that there once was a man named Jesus who was killed and who was worshipped by some people as some sort of god … but none that he was alive.256
Nevertheless, what limited historical and evidential material there is has led some very eminent classical scholars and historians of the likes of Michael Grant (1977) to conclude that it is more probable than not that Jesus did actually exist. The Rev James Peter, in his helpful book Finding the Historical Jesus, has written (1965:25):
To deny the existence of Jesus involves discounting a considerable amount of evidence which suggests that he did exist ... .257
The eminent classical scholar and historian Michael Grant mentioned above, who was certainly no Christian apologist, in his book Jesus writes (1977:199-200):
[The] skeptical way of thinking reached its culmination in the argument that Jesus as a human being never existed at all and is a myth. In ancient times, this extreme view was named the heresy of docetism (seeming) because it maintained that Jesus never came into the world “in the flesh”, but only seemed to; and it was given some encouragement by Paul’s lack of interest in his fleshly existence. Subsequently, from the eighteenth century onwards, there have been attempts to insist that Jesus did not even “seem” to exist, and that all tales of his appearance upon the earth were pure fiction. In particular, his story was compared to the pagan mythologies inventing fictitious dying and rising gods.
...
More convincing refutations of the Christ-myth hypothesis can be derived from an appeal to method. In the first place, Judaism was a milieu to which doctrines of the deaths and rebirths of mythical gods seems so entirely foreign that the emergence of such a fabrication from its midst is very hard to credit. But above all, if we apply to the New Testament, as we should, the same sort of criteria as we should apply to other ancient writings containing historical material, we can no more reject Jesus’ existence than we can reject the existence of a mass of pagan personages whose reality as historical figures is never questioned. ... To sum up, modern critical methods fail to support the Christ-myth theory. It has “again and again been answered and annihilated by first-rank scholars”. In recent years “no serious scholar has ventured to postulate the non-historicity of Jesus” – or at any rate very few, and they have not succeeded in disposing of the much stronger, indeed very abundant, evidence to the contrary.258
256 There were over 40 well-known historians (both Jewish and pagan) writing at the time of Jesus or within a century thereafter. Apart from two highly dubious, indeed forged or interpolated passages in Josephus and two very brief and highly disputed passages in the works of two Roman writers (namely, Pliny the Younger and Tacitus; Suetonius appears to be referring to somebody else altogether), none of those historians made any mention of Jesus at all.
257 Peter, on p 25, in fn 3, lists a number of scholarly publications that contain notable treatments of the evidence available, as at 1965, for the existence of Jesus.
258 Endnotes omitted.

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A N Wilson expresses a similar view (1992:89):
The realistic details [about Jesus’ life] are too many, and too old, for me to be able to accept that they were all invented by some unsung novelistic genius of the first century of our era; though they are so heavily outweighed by improbable stories, and so soaked in “teaching” that I fully sympathise with any reader who has hitherto supposed that it was impossible to find a “real” Jesus amid so much religion and folklore.
Wilson is right about the “improbable stories” and the like. Clearly, there is a massive amount of legendary or mythological material which has been superimposed upon what little we know of the historical Jesus: see, eg, Besant ([1901] 1914); Heline (1950); Freke and Gandy (1999); Harpur (2004).259 Edge ([1943] 1997:Online) writes that the “Jesus of the Gospels is a character, partly fictitious, partly symbolic, built around some actual personality, whose identity is buried among a confusion of historical and traditional materials”. Besant ([1901] 1914:111), in her seminal book Esoteric Christianity, writes:
The occult records partly endorse the story told in the Gospels, and partly do not endorse it; they show us the life, and thus enable us to disentangle it from the myths which are intertwined therewith.
Leaving aside what may or may not constitute the “occult records”,260 and what they supposedly contain, perhaps the greatest support for the assertion that Jesus of Nazareth was a real person comes, as Grant (1977) and others have pointed out, from the New Testament Gospels themselves, despite “all those discrepancies between one Gospel and another” (Grant 1977:200), and the fact that the Gospels represent the faith of the believing Church (or, at least, the faith of some in the Church that would ultimately become what is elsewhere referred to in this thesis as the “traditional Church”, with their members being referred to as “traditional Christians”). Thus, Bell (1936:89), in writing about the parables of Jesus, referred to their “logical consistency which equals that of a natural law”, noting also that Jesus never contradicted himself, and even the great scientist and forthright rationalist Viscount Haldane (1934:72) wrote:
259 The study of comparative religion shows that certain key events in the “Jesus story” already existed in numerous religions prior to the alleged time of Jesus. Krishna, the crucified Hindu saviour, supposedly rose from the dead and ascended bodily into heaven. Buddha supposedly ascended bodily to the celestial regions. We also have Lao-Kiun, Zoroaster, Horus, and Aesculapius, the Son of God, the saviour, who after being put to death supposedly rose from the dead as well, Orpheus, Bacchus, Osiris, Dionysus, Apollo, Hercules, Adonis, Ormuzd, Mithras, Indra, Oedipus, and Quetzalcoatle, the Mexican crucified saviour, who after being put to death, also rose from the dead. Finally, and most importantly, there is Mithras, the Persian saviour and sun- god.
260 See also Hodson (1977). Bishop F W Pigott wrote, “Occult research may quite easily be faulty ...” (foreword, Hodson 1930:ix).

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Personally, I am not one of those who find it probable that Jesus is a mainly mythical figure. A large number of his sayings seem to me to cohere as expressions of a definite and quite human character, which could hardly have been invented by disciples who wished to prove his divinity.261
Clift (1982:108) makes the point that Jung, in his last major work Mysterium Coniunctionis,262 wrote that
... while he [Jung] did not doubt the historical reality of Jesus of Nazareth, he did want to point out that the figure of the Son of Man and of Christ the Redeemer had archetypal antecedents.
Siimilarly, Hodson (1977:3) writes that the Jesus of the Gospels is “a blend of the real personage and allegorical personifications of Arhats, their missions and advancement to adeptship”. The present author prefers to embrace what the Dutch Theosophist and Liberal Catholic priest E Francis Udny (1927:4) had to say about the matter in his little book A Help to Worship in the Liberal Catholic Church, namely, that we must “remember that our Lord walked as a man among men, and never claimed to be other than human (however much holier than other men He may have been)”. The French philosopher and Catholic apologist Jean Guitton, in his 1955 book The Problem of Jesus: A Free-Thinker’s Diary, wrote of the difficulties inherent in the critical and mythical approaches to New Testament studies so often expounded as the “way forward” by New Agers and esotericists. At the end of the day, wrote Guitton, approaches of those kinds are totally inadequate to explain the “magnitude of the spiritual upheaval which overthrew two earlier religions (Judaism and paganism) and conquered the world so suddenly, so profoundly, and so permanently”. Events in time and space can have a dual character. Thus, Guitton writes of the historical as well as the metahistorical when it comes to such events as the incarnation and resurrection of Jesus. The metahistorical is grounded in the historical. The “mystery of Jesus” is grounded in Jesus’ “personality” that so transformed the world.263
261 However, the form criticism of The Jesus Seminar does not attest to the historicity and veracity of every purported utterance as recorded in the gospels (indeed, far from it): see Funk (1996) and Miller (1992); cf Barnett (2009).
262 Jung, The Collected Works of C G Jung, ed Sir Herbert Read, et al, trans R F C Hull (2nd ed rev, Bollingen Series XX, Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press, 1970), XIV, p 124.
263 See also Angus (1934a) who, in his Jesus in the Lives of Men, writes of the incredible transformative and ongoing power and wonder of Jesus’ personality – something that transcends both myth and our finite, limited and almost certainly invalid notions of the supposed existence of a two-dimensional world.

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In more recent times, our own Dr Arthur Mowle has referred to “this man Jesus” as “a historical character who seemed to have allowed his own Christ potential to become fully authenticated” (Mowle 2007:183). Corelli (1966:13) writes that Jesus came to teach us our true position in the scale of the great Creative and Progressive Purpose”, the latter referring to the immortality of “the imperishable Spirit”.264 All this the present writer accepts and enthusiastically embraces.
In the absence, or at least paucity, of historical material pertaining to Jesus’ life, hundreds of books have been written that seek to “fill in the gaps”, so to speak. Was Jesus a “completely Gnostic Essene who sought to liberate degraded Hebraism of the time and its self-seeking priests by spreading the light of pure Gnosticism throughout the land including the attainment of Adeptship and beyond” (Hodson 1977:1)?265 Was Jesus the “Teacher of Righteousness” of the Qumram community? Hodson (1977:3) is “inclined to doubt the identification”. Thiering (1992) thinks the reference is to John the Baptist as opposed to Jesus, but does it really matter? Did Jesus spend his so-called “missing years” (that is, the period between the ages of 12 and 30) in India, or alternatively, did Jesus escape from death on the Cross and then travel to and live in India, studying Hinduism and Buddhism there, before dying and being buried in a tomb in Kashmir?266 Was Celsus correct when he apparently asserted that “Jesus was the illegitimate son of a certain Panthera, and, again, that he had been a servant in Egypt, not when a child, as according to the New Testament, but when he was grown, and that he learned there the secret arts”?267 In short, are we
264 The scholarship of theologian and Biblical historian Barbara Thiering (see Thiering 1992, 1995 and 1998), although highly controversial (see, eg, Barnett 2009) and at times overly speculative, does provide more than a little support for the view held by early Liberal Catholics and others interested in the Ancient Wisdom that Jesus was certainly aware of the Ancient mysteries and may even have been initiated into them.
265 See also Thiering (1992), who has also expressed the view that Jesus was the leader of a radical faction of Essene priests. The Essenes (whom some scholars consider were the forerunners of Christianity) were an ascetic and quite esoteric Jewish sect from the 2nd century BCE onwards. It is said that their deep esotericism was “possibly derived from Buddhist sources” (Krusenstierna, in Hodson 1977:59). There were certainly Buddhist communities in the Hellenistic world and in the region of the Holy Land from early times, and a certain syncretism did develop, especially as respects Greek thought and philosophy, but less so Hebrew thought.
266 See “Did Jesus Visit India?” (2007:Online).
267 Cf Origen, Contra Celsum, i. 9, § 7, as described by R Gottheil and S Krauss, “Celsus”, in The Jewish Encyclopedia, [Online version] viewed 14 April 2009, <http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/view.jsp?artid=290&letter=C>. Unfortunately, Celsus’ writings were destroyed early in the 5th century either by or otherwise on the express instructions of St Augustine (see Bushby 2004:55). However, in the 19th century, much, if not the majority, of Celsus’ written diatribe against Christianity, The True Word (also known as The True Discourse and The True Doctrine), had been reconstructed by various scholars (eg Jackman, Keim and Muth): see Gottheil and Krauss (above) and Bushby (2004:55).

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expecting too much at this late stage in our search for the historical Jesus?268 The present writer will contend in the final chapter of this thesis that we can, even today, discover the real Jesus if we are prepared to focus with honesty and single-mindedness of purpose on what was Jesus’ demonstrably distinct teaching, namely his unique version and understanding of the “Kingdom of God”, and then proceed in faith to follow him on a daily basis. In the opinion of the present writer, James Peter is right when he says (1965:208):
It is as a man in history that he shows himself unique, and it is thus that he is seen by the historian. This uniqueness of a person truly human is what enables the historian to say of him that he is divine. If it is objected that to be divine is to be beyond history, or to be something that no historian has the capacity to recognize, the reply is that such a line of argument would make it impossible for us to recognize any action on the part of God or indeed to say anything about him at all.
There is another sense in which the expression, the “Historical Jesus”, can be used, and that is in contradistinction to the Jesus that emerges from the pages of the so-called Gnostic Gospels (the Nag Hammadi Library).269 Thus, Pagels ([1979] 1988:19) speaks in terms of “the ‘living Jesus’ [who] speaks of illusion and enlightenment, not of sin and repentance, like the Jesus of the New Testament”. She goes on to say:
Instead of coming to save us from sin, he comes as a guide who opens access to spiritual understanding. But when the disciple attains enlightenment, Jesus no longer serves as his spiritual master: the two have become equal – even identical.
Bultmann (1956) sought to “demythologize” the New Testament accounts of Jesus’ life and teachings altogether. He wrote of a “Mythical Jesus”, in contradistinction to the “Historical Jesus”, interpreting to a great extent the life, death and supposed resurrection of Jesus in terms of the “Gnostic redeemer myth”, that is, a divine personage sent down from the celestial world, veiled in earthly form, for the purpose of bring redemption to humanity as a whole.270 Thus, without in any way calling into doubt the historicity of the “Historical Jesus”,
268 Cf Schweitzer ([1911] 2005). One cannot hope to find any support for Christianity in the Dead Sea Scrolls as they comprise only a copy of the Tanakh (the Hebrew Bible) and some Jewish apocryphal writings. There are no express references to Jesus in the scrolls.
269 See Robinson (1988).
270 Certainly, one can find evidence of the Gnostic redeemer myth in such passages of the New Testament as John 1:1-18 (“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made ...”) and Phil 2:6-11 (“Who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God: But made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men: And being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross. Wherefore God also hath highly exalted him, and given him a name which is above every name: That at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven, and things in earth, and things under the earth; And that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father”). As

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various mythical images are said, at least by some theologians and other scholars in the tradition of Bultmann, to have been attached to the person of Jesus of Nazareth mainly in the form of the Gnostic redeemer myth: see Dart ([1976] 1988:38-42).
However, the search for the historical Jesus continues to this day,271 despite the fact that many Liberal Catholics place little or no significance on the historical Jesus, with some even asserting that it matters not one iota whether Jesus ever existed as a real person. Why is it so important - assuming that it is, for the moment - that we base our faith on a real person, in this case, the historical Jesus? Sometime Liberal Catholic priest and Theosophist Brian Parry expressed it well when he wrote (1966:7):
Jesus Christ is truly human. He had hands and feet, a heart, feelings and thoughts like ours. He knew hunger and happiness, rest and labour, heat and cold, a mother’s love. He was not free from temptation. He was no stranger to suffering and death. His eyes, the eyes of a man, saw the same things that our eyes see.
He saw the same things and yet we all know that there is something different about the way He saw them. If His eyes saw the same things we see, He in Himself interpreted them differently. And so to pray that the eyes of Christ may be opened in us means not only that we may see the world that he saw, but also, that we might see it as He saw it.
What is the “different” quality that shines out of every page of the Gospel? It is so simple, so obvious, that it is usually overlooked. The simple fact is that Jesus saw things and people as they are, whereas we see them through the eyes of self. Our lives are self-centred, His was open to the world. We see things in terms of our own needs, whilst He saw them as they are in themselves. Why could He see things and persons as they are while we cannot? What quality of character did He possess which we lack? Remember it is of no value if we think of Him as God as though this were the explanation. If it is, then He is of no use to us. We cannot follow a God, we can only follow a man.
We must look for some human capacity which we can share. Surely that capacity is love. God is love, He said. The life of Jesus was the complete life of love. Surely this is the special quality. Jesus was one with His loving Father and one with all men.272
That much is, or at least ought to be, clear ... even to Liberal Catholics, but was Jesus more than what has been described above (assuming that be possible, which is most doubtful).
regards the Gospel of John, Thiering (1998), using the Dead Sea Scrolls pesher method of interpretation, concludes that Jesus, assisted by his Gentile friend Philip, was the real author of that Gospel.
271 Shorto (1997), for example, writes of the need to deconstruct, and then reconstruct, the Gospel stories about Jesus of Nazareth aided by the additional knowledge we have acquired over time, and especially in more recent years, from both science and history. Shorto (1997:137) writes that “we find meaning [relevantly, as regards the significance of Jesus] by associating the present with the past”.
272 Emphasis added.

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Was Jesus of Nazareth the long-awaited Jewish Messiah? The answer to that question must be ... No! As Douglas Lockhart, the author of such best-sellers as Jesus the Heretic and The Dark Side of God, has pointed out (1997:31):
Rudolf Bultmann, a theologian who more than anyone else has assisted with the process of dymythologizing the New Testament, pronounced many years ago that Jesus did not consider himself to be the Messiah of Israel. ... Since then Churchmen of all types have taken to agreeing with Bultmann ... and a survey of Christian literature seems to suggest that Bultmann is right and the evangelists quite mistaken.273
Not only is it the better view that Jesus did not consider himself to be the Messiah, he simply did not meet the requirements for the role. Rabbi Aryeh Kaplan in his book The Real Messiah? makes it clear that the Jewish Messiah is to be “a human being born naturally to husband and wife” ([1985] 2002:52). Further, this Messiah would not “be a god, nor a man born of supernatural or virgin birth, as the Christians claim” (also at 52). The Jews never expected that any person other than a being distinct from and inferior to God - in other words, a mere man, albeit a strong and wise leader and teacher - was to be their Messiah. Any talk of the Messiah being even the “son of God”, a demi-god, God-like or anything other than a mere man born naturally, and not supernaturally, is totally unacceptable and unbiblical.274 The very idea that God could or would take on human form is contrary to Jewish scripture and thinking to this very day. The Jews have always believed in a non- corporeal God. Further, the Jews assert that God cannot become man, and man cannot become God.275
There were many other expectations attached to the Jewish Messiah – expectations that are to occur during the lifetime of the Messiah but which, during Jesus’ short lifetime on earth, were not fulfilled (and, in some cases, did not need to be fulfilled). For example, the Jewish Messiah is expected to “return the Jews to their land”,276 “rebuild the Temple in
273 Nevertheless, there are those who hold the view that Jesus was the Messiah: see, eg, Barnett (2009. As a separate issue, the present writer is in favour of “remythologizing”, not “demythologizing”, the New Testament. Be that as it may, Bultmann was undoubtedly right in what he said about Jesus being, or holding himself out to be, the Jewish Messiah. As many Jewish and even Christian theologians have pointed out, Jesus simply did not meet any of the “requirements” or expectations for the role of Messiah.
274 See Dt 18:15; cf Jn 1:45.
275 See Num 23:19 (“God is not a mortal that He should lie, nor a man, that He should change His mind”). The Talmud also makes it clear that “If a man clams to be G-d, he is a liar!”. See Yerushalmi, Taanis 2:1 (91); cf Moreh Nevuchim 3:15.
276 See Is 43:5-6.

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Jerusalem”277 and “redeem Israel” from exile and servitude (Kaplan [1985] 2002:53).278 When Jesus was alive here on earth, the Jews were still in their holy land then named Palestine (albeit under Roman occupation), the Holy Temple was still standing in Jerusalem and had not been destroyed, and there was no need for redemption, as that concept is understood in Jewish faith and tradition. Further, the Hebrew Bible states that the Messiah will usher in an era of world peace, bringing to an end all hatred, oppression, suffering and disease,279 and spread universal knowledge of the God of Israel, which will unite all humanity as one in harmony and perfect peace as “all the nations in the world unite to acknowledge and worship the one true G-d” (Kaplan [1985] 2002:53) at the Temple in Jerusalem.280
Evangelical Christians say that all of these promises, and many others as well purportedly contained in the Bible, will be fulfilled by Jesus when he comes again. However, there are two problems with that. First, as already mentioned, the Hebrew Bible makes it clear that the Messiah will complete his mission in his first attempt, something Jesus failed to do.281 Even Jesus himself acknowledged that the various promises and expectations concerning the Messiah would be realized during Jesus’ own generation, for he said, “Truthfully I say unto you that this generation shall not pass till all these things be done” (Mk 13:30). Secondly, the Hebrew Bible also makes it clear that the kingdom of the Jewish Messiah will be very much an earthly and physical one - that is “one of this world” - whereas Jesus made it unambiguously clear that his kingdom was “not of this world” (see Jn 18:36).
Yes, the very fact that Jesus was totally unsuccessful in redeeming the Jews politically282 meant that early Christians could no longer look upon that as the task of the Messiah. His redemption had to be given a new meaning. Thus, the early Christians began to teach that Jesus’ mission was not to redeem humanity from political oppression but to redeem it from spiritual evil. However, there was still the problem that Jesus was dead. Worse still, he had been so ignominiously executed. How could that happen to the supposed Messiah, who, according to the Hebrew Bible would usher in a new era of world peace, unity and harmony,
277 See Ez 37:26-28.
278 The latter is said by Orthodox Jews to be the “first task of the Messiah” (Kaplan [1985] 2002:28).
279 See Is 2:4.
280 See Zec 14:9; Is 11:9; Is 45; Zafania 3.
281 After the death of Jesus the Jews would go into exile, the Temple in Jerusalem was completely destroyed, and even Jerusalem itself was laid to waste.
282 Lockhart (1997:265) refers to the “ultimate failure of [Jesus’] Messianic Mission”.

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and, as already mentioned, Jesus’ untimely demise prevented him from fulfilling the various things expected by Jews of the Messiah. In order to get around that problem, and ensure that Jesus could be acknowledged as the long-awaited Messiah, the early Christians - well, at least some of them - redefined and expanded the Messiah’s mission, and in the process selectively borrowed, where necessary, from pagan myths such as the myth of the dying and rising God. Further, many early Christians proclaimed Jesus would return to the world again in a “second coming”.283 (Of course, as already mentioned, the Messiah spoken of in the Hebrew Bible was supposed to achieve all of his objectives in one “coming”, but that was conveniently glossed over by the early Church which first began as an unusual sect within Judaism itself.)
As Lockhart says (1997:31):
... [T]oo close a scrutiny of Jesus in the role of the Jewish Messiah unravels the Church’s compulsory Christ of faith – the Christ of faith argued into existence by Bultmann as an alternative to the elusive Jesus of history.
Turning now to another question, was Jesus of Nazareth God in the traditional theistic sense as understood by orthodox Jews and many others? Well, Jesus never said that he himself was God. Indeed, he virtually denied that he was God when he exclaimed, “Why callest thou me Good? There is none good but one, that is God” (Mt 19:17; see also Mk 10:18.). He did not claim to be all-powerful (that is, omnipotent), for he said, “I can of mine own self do nothing” (Jn 5:30). He did not claim to have knowledge of all things (that is, be omniscient), for he said, “But of that day and that hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels which are in heaven, neither the Son, but my Father only” (Mt 24:36, Mk 13:32). He is also said in the Scriptures to have been “tempted of the devil” (Mt 4:1), but God cannot be tempted with evil (see Ja 1:13). He prayed to God (see, eg, Mt 17:5, 27:46; Lk 6:16; Jn 17:5), which would be a most strange thing to do if he were God in a unique and exclusive sense.
Traditional, conservative Christians point to Jesus’ purported utterance, “I and my Father are one” (Jn 10:30) as support for their assertion that Jesus was, and expressly claimed to be, God. However, assuming for the moment that Jesus did, in fact, say those words attributed to him in John 10:30, the verse must, like all portions of sacred scripture, be seen
283 See Heb 9:29; Pt 3.

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in its total context. Admittedly the Jews did indeed infer that Jesus was purportedly claiming to be God (see Jn 10:31), but Jesus quickly rephrased his statement with the term "God's son", whilst referring to the Jewish scriptures to elucidate the true meaning of that term: see Jn 10:34-36.284 Thus, Jesus certainly was not claiming to be God in any unique or exclusive sense – something that is of immense importance to Liberal Catholics and other liberal Christians. Indeed, Jesus never claimed anything for himself that he did not also claim for those who were prepared to follow him. His prayer was this: “that they all may be one; as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us” (Jn 17:21). Jesus was saying, “The father is in me, and I am in the father”, which is a wonderfully panentheistic view of God. (Similarly, Jesus is also reported to have said, “I am in my Father: and you in me, and I in you” (Jn 14;20).)
Is Jesus God’s “only begotten son” (cf Jn 3:16), as traditional, conventional Christians assert? Those who believe that have simply literalized and carnalized a myth. The good news according to the Ancient Wisdom - the “lost Gnosis”, if you like - is that we are all begotten of the Only One. There is Only One, and everybody is the only begotten son: see Murphy (1971:27). In short, Jesus is represented by the New Testament writers to be as distinct a being from God the Father as one man is distinct from another. “It is written in your law, that the testimony of two men is true. I am one who bear witness of myself, and the Father that sent me beareth witness of me” (Jn 8:17, 18).
The most that can be claimed from the Bible, weighing everything in the balance, is that Jesus was the “Son of God” - a very human title in any event - but not the Supreme or Almighty God. However, when we read the New Testament Gospels we find that the title most used by Jesus - indeed over 60 times - to describe himself was “Son of Man”. Those words do not imply that Jesus was claiming to be either God in any unique or exclusive sense or the long-awaited for Messiah. Interestingly, that title (“Son of Man”) was used only by Jesus himself. Our Lord never really explained the precise meaning of the title, but it appears to be linked with what Jesus saw as his mission in life (namely, the proclamation of the Kingdom of God as a past, present and future reality), and that Jesus saw himself as a
284 In Jewish literature and sacred scripture the term “Son of God” was a purely human title and did not refer to a divine figure: see, eg, Ps 2: 7 (“You are my son, today I have begotten you”). The king (eg Solomon) is God’s first-born: see Ps 89:27. Angels, Israelites in general, righteous people, and, in the New Testament, Christians can all be spoken of as sons of God, and can address God as Father.

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representative human being through whom God was acting in an important but by no means unique way to make the Kingdom of God a reality in our world.
So, how did Jesus see his mission? To die for our sins, as a ransom for many, as asserted by conventional Christians? No, that was not the message of Jesus. True, Mark 10:45 says, “The Son of Man came … to give his life a ransom for many”, but Higher Criticism and the more recent form criticism undertaken by The Jesus Seminar285 make it unambiguously clear that those words come from Mark or the editor. Indeed, the words recorded in Mark 10:45 occur in a portion of Mark 10 (namely, verses 41-45) which is known to be a duplicate of another portion of Mark’s Gospel (viz Mk 9:33-35) in which the “ransom” idea is totally absent. In fact, there is no reference to Jesus’ martyrdom at all. What we are dealing with here is an interpolation representing, not an actual teaching or utterance of Jesus but the faith of certain believers in the early church. As for Jesus’ supposed utterance as recorded in Matthew 26:28 (“For this is my blood of the new testament, which is shed for many for the remission of sins”), the last mentioned words (“for the remission of sins”) are, as critical commentators such as Dr Vincent Taylor have pointed out, a comment added by the evangelist and not authentic. In any event, both of these supposed and highly dubious utterances of Jesus (namely, Mk 10:45 and Mt 26:28) are incongruent to the whole tenor and thrust of Jesus’ teachings. They are hyper-Paulinistic editorial additions to support a later theological interpretation of Jesus’ death. Critical investigation of the documents confirms that.286
Furthermore, the whole notion of Jesus’ death as a blood sacrifice is unbiblical.287 In the Jewish scriptures, blood atonement was only one method prescribed for the forgiveness of sins,288 and even then only for “a small category of transgressions” (Kaplan [1985] 2002:70). The main way was pure repentance unto God, through words of prayer.289 The conventional Christian ideas of blood sacrifice owe more to pagan mystery religions such as Mithraism than to Judaism.
285 See Funk (1996a) and Funk, Hover and The Jesus Seminar (1996b); cf Barnett (2009).
286 See Angus (1934b:7-11) and Weatherhead (1965:69).
287 Cf Heb 9:22. The whole idea of a person repenting on behalf of another person is totally foreign to Judaism. The communal sacrifices referred to in the Torah were for the sake of a whole community that had erred in its ways, and were not for the remission of sins of individuals. Further, human sacrifice (whether for the supposed purpose of the remission of sins, salvation or any other purpose) has no place in Judaism: see Jer 32:35; cf Gen 22:1-24 (the “Binding of Isaac”).
288 See, eg, Lv 17:11.
289 See, eg, Ez 33:11, 33:19; Jer 36:3, Hos 14:3.

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Was Jesus the “Suffering Servant” referred to in Isaiah 53:3-5?290 Much has been written on that matter, both from Jewish and Christian perspectives. Although it is not the preferred interpretation in Judaism, the passage may be a reference to the long-awaited Messiah or a Messianic era. If so, the passage cannot be read and construed as a reference to Jesus for the reasons previously given, namely, that Jesus simply failed to meet the requirements and description of the Messiah as set forth in the Hebrew Bible. More likely, the passage may be a reference to the Prophet Isaiah himself, but it is even more likely still that the passage is referring to the entire Jewish people over time.
Who, then, was Jesus? The New Testament tells us that Jesus of Nazareth was “a man approved of God” (Acts 2:22) who preached what is described in the New Testament as the “gospel of God”. For example, in Mark 1:14 we read that Jesus came into Galilee “preaching the gospel of God” - note, not the so-called “gospel of Our Lord Jesus Christ”, but the “gospel of God”. Whatever this gospel is, Jesus urged all who would listen to him to experience it, embrace it, and live it. Jesus said, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the gospel” (Mk 1:15; cf Mt 4:17, 10:7; Lk 4:43). This is the answer to those Christian evangelists who assert that there was no Christian gospel (the so-called “gospel of Our Lord Jesus Christ”) until after Jesus had died and supposedly rose from the dead. Ironically, the gospel that so many traditional Christians proclaim is not the “gospel of God” proclaimed by Jesus himself.
American Episcopalian (Anglican) priest Everett L Fullam described Christianity as “Christian living, resurrection living”, that is, “living according to priority – the priority of seeking first the kingdom of God” (as quoted in Slosser 1979:74). Fullam describes this concept of “resurrection living” in these terms (again, Slosser 1979:74):
St Paul describes it in these words … “If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth.” [Col 3:1-2]
… A new goal, a new objective. If you be raised with Christ, then seek those things which are above. That’s St Paul’s way of saying what Jesus said in the Sermon on
290 “He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief: and we hid as it were our faces from him; he was despised, and we esteemed him not. Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows: yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted. But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed.”

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the Mount; “Seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; all these things shall be added unto you.” [Mt 6:33]291
“Resurrected living” is not something supposedly supernatural that is to happen at some time in the future, whether at the moment of our death or otherwise. The resurrected living which Paul is here expounding, and of which Jesus spoke, is something in the here-and- now. Thus, Paul speaks of our having been “raised with Christ”. As for Jesus, he “equates the coming of the kingdom with doing the will of God” (Fullam, as quoted in Slosser 1979:74-75). Fullam goes on to say (again, Slosser 1979:75):
Experiencing the kingdom of God is doing the will of God. Jesus said, concerning himself, “I have not come to do what I desire,” He said; “I do only such things as I am directed by the Father.”
And you will find that one of the characteristics of the new life experience, the new life walked in, will be a desire to live our lives according to the will of God. His purpose for us will become supremely important. His plan for our life will be our quest and discovery. The accomplishing of the good works that he has prepared for us to walk in [Eph 2:10] will become the magnificent obsession of all who experience the resurrection.292
The late Dr Robert Killam, an outstanding Unitarian Universalist leader in his day, had this to say about the continuing relevance of Jesus (Killam, as quoted in Marshall 1970:155):
Jesus’ life was not bound by the time, the country, or the community in which it was lived, for he knew and lived by the truths that are valid always and everywhere. Although men have thought to excuse their own dismal failures by calling him visionary and impractical, they have known in their hearts that it was they who were impractical, for everything they have touched has turned to ashes.
It is true that Jesus knew nothing of modern conditions of life. He never saw a factory or heard its clatter. He never listened to a radio or watched television or rode in an automobile. He never visited a hospital or worked in a scientific laboratory. But these are only the gadgets of life! Life itself Jesus knew. Birth and death, work and wages, sickness and despair, poverty and blessings and hardships that make up life are not new to us. They were not new in his day. They have been present in every age. Every human goodness and evil, dream and failure which we know he also knew. He spoke to a world like ours.
Despite our unwillingness to pay the price of discipleship, we believe in him, not because he was God, but because he was man, at man’s best.
For all Christians - and that includes, and must include, Liberal Catholics - Jesus is God in a form we can understand and with whom we can readily identify, because he shared our
291 Emphasis in the original.
292 Emphasis in the original.

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common humanity. His divinity lies in his complete and total humanity – humanity at its very best. Not only was the “basic message of Jesus ... that nothing can destroy love” (Mowle 2009:125), he fully demonstrated the truth of that proposition in his life and death and in his ongoing spiritual presence among us. This is what we mean when we speak of Jesus Christ being “our foundation” and “our chief corner stone” (Liturgy 224). Dr Harry Emerson Fosdick, in a sermon entitled “The Peril of Worshipping Jesus”, published in a volume of sermons by Fosdick entitled The Hope of the World, writes of what it truly means to speak of Jesus being divine (1933:126-127):
... I believe in the divinity of Jesus with all my faculties if we can come to an understanding about what we mean by divinity. Are you willing to start with John’s idea of divinity in the New Testament: “God is love” [1 Jn 4:8]? That is divinity – love. Divinity is not something supernatural that ever and again invades the natural order in a crashing miracle. Divinity is not in some remote heaven, seated on a throne. Divinity is love. Here and now it shines through the highest spiritual experiences we know. Wherever goodness, beauty, truth, love are – there is the Divine. And the divinity of Jesus is the divinity of his spiritual life.293
Leslie D Weatherhead, a former president of the Methodist Conference of Great Britain, in his book The Transforming Friendship wrote that the essence of Jesus’ divinity was that he “always revealed His Father ... always lived to show men what God was like” ([1928] 1930:41). Weatherhead refers to what Jesus, in his life of total self-giving, reveals to us, and offers us, and that is “the companionship and friendliness of God” ([1928] 1930:41). Weatherhead then goes on to write ([1928] 1930:51):
Christianity began ... in a vivid, tremendous, transforming experience of the friendship of Jesus. It could never have continued unless the friendship had been sustained; unless those who had never seen Him could yet enter into the fellowship and become sure of Him also. There is no greater need in our time than ... to make Jesus real to men; to invite them into that transforming fellowship which cannot be proved save by personal experience, but which, when realized, brings men that glorious exhilaration, that sense of ineffable peace, and that escape from all bondage which are promised in the New Testament.
For the present writer, the “real presence” of the historical Jesus lies in the power of his personality, as experienced as an ever-present inner reality in our consciousness, and in his ability to enrich our lives accordingly. Professor Samuel Angus in his book Jesus in the Lives of Men writes of “the peerless greatness and unique place of Jesus, so that men continue to find the way of life through him, and learn to interpret their lives in the light and
293 Emphasis in the original.

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by the standard of his life” (1934a:53) before going on to describe the transformative power of Jesus’ personality (1934a:66-67):
It was expedient for Christianity that Jesus should go away, in order that the Spirit, with which the early Christians identified his living person, should come. It was expedient that he should surmount the limitations of an earthly life in order that he might abide forever as a universal Presence. It was expedient that his history should be lifted out of Galilee and Judea in order that those who had not seen him with the eyes of sense, nor touched him sensibly, should everlastingly behold his glory.
In the feebler glories of the interpenetration of our own personalities by other personalities we have analogies – but not an explanation – of the power inherent in Jesus’ personality to impress itself upon his followers. The divine “Idea” of Jesus’ life has mysteriously, but none the less truly, entered into countless lives, bestowing power and bringing uplift.
Scottish professor James M Stalker, an eminent preacher,294 writer and academic of yesteryear, whose impact upon theological thinking was perhaps greatest in the United States of America than anywhere else including his homeland, wrote powerfully of the need to recognize the historicity of Jesus Christ in order for there to be any ongoing relationship with him and mystical sharing in his life. For example, Stalker, in his book The Life of Jesus Christ, writes ([1880] 1891:139):
No life ends even for this world when the body by which it has for a little been made visible disappears from the face of the earth. It enters into the stream of the ever- swelling life of mankind, and continues to act there with its whole force for evermore. Indeed, the true magnitude of a human being can often only be measured by what this after-life shows him to have been. So it was with Christ. The modest narrative of the Gospels scarcely prepares us for the outburst of creative force which issued from His life when it appeared to have ended. His influence on the modern world is the evidence of how great He was; for there must have been in the cause as there is in the effect. It has overspread the life of man and caused it to blossom with the vigour of a spiritual spring. It has absorbed into itself all other influences, as a mighty river, pouring along the centre of a continent, receives tributaries from a hundred hills. And its quality has been even more exceptional than its quantity.
Now, Stalker was for the most part an evangelical, yet what is set out above, excerpted as it is from one of his most influential books, could easily have been written by a Liberal Catholic, unless that Liberal Catholic be one whose though forms are very much rooted in
294 Stalker served for a number of years as a minister in the Free Church of Scotland.

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“Theosophy as understood by Adyar”.295 Stalker goes on to write of Jesus ([1880] 1891:139-140):
But the most important evidence of what He was, is to be found neither in the general history of modern civilization nor in the public history of the visible Church, but in the experiences of the succession of genuine believers, who with linked hands stretch back to touch Him through the Christian generations. The experience of myriads of souls, redeemed by Him from themselves and from the world, proves that history was cut in twain by the appearance of a Regenerator, who was not a mere link in the chain of common men, but One whom the race could not from its own resources have produced – the perfect Type, the Man of men. ...296
For Liberal Catholics, that is a vision of Jesus with which we should be able to identify, with both intellectual honesty and at emotional depth – redemption, or regeneration, in the form of being made free from ourselves and from the world, so that we can both find, and lose, ourselves in a greater and wider reality that is timeless and infinite, ultimate and ineffable. Identification with both the Jesus of history and the Christ of faith can lead us to a spiritual regeneration aided and assisted by the vicarious spirituality of the Man from Galilee who was able to say, with complete honesty and humility, “I and my Father are one” (Jn 10:30), but this can only occur in the manner referred to above to the extent to which we open ourselves and are otherwise responsive to the outpoured life of Jesus present both in the race consciousness and, mystically, in the depths of our own spiritual lives as part of the Presence, indeed Omnipresence, of God-life. Thus, David Torkington in his book The Mystic297 writes of making contact with Jesus in his “resurrection life” in which you “can no longer see Jesus as you used to because you are within Him and are being fitted into Him more perfectly in your prayer than ever before” ([1995] 1999:78). After all, did not Jesus say, “the Father is in me, and I in him” (Jn 10:38), and “I am in my Father: and you in me, and I in you” (Jn 14:20), before going on to pray to the Father, “that they all may be one; as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us” (Jn 17:21)? In short, not only is the “fullness of God’s life ... to be found and experienced in the full humanity of Jesus” (Torkington [1995] 1999:78), mystically we experience that Oneness with the Father through our encounter with Jesus who, as an integral part of God’s Omnipresence, is one with us in and through the power of consciousness, prayer and the sacraments.
295 See Tillett (2005:Online).
296 Emphasis added. Stalker ([1880] 1891:140) goes on to write of further testimony, or evidence, if you prefer, of the ongoing presence of Jesus in the lives of humans in the form of the “experience of myriads of minds, rendered blessed by the vision of a God who to the eye purified by the Word of Christ is so completely Light that in Him there is no darkness at all”.
297 Part of a trilogy of books on prayer, the others being The Hermit and The Prophet.

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Esoterically, Jesus may be seen to represent the disciple, that is, the earnest seeker after Truth, the person on the Path (see, eg, van Alphen (2000:Online)) as well as a “human Incarnation of Divine Thought, an outcome and expression of the ‘Word’ or Law of God” (Corelli 1966:13). Ann K Elliott in her book Higher Ground (2000-2003:Ch 1:Online) writes that “the main events in the life of Christ fit onto such a framework [one for the transmission of sacred teachings] and correspond remarkably to the archetypal themes of other religions concerning the transformation of consciousness”. Elliott quotes Carl Jung who wrote (see Stein 1999:170):
Christ’s life is a prototype of individuation and hence cannot be imitated: one can only live one’s own life totally in the same way [Christ lived his and] with all the consequences this entails.
Jung referred to “the high drama of the life of Christ and how it is being re-enacted in the individual soul” as “the Christian archetype” (Elliott 2000-2003:Ch 1:Online), something which is highly reminiscent of, and extremely indebted to, Plato’s “archetypal ideas”. For Plato, the archetypes constituted “the intangible substrate of all that is tangible” (Tarnas 1991:12). Plato’s theory of archetypes helps us to appreciate, interpret and apply to our own lives the life of Jesus, and the key events in that life. Thus, G F Maine, in the introduction to his anthology book The Life and Teachings of the Master, writes (1953:17- 18):
The passion-story, which is fundamental to all the gospels, presents five main episodes in the Life of Christ, and these correspond to successive stages of soul- development in the individual. (1) The Birth: The birth of Christ in the heart of the disciple; the awakening to a realisation of his own spiritual nature. (2) The Baptism: self-dedication to the service of the Master. (3) The Transfiguration: conscious realization of the Divine indwelling. (4) The Passion and Death-Resurrection: The sacrifice and death of all that pertains to the separated self-hood; complete self- surrender to the eternal reality of Love. (5) The Ascension: union, or at-one-ment, with the Divine.
Thus the beginning of the mystic drama, the birth of the soul into the human kingdom by way of the gate of generation, becomes an ordered progression which ends with the ascent of the soul to the kingdom of the spirit and its union with the source of Light.298
The present writer does not eschew this esoteric approach. Indeed, he embraces it with enthusiasm, and with the deep conviction that the so-called “Jesus story” is, at a very deep level known to as by spiritual intuition, “symbolic of what [we] are about, too” (Mowle
298 Italics in the original.

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2009:124). However, without the historical Jesus, and its story, we have no real way of conceptualizing just what the words used in the Gospels to depict and describe the so- called “Life of Christ” actually mean. Jesus authenticates, actualizes and makes real and possible for us what is otherwise not only inscrutable but unattainable. This important fact - so often overlooked or even openly repudiated by Liberal Catholics - has been expressly acknowledged by Bishop Leadbeater himself (1965:1):
The life of Christ is the prototype of the life of everyone of His followers. We too must pass through those stages, those steps, those initiations through which Christ passed. We must suffer with Him all the sorrow and the pain of Easter week, a veritable crucifixion of all that seems to man worth having; but he who endures to the end, he who passes through that test as he should, for him the glory of Easter is to be revealed, and he will gain the victory which makes him more than man, which raises him to the level of the Christ Spirit.
More recently, Mowle (2007:183), after alluding to Jesus’ resurrection and ascension, refers to this “Jesus the Christ [who] occupies places that one day all humanity will share”. Weatherhead wrote that Jesus’ divinity “was not endowed but achieved by his moral reactions so that he climbed to an eminence of character which the word ‘human’ was not big enough to describe” (1930:260). So it is, or can be, for us as well. Weatherhead is not alone. Roman Catholic priest Andrew M Greeley (1971) sees Jesus as the archetypal human and way-shower (“our pattern and perfect ensample” [Liturgy 365]) such that we too should be bringing ransom to captives (those in bondage to self) and hope, faith and love to other people just as Jesus did in his earthly life. Liberal Catholic priest Claude Thompson expressed it well when he wrote (1962:9):
Christ, from what may be called the general esoteric view that many of us take, was, as an historical person, the result of that spiritual evolution mentioned, that had raised him to the point where his immanent and inherent divinity was so fully manifest that he was able to say – “I and my Father are One” [Jn 10:30] and “No man cometh unto the Father but by me,” [Jn 14:6] and “Me” is that inherent divinity shared by all men. Only through their own divinity can they reach God.
Jesus, more than any other person who has ever lived, lived his life in conscious communion with that inner light which is our “God centre”. The Liturgy, in the Service for the Ordination of Acolytes, also states (Liturgy 370):
In many forms of religious faith light has been taken as a symbol of deity – the light which lighteth every man that cometh into the world [cf Jn 1:9]. That light is universal, but it also dwells in the heart of man. It is our duty to see that light in

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everyone, however dimly it may burn, however veiled and darkened it may appear to our ordinary perception.
There is a further, quite metaphysical and allegorical, sense in which the word “Jesus” can and has been used, and that is the sense already mentioned in the context of the Holy Trinity, namely, that one’s “son”, spiritually speaking, is one’s genuine desire for something good (that is, godly or godlike). Thus, Murphy ([1972] Online) writes:
The Jesus of the Bible has more than one meaning. The word Joshua is identical with the name Jesus. Joshua (Jesus) means “God is Savior,” “God is Deliverer.” When you read the Bible, look upon Jesus as Taylor said, “illumined reason or your knowledge of God.” It also means realization of your desire, the solution to your problem or salvation, the God-Presence within. Jesus symbolizes the cornerstone rejected, but which is most essential in building the temple of God-consciousness. The realization of our desire saves us from any predicament in the world; therefore, that is our savior. Our own consciousness or conviction saves us. “Thy faith hath made thee whole.”
In the next section of this chapter, which relates to what is sometimes referred to as the “Historical Christ”, the combination of “Jesus” and “Christ” will be considered in the light of Liberal Catholic teaching and understanding. It is sufficient, for present purposes, to say that, faithful to the Ancient Wisdom, the Liberal Catholic Church does not affirm that Jesus was in any sense uniquely and exclusively God, unlike “orthodox Christians [who] believe that Jesus is Lord and Son of God in a unique way” (Pagels [1979] 1988:19). However, many Liberal Catholics, including the present writer, would agree with the American Roman Catholic priest Andrew M Greeley (1971) who wrote that a Christian is one who says “yes” to the invitation of Jesus to follow him and to love unconditionally, that the underlying reality of life and the entire universe is love,299 and that what is required of us human beings is simply to open ourselves up to that love so that it can flow into us and through us and out of us to all around us.
The Historical Christ
The Theosophist Henry T Edge, in his book The Universal Mystery-Language and Its Interpretation, has written ([1943] 1997:Online):
Though every man is an incarnation of divinity, there are some who are so in a special sense. These are men who have progressed in their individual evolution to a point beyond that reached by the average humanity of their time, and who come
299 See 1 Jn 4:8 (“He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love”).

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to the world in times of spiritual darkness to teach the truths of the ancient wisdom. Such teachers are the world’s Christs; and we find them in the religions of India, Egypt, ancient America, and elsewhere, accounts similar in essentials to the Gospel narratives.
In Liberal Catholic teaching and esoteric thought and writing generally, the “Historical Christ” is not necessarily, or even ordinarily, equivalent in meaning or intent to the “Historical Jesus” (the latter referring to the so-called “Christ of the Churches”, as traditionally understood). Van Alphen (2002:Online) writes that when one combines Jesus with Christ, there are two distinct but interrelated meanings.
First, there is a reference to “Christ as the World Teacher”,300 that is, “the World Teacher expressing himself through the personality of his beloved disciple, Jesus” (van Alphen 2002:Online):
Physically seen, one sees Jesus, but the one expressing himself through that body is Christ, the World Teacher, thus Jesus Christ.301
Secondly, there is a reference to the human personality “under full sway of the soul” (van Alphen 2002:Online), or, if you like, the World Teacher expressing Himself through the personality of the disciple on the path, for we are “all Christs in the making” (Heline 1950:33).302 (In the section of this chapter relating to the “Cosmic Christ”, the expression “Jesus Christ our Lord” will be discussed.)
300 The Christ has been variousl;y referred to as the World Teacher, the Bodhisattva, and the Lord Maitreya.
301 The Liberal Catholic Church, undeniably, was formed at least in substantial part to help prepare for the coming of the supposed World Teacher, and to make itself available for use by the World Teacher, relevantly, as a special means by which the World Teacher would help the world when He came. In the words of C W Leadbeater, “At any rate, it is there for Him if He wishes to use it ... [the Church] putting itself wholly into His hands as an instrument to be used at His will”: see Theosophy in Australia, March 1917. Bishop Leadbeater’s former secretary, the late Harold Morton, himself a former leading Australian Theosophist and former Liberal Catholic priest who had become disenchanted with both institutions as early as 1944 and almost certainly earlier, apparently expressed his opinion to the late J M Prentice (himself an eminent Australian Theosophist) in 1962 that - according to “detailed notes” purportedly taken by Prentice of the alleged conversation - Leadbeater had intended using Annie Besant as the means of proclaiming himself (Leadbeater) as the vehicle for the World Teacher but that was not possible because of Leadbeater’s “tarnished reputation” so Leadbeater “had to seek out a suitable subject, whom he could dominate”: see Tillett (2004). Assuming for the moment that Morton did hold the view that he supposedly expressed to Prentice, that is not evidence that Bishop Leadbeater saw things the same way. It has also been written that one Hubert Van Hook (1895-1984), who would later become a Chicago lawyer, had been considered by Leadbeater as a candidate for the role for which Krishnamurti was eventually chosen: see Faig (2006:13).
302 In the Ancient Mysteries a probationer or neophyte was often referred to as a “Chrestos” [Greek for “good”] - interestingly, Osiris was called Chrestos - whereas an initiate was called a “Christos” [Greek for “anointed”]. (The inscription “Chrestos” is visible on a Mithras relief in the Vatican.) A certain syncretism is known to have taken place with these two words, further complicated by the use of other words such as the Latin words “Chestus” and “Christus”, the former being a mutilated form for the latter. Originally a title, the term Christos was

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As to the first meaning, Besant ([1901] 1914:113-4) in her Esoteric Christianity wrote that, Jesus’ “superhuman purity and devotion” fitted “[him], the disciple, to become the temple of a loftier Power, of a mighty, indwelling Presence”:
The time had come for one of those Divine manifestations which from age to age are made for the helping of humanity, when a new impulse is needed to quicken the spiritual evolution of mankind, when a new civilisation is about to dawn. ... A mighty "Son of God" was to take flesh upon earth, a supreme Teacher, "full of grace and truth" — [Jn 1:14] One in whom the Divine Wisdom abode in fullest measure, who was verily "the Word" incarnate, Light and Life in outpouring richness, a very Fountain of the Waters of Life. Lord of Compassion and of Wisdom — such was His name — and from His dwelling in the Secret Places He came forth into the world of men.
For Him was needed an earthly tabernacle, a human form, the body of a man, and who so fit to yield his body in glad and willing service to One before whom Angels and men bow down in lowliest reverence, as this Hebrew of the Hebrews, this purest and noblest of "the Perfect", whose spotless body and stainless mind offered the best that humanity could bring? The man Jesus yielded himself a willing sacrifice, "offered himself without spot" to the Lord of Love, who took unto Himself that pure form as tabernacle, and dwelt therein for three years of mortal life.
Besant is referring to the Lord Maitreya303 whom she and others believed had overshadowed Jesus of Nazareth after his baptism and at various times up until his crucifixion (or stoning to death, according to Leadbeater) in the sense that Jesus’ body and person were temporarily used as a vehicle for the Lord Maitreya, hence the various expressions “Christ our Lord”, “Christ as the World Teacher”, “The Christ”, “the Lord Christ”, and so forth, referred to by Leadbeater and others (see, eg, Udney 1927) as the Representative of the Son of God upon earth.304 Both Besant and Leadbeater would soon have much to say about what they expected would be another coming of the World Teacher who, so they and certain others (but by no means all, or even most) in the Theosophical movement believed, would soon revisit the world publicly, overshadowing and speaking through the vehicle of one Jiddu Krishnamurti. The ill-fated Order of the Star of the Sea,
“later attached to Jesus” (Krusenstierna, in Hodson 1977:58) but has also been used throughout the years to refer to a Great Being (eg the World Teacher, the Lord Maitreya, the Bodhisattva, or simply “the Christ”).
303 Also known and referred to as the “Living Christ” (at least in traditional Liberal Catholic thought and in some quarters of esoteric Christianity), the Lord of Love, the alleged head (“Bodhisattva”) of the occult hierarchy, who supposedly held the office of World Teacher until, it is said, he assumed the office of the Buddha on 1 January 1956. According to the teaching held by some Theosophists Jesus of Nazareth and the Master Kuthumi jointly assumed the office of the Lord Maitreya. Many Buddhists also believe in the coming Lord Maitreya Buddha - the next and, according to some, the “final” Buddha - the Lord Gautama Buddha being the “Teacher of the Past”.
304 Some esoteric writers (see, eg, Heline 1950:30) have used the expression the “Planetary Christ” to refer to “the highest Initiate of the archangelic Host” who, it is said, ensouled the body and person of Jesus during the 3- year period of his public ministry. Heline (1950:37) uses the expression “Cosmic Christ” to refer to the One who inspired all religions (cf the “World Teacher” of Besant and Leadbeater). Regrettably, the use of different terminology by different writers does not assist at all in understanding.

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formed to help usher in that great expected event, ended on 2 August 1929 when Krishnamurti publicly repudiated the role that seemingly had been imposed upon him by others.305
Leadbeater, in particular, wrote and spoke of the “World Teacher” - an entity or Being otherwise referred to as “our blessed Lord” by Udny [1927:2]) - being, in sacred mystery, a special epiphany of the Logos in its second aspect (the “eternal Christ” or “Cosmic Christ”), the latter being a matter to be further considered below. Liberal Catholic priest Udny (1927:44) succinctly described what he and others (in particular, Leadbeater and Besant) saw as the special role and mission of the World Teacher, namely, to ever offer Himself to that altar on high “as a Channel for the life of the Second Person [of the Blessed Trinity] …[as] an ‘eternal High Priest,’ the true Officiant in all the sacraments administered by His priests”.
Santucci (in foreword, Schüller 1997:Online), after referring to a number of authoritative sources, writes that “the doctrine of the ‘Christ as the World Teacher uniting himself with Jesus at the baptism’”, as developed and expounded by Besant ([1901] 1914) and Leadbeater (1983), can be seen as a departure or deviation from the original teachings of H P Blavatsky, to which many Theosophists did not, and presumably still not, subscribe, and which did not necessarily, if at all, form part of “traditional” mainstream Theosophical teaching.
The present writer is reverentially agnostic regarding the “World Teacher” idea, preferring to interpret it allegorically and spiritually in a manner not inconsistent with Liberal Catholic, Theosophical and New Thought exegesis on other matters (cf Hodson 1925, 1967-81, and 1975; Grove [1925] 1962; Metaphysical Bible Dictionary (1931); Addington [1969] 1996).
Thus, the “World Teacher” may be said to symbolise and represent, or be a shorthand expression and personification of, the ancient wisdom or “lost gnosis” that is at the heart of all the major religions and mythologies306 - that is, “the wisdom underlying all religions when they are stripped of accretions and superstitions ... teachings [that] aid the unfoldment of
305 See Vernon ([2000] 2002) and Ellis-Jones (2006).
306 The Ancient Wisdom is ordinarily regarded as being not only the essence of all religion, esoterically interpreted, but the eternal source from which all such religions have emanated, hence the notion (especially held by Leadbeater) that the World Teacher was a special epiphany of the Logos in its second aspect (“the Son”).

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the latent spiritual nature in the human being, without dependence or fear” (Besant [1909] 1984:60). For the present writer, the “World Teaching” (the essence of which is that there is One Being, One ever-evolving, ever-changing but otherwise indestructible Life or absolute Reality manifesting Itself as the “many”, in all things and as all things, as a triplicity of Life, Truth and Love in which we live and move and have our being on a boundless plane in an otherwise eternal universe, being one of a number of such universes over endless time) is more important than any notion of “World Teacher”. As Krishnamurti often said in his writings, speeches and talks, it’s the teaching that matters, not the teacher. Such a view finds some support in the writings of our own Bishop Wedgwood, who wrote (1928:161):
One of the titles sometimes given to the Second Person of the Godhead is “World Teacher”. Most people would say that teaching is the passing on of knowledge, and would connect it with the intellectual nature of man which comes under the special guidance of the Holy Spirit. But a difficulty sometimes arises from a misunderstanding of the teacher’s task. It is not to lay facts before the pupil but to encourage him to exercise his own faculties in order to grasp fundamental realities by his own efforts; the true teacher will quicken initiative and enterprise in the student in order that he may learn to use his own powers and comes to see things for himself.
The Mythic (or Pagan) Christ
In almost all of the world’s religions one finds fairly similar myths of creation,307 the flood, and so forth. Then there is the myth of the dying and rising god, which is common to a number of religions and religious philosophies. These archetypal myths and common motifs, although not in themselves necessarily, it at all, historical, are nevertheless “poetic expressions of … transcendental seeing” (Campbell 1973:31). Tom Harpur (2004:17) has written:
As [Joseph] Campbell repeatedly made clear in his many books and in the interviews with [Bill] Moyers, the deepest truths about life, the soul, personal meaning, our place in the universe, our struggle to evolve to higher levels of insight and understanding, and particularly the mystery we call God can be described only by means of a story (mythos) or a ritual drama. The myth itself is fictional, but the timeless truth it expresses is not. As Campbell puts it, “Myth is what never was, yet always is.”
307 As Suzuki (1997:185) has pointed out, “Creation stories create, or re-create, the world human beings live in, shape what we see and suggest the rules by which we should live. Unbelievably numerous and diverse, these tales of the Beginning of Everything are considered by the peoples that live by them the most sacred of all the stories, the origin of all the others.”

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History and myth often coalesce into what Campbell (1973:26) refers to as “themes of the imagination”, but care must be exercised here. As Smart (1992:15) points out:
… These stories often are called myths. The term may be a bit misleading, for in the context of the modern study of religion there is no implication that a myth is false.
Besant ([1901] 1914:131), in Esoteric Christianity, refers to a “Christ” whom she describes as being “the Mythic Christ, the Christ of the solar myths or legends, these myths being the pictorial forms in which certain profound truths were given to the world”.308 She goes on to write ([1901] 1914:134):
The Solar Myth … is a story which primarily representing the activity of the Logos, or Word, in the kosmos, secondarily embodies the life of one who is an incarnation of the Logos, or is one of His ambassadors. The Hero of the myth is usually represented as a God, or Demi-God, and his life, as will be understood by what has been said above, must be outlined by the course of the Sun, as the shadow of the Logos. The part of the course lived out during the human life is that which falls between the winter solstice and the reaching of the zenith in summer. The Hero is born at the winter solstice, dies at the spring equinox, and, conquering death, rises into mid-heaven.
Besant, after referring to a number of pagan “dying and rising gods” and solar myth manifestations, religions and festivals, concludes ([1901] 1914:144):
Hence, when the Master Christ [that is, Christ as the World Teacher] became the Christ of the Mysteries, the legends of the older Heroes of those Mysteries gathered round Him, and the stories were again recited with the latest divine Teacher as the representative of the Logos in the Sun. Then the festival of His nativity became the immemorial date when the Sun was born of the Virgin, when the midnight sky was filled with the rejoicing hosts of the celestials, and
Very early, very early, Christ was born.
Those traditional Christians who assert that all that is written about Jesus in the New Testament is historical and non-mythological - on the ground that myths of the kind referred to above take a considerable amount of time to develop - seem blind to the fact that, prior to the time of Jesus, there already was in existence not only a Solar myth but also the myth of the dying and rising god. These myths were readily available to be quickly engrafted upon the life, passion and death of the man Jesus of Nazareth “crucified in space”: see, eg, Harpur (2004). The famous American mythographer Joseph Campbell tended to construe
308 The expression “Solar Logos” is often used in Theosophical literature, as well as in other esoteric writings, to refer to the Deity in its manifestation as the relevant Logos of a particular Solar System.

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all religions, not just Christianity (as ordinarily understood by traditional Christians), as “misunderstood mythologies” (Campbell 1986; see also Adler 1990:58-9), and saw the principal function of mythology as well as ritual as the “supply [of] the symbols that carry the human spirit forward, in counteraction to those other constant human fantasies that tend to tie it back” (Campbell [1949] 1990:11).
Take Mithraism, for example. Mithras, the Persian saviour and sun-god, who went around the countryside, teaching, healing and the sick, and casting out devils; Mithras, who had 12 disciples, and who held a last supper; Mithras, who was killed, buried in a rock tomb, and supposedly rose from the dead three days later, before finally ascending into heaven. Sound familiar? A religion was founded in his honour in the 6th century BCE, well before the supposed advent of Jesus Christ. Its distinguishing outward feature was baptism in the sacrificial blood of bulls. However, Mithras, whose supposed birth was also celebrated on the 25th of December, was a truly fictional character.
The learned Professor Samuel Angus, in his celebrated works such as The Mystery Religions, and more recently other scholars such as Hyam Maccoby (1986) and Andrew Welburn ([1991] 2004), have demonstrated that Christianity was largely the creation of Saint Paul, synthesizing and syncretising certain key elements of Judaism with many other pagan belief systems, primarily Greco-Roman mystery religions and, especially, Mithraism.309 As to the latter, before the 5th century CE, when the Christian Church finally declared Mithraism heretical, the two religions coexisted and were undoubtedly influential upon each other.310 Many ancient Roman churches today still contain well-preserved mithraeums in their vaulted burial crypts, and some mithraeums can be viewed to this day in and around London.
Yes, the motif of a crucified saviour, and the concomitant myth of the dying and rising god, were already extant prior to the alleged time of Jesus. It is also interesting to note something that Cooper (1996:38) has pointed out in his fascinating book Mithras:
309 Certainly, his New Testament writings (see, eg, Rom 8:2-11 and 29, 1 Cor 2:6-7, 2 Cor 12:1-4, Phil 1:21, Gal 2:20, Col 1:26-27 and 2:2) give much credence to that assumption.
310 The 11th edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica, in its article on Mithras, after referring to the many analogies between Mithraism and Christianity, states, “At their root lay a common Eastern origin rather than any borrowing.”

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... Mithraism came to the West when Cilician pirates were settled in Greece in the first century BCE. One of the major cities in Cilicia was Tarsus. Paul of Tarsus came from Tarsus some 180 years after the Cilician pirates had been resettled. He may well have been influenced by the sacerdotal currents of the area.311
The tragedy is that so-called traditional or orthodox Christianity has grossly distorted and carnalized Paul’s Neoplatonic ideas about the indwelling Christ and engrafted and projected the gnosis of Paul’s mystery religion teachings upon the man Jesus, deifying him in the process such that Jesus came to be regarded as God in a unique and exclusive sense. The irony is that, if Jesus be God in a unique and exclusive sense, how could we ever hope to follow him?
The Cosmic Christ
The present writer has chosen to use the expression “Cosmic Christ” to refer to “God the Son”, that is, the Logos (or Word) in its second aspect, the Second Person of the Most Holy Trinity, that, through various rays from Itself, breathes forth life into the entire universe, its various planets (including but not limited to this planet Earth), in fact, all that is, ever- offering Itself as the “Lamb slain from the foundation of the world,312 dying in very truth that we might live” (Prayer of Consecration, Holy Eucharist), and constituting the indwelling life of all that is, being the Word “made flesh” as Christ, the Son. This “Logos of our Solar System” (Pigott 1925:17), this “Solar Deity, or Logos, [which] ‘breathes forth His own divine life into His universe,’ even down to the physical plane” (Udny 1927:2), is the very Self- Givingness of Life Itself – Life giving of Itself to Itself in order to perpetuate Itself. It is the very essence, heart and soul of Love … and it is divine (cf 1 Jn 4:8). Lutyens (1926:88) writes:
It is this stupendous truth which is at the root of all religions, which lies behind the symbolism of every Sacrament. The Eternal Sacrifice; God sacrificing Himself to Himself; the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world [cf Rev 13:8]; the body of Osiris slain and scattered; the Lost Word – all these are symbols of the great primeval truth of creation, the supreme Sacrifice of the Logos, Who has freely offered Himself as the ensouling Life of matter, cribbed, cabined, and confined in form, for only through form could an objective Universe come into being. Manifestation is sacrifice; every form that exists is a symbol of the supreme Oblation, God giving Himself to His world that it might live, holding Himself imprisoned in that form while time shall last.
311 Indeed, it is quite reasonable to assume that St Paul (whom Elaine Pagels (1979) has called “the Gnostic Paul”) would have been familiar with the distinguishing features of Mithraism. Being the learned man that he was, it is almost certain he would have known a fair bit about Mithraism.
312 Cf Rev 13:8. See also Liturgy (215).

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Indeed, it is the “living Christ” as we, members of Christ’s Mystical Body, “strive to serve together as a vehicle of the eternal Christ” (Parry and Rivett [1969] 1985:5). Leadbeater makes the point, in several of his writings (see, eg, 1983) that the World Teacher (or “Historic Christ”), was, in sacred mystery, a very real and special epiphany. Rivett makes an important linkage with Jesus, when he writes (2008c:85):
Jesus the fullness of this Cosmic Christ was (and is) manifest, and that he has shown us that the Christ is indeed our indwelling life. We can, I think, see that the Christ-in-us, our individual Divine Centre, is our I AM consciousness.313
Hall (2000:28) makes the point that the early Christian Church “regarded Deity as outside of creation” whereas the Gnostics and various pagan groups took the view that the universe was the “body of God through which spiritual power manifested as a constant impulse toward unfoldment and growth”. The latter is very much the Liberal Catholic position. Thus, Wedgwood (1928e:Online), in writing of the various references in the Gloria in Excelsis in the Holy Eucharist to the Second Aspect of the Logos, the Lord Christ, “alone-born of the Father”, writes that those words mean that “there is One Life, which is the Father’s life”, and then immediately goes on to make reference to the next set of words in the Gloria, “O Lord God, Indwelling Light”. The Cosmic Christ is the same “life and light which dwells within the human heart” (Wedgwood 1928e:Online), that is, the Mystic Christ. It is our mystical connection to other human beings – the “pattern that connects” (Fox 1998).
Burt (1960:np) makes the point that the expression “Jesus Christ our Lord” (and, presumably, the expression “the Lord Jesus Christ” and other like combinations) embraces three distinct ideas:
First, it refers to the disciple Jesus, second to the great Teacher, the Master Christ, and third, the Second Person of the ever Blessed Trinity.
The Mystic Christ
Besant ([1901] 1914:146), in Esoteric Christianity, writes that “The Christ of the Solar Myth was the Christ of the Mysteries, and we find the secret of the mythic in the mystic Christ.”
313 Emphasis in the original. See “The Mystic Christ”, below.

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The Mystic Christ, or the “Christ within”, is the “Christ in [us], the hope of glory”314 (Col 1:27), a very special and highly individualistic (yet otherwise common to all) manifestation of the Cosmic Christ or Universal Spirit within each of us, indwelling as our potential perfection but otherwise living undeveloped in our human spirits, that nevertheless is ever seeking first, progressive unfoldment, and then perfect expression in our daily lives: see Rivett 2008c:85. Corelli (1966:14) writes:
The whole life and so-called “death” of Christ was and is a great symbolic lesson to mankind of the infinite power of THAT within us which we call SOUL, … capable of exhaustless energy and of readjustment to varying circumstances. Life is all Life. There is no such thing as Death in its composition, – and the intelligent comprehension of its endless ways and methods of change and expression, is the Secret of the Universe.
Another way of referring to this Christ is the incarnation and presence of God in us as us, for “we are all Christs in the making” (Bidwell, quoted in McGarry 1966:17).
The late Bishop L W Burt (1960:np) referred to this Christ as “The God Within”, also noting that Jesus himself affirmed, when charged with blasphemy, “Is is not written in your law, I said ye are gods” (Jn 10:34; cf Ps 82:6).315 Burt also wrote that St Paul affirmed not only the proposition of “God-with-us” but also “God-in-us”, which, as Burt pointed out, emphasized “man’s unity with the Divine”. He goes on to write (1960:np):
... In the earliest form of Christianity there is that definite teaching of “God-in-us,” and this thought comes naturally to St Paul and colours all his writings. The most marvelous event that the universe offered to St Paul was the revelation that God exists not only with-us, but that God also exists in-us.316
We make contact with this Mystic Christ - which then becomes a truly living reality within our lives, and not just some metaphysical principle of the God-man - when we discover or otherwise awaken by spiritual intuition to our own divine selfhood, which is the Logos of the soul, and become conscious of the presence of God with us and in us and of our essential oneness with all life. This is the true “second” or “new” birth. Van Alphen (2002:Online) describes this Christ as being “the soul, or immanent Christ principle”, that is, the all- sustaining truth of our being. As the Gnostics, or at least some of them, pointed out, “self-
314 Burt (1960a:np) refers to this teaching of St Paul (see, in full, Col 2:25-27) as Paul’s “most valuable contribution to Christian thought”.
315 See also 1 Jn 4:4 (“Ye are of God, little children, and have overcome them: because greater is he that is in you, than he that is in the world”).
316 [Emphasis in the original.

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knowledge is knowledge of God; the self and the divine are identical” (Pagels [1979] 1988:19).
In esoteric thought and teaching, Jesus Christ represents a very special, individual expression of this Christ idea or principle. In words attributed to Jesus (Jn 10:30; 17:21):
I and [my] Father are one.
That they all may be one; as thou, Father, [art] in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us … .
Our evolutionary task and journey is made possible through the presence and activity within each one of us of the Mystic Christ. As Lutyens (1926:89) puts it:
The Spirit crucified in man that he might live, man dying in form that he might release the life, the Wine poured forth, the Body broken, the Garden of Gethsemane and the Hill of Golgotha – these are but stages on the pathway of the Cross, at the end of which is the glory of the Resurrection, the ineffable brightness of the Father’s glory.
The Anonymous Christ
The present writer, in an article entitled “The Anonymous Christ” (Ellis-Jones 2008a) and published in Communion, has written this about the Christ who is sometimes referred to as the “Anonymous Christ” (2008a:33):
... the Personality of Jesus, through whom the Living Christ expresses Itself, can be experienced as a living presence; for he comes to us, and visits us, in our home and in our community. Yes: the Christ comes to us through an idea, a word we hear, and a person who is suffering or joyful. We meet this Christ in our interactions with others. Everyone we meet, everyone we serve, is in the image of Jesus. Roman Catholics understand this so much better than Protestants. Yes, the Anonymous Christ, as it is known, comes to us in so many ways, and we fail to recognize that Jesus’ incarnation, the very manifestation and Self-expression of the Living Christ, continues all the time, in us and in other people.317
The primary, but by no means the only, Biblical basis for this special manifestation or Self- expression of Christ can be found in Matthew 25: 33-40.318 Leadbeater himself, in an article originally published in The Adyar Bulletin (1911:Online), wrote insightfully of this
317 See also Ellis-Jones (2008c).
318 The Gospel Reading for the Sixth Sunday after Trinity in The Liturgy: see “The Anonymous Christ” (Ellis- Jones 2008a).

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Anonymous Christ, whilst making pointed reference to the salient part of the above mentioned verses from Matthew’s gospel:
... In the twenty-fifth chapter of Matthew will be found a striking account, said to have been given by the Christ Himself, of what is commonly called the day of Judgment, when all men are to be brought before Him and their final destiny is to be decided according to the answer which they are able to give to His questions. Remember that, according to the theory, the Christ Himself is to be the judge on that occasion, and therefore He can make no mistake as to the procedure. What then are the questions upon the answers to which the future of these men is to depend? From what one hears of modern Christianity one would expect that the first question would be: “Do you believe in Me?” and the second one: “Do you attend Church regularly?” The Christ, however, unaccountably forgets to ask either of these questions. He asks: “Did you feed the hungry, did you give drink to the thirsty, did you clothe the naked, did you visit those who were sick and in prison?” That is to say, “were you ordinarily kind and charitable in you relations to your fellow-men?”
And it is according to the answers to those questions that the destiny of the man is decided....
Leadbeater also wrote in the same article that “on this subject the teaching of the Christian scripture is exactly the same as that of Theosophy” (1911:Online). When we live selflessly for others, crucifying our “little selves” (our “victory ... over the lower nature”, in Leadbeater’s words) for the sake of the one true Self, the ground of our being, indeed all Being, we not only encounter the Anonymous Christ, we also share our saving experience of that Christ with those with whom we come into contact.
In an attempt to bring all of this into some sort of coherent whole, one can do no better than quote from Bishop Wedgwood (1928d:Online):
In our Church we have the Christ within us, but you have also special intensification of the power of the Christ without us which can awaken and draw out into fuller expression the power of the Christ within us.

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CHAPTER 4
EXPERIENCING THE CHRIST THROUGH LIBERAL CATHOLIC EXPRESSION Christ in the Liberal Catholic Liturgy
The Liberal Catholic Liturgy
The English word “liturgy” comes from the Classical Greek word λειτουργία (leitourgia), which means “public work”.319 When we refer to a “liturgy” of any particular church we are generally referring to the written text (in the form of, say, a missal, congregational prayer book or other divine liturgy book) accompanied, supported and given effect to by the various rituals, ceremonial, traditions, rites, practices and formulae that are ordinarily and regularly observed and followed by the church in question as part of their corporate act or acts of public worship. The Catholic Encyclopedia has this to say about the etymology, interpretation and, perhaps more importantly, application of the Greek word for liturgy:
Liturgy (leitourgia) is a Greek composite word meaning originally a public duty, a service to the state undertaken by a citizen. Its elements are leitos (from leos = laos, people) meaning public, and ergo (obsolete in the present stem, used in future erxo, etc.), to do. From this we have leitourgos, "a man who performs a public duty", "a public servant", often used as equivalent to the Roman lictor; then leitourgeo, "to do such a duty", leitourgema, its performance, and leitourgia, the public duty itself.320
James Ingall Wedgwood was an outstanding liturgist.321 Of that there is no doubt.
Bishop Wedgwood has written of the singular importance of liturgy as a means and vehicle for personal and collective transformation (1976b:147):
One of the great advantages of Church training, rightly understood, is that it develops this ability to modify our consciousness as we wish in response to the demand of the Liturgy with its constant flow of key-ideas and in the fellowship of the other members of the Lord’s mystical body.
319 The term is frequently used in the Greek text of the New Testament: see, eg, Acts 13:2.
320 See A Fortescue, "Liturgy", in The Catholic Encyclopedia, vol. 9 (New York: Robert Appleton Company, 1910) [Online version] viewed 9 April 2009, from New Advent: <http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/09306a.htm>.
321 Merriam-Webster Online defines a “liturgist” as “one who adheres to, compiles, or leads a liturgy” as well as “a specialist in liturgics”: see <http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/liturgist> (viewed 9 April 2009).

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It is generally acknowledged that Bishop James I Wedgwood was the principal author of The Liturgy According to the Use of the Liberal Catholic Church. In his tribute to Bishop Leadbeater on the latter’s passing, Wedgwood wrote the truth when he said:
The writing and compilation of the Liturgy was mostly done by myself.322
However, there is enough anecdotal and other material to conclude that, as Bishop E James Burton wrote in his short biography of Wedgwood (see Wedgwood 1976b:x), “the task of revising the Liturgy”323 occupied both Bishops Leadbeater and Wedgwood “for [some] three years”.324 Burton makes it clear that the “superb language” was “the work of Wedgwood”, and that is undeniably the case. Wedgwood had a profound interest in church liturgy and ritual per se, whereas some writers in recent times (see, eg, Ellwood 1995:320) have even gone so far as to state that C W Leadbeater’s main interest was more a case of his “having become persuaded that Theosophy needed a liturgical expression”. However, there is no doubt that Bishop Leadbeater did assist on the Collects, and also selected, either alone or in association with Bishop Wedgwood, the Psalms, canticles, and the various Epistle and Gospel readings for each week as well as those for use on other special occasions.
It is said by some that Bishop Wedgwood stated that The Liturgy “owes its lineage” to The Divine Liturgy of Saint Chrysostom325 and is “not a modification of the Roman Mass” but “rather takes more of its wording and flow and energies” from one of the liturgies that is still in use in the Byzantine Orthodox Church.326 Now, what Wedgwood did have to say concerning this matter is relevantly as follows (1928a:Online):
Isn't the Liberal Catholic Church merely another "reformation" of the Roman Catholic Church?
322 From “Bishop Leadbeater Remembered”, The Liberal Catholic, April 1934; [Online extracts] viewed 8 April 2009, <http://www.cwlworld.info/html/liberal_catholic_church.html>.
323 Emphasis added.
324 The work of revising the Liturgy was completed by June 1919. A full edition of The Liturgy According to the Use of the Liberal Catholic Church was published on St Alban's Day that year.
325 This Divine Liturgy, which follows the traditions of the city of Constantinople where the early church father, and one of the four great Greek doctors of the Christian Church, St John Chrysostom (c347–407) served as archbishop/patriarch, is the primary worship service of the Eastern Orthodox Church. St Maro (Maron/Maroun), patriarch and patron saint of the Maronites, was a friend of St John Chrysostom; Maroun’s pupils took the Christian faith from Syria to Lebanon and then to the Holy Land, Egypt, Cyprus and other countries in the region. Syriac Christianity is a most early Christian tradition.
326 See “Liturgy of St John Chrysostom: The Basis of the Liberal Catholic Liturgy”, in “Liturgy”, The Global Library: The Old Catholic Church (website), [Online] viewed 17 March 2009, <http://www.global.org/Pub/JC_Liturgy.asp>.

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No! The question does not therefore arise whether there is to be any parallel reformation of the Greek Orthodox Church.
The Liberal Catholic Liturgy is in this general sense a reformation of the Liturgy of St Chrysostom.327
Dr John Chryssavgis, a Greek Orthodox priest, official and academic, in an article entitled “The Lima Statement and The Holy Eucharist: An Orthodox Perspective” and published in the October 1991 issue of The Australasian Catholic Record, has made reference to The Divine Liturgy of St John Chrysostom, as well as that of St Basil, in the context of the notion of the Holy Eucharist and Christ’s so-called “propitiatory sacrifice”. Chryssavgis writes (1991:444):
The phrase “propitiatory sacrifice” which is adopted from Roman Catholic theology may be understood by the Orthodox only in the sense of the Greek adjective hilasterios, saving and redemptive. The sacrifice must be seen as a self-oblation of freedom and love for the world and not as an obligation, a need to satisfy a “Father in heaven” – it is pleasing to Him not because He needs a sacrifice from us but because “the one who offers and is offered” (cf both The Liturgy of St John Chrysostom and that of St Basil) is glorified by this gift when it is accepted. [Irenaeus, Against Heresies IV, 18, 1.] The blood shed on the Cross may only be interpreted in terms of the love of the martyrs and saints of the Lord.328
This Greek Orthodox understanding of propitiation, coming as it does from a tradition of philosophical and theological thought very much akin to Christian theosophy and thus Liberal Catholic thought, should readily find favour with many, if not most, Liberal Catholics who long ago turned their backs on traditional notions of vicarious atonement and associated ideas such as expiation and propitiation. When propitiation, and sacrifice, are spoken of and understood in terms of Self-giving and Self-oblation, and freedom and love, and even redemption, the idea of the Eucharist, indeed all worship, as a sacrifice becomes much more intelligible and sensible. This Greek Orthodox understanding finds expression in various parts of The Liturgy, particular in the Service of the Holy Eucharist. Examples include but are not limited to the following:
We adore thee, O God, who art the source of all life and goodness, and with true and thankful hearts we offer unto thee this token of thine own life-giving gifts bestowed upon us, thou who art the giver of all. (Liturgy 211; 230)
327 Emphasis in the original. When one reads The Divine Liturgy According to St John Chrysostom (Wedgwood 1982) one finds in that Divine Liturgy many passages that are identical or otherwise very similar to those in The Liturgy (of the Liberal Catholic Christ), especially those sections dealing with such matters as the Consecration, Elevation and Fraction of the Sacred Host.
328 Emphasis in the original.

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Uniting in this joyful sacrifice with thy holy church throughout the ages, we lift our hearts in adoration to thee, O God the Son, who art consubstantial and coeternal with the Father, who, abiding unchangeable within thyself, didst nevertheless in the mystery of thy boundless love and thine eternal sacrifice send forth thine own divine life into the universe and thus didst offer thyself as the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world, dying in very truth that we may live. (Liturgy 215)
Thou, O most dear and holy Lord, hast in thine ineffable wisdom ordained for us this blessed sacrament of thy love, that in it we may not only commemorate in symbol thine eternal oblation, but verily take part in it and perpetuate thereby within the limitations of time and space, which veil our earthly eyes from the excess of thy glory, the enduring sacrifice by which the world is nourished and sustained. (Liturgy 215)
It would appear that the starting point for the creation (or “revision”) of what was to become The Liturgy began with an existing liturgy (namely, that of the Old Roman Catholic Church in Great Britain) which was basically an English translation of the Dutch Old Catholic Missal compiled by Archbishop A H Mathew. In a letter, dated 5 September 1916, from Leadbeater to Annie Besant, Leadbeater described the task as being one of “reconstruction of the Catholic Ritual” with the aim of producing a new liturgy which would be “the only one combining the power of the ancient Church with a true Theosophical expression of the real relation between GOD and man"329 (quoted in Jinarājadāsa 1952:5). Tillett ([1986] 2008:Online) writes:
The Liberal Catholic rite, which emerged over the year which followed, was based in part on Roman Catholic and Anglican sources, and was influenced by the elaborate ceremonial of the Catholic Apostolic Church (the so-called "Irvingites") and Archbishop Mathew's liturgy. The ceremonial, as distinct from the liturgical text, was based on J D H Dale's translation of Baldeschi's Ceremonial According to the Roman Rite, in addition to the standard work on the Roman Rite, Adrian Fortescue's The Ceremonies of the Roman Rite Described which had replaced Baldeschi. They were also influenced by the standard Anglo-Catholic ceremonial text, Ritual Notes.330
Thus, it would appear that what is now The Liturgy is a syncretization and revison, indeed a reconstruction or “reformation”, of a number of different liturgies, including those of the Roman (Latin) rite, the Old Catholic Church rite, and the rite of the Church of England (through its Book of Common Prayer), and the Divine Liturgy of St John Chrysostom. Bishop Leadbeater, in The Science of the Sacraments, writes ([1920/1929/1967] 1967:133- 134):
329 Emphasis in the original.
330 See Ch 17, Charles Webster Leadbeater, 1854-1934: A Biographical Study by Gregory Tillett ( PhD Thesis, The University of Sydney, Sydney, 1986), [2008 Online version published at Leadbeater.org] viewed 18 March 2009, <http://leadbeater.org/tillettcwlchap17.htm>, endnotes omitted.

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The Liturgy of the Eastern Church has a delightful feeling which is refreshingly different from our Western Liturgies, but is rather odd and very vague—not at all clear in outline or idea. The thought-form behind the Anglican Prayer Book is largely spoiled by being so broken up by the numberless different usages and divisions in that branch of the Church. … The atmosphere of many of its compartments makes one feel somehow rather straight-laced; but its great beauty of language and quite dignified sense of reserve combine to sound a note of stately beauty and spiritual refinement.
The body of thought behind our own Liturgy is conspicuous by reason of its amazingly brilliant colours. … This act of grace is made possible only by the fact that we have cut out all depressing or falsely humiliating passages from our Liturgy. … Another factor is that we are slightly in touch with the Roman Liturgy-form, and this helps in producing this effect of mellowness and prevents our own Liturgy-form from becoming too hard and glittering. Having to some extent followed the beautiful language of the Anglican Prayer Book, our thought form is not without a touch of its chaste refinement.
The end result331 is similar to that which was achieved by the Maronite Catholic Church, in its Divine Liturgy, that is, the exact kind of a liturgy that one would expect from an Eastern- leaning Western Christian Church in the Catholic tradition. The only difference, insofar as the Liberal Catholic Church is concerned, is that its historical roots lie more firmly in the Western Christian Church than is the case with the Maronite Church. However, both churches have drawn heavily upon the ideas, writings and teachings of the early Eastern Church Fathers whose thinking was much more mystical than those Church Fathers who would later gain ascendancy in Rome. Sadly, the bulk of the traditional Christian Church, in both its Roman Catholic and multifarious Protestant manifestations, has been predominantly a Western leaning church ever since the “conversion of the Roman Empire in the fourth century and the evangelization of Europe beginning in the seventh century” (Rohr and Martos 1989:4), not to mention the events of the Protestant Reformation in the 16th and 17th centuries.
Be that as it may, the Liberal Catholic Church expressly acknowledges what some more progressive Roman Catholic Christian theologians such as Rohr and Martos also acknowledge to be a fact, namely that the Catholic tradition is “a religious tradition with both Eastern and Western cultural elements” and that, as an Eastern tradition, “Christianity is a wisdom tradition” (Rohr and Martos 1989:4). What makes the Liberal Catholic Church very special is the emphasis it gives as a church in its Liturgy to that Eastern wisdom tradition whilst also retaining much of the language, thought forms and teaching of the Western
331 Known as either the Liberal Catholic Rite or the Liberal Rite.

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tradition. This is, in the opinion of the present writer, altogether appropriate, given that the real Jesus was a man of the East who belongs as much to Asia as to the West.
Insofar as the Liberal Catholic Church is concerned, David Revill, in his biography of the eminent composer John Cage, writes of Cage’s interest, at one point in Cage’s life, in the Liberal Catholic Church and of his attending services at St Alban’s Liberal Catholic Pro- Cathedral in the Hollywood Hills.332 Revill (1992:31-32) offers a most apt description of the distinctive flavour, idiosyncrasy and yet wonderful “balance”, if that be the right word, of the Liturgy and services of the Liberal Catholic Church:
The Liberal Catholic observance was a kaleidoscope of the most theatrical elements of the principal Occidental and Oriental rituals.
In a similar vein, but somewhat dismissively and altogether inadequately, Ellwood (1995:320) has described The Liturgy as being “a liturgy and ceremonial of Catholic type but with concessions to Theosophical concepts”.333 However, former Archbishop of Canterbury (1961-74), the late Lord Michael Ramsey, when he was the Anglican Bishop of Durham (in the years 1952-56), was just one of many mainstream traditional Christians who over the years have paid tribute to Bishop Wedgwood for “the excellence of the phrasing as language of liturgy and worship” (Burton, in Wedgwood 1976b:x). Dr Ramsey made special mention of the Prayer of Consecration in the Longer Form of the Service of the Holy Eucharist, referring to its “great logical aptness ... [its] language and acts in time – models and a rite and a ceremony disclosing the eternal ... appropriate to adoration and mystery and worship, what the prayer calls heartfelt love and reverence” (Burton, in Wedgwood 1976b:xi).
As E James Burton has pointed out in his short biography of the principal author of The Liturgy, “Bishop Wedgwood was the source, fons et origo” (Burton, in Wedgwood 1976b:xi). Wedgwood himself has written (1929:52):
A liturgy has to be carefully compiled by people who know to a reasonable extent what they are doing. The liturgy of the church in which I am privileged to work has
332 Revill (1992:32) refers to the opposition from Cage’s family to his (Cage’s) involvement in and enthusiasm for the Liberal Catholic Church. Revill writes that Cage discussed the matter with the priest, the Reverend [sic] Tettemer, who dissuaded Cage from deciding in favour of the Church, reportedly saying to Cage: “There are many religions. You have only one mother and father.” (As a sidelight, the former Spanish Mission Adobe style St Alban’s Liberal Catholic Church in Los Angeles, after some remodeling, is now a Russian Orthodox Church.)
333 Worse still, the Australian Roman Catholic apologist and radio broadcaster of yesteryear, Dr Leslie Rumble, once described the Liberal Catholic Service of the Holy Eucharist as “a Theosophical travesty of The Mass”.

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been carefully revised, so as to exclude a number of features that we feel to be defective in the older liturgies and to present difficulty to sincerely-minded worshippers. We have cut out petitions for temporal benefits, and all passages which indicate fear of God, of His wrath and of everlasting hell; all expressions of servile and cringing self-abasement, appeals for mercy, imprecations of the heathen and cursings, and the naïve attempts that one sometimes finds to bargain with the Almighty. The evil of all this is patent to anyone who pauses to look at it.
Wedgwood was very much aware of the power of words to create reality ... or, at least, a special kind of reality. He wrote (1929:51-52):
Words ... are a kind of currency by means of which we exchange thought with one another. ...A word, therefore, is a symbol of thought. It is related to a thought or an emotion, which is to be regarded as its ensouling life. People can use language quite casually and express through it very little of the substratum or “substance” of life. On the other hand, words can be made the vehicle of strong and rich emotion and thought. We can go further still in our ideas ... If a man’s consciousness be sufficiently developed and attuned ... language may be so wielded as to release a great downflow of spiritual power. It is in this attitude that we should approach a liturgy. The words themselves, if properly chosen, are “Words of Power”; they unlock the entry to this universal reservoir of power. Moreover, behind such a liturgy is the accumulated development of centuries. As the leading key-ideas are brought before a congregation, the collective thought of the people can work wonders, and a liturgy becomes a marvelous instrument of self-expression.
The Sacraments
Wedgwood (1928d:Online) has written of the importance of the sacraments:
The Church is a purifying influence. Your thought is carried up to a higher level, so you become more responsive to spiritual influences. The inspiration of our service is the power through the Sacraments, working with the angels, that tends to induce higher modes of consciousness time after time, and familiarizes you with those higher modes of consciousness.334
The Liberal Catholic Church, in the Catholic tradition, is a sacramental church, and affirms the reality of what is known as “sacramental grace”. Now, it is written in Sacred Scripture:
For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God.335
334 Emphasis added.
335 Eph 2:8. Grace works first, even as regards the decision to follow Christ. We are touched by God’s grace and in its workings in various ways, including the acts of others, sickness and other afflictions.

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For those in the Catholic336 tradition, the primary, but by no means exclusive,337 means of grace (indeed, what is referred to as “sanctifying grace”, something that will be the subject of further discussion below) is though the “sacraments”, but what exactly is a “sacrament”?
A sacrament338 is defined in Hexham's Concise Dictionary of Religion339 as "a rite in which God is uniquely active". More helpfully, Saint Augustine defined a sacrament as "a visible sign of an invisible reality". Similarly, the Council of Trent defined “sacrament” as “a visible sign of invisible grace instituted for our justification” (Broderick 1944:142), whilst the Anglican Book of Common Prayer (1662) defines a sacrament as being "an outward and visible sign of an inward and invisible grace",340 and that definition is reproduced in the Statement of Principles and Summary of Doctrine of the Liberal Catholic Church.341 Each sacrament has “three essentials … sensible [that is, outward or visible] sign, divine institution and the power of giving grace” (Shepherd 1977:16).
Wedgwood (1928:6) agrees with those who assert that all life is sacramental, but only “in the sense that all physical activities are a vehicle through which the spiritual element in man may be expressed”. With the utmost respect to Bishop Wedgwood, all of life is sacramental in a very real sense because nothing is separated from the Omnipresence and Omnipotence of God, and everything has the potential for revealing the Presence of God who is present in all things, as all things, as the indwelling Light of Christ. However, in the Christian tradition, an ecclesiastical sacrament was instituted by Christ (Wedgwood 1928:6), and thus is a means by which Christ’s Presence and Power can be made manifest
336 The present writer uses the word “Catholic” to embrace all those non-Protestant liturgical and sacramental Christian churches the majority of which assert, justifiably or otherwise, that their respective episcopates can be traced back to the earliest apostles and consider themselves part of a catholic (that is, universal) body of Christian believers.
337 It goes almost without saying that Liberal Catholics, along with other Catholic (and even Protestant) Christians, acknowledge that God’s grace is also procurable by means of such spiritual practices as one’s own prayers, meditations and internal aspirations as well as Lectio Divina (“holy reading”), quite apart from the communal use of ceremonial and the sacraments.
338 Croucher (nd:Online) writes: “The word comes from the Latin sacramentum, the term used for the coin given to a soldier to signify his oath of loyalty when recruited to serve the Emperor. His allegiance was to Caesar as lord. In the Christian sacraments, we pledge our loyalty to Christ: 'Jesus is Lord' (Romans 10:9)” [italics added].
339 See Irving Hexham's Concise Dictionary of Religion, 2nd ed (Vancouver: Regent College Press, 1999), Definition of "Sacrament", [Online] viewed 10 March 2009, <http://www.ucalgary.ca/~nurelweb/concise/WORDS-S.html>.
340 Besant ([1901] 1914:283) refers to the “outward and visible sign” as being a “pictorial allegory”. Wedgwood (1928:6), noting that “the sacrament is the ‘means by which we receive’ the grace”, goes on to say that the grace comes through the outward and visible sign of the sacrament, hence, again, the notion of a “living” symbol.
341 See Section 4 (The Sacraments), [Final Draft] Statement of Principles & Summary of Doctrine, 9th ed (London: St Alban Press, 2006).

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in the lives of its recipients, for it has been rightly said that we can know God only as God chooses to reveal and give of Itself. Thus, Wedgwood (1928:6) notes:
The Church reserves the word “sacrament” for certain special rites in which the power of Christ is directly operative. Those rites are so wonderful to those who understand anything about them, that we should be careful to safeguard the word.
For the Liberal Catholic, the sacraments are an integral part of “the mysteries of God" (1 Cor 4:1), and the Ancient Wisdom itself. Even The Catholic Encyclopedia acknowledges the more esoteric nature and meaning of a sacrament:
Taking the word "sacrament" in its broadest sense, as the sign of something sacred and hidden (the Greek word is "mystery"), we can say that the whole world is a vast sacramental system, in that material things are unto men the signs of things spiritual and sacred, even of the Divinity.
… The Fathers saw something mysterious and inexplicable in the sacraments.342
In simple terms, grace is power - interior, spiritual power - in the form of “a gift by our Lord of His own perfect life in order that our lives may be transformed and be made like unto His” (Raynes 1961:75). In other words, grace is God’s outpouring of love and blessing in Christ communicated to us, which enables us to progress on our soul journey and enhances our spiritual evolution. Sanctifying grace, in the Liberal Catholic tradition, is the divinely produced power, as well as the resultant state or quality of the human soul, by means of which we are enabled to enter into “that larger consciousness … merging [our] own separate personal consciousness into the larger consciousness … for getting into touch with the Divine consciousness” (Wedgwood 1928c:Online). Such grace uplifts the soul and brings us into contact with “higher things” (see Tettemer [1951] 1974). Here, we are talking about nothing less than that God-Power that is expressed both in the form of the provision of the descent into matter of the Cosmic Christ, the Son, and in the appropriation of the “merits” of that Son’s eternal sacrifice by means of our own internal awakening by spiritual intuition to our own divine selfhood or over-self.343 This grace is God’s gift to the Church.
Sometime Liberal Catholic priest and Theosophist Brian Parry has written that the sacraments are “the means whereby Jesus Christ, through His Church, protects, guides and sustains His people” (1962:7). The old evangelical acronym, “GRACE” (“God’s Riches
342 See Kennedy (1912:Online).
343 Protestants (other than some Anglicans) ordinarily reject the notion of sacramental grace. See, eg, M Dix: "To sacraments considered merely as outward forms, pictorial representations or symbolic acts, there is generally no objection" (The Sacramental System Considered as the Extension of the Incarnation, New York: Longmans, [1893] 1902), p 16.

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at Christ’s Expense”), when esoterically understood, is still quite apt. A sacrament is a free, undeserved sacrificial gift344 from the Living Christ whose nature it is to give of Itself to others so they might have Life, and have it more abundantly (cf Jn 10:10), thereby quickening the spiritual evolution of all who are responsive to the Son’s (especially Jesus’) outpoured life. In short, grace is the gift of God Himself, not just a gift from God. Such grace is available to everyone who is prepared to accept it, “open” it, and “use” it. Vicarious spirituality, one might call it, as opposed to vicarious atonement.345 The latter has no place whatsoever in Liberal Catholic thought and teaching, whereas the former (Jesus’ spirituality) can be “a tremendous, incalculable impetus to spiritual and other growth” (Blanch 1971:15). Indeed, Jesus’ whole life was one of sacrificial self-giving, and he thereby performed “a work of unique and incalculable value to the race, and is therefore justly entitled the Saviour of the world” (Fox 1934:15). Still, each one of us must still “work out our [own] salvation with fear and trembling” (Phil 2:12), although help is available from others, both visible and invisible.
The services of the Liberal Catholic Church, in particular, the services of the Holy Eucharist346 and the Benediction of the Most Holy Sacrament, are powerful vehicles for the reception of this kind of sanctifying grace, liberally interpreted. Thus, Wedgwood (1928e:Online) writes that
… few people, I am afraid, have a realization of God as a living power, and I do not think there is any better way of getting that experience than through the services of the Church. There you have a way of getting that living realization.
Wedgwood (1976b:12-13) also stresses the special benefits that flow from the sacraments especially:
When you add to this the blessing of Our Lord that flows through the sacraments and all the spiritual help from other sources, it will be realised how magnificent this
344 See Section 4 (The Sacraments), [Final Draft] Statement of Principles & Summary of Doctrine, 9th ed (London: St Alban Press, 2006): “... the grace given unto us is a free gift of grace and is not proportionate remuneration for any personal effort on our part.”
345 The “moral influence of the atonement” (cf Peter Abailard) is, in the view of the present writer, the only theory of the atonement (“at-one-ment”) that does not offend against common sense and Sacred Scripture. Jesus’ suffering can be redemptive to the extent that it leads us to moral and spiritual transformation as a result of a deep contemplative recognition that Jesus’ unwarranted suffering and death were the result of “the evil spirit of separateness and selfishness” (see Liturgy 367) on the part of persons who, if we be truly honest with ourselves, were not all that different from ourselves. When we take responsibility for our part in crucifying the good in others and failing to crucify the evil in ourselves, we are reconciled to God.
346From the Greek eucharistia, meaning “thankfulness”, as representing thanksgiving. The English word Eucharist is simply “the Anglicized form of the Greek word meaning thanksgiving” (Shepherd 1977:16). See also Wedgwood (1929:67).

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outpouring may be. The quality of thought and emotion is so much more elevated than the ordinary thinking and feeling of the outer world, that with its greater potency and having a clear and uninterrupted field of action, it really can do much to melt away the hatred and distrust and unhappiness all too prevalent in the world. That is the attitude in which we in this Church work. …
In short, a sacrament, in the Liberal Catholic tradition and Liturgy, is a “living symbol”347 – what H P Blavatsky referred to as “concretized truth” – in that it not only “symbolizes”, “represents” or “stands for” something else (the “inner reality”), it actually is instrumental in bringing about that reality and, in very truth, is that reality; hence, the reference in the Prayer of Consecration to “this blessed sacrament of thy love, that in it we may not only commemorate in symbol that thine eternal oblation, but verily take part in it” (Liturgy 215), and the subsequent reference at the time of Holy Communion to “a living memorial and pledge of thy marvellous love for mankind” (Liturgy 220; 237). Being a living symbol, a sacrament “effects what it symbolizes” (Broderick 1944:142), that is, it both represents and confers grace or spiritual power to the recipient. In the words of Parry (1960):
The Sacraments of the Church exist that man may have more abundant life [cf Jn 10:10] – not merely exist; so that men may be aided to the continual vision of the wonder of living, the joy, the beauty and the challenge of life, of being fully alive fulfilling a divine purpose.
And what of “faith” … and “salvation” (cf Eph 2:8)?
Faith requires both belief348 and trust349 – things of the mind or consciousness that go beyond the intellectual and denotes a wholehearted commitment to the spiritual, as opposed to the material, and to the One Eternal Reality that is in all things as all things, as well as such other things as renunciation, self-surrender, letting go, handing over, an openness to the Truth, a calm acceptance of what is, and a willingness to change ... no
347 Wedgwood (1929:73) points out that the Greek word sumbolon (“throwing together”) “means really a correspondence between a noumenon and a phenomenon, between a reality in the higher archetypal world and its outer physical expression here”. He goes on to point out that symbol and figure “came later to acquire the sense of denying the very reality they originally affirmed”. Hence, in the Service of the Lord’s Supper (or Holy Communion) as ordinarily celebrated in a Nonconformist Church (eg a Baptist Church) the bread and the wine (the latter ordinarily just plain non-alcoholic dark grape juice) only “represent” the body and blood of Jesus Christ. They are mere “elements” conferring no grace or having any saving efficacy in themselves. Even the word “symbol” seems inappropriate to refer to these outward and visible “elements”. (In recent years, however, some Baptist denominations have started to move away from a “theology of the elements” toward what has been called a “theology of enactment” emphasizing the incarnation of Christ within the ecclesial body or church (the so-called “priesthood of all believers”): see, eg, White (2007).)
348 Belief involves, among other things, acceptance of the Truth, Oneness and Omnipresence of God.
349 Trust, which has been described as “belief activated”, involves, among other things, leaning one’s whole weight and resting on the promises and principles contained in Sacred Scripture and as otherwise revealed to us by the Holy Ones, World Teachers, relying also on our own spiritual intuition.

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matter what. In short, faith involves a “believing on”, a “coming to”, a “receiving”, and a “standing firm” and “holding fast” to the eternal verities of the Ancient Wisdom. Maronite Chorbishop Seely Beggiani (2008:Online) writes:
Religious faith is the conviction that all of reality, despite the many aspects of life that seem to go wrong, is radically good and has an ultimate purpose.
As regards salvation, the word itself comes from the same Latin root as the word salve, and refers to a healthy kind of wholeness and oneness.350 As Liberal Catholics we do not believe that we are saved by Jesus’ shed blood on the Cross. It is what that blood represents that saves us – the power of suffering love and that eternal self-sacrifice of Life Itself in the form of Life’s Self-givingness to Itself as well as our givingness of ourselves in sacrificial love to others (cf “the glad pouring out of our lives in sacrifice” in the Service of Solemn Benediction). Liberal Catholics don’t talk much about sin, but it should be remembered that the word sin has an “I” in the middle. The essence of sin is selfishness,351 self-absorption and self-centredness - an attempt to gain some supposed good to which we are not entitled in justice and consciousness - and we all need to be relieved of the bondage of self (“the evil of separateness and selfishness” (Liturgy 367)). That is what salvation is all about, with the aim of recovering all humanity, indeed all created things, to God, thus “proving” God’s love.
The sacraments are a powerful means of grace, and thus of salvation. However, as former Liberal Catholic priest (and later auxiliary bishop) Edmund W Sheehan ([1925] 1977:39) has written:
The reception of the sacraments is not necessary to “salvation.” ...
...The sacraments are among the aids offered to men by the Christ, and their purpose is materially to hasten the unfoldment of their divine nature and thus save men many unnecessary and painful footsteps; to aid all men more quickly to reach their destiny – the peace, the power, the love and the bliss of conscious union with God.
350 Salvation, in its root, simply means health (salus).
351 The present writer recalls his late father often recounting that the Australian-born Anglican cleric Francis O (Frank) Hulme-Moir AO (1910-1979) would, whenever questioned, define sin in those terms (viz “The essence of sin is selfishness”), especially (and relevantly for the writer’s father) when Hulme-Moir was involved in chaplaincy work with the Australian Imperial Force (AIF) during World War II whilst serving in the Middle East, among other places. Hulme-Moir would later become a much loved and respected Anglican bishop (including a bishop to the armed forces), a chaplain to the police force, chaplain-general to the Australian army, and a member of the Parole Board of New South Wales.

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The sacraments also remind us of the great fact that the Absolute One is and always has been Being Itself, even before there was time and space, and has never been absent at any point in time and space since then. Thus, Croucher (nd:Online) writes:
The sacraments presuppose that God has met us in history and that this meeting calls us to regular recollection and re-enactment in order to experience God's real presence in our midst. The grace of God is offered to us in and through these sacraments in a way that we cannot grasp by our own moral efforts.
The Holy Eucharist
As Fr Geoffrey Hodson points out (1977:4):
The Master Jesus did not originate the Holy Eucharist. Actually, he repeated in suitably modified form a very ancient rite appertaining to both the Lesser and the Greater Mysteries, having himself participated therein during his passage through both of them.352
Hodson goes on to write (1977:8) that what became the Christian Sacrament of the Holy Eucharist or the Mass “developed out of not only the Essene but also the Egyptian and Chaldean Mysteries”.353
Whatever be its origins, the Holy Eucharist, also known as the Mass, and in some Christian denominations the Lord’s Supper (albeit in a theologically different form), was an integral part of all Christian worship from the very beginning.354 An American Episcopalian (Anglican) priest Everett L Fullam has expressed it this way (as quoted in Slosser 1979:93- 94):
Now it is true that right from the days of the apostles the worship of the Christians centered in the Lord’s Supper ... And this was basically the only form of worship that they had for the first nearly sixteen hundred years of the Christian faith. After the sixteenth century, the Protestant Reformation, another kind of worship came into being that is characteristic of many Protestant communions. But what goes on in an average Protestant church on a Sunday morning would not be recognized for
352 See also Thiering (1992).
353 This is supported by the comprehensive and meticulous research of Doane ([1882] 1985) contained in Chapter 30 of his book Bible Myths and Their Parallels in Other Religions. Doane also refers to Indian, Parseee, Greek, Persian (particularly as regards Mithraism), ancient Mexican, African and many other parallels as well.
354 See, eg, Acts 2:42 (“And they continued stedfastly in the apostles' doctrine and fellowship, and in breaking of bread, and in prayers”). See also Lk 24:35 (“And they told what things were done in the way, and how he was known of them in breaking of bread”).

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the first thousand years or so in the Christian church as a service of Christian worship.
The Holy Eucharist is first and foremost a “sacrament of ... love” (Liturgy 215), indeed the “heritage of holiest love bequeathed by our Lord” (Wedgwood 1929:72). One Roman Catholic writer, who was in Holy Orders, has referred to this Sacrament as one which Our Lord
when about to depart out of this world to the Father, instituted, in which he, as it were, exhausted the riches of his love towards man, making a memorial of his wondrous works. This, the sacrament of the altar, therefore, is the sacrament of love, which he institutes in person out of love to us, to which he invites us by love, and the end of which is the union of love.355
The Holy Eucharist has been described as “the most solemn of all the Christian sacraments” (Hoeller 1989a:Online) which brings “a special intensification of [Christ’s] Presence, in other words a greater immediacy, for our helping and spiritual awakening and a great outpouring of spiritual power” (Wedgwood 1929:74).
Without doubt, the Holy Eucharist is “the central Sacrament in the Catholic tradition” (Oliveira 2007b:207). Bishop Leadbeater, in The Science of the Sacraments (1919/1924/1942/1967/1983] 1983:1), writes in almost rapturous tones of the enormous significance and importance of the Holy Eucharist:
Unquestionably the greatest of the many aids which Christ has provided for His people is the Sacrament of the Eucharist, commonly called the Mass — the most beautiful, the most wonderful, the most uplifting of the Christian ceremonies. It benefits not only the individual, as do the other Sacraments, but the entire congregation; it is of use not once only, like Baptism or Confirmation, but is intended for the helping of every churchman all his life long; and in addition to that, it affects the whole neighbourhood surrounding the church in which it is celebrated.
The Sacrament356 of the Holy Eucharist, or the Mass,357 is “an action – ‘do this’” (Dix
355 Meditations and Considerations for a Retreat of One Day in Each Month (compiled from the Writings of the Fathers of Jesus, by a Religious), Dublin: M H Gill and Son Ltd, [c1921] 1960, p 48.
356 As regards the divine institution of the sacrament (one of the three essentials of any sacrament) the Liberal Catholic priest T W Shepherd (1977:16) acknowledges that this sacrament was instituted by “Christ at the Last Supper when he said: ‘Take, eat, this is my body … Take, drink, this is my blood … .”
357 The term “Mass”, from the Latin missa, etymologically refers to either a “service”, a “sacrifice”, or a “feast”. The Latin words Ite, missa est can mean “Go. It (that is, the sacrifice) is sent” or “Go. You are dismissed”, with the “you” referring to either the Angels or, as used in other places, the catechumens). As respects the reference to the Mass being a “feast”, we have the Old English word messe, hence the “supper” of the Lord. However, as Wedgwood ([1928] 1984) correctly points out, the derivation of the word is “a matter of some dispute”. See also Wedgwood (1929:67) on the derivation of the expression.

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1945:238),358 being not only “a daily repetition of the sacrifice of the Christ” (Leadbeater [1913] 1954:177) but “a magnificent exercise in yoga for developing self-consciousness at ... higher levels of being” as well as a means of “sending out of spiritual power into the world” (Wedgwood 1928d:Online) to which Bishop Leadbeater has also referred. Symbolically, the Eucharist, albeit a “mystery” (Mowle 2007:182), is a “summary”, in dramatic form, of the whole of the Gospels, namely, the awakening to “the recognition of the One Life” within all persons and things (Wedgwood 1928c:Online), the climax of which is that “the faithful are made one with God and each other by receiving the body and blood of Christ under the earthly forms of bread and wine” (Hoeller 1989a:Online). The whole service of the Liberal Catholic Mass is a sacred mystery drama, something that the late Fr Frank Haines, an Australian Liberal Catholic priest who was a wonderful mentor and great inspiration to the present writer, used to refer to as “the sublimest myth known to man”, involving, among other things, “depth experience and Mystery Present and genuine self- love and practical concern for neighbour” (Ebner 1976: 161).
As Wedgwood (1929:68) rightly points out, “The service of the Holy Eucharist takes the form of a ritual-drama.” That is its form. The purpose of the Holy Eucharist is, according to Bishops Leadbeater ([1913] 1954; [1920/1929/1967] 1967; 1983) and Wedgwood (1928; 1928d; 1928e; 1928f) and certain others (especially Mowle 2007) expressly referred to below is essentially sevenfold:359
1. The Eucharist, with its historical background in the Ancient Mysteries as a cultic ritual of initiation, is a “living symbol”, object lesson, acted parable, mystical dramatization, “representative sacrifice” and a real life “passion play”, so to speak, in the form of a perpetuation, an actualisation (a “making present” in the Eternal Now, as well as “the actualisation of the Church in the time and space of this age and this world”360 (Chryssavgis 1991:441)), a “repossession” or “re-presentation” – in short, an extension in terms of time and space (or “spacetime”), as opposed to a mere repetition,361 of the essential sacrificial nature and character of “God as a living
358 Emphasis added.
359 Having said that, and what is to follow, the present writer is acutely aware of his own limitations and inadequacies. As Raynes (1961:67) has pointed out, “The fullness of this sacrament defeats the greatest theologian to explain in detail.”
360 Emphasis in the original. Chryssavgis (1991) expounds the Greek Orthodox understanding of the Eucharist – an understanding and approach very similar to that held and adopted by Liberal Catholics generally.
361 Wedgwood (1929:68) writes: “It [the Service of the Holy Eucharist] is no more then a question of repetition of the sacrifice, of re-accomplishment of the sacrifice of the Cross, but rather of constant re-presentation in terms

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power” (Wedgwood 1928e:Online), and, more particularly, a “showing forth” before God the Father of “the infinite power of THAT within us which we call SOUL”362 (Corelli 1966:14) in the form of:
a. both:
i. the ongoing descent from Spirit into matter,363 incarnation and cosmic, eternal sacrifice (that is, the continued pouring down of the Divine life) of the Second Person or Aspect of the Blessed Trinity - “Our Lord” - bringing the universe into existence, sustaining it on an ongoing basis, but ever remaining as an ineffable and inexhaustible Holy Presence beyond the earthly limits of time and space,364 and
ii. its ultimate reascent from matter into Spirit (a “return of all creation to Christ who is the King and Lord of the Universe” (Sheen 1961:xviii)),365
thus making possible the progressive divinisation of the world - a world of soul-making that otherwise exists for the making and training of souls366 - to the extent to which we individually and collectively “identify [ourselves] with that great Sacrifice of the Second Person or Aspect of the Trinity” (Wedgwood 1928d:Online), and
b. the sacrifice of the World Teacher (Himself a special epiphany or manifestation of the Second Person or Aspect of the Blessed Trinity) in
of time and space of that primal sacrifice out of time and space to which the world and all created life owes its existence.”
362 Emphasis in the original.
363 This view of the Fall, and the Incarnation, has been shared by some notable Christians who were not Liberal Catholics. See, eg, R J Campbell (1907). Campbell was a Nonconformist preacher in London. In his book The New Theology he saw the Biblical doctrine of the Fall as an allegory of the descent of God’s life into the finite realm. Campbell also believed that, whilst there was a distinction between humanity and divinity, all people have within themselves the God-given potential to “be as Christ”, that is, to be “partakers of the spirit of Christ”.
364 Thus, we read in the Bhagavad-Gîtâ (10:42), “I established this universe with one fragment of Myself, and I remain.”
365 Mathews (1981:62) writes: “The Apocalypse envisages the passing away of the heavens as well as the earth and sea to make way for a renewed universe.” See also Hagger (1993), an exponent of philosophical, religious and cosmological Universalism, who asserts that Light is the universal energy that manifests Itself into and as the universe and also guides and directs both our spiritual unfoldment as well as our ultimate destiny and that of the universe itself. Bishop James Burton, in a superadded footnote in Shepherd (1977:16) writes: “The cosmic significance of the Eucharist is made very clear in the Orthodox and other Eastern Liturgies.”
366 Corelli (1966:14) refers to “the infinite power of THAT within us which we call SOUL … [which is] capable of exhaustless energy and of readjustment to varying conditions” [emphasis in the original].

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descending into incarnation to assist in our ongoing spiritual growth and evolution, such sacrifice being understood as “a self-oblation of freedom and love for the world and not as an obligation, a need to satisfy a ‘Father in heaven’”367 (Chryssavgis 1991: 444), and
c. the essential oneness, wholeness, unity, indivisibility and ultimate indestructibility of all life, and all that is, symbolically represented by, and fully but microcosmically concentrated in, the Sacred Host (Itself a living symbol of the All-ness of Life, in the very real sense that all of life can be said to be present within the confines of this otherwise very little wafer of bread, itself a miniature of the “Eternal Now”),368 and
d. the “Divine Life coming into manifestation” (Wedgwood 1928d:Online) with the breaking of the Sacred Host, “since the outflow of force evoked by the consecration has a special and intimate connection with that department of nature which is the expression of that divine Aspect [namely, the Second Aspect of the Deity]” (Leadbeater [1913] 1954:531-532), that we might “become partakers in the divine nature” (see 2 Pt 1:4).
2. The Eucharist is a celebration, re-presentation, living and perpetual memorial and commemoration369 of both the life and the final drama of the passion, death, resurrection, ascension of Jesus of Nazareth370 (“and of the benefits which we receive thereby” (Raynes 1961:62)), who, it is said by some at least, was overshadowed by the World Teacher over a three-year period, who otherwise gave his life that we might awaken to our spiritual heritage and birthright, that is, the full
367 Emphasis in the original.
368 One is reminded of the words of William Blake (from “Auguries of Innocence”): “To see a world in a grain of sand/And a heaven in a wild flower,/Hold infinity in the palm of your hand/And eternity in an hour.” The circular shape of the wafer is itself illuminating. As previously mentioned, in the ancient occult tradition metaphysics was often spoken of as sacred geometry or simply geometry. The circle, a most ancient and universal symbol, represents, among other things, life that has no beginning and no end (cf the Gnostic concept of a “world serpent”, in the form of a circle, eating its own tail), eternity, infinity, Heaven, the universe, the cosmos, perfection, purity, God, Spirit (or Force), Ultimate Oneness, the cycle of existence (human and otherwise) and associated notions of karma and reincarnation. More relevantly, especially in the context of the Holy Eucharist (cf the circular shape of the Sacred Host), the circle, being unbroken in nature, also represents a “sacred place”.
369 See, especially, 1 Cor 11:24.
370 Corelli (1966:14) writes concerning Jesus: “His real LIFE was not injured or affected by the agony on the Cross, or by His three days’ entombment; the one was a torture to His physical frame … the other was the mere rest and silence necessary for what is called the ‘miracle’ of the Resurrection, but which was simply the natural rising of the same Body, the atoms of which were re-invested and made immortal by the imperishable Spirit which owned and held them in being” [emphasis in the original].

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awareness of God’s indwelling Spirit within us, and whose “wholesome presence by means of the mystery of the Holy Eucharist sustains those who remain faithfully on pilgrimage” (Mowle 2007:183). Maloney (1990), a Roman Catholic, refers to the Eucharist as the presence of Jesus to the broken (in the words of Walker 1991:458). The present writer often uses the phrase “vicarious spirituality” to describe the inestimable benefits that can be derived from a complete identification with, and surrender to, what may be termed the Way of Jesus, or the “Higher Life”. This is not to be confused with any traditional notions of expiatory or propitiatory371 vicarious atonement or sacrifice.372 In the Christian tradition, the service of the Eucharist also commemorates the sending of the Holy Spirit, by which the benefits of Christ’s sacrificial love - his whole life was one of self-giving and sacrificial love - are made available to believers.373 Maloney refers to the Eucharist as reflecting the practice of Jesus in his life (in the words of Walker 1991:458). Wedgwood himself ([1928] 1984:41; 2009:23) wrote that “the holy bread” was Jesus’ “vehicle or instrument through which His Life and blessing are communicated to us”, and that “Jesus speaks of a mystical sustenance through which His followers draw their spiritual life from Him, even as He lives by the Father who sent Him” ([1928] 1984:39; 2009:22). Wedgwood thus makes it clear that the species of bread and wine become “vehicles for the Lord’s life, and in that way he is received mystically” (Shepherd 1977:16).
3. The Eucharist is a service of thanksgiving, taking the form of a sacrifice on our part and a means of showing the thanks,374 praise, worship and devotion due to the Lord Christ by the Church for the work of creation and world redemption (the latter referring to a return to “the path which leads to righteousness”; cf The Confiteor). Thus, in lifting our consciousness, we are consecrated and transformed375 and later,
371 Cf Canons of the Council of Trent, Sess XXII, cap i-ix: “a propitiatory sacrifice, which may be offered for the living and the dead, for sin, punishment, satisfaction and other needs”. See Chryssavgis (1991) for a Greek Orthodox perspective which is much closer to Liberal Catholic thought and teaching.
372 Byron (1991), writing from a Roman catholic perspective, expounds an almost unconventional view that the use of the word “sacrifice” in relationship to Jesus’ death is, or at least ought to be, used “analogously or metaphorically of the death of Jesus, not literally” (in the words of Walker 1991:460).
373 See, especially, Mt 26:28.
374 See, especially, Mk 14:23. In the traditional Jewish meal, thanksgiving was offered for the redemption of Israel. In the Eucharist, just as Jesus gave thanks and praise for the redemption of the whole world, so we, in our service of the Eucharist, offer thanks on behalf of the whole world in gratitude for its ongoing redemption according to God’s cosmic plan.
375 Cf the Roman Catholic Doctrine of Transubstantiation. We Liberal Catholics place greater emphasis on the need for our own transformation or transubstantiation whilst still affirming the Real Presence of Our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament. As Wedgwood has written (1929:74): “Christ’s Life is in everybody, but is certainly more

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in the actual partaking of communion, we “finally merge [our] thought of the Second and Third into the First Aspect of the Trinity” (Wedgwood 1928e:Online), that is, we come to directly experience Being in all of Its phases of absolute as well as relative existence (“Ultimate Reality”).
4. The Eucharist is a communal sacred meal such that, through the Eucharist, “in a purely spiritual sense, all believers - dead, living, and yet to be - are united as one in the body of Christ (also known as the Church)” (Wilson, with Slattery 1984:132). Wilson, a Christian psychiatrist, rightly refers to the Eucharist as a means by which all believers, including those who have died, partake in a “mystical communion” (again at p 132). In the Eucharist we partake not only of God and communicate with Him, but also with our brothers, that is, “all those who accompany Him, with all those who are incorporated in Him, [indeed] with all mankind” (Evely [1963] 1967:70). As Rohr and Martos (1989:72-73) write:
The broader symbolism of the Eucharist is the Body of Christ, understood not just in Communion but through Communion. We do not receive the sacramental bread and wine alone. We receive it at a sacred meal with others. We all partake of one sacrament, one Body of Christ, and in doing so we signify that we are willing to be one Body of Christ. As St Augustine said centuries ago, the Eucharist invites us all to become what we eat.
The connectedness of the Eucharist is also therefore our connectedness with one another. We are not alone. We are not isolated individuals. We are not in competition with each other but in communion with each other. ...
5. The Eucharist is a means or mode by which we, the faithful, can derive grace - a “tremendous radiation of power through the service of the Church (Wedgwood 1928c:Online) - and thus:
a. mystically receive Christ, according to the extent to which the Christ is awakened in each, in the form of a communal meal in the nature of a sacred banquet (also bearing in mind that the “greatest means of spiritual aid and physical healing is … in the Holy Communion” (Leadbeater 1919:Online)), and
manifest and more expressed through some people than through others. The degree of presence depends on the object which expresses it.”

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b. affirm and celebrate not only our communion376 with both Christ and each other but also our essential oneness in Christ, and
c. “awaken [a] real passion for peace and brotherhood” (Wedgwood 1928c:Online), and
d. look forward to our ultimate attainment of Christhood in the form of full and conscious communion with God the Father, the Absolute - indeed, there is, especially in our Liberal Catholic service of the Eucharist, a showing forth and anticipation of the final unity of all things in Christ (“wondrous and mystic communion with thee” (Liturgy 220, 237-238)).377
As we “eat the bread” and “drink the cup” (the “sacred mysteries of thy Body and Blood” (Liturgy 220)), which offerings of bread and wine have since become “the channel or vehicles of Christ’s Presence” (Wedgwood 1929:72), thereby being spiritually nourished in this mystical sharing of new life, we not only “enter into the Holy Presence of God Himself” (Wicks 1968:14) we thereby participate378 in what, in traditional Christian terms, is referred to as death to sin and resurrection to new life. In other words, we die to “self” and are resurrected, so to speak,379 into newness of Life and Power to go out into the world and do the work of Christ more efficaciously. Part of the purpose of the Sacrament of the Altar is “to strengthen us, so that we can live our lives according to His divine commandment of love” (Wicks 1968:14).
6. The Eucharist is the greatest of all works that we can do for our fellow human beings, by providing help and stimulus to them in the form of a special outpouring of love and spiritual force and blessing generated by and through our positive thoughts and ideas (“the perfect devotion and sacrifice of our minds and hearts to thee” (Liturgy 217)). As Wedgwood has written, this is “the only way to bring about permanent peace” (1928c:Online), through “the sending out of spiritual power into the world” (1928d:Online). By means of our self-giving and outpouring of sacrificial love for the world, we offer ourselves a living sacrifice that it may be taken up into
376 See, especially, 1 Cor 10:16-17.
377 The English Anglo-Catholic churchman and hymnist John Keble wrote these beautiful lines: “Till in the ocean of thy love/we lose ourselves in heaven above.”
378 See, especially, 1 Cor 10:16.
379 Leadbeater, in The Inner Side of Christian Festivals, referred to every stage of one’s spiritual progress and development as being “very truly a resurrection”.

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the one “enduring sacrifice by which the world is nourished and sustained” (Liturgy 215).380 In this way, we become “co-worker[s] with [Our Lord], in helping to bring peace and harmony to all the peoples of our world” (Wicks 1968:14).
7. Microcosmically (for each of us is a miniature copy of the universe),381 the Eucharist is a mystery drama and pictorial representation of the human soul, which comes forth from God, and which labours and struggles in time and space, in exile from its eternal home, in its pilgrimage and on its way to its ultimate re-union with the divine source from which it came. As previously mentioned, the Eucharist re-enacts the descent from Spirit into matter and its eventual reascent from matter into Spirit again. In short, we come from God, we belong to God, we are part of God’s Self- Expression, and we are on our way back to God. God is - we are. Each one of us, according to Leadbeater, is a living battery of spiritual energy, having been made by God the Son an eternal being in the image of God.
Leadbeater (1983) also reminds us that the Holy Eucharist is a pictorial, but otherwise living, representation of both the Blessed Trinity and the Lord Christ Himself. As regards the Eucharist signifying the Blessed Trinity:
 the Sacred Host represents God the Father, the Deity whole and indivisible, the Universal Spirit,
 the Wine represents God the Son, whose Divine Llife is poured down into the Chalice of material form, and
 the Water represents God the Holy Spirit, brooding over the face of the waters (cf the Eternal Mother of God/Chaos/the Great Depth/the Waters of Space).
When the Universal Spirit, in its creative aspect as the Holy Spirit, “unites” with the Eternal Mother, Christ the Son in the form of the universe is brought into being. Blanch (1971:81), after referring to that portion of the service of the Holy Eucharist in The Liturgy shortly after The Commemoration of the Saints in which the priest prays that “by this action, ordained from of old, thy ++ strength, thy ++ peace and thy ++ blessing ... may be spread abroad
380 In traditional Christian terms, the participants offer themselves to Jesus so that their living sacrifice may be taken up into his own sacrifice, and be used by him in the service of the world: see Rom 12; Heb 9:24, 10:19-25; Col 1:24; 1 Pt 2:4-5.
381 Hodson (1977:26) writes: “Spiritually and materially, every Host is as a microcosm of the Macrocosm. Blessed indeed is every recipient.”

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upon thy world” (Liturgy 219, 237), says that the foregoing references are to the three persons of the Holy Trinity:
... “Thy strength” is of the Father, “Thy peace” is of the Son and “Thy blessing” is of the Holy Ghost.
As regard the Eucharist signifying the Lord Christ:
 the Sacred Host represents the essential oneness of the Son and the Father, with Christ the Son resting within the bosom of the Father,
 the Wine represents the indwelling presence and manifestation of Christ the Son in matter in Its positive or male form, and
 the Water also represents the indwelling presence and manifestation of Christ the Son in matter in Its negative or female form.
Under the outward signs of bread and wine (conjointly “the sign which represents and confers grace as they represent earthly food and also signify the grace which supports and nourishes the soul” (Shepherd 1977:16)) we have the Real Presence of what is sometimes referred to as the “Eucharistic Lord”. Wedgwood (1928:151), referring to the Real Presence of Our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament, said this (in a sermon delivered in Sydney on 22 April 1927 on the subject of “The Holy Eucharist”):
It is, of course, quite true that everything is God and that His life expresses itself through every form in the universe, but what we have here is a special intensification of that presence. He is more directly with us, more directly expressed through the consecrated Bread and Wine, than through those ordinary manifestations called bread and wine. It is in that sense that there is the Real Presence in the Blessed Sacrament.
Roman Catholic priest Harry Morrissey (2004:176) refers to the Real Presence in the Mass as being a “mystery of faith”. He goes on to say (at 176-177):
The Church has taken her lead from St Thomas Aquinas in using the word “substance” to express what the English Bishops call “inner reality”. “Substance” is a metaphysical term from Greek philosophy. It is not what we mean by our word

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“substantial.” That would mean physical concreteness. This is about a deeper reality of “being,” and about that becoming the “being” of a people.382
Thus, Wedgwood (1976b:129) writes:
Our physical bodies are the instruments that we use in this physical world for expressing ourselves, and so also in this Sacrament the Bread is the Body of Christ in the sense that the life and the blessing of Christ pour through that Bread as their vehicle on the physical plane.
At the risk of sounding trite, the “Eucharistic Lord” is as real a presence of the Lord as one could ever hope to encounter. Thus, Blanch (1971:69), after referring to the Consecration and the moments shortly thereafter in the service of the Holy Eucharist, writes:
... And let us remember, if we would go further in our thought and conception of the Christ as we think of Him and know Him to some extent that is with us at the moment – it is more than that, as we sing in the second verse of the “Adeste Fidelis”, it is the Presence of “God of God, Light of Light,” that divine aspect of Himself which is “Very God of Very God.” And here His “Presence we devoutly hail.” ...
It is perhaps not possible for us to appreciate this as it really is. We can have only some approximation of an idea about His Presence, But we should always strive for a better idea, a deeper understanding, a wider experience. This Christ is spiritually present, but also actually present, as present as we are ourselves – for the time being in a sense even One of ourselves, but always infinitely greater, to give us the incalculable stimulus of His presence.383
The ongoing presence of the Eucharistic Lord in the Sacred Host distinguishes the Sacrament of the Altar from all of the other sacraments for the reason that the sacrament “does not cease to be when the action which produces it ceases … [it] has a permanent existence” (Shepherd 1977:17).
We have further symbolism, once again in a living sense, in that the Bread (cf flesh) may be said to represent our terrestrial, mortal life, whilst the Wine (cf blood) signifies our spiritual life. Conjointly, both represent or signify our lower and higher natures respectively, and, as Leadbeater used to say, make for “an outpost of [the Lord’s] consciousness”. Finally, as Liberal Catholic priest Blanch (1971:81) points out, the Chalice represents the human soul.
Roman Catholic Archbishop Fulton J Sheen, in his inimitably beautiful manner of writing, has written (1961:xvii-xix):
382 In a similar vein, Wedgwood (1976b:129) refers to “the substance – SUB STANS, that which stands beneath or behind that bread and wine”, noting that “a body is that which is a vehicle of life or consciousness or power, that which expresses the life” [emphasis in the original].
383 Emphasis in the original.

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We must not think of the offering of the bread and wine as independent of ourselves; rather the bread and wine are symbols of our presence on the altar. ...
...
We are, therefore, present at each and every Mass under the appearance of bread and wine; we are not passive spectators, as we might be in watching a spectacle in a theatre, but we are co-offering Christ’s sacrifice to the Heavenly Father. ...
We who are assisting in the Mass, together with all creation, offer ourselves as bruised grain and crushed grapes that we may die to that which is lower to become one with the tremendous Lover. ...
... Bread and wine are withdrawn from profane use and dedicated to God; so we, who are symbolized by the bread and wine, offer ourselves to be made sacred and holy. ...
The Liturgy (232) uses these beautiful words:
We lay before thee, O Lord, these thy creatures of bread and wine, ++ [linking them spiritually with ourselves and] praying thee to receive through them our sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving; for here we offer and present unto thee ourselves, our souls and bodies, to be a holy and continual sacrifice unto thee. May our strength be spent in thy service and our love poured forth upon thy people, thou who livest for ever and ever.
In summary, one can do no better than to quote from Leadbeater’s book The Hidden Side of Things ([1913] 1954:177):
The idea of the service may be said to be a double one: to receive and distribute the great outpouring of spiritual force, and to gather up the devotion of the people, and offer it before the throne of God.
Wedgwood (1928b:Online) has written:
… Remember it is Christ who is working through the Eucharist, not you yourself; He is working at the altar through His celebrant. There is also another way in which way can look at it.
There is the Christ in you who is working through you as you go through the Mass, and if you think of that as you do the Mass, it will be an enormous help.
You have always the duality, the two aspects of Christ the Victim and Christ the Priest. Christ is the High-Priest who offers the Sacrifice, and also the Victim who is sacrificed.
In what sense is Christ both “Victim” and “Priest”? In the words of Bishop Wedgwood again (1928:151):
... [T]he mystical teaching is that Christ is Himself the Victim and the Priest. This is the transcendence of God and also His immanence. He is above His world transcendent and is therefore the Priest – the one who offers the sacrifice. He is

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also immanent in the universe; His life is poured down into matter and he is therefore the Victim who is offered.384
One of the major aims or objectives of sacramental worship is to assist in one’s spiritual growth and development, as well as that of others, indeed (especially, but by no means exclusively, in the Liberal Catholic tradition) the whole universe. Thus, Wedgwood (1928c:Online) writes that the service of the Holy Eucharist is, among other things, a means whereby we can be carried “out of the prison of the separated consciousness into that larger consciousness in which we come to sense the One Life”. He goes on to write:
There is nothing, I think, really more important than the gaining of this recognition of the One Life, which is the recognition of brotherhood. You can make excuses for people, but you can never understand people really until you realize that oneness of consciousness in the divine Life. The antagonism that we feel comes, not from the life, but from the bodies we have brought up from the past lives.
As mentioned above, the service of the Holy Eucharist is a powerful vehicle not only for personal development and self-transformation but also for healing. As Leadbeater (1919:Online) has written:
The greatest means of spiritual aid and physical healing is now given to the patient in the Holy Communion. No greater help both for body and soul can be offered than this, for with the reception of the Sacred Host the human body becomes for a few hours a veritable shrine, radiating the glowing love and power of the Christ.
The Eucharist affirms, celebrates, offers and creates a vision and pictorial representation of what is otherwise a fact – that is, an occurrence in space and time385 – but a special kind of fact that goes beyond our own limited, finite notions of space and time, a miniature of the “Eternal Now”. This is the fact ... this special fact (see Rohr and Martos 1989:72):
The wisdom of connectedness is most powerfully symbolized in the Eucharist, the central sacrament of the Catholic faith. If we understand the Eucharist rightly, we understand that we are not alone. God is with us in the Eucharist, and we need only to open ourselves up to God’s presence to experience it in the prayers and Scripture readings of the Mass, and especially in Communion.
384 See Joad (1951), who makes a strong case for what he, in his book The Recovery of Belief, refers to as his Christian “Transcendence-Immanence” theory of the universe. Like the present writer, the British philosopher and broadcaster C E M Joad was an objectivist when it came to moral values, the most outstanding of which, in Joad’s view, were Truth, Goodness and Beauty. He saw these as being modes or manifestations of God’s Self- revelation of his nature, and proceeded to conclude that this revelation must be regarded as being that of both a transcendent and an immanent Divine Being, “which, though it manifests, is itself other than, the being manifested”.
385 Cf Anderson (1962:14).

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The Historical Jesus
In the two versions (namely, the Longer Form and the Shorter Form) of the Holy Eucharist contained in The Liturgy one finds the following express references to “Jesus”:
 “... And are built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets: Jesus Christ himself being the chief corner-stone” (in The Canticle, Shorter Form only [Liturgy 224])
 “We believe ... in one Lord, Jesus Christ, the alone-born Son of God ...” (in The Creed, in both the Longer and Shorter Forms [Liturgy 209, 229])
 “O Lord Jesu Christ, who didst say to thine apostles: ‘Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you’, regard not our weakness, but the faith of thy church and grant her that peace and unity which are agreeable to thy holy will and commandment” (in The Salutation of Peace, Longer Form only [Liturgy 220])
 “Under the veil of earthly things, now have we communion with our Lord Jesus Christ; soon with open face shall we behold him, and rejoicing in his glory, be made like unto him. Then shall his true disciples be brought by him with exceeding joy before the presence of his Father’s glory” (in the Prayer after Communion, in both the Longer and Shorter Forms [Liturgy 221, 239]).
There are other implied references in the two versions of The Holy Eucharist contained in The Liturgy to Jesus, such as the following:
 “Who the day before he suffered took bread into his holy and venerable hands, and with his eyes lifted up to heaven unto thee, God, his almighty Father, giving thanks to thee, he ++ blessed, brake and gave it to his disciples … In like manner, after he had supped, taking also this noble chalice into his holy and venerable hands … As oft as ye shall do these things ye shall do them in remembrance of me” (in the Prayer of Consecration [Liturgy 216, 234])
 “… as thou, O Lord Christ, wast made known to thy disciples in the breaking of bread …” (in The Commemoration of the Saints [Liturgy 219, 237]).

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In each instance referred to above, the reference to “Jesus” is qualified or even substituted by the addition or insertion, as the case may be, of one or more other words traditionally associated with the name and person of Jesus, as in “Jesus Christ”, the “Lord, Jesus Christ”, “O Lord Christ”, “thy Son” or something very similar. What does one make of this?
It is the view of the present writer that it only becomes possible to fully understand and interpret the above mentioned references to Jesus when regard is hard to the true meaning of the other super-added words – a matter discussed elsewhere throughout this thesis. It is sufficient, for present purposes, to simply note that, metaphysically, the word “Jesus” has often been used to refer not so much to the historical Jesus of Nazareth but to “[t]he I in man, the self, the directive power, raised to divine understanding and power – the I AM identity ... God’s idea of man in expression”.386 Thus, van Alphen (2002:Online) writes that “Jesus means literally ‘the good man’ and ... stands for the personality of every human being who treads the path of purification”.
Elsewhere in this thesis the combination of “Jesus” and “Christ”, as well as the reference to the “Lord Jesus Christ”, are considered. One point should be made at this important juncture: The Liturgy sometimes uses the words “the Lord” in some places to refer to God the Father, in other places to mean “God the Son (or Christ)”, and in others to refer to both, even in the same collect or other sentence.387
However, we Liberal Catholics can learn much from the writings of some of the progressive Roman Catholic thinkers of today, especially those open to inspiration from religious traditions other than their own, including non-Christian ones. For example, Rohr and Martos (1989:9) have this to say about the sacramentality of Jesus himself, and his presence in the Church community:
Because Jesus is the ultimate revelation of God, Jesus is the fundamental sacrament of God. He is the greatest sign of God’s love and presence and activity in the world. The sacramentality of Jesus did not end with the ascension, however. It continues in the Church which, since the days of St Paul, has been called the Body of Christ. The Church as the whole People of God under the headship of Christ incarnates the divine presence in creation, similar to the way that Jesus did this as a single individual. The Church is basically a sacrament of God in the world.
386 “Jesus”, in Metaphysical Bible Dictionary, p 345.
387 See, eg, The Collects in the Service of Prime (“O Lord, our Heavenly Father ... through Christ our Lord”; “O Lord Christ ...”; “Teach us, O Lord, ... through Christ our Lord”).

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There are no express references to “Jesus”, as such, in the Service of Benediction of the Most Holy Sacrament contained in The Liturgy, but there are, in that Service, a number of allusions to the esoteric and mythic nature and “inner meaning” of the Jesus story. Those allusions are also the subject of separate treatment in other parts of this thesis.
The Historical Christ
In the services of the Holy Eucharist in The Liturgy one finds a number of references to the “Historical Christ”, perhaps the more significant ones being the following:
… who spake by the Prophets … [Liturgy 210, 230]
Here do we give unto thee, O Lord, most high praise and hearty thanks for the wonderful grace and virtue declared in the holy Lady Mary our heavenly Mother and in all thy glorious saints from the beginning of the world, who have been the choice vessels of thy grace and a shining light unto many generations. [Liturgy 219, 237]
And we join with them in worship before thy great white throne, whence flow all love and light and blessing through all the worlds which thou hast made. [Liturgy 219, 237]
May the Holy Ones, whose pupils you aspire to become, show you the light you seek, give you the strong aid of their compassion and their wisdom. [Liturgy 222, 239-240]
The Mythic (or Pagan) Christ
In the services of the Holy Eucharist in The Liturgy one finds a couple of references to what has been referred to as the “Mythic (or Pagan) Christ”, but they can equally be construed as references to the “Cosmic Christ”:
… the ineffable sacrifice of thy Son, the mystery of his wondrous incarnation, [his blessed passion,] his mighty resurrection, and his triumphant ascension … [Liturgy 217]
Unto thee, O perfect one, the Lord and lover of men, do we commend our life and hope. For thou art the heavenly bread, the life of the whole world; Thou art in all places and endurest all things, the treasury of endless good and the well of infinite compassion. [Liturgy 220, 238]

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The Cosmic Christ
In the services of the Holy Eucharist in The Liturgy one finds a number of most uplifting, inherently transformative references to what has been referred to as the “Cosmic Christ”, perhaps the more significant ones being the following:
O Lord Christ, alone-born of the Father; O Lord God, indwelling light, Son of the Father, whose wisdom mightily and sweetly ordereth all things, pour forth thy love; thou whose strength upholdeth and sustaineth all creation, receive our prayer; thou whose beauty shineth through the whole universe, unveil thy glory. [Liturgy 206, 226]
Uniting in this joyful sacrifice with thy holy Church throughout the ages, we lift our hearts in adoration to thee, O God the Son, who art consubstantial and coeternal with the Father, who, abiding unchangeable within thyself, didst nevertheless in the mystery of thy boundless love and thine eternal sacrifice send forth thine own divine life into the universe and thus didst offer thyself as the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world,388 dying in very truth that we may live. [Liturgy 215]
All these things do we ask, O Father, in the Name and through the mediation of thy most blessed Son, for we acknowledge and confess with our hearts and lips that ++ by him were all things made, yea, all things both in heaven and earth; ++ with him as the indwelling life do all things exist, and ++ in him as the transcendent glory all things live and move and have their being: [Liturgy 218, 236]
For thou art the heavenly bread, the life of the whole world; thou art in all places and endurest all things, the treasury of endless good and the well of infinite compassion. [Liturgy 220, 238]
... we pray that thou wouldst command thy holy angel to bear our oblation to thine altar on high, there to be offered by him who, as the eternal high priest, for ever offers himself as the eternal sacrifice. [Liturgy 217, 235]
The Mystic Christ
In the services of the Holy Eucharist in The Liturgy one finds a number of references to the indwelling Presence, Power and essential Mystery of God/Christ known as the “Mystic Christ”, perhaps the more significant ones being the following:
Teach us, O Lord, to see thy life in all [men and in all] the peoples of thine earth … [Liturgy 207, 227]
… praying thee, O Lord, that we may evermore abide in Christ and he in us. [Liturgy 211, 230]
388 Cf Rev 13:8.

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Thee we adore, O hidden splendour, thee, Who in thy sacrament dost deign to be; We worship thee beneath this earthly veil, And here thy presence we devoutly hail. [Liturgy 216, 234]
… with him as the indwelling life do all things exist … [Liturgy 218]
Roman Catholic priest Fr Louis Evely, in his book We Are All Brothers, writes beautifully of the experience of the Mystic Christ ([1963] 1967:91):
If you are not dead and risen again, you know nothing of Christ. Before undertaking any apostolate, you will have to kill yourself. How can you bring to others a message of resurrection if you are not dead?
The Anonymous Christ
As mentioned previously in this thesis, Christ, although not a person as such, is nevertheless present in all human beings, indeed in all created things, and it is a very special part of the Ancient Wisdom that the Liberal Catholic Church has a most important responsibility among Christian churches to maintain, teach, promulgate and practise the true gnosis, an important part of which is recognising the Christ in all others. This is the meaning of the Sanskrit phrase Namaste,389 which is a combination of the two Sanskrit words, namah and te, meaning, "I bow to that (divinity) inherent in you". In mystic or esoteric Christianity, the equivalent expression is, “The Christ in me salutes the Christ in you”.
In the services of the Holy Eucharist in The Liturgy one finds a couple of references to what has been referred to as the “Anonymous Christ”, perhaps the more significant ones being the following:
… we know that we do serve him best when best we serve our brother man … [Liturgy 210, 229]
May the Lord enkindle within us the fire of his love and the flame of everlasting charity. [Liturgy 211, 231]
And as he hath ordained that the heavenly sacrifice shall be mirrored here on earth through the ministry of mortal men, to the end that thy holy people may be knit more closely into fellowship with thee … [Liturgy 217]
389 Also Namaskar and Namaskaram.

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We who have been refreshed with Thy heavenly gifts do pray Thee, O Lord, that Thy grace may be so grafted inwardly in our hearts, that it may continually be made manifest in our lives; through Christ our Lord. [Liturgy 222, 239]
On the altar - itself a living symbol of our hearts, minds and will - we offer ourselves (“…we offer and present unto thee ourselves, our souls and bodies, to be a holy and continual sacrifice unto thee …” (Liturgy 212, 232)), under the forms of bread and wine, sacrificing and crucifying our lower selves so as to be consecrated for the service of the Lord, and thereby transformed and changed not only in likeness but also in substance (that is, spiritually “transubstantiated”) such that we become one with the Other, the Absolute, the Universal Spirit within each and every one of us … “so may thy many children know themselves to be one in thee, even as thou art one with the father” (Liturgy 219, 237).
In the words of Jung (1955:317):
The dichotomy of God into divinity and humanity and his return to himself in the sacrificial act hold out the comforting doctrine that in man's own darkness there is hidden a light that shall once again return to its source, and that this light actually wanted to descend into the darkness in order to deliver the Enchained One who languishes there, and lead him to light everlasting.
Finally, the Eucharist looks forward to that day when each of us will come “face to face” with the Almighty Father, the Source and Essence of All:
Under the veil of earthly things now have we communion with our Lord Jesus Christ; soon with open face shall we behold Him, and, rejoicing in His glory, be made like unto Him. Then shall His true disciples be brought by Him with exceeding joy before the presence of His Father's glory. [Liturgy 222, 240]
The Benediction of the Most Holy Sacrament
This “comparatively modern” (Wedgwood 1976b:137) devotional390 service - for that is probably how it is best described - began in the 13th century. In terms of its relationship to the service of the Holy Eucharist, or the Mass, the service of Solemn Benediction has been described as follows:
It is an extension of that very brief section of the mass [sic] when, just before Communion, special devotion is addressed to Jesus present on the altar under the outward signs of bread and wine. The Mass, however, is addressed to God the
390 Wedgwood writes (1976b:145) writes: “Worship means of [sic] giving of ‘worth-ship’ to God. Devotion means ‘to vow oneself away from’.”

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Father and it would overturn the nature of the Eucharistic action to give the Mass over to adoration of the Blessed Sacrament.391
In our Liturgy, as opposed to that of the Roman rite, one thinks especially of the following passages (see Liturgy 216, 234; 220, 238):
Thee we adore, O hidden splendour, thee, Who in thy sacrament dost deign to be; We worship thee beneath this earthly veil And here thy presence we devoutly hail.
...
Unto thee, O perfect one, the Lord and lover of men, do we commend our life and hope. For thou art the heavenly bread, the life of the whole world; thou art in all places and endurest all things, the treasury of endless good and the well of infinite compassion.
According to the Catholic Encyclopedia there are “traces of two distinct elements” in the Benediction service:392
There is of course in the first place the direct veneration of the Blessed Sacrament, which appears in the exposition, blessing, “Tantum ergo”, etc. But besides this we note the almost invariable presence of what at first seems an incongruent element, that of the litany of Loreto, or of popular hymns in honor of Our Lady. Tracing our present service back to its origin we find that these two features are derived from different sources. The idea of exposing the Blessed Sacrament for veneration in a monstrance appears to have been first evolved at the end of the thirteenth or the beginning of the fourteenth century. ...
...
Turning now to our second element, we find that from the beginning of the thirteenth century, a custom prevailed among the confraternities and guilds which were established at that period in great numbers, of singing canticles in the evening of the day before a statue of Our Lady. ...
Now it seems certain that our present Benediction service has resulted from the general adoption of this evening singing of canticles before the statue of Our Lady, enhanced as it often came to be in the course of the sixteenth and seventeenth
391 “What is Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament?” [Online] viewed 13 March 2009, <http://members.cox.net/anglican/what_is_benediction_of_the_bless.htm>. Bishop Wedgwood has also confirmed that the service of Solemn Benediction is “really an extension of the Eucharist” (1976b:137).
392 See Thurston (1907:Online).

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centuries by the exposition of the Blessed Sacrament, which was employed at first only as an adjunct to lend it additional solemnity. ...393
As mentioned previously, there are no express references to “Jesus”, as such, in the Service of Benediction of the Most Holy Sacrament contained in The Liturgy, but there are, in that Service, a number of allusions to the esoteric and mythic nature and “inner meaning” of the Jesus story, hence such references to “O Saving Victim” (in O Salutaris Hostia) and “Priest and Victim” (in the Litany).
Our Liturgy informs us that, in the Service of Benediction of the Most Holy Sacrament, we receive “the blessing of Christ himself through the most holy sacrament” (Liturgy 256). This would appear to be a composite, holistic reference to what elsewhere in this thesis has been referred to as the Cosmic Christ, the Mystic Christ, and, most importantly, the Eucharistic Lord.
The service of Benediction contains a number of allusions to both the Cosmic Christ and the Mystic Christ (very much inextricably bound together), the most significant ones, at least in the opinion of the present writer, being the following, which have been extracted from both O Salutaris Hostia and the Litany (see Liturgy 256, 258- 259):
O Saving Victim, opening wide The gate of heaven to man below, Our foes press in from every side; Thine aid supply, thy strength bestow. All praise and thanks to thee ascend For evermore, blest One in Three; O grant us life that shall not end In our true native land with thee. ...
Thou, whose wisdom all things planned, Held by whose almighty hand All things in their order stand, We, thy church, adore thee.
Thou, whose life and strength pervade Whatsoever thou has made, All-preserver, strong to aid, We, thy church, adore thee. ...
393 Wedgwood has written (1976b:138) of the “intensification of the devotional stage” of the service of Benediction in the Middle Ages, which later took the form of “a reaction against Protestantism, which challenged the doctrine of the objective Presence of our Lord in the Eucharist at the time of the Reformation and onwards”.

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Priest and victim, whom of old Type and prophecy foretold, Thee incarnate we behold; Son of God, we hail thee. ...
Insofar as the Litany is concerned, Wedgwood has written of the Power of the Written and Spoken Word as a means and vehicle of heightening and expanding one’s consciousness (1976b:132):
Various ideas are placed before the people; different conceptions are brought before their minds. Everything is done that can be done to rouse and enkindle the fire of their devotion, in order that every person in the congregation in some way or another, through one sentiment or another that is expressed, may have this devotion stirred and enflamed, and so may gain the full benefit of this quickening Life that is outpoured upon us, the blessing from the Christ Himself.
The service of Benediction contains a most beautiful all-encompassing allusion to the Eucharistic Lord and, beyond that, to both the Cosmic Christ and the Mystic Christ in the following prayer that is said immediately before the Ascription to the Holy Trinity (see Liturgy 261-262):
O God, who in the wonderful sacrament of the altar hast left us a living memorial of thine eternal sacrifice; grant us, we beseech thee, so to venerate the sacred mystery of thy Body and Blood that we may ever perceive within ourselves the power of thine indwelling life, and thus, by the glad pouring out of our lives in sacrifice, may know ourselves to be one in thee and through thee with all that lives; who livest and reignest with the Father in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God throughout all ages of ages.
Wedgwood (1976b:132) writes of the intent and import of the service of Benediction in the following terms:
Various sentiments are expressed in the course of the Litany, sometimes it is one aspect of the Blessed Trinity, sometimes another aspect is invoked. Various ideas are placed before the people; different conceptions are brought before their minds. Everything is done that can be done to rouse and enkindle in the fire of their devotion, in order that every person in the congregation in some way or another, through one sentiment or another that is expressed, may have his devotion stirred and enflamed and so may gain the full benefit of this quickening Life that is outpoured upon us, the blessing from the Christ Himself.
Wedgwood has also written that, “in the service of Benediction we approach the living Presence of the Christ” (1976b:134). Once one accepts the idea that all of life if sacred, holy or divine, then there should be no difficulty in understanding the nature of the “Real Presence” as an objective fact as well as an ineffable mystery. To quote Wedgwood again (1976b:139):

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There is nothing crass or degrading in the idea of the Real Presence if matter is exalted and sanctified as the vehicle of spirit. Does not the Divine Life slumber even in the mineral?
Of even greater significance is that “where the Blessed Sacrament is the centre of the worship, at the Holy Eucharist and at Benediction, [one] is dealing with the influence of the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity brought down through the direct and personalized channel of our Blessed Lord, the especial manifestation or epiphany of that Person” (Wedgwood 1976b:144). However, at the risk of sounding crass or even selfish about the matter, one may well enquire as to the “purpose” of this service of Benediction, leaving aside for the moment the very nature of the service itself, which is one of “devotion”. Wedgwood has written (1976b:146-147):
[The service of Benediction] rehearses before us a number of different attributes of our Lord, and it brings before us certain qualities of character through which we are to fashion ourselves into His adorable likeness. There is no limit to the possibilities that here open out before us.
The service of Benediction leaves many lasting impressions, perhaps the most significant being, in the words of Brooks ([1924] 1977:Online), the following:
 “Substance is God and ... form is Substance in manifestation; hence, form is declared incorruptible because by nature it is perfect.”
 “God is being rediscovered ... [W]e see omnipresent Spirit manifesting in an infinite variety of forms. We believe in the perfection of the manifest because God is everywhere.”
 “As the misconception, dualism, passes, and the true conception of One Presence and Power takes its place, the unity of all life is being revealed as well as the perfect nature of all God manifestation – and there is no other.”394
The Service of Healing
To varying degrees, we are all broken, damaged people in need of healing, and it is demonstrably clear from even the most cursory reading of Holy Scripture that God’s ideal will for us is perfect health. To borrow a cliché from Alcoholics Anonymous, the Church is, or at least ought to be, a “clinic of calm”, and, even more importantly, a place where broken, damaged but otherwise ordinary people can find solace, comfort, healing and strength. One of the major functions of any religion, but most especially Christianity in the form of Liberal
394 See “The Mystery of Healing”, <http://www.angelfire.com/wi2/ULCds/nona1.html> (viewed 2 April 2009).

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Catholicism, is healing. Leslie Weatherhead, a Protestant minister who wrote many scholarly works on the healing ministry of the Church, has written (1951:50):
To separate religion and healing as though they never had any vital relationship is to make nonsense of most of the healing acts of Jesus Christ.
Leadbeater (1919:Online) has written:
The purpose of the Service of Healing is twofold; first, to bring spiritual upliftment to those who are in sore need thereof; second, to give some relief, when possible, to those who are suffering, from various physical ills.
The Coming of the Kingdom of God – the major theme, as we have seen, of the teachings of Christ Jesus395 – was characterised first and foremost by the healing ministry of the Master himself, whose healings were motivated by compassion, at least according to the Synoptic Gospels.396 The late William Weston, a moderate High Church Anglican who believed very much in the healing ministry of the Church, once wrote (1976:5):
The ministry to the sick was an essential part of Jesus Christ’s work. He told his followers that whoever believed in him would do the works which he did, and greater works would the believer do, because he was going to his Father [Jn 14:12].397
Weston also points out there is “a great deal of evidence to show that the Healing Ministry [of the Church] was continued in the early centuries of the life of the Church” (1976:9), and the Apostle Paul lists healing as one of the charismatic gifts.398 Unfortunately, problems began to emerge with the healing ministry of the early Church, even as recorded in the New Testament. The writer of Luke’s Gospel says, “A dispute arose among them which of them was the greatest” (Lk 9:46). This lack of both self-sacrifice and humility on the part of the disciples resulted in their inability to heal the boy who had epilepsy (see Lk 9:37-41). Jesus successfully intervened, healed the boy, and proceeded to rebuke the disciples for their
395 Martin (1960:19) writes that “in the ministry of Jesus of Nazareth, healing the sick plays a part of primary importance”.
396 John’s Gospel construes the underlying object or purpose of Jesus’ healings as being “signs” of the Coming of the Kingdom, and as a means by which “the works of God [may] be made manifest”: see, eg, Jn 9:1-3.
397 In his 1995 book Jesus the Healer Stevan Davies, a professor of religious studies, “translates” the spiritual terminology and thought forms of the Gospel accounts of Jesus’ healings into today’s language of psychology, the result being a de-supernaturalised and altogether credible portrayal of a man whose unbroken communion with the “Christ within” enabled him to be a means by which others who came into contact with him could find healing.
398 See 1 Cor 12:9, 28, 30.

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lack of faith (see Lk 9:42-43). Weston goes on to write that it is the duty of all Christian believers “to enable the Living Christ to continue his works through their ministry of prayer and service” (1976:51).
Dr Norman Vincent Peale399 (see Peale and Blanton 1955:236) has written that “[t]he tendency of the Christian religion has been to ignore its healing element”. However, the healing ministry has always played an important role in the life, teaching and practice of the Liberal Catholic Church, and the challenge for us is to keep that ministry not only going but also growing just as the Master intended.
Roman Catholic priest and author Richard McAlear ([1999] 2005:3) writes that the healing ministry of the Christian Church is “a dramatic proclamation of Christ’s living presence in the world today ... a real experience of His love”. To that extent, the Service of Healing has much in common with both the Holy Eucharist and Solemn Benediction. Christ is at work, in a very real and objective way, not only as the Power and Presence that effects the healing, the means by which such healing takes place, but also the very embodiment within us as the innate potentiality for the healing to take place in the first place – that is, to remove the state of dis-ease caused so often by “sickness in the mind” (negative thoughts and emotions, and so forth) and thus restore body, mind and soul to the state of wellness and ease which is our birthright and God-given potentiality.400
Dr Norman Vincent Peale often wrote and spoke of the need for there to be a “shift in emphasis from self to non-self” (see, eg, [1965] 1966:196)401 for there to be any hope of spiritual and emotional growth and development, let alone healing of body, mind, soul and spirit. Douglas Lockhart has written that “what we need is a resurrection of the self to the self, a resurrection through the senses so that we can unhook ourselves from conscious
399 Peale was one of the first persons – if not the very first – to combine depth psychology with religion. In 1937 Peale established a religio-psychiatric clinic with the Freudian psychiatrist Dr Smiley Blanton in the basement of Peale’s Marble Collegiate Church in New York City. It was America’s first service combining religion and psychiatry for the sake of mental health. The clinic subsequently grew to an operation with more than 20 psychiatrists and psychologically-trained ministers of religion, and in 1951 became known as the American Foundation for Religion and Psychiatry. In 1972 the Foundation merged with the Academy of Religion and Mental Health to form the Institutes of Religion and Health. The organization is today known as the Blanton-Peale Institute.
400 Healing in the New Testament is of two kinds: “physical” (see, eg, Mt 4:24, 10:8; Lk 5:17; Jn 4:47) and “spiritual” (see, eg, Heb 12:13). However, at the risk of stating the obvious, the two are often inextricably interrelated.
401 World’s Work (British) edition (1966).

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distraction and learn, slowly, the difference between having, and not having, a will” (2006:10:Online) and that “[t]o lose the limited self is to ‘wake up’; it is to transcend the self that sleeps and acquires real will” (2006:11:Online). Peale speaks in terms of a shift of emphasis from self to non-self. Lockhart speaks in terms of a resurrection of the self to the self. Despite the difference in language, both are articulating the same fundamental spiritual truth. Now, on the subject of divine healing Dr Peale writes (1957:283):
One way that Christ heals is by restoring spiritual harmony, both within and without the personality. And harmony is so vital to well-being that it cannot be over-stressed. Harmony has a powerful influence in establishing health which may have been undermined by vindictive [or other negative] attitudes.
In a similar vein, Weatherhead has written (1951:317-318):
In such a unity [of body, mind and soul] there cannot be disease at any point, at any level of being, without the whole personality being to some extent affected.
Traditional Christians attribute sickness and disease to the Fall (Original Sin). Interestingly, Jews do not believe in the Doctrine of Original Sin and other associated beliefs such as the so-called Total Depravity of Man. Jews quite rightly accuse Christians, especially fundamentalists and conservative evangelicals, of applying non-Jewish exegetical techniques of Bible meaning and textual analysis to the Hebrew Bible as opposed to using the exegetical techniques that have been approved, endorsed and used by rabbis for hundreds and hundreds of years. It is therefore no surprise at all that so many traditional Christians make strange claims for the “Old Testament” that do not stand up to any form of close or even cursory scrutiny by informed rabbis and Jewish scholars. Fortunately, the Liberal Catholic Church is more enlightened in this and many other respects, rejecting all notions of total depravity and original sin, and instead seeing “sickness [as] a matter of karma” (Wedgwood 1976b:155).402 Indeed, Jesus himself, when asked who had sinned that had supposedly resulted in the blindness of the man born blind, declared, “Neither hath this man sinned, nor his parents, but that the works of God should be made manifest in him” (Jn 9:3).403 For Jesus, healing was a special manifestation of the salvific Power and Presence of God and His divine plan working itself out in individual lives.404
402 Emphasis in the original.
403 See also Jn 11:4. Lazarus’s sickness was to be “not unto death, but for the glory of God, that the Son of God might be glorified thereby.” If we suffer, it is so that God may be glorified through our lives: see 1 Pet 4:14.
404 As previously mentioned, salvation, in its root, simply means health (salus). As regards salvation, the word itself comes from the same Latin root as the word salve, and refers to a healthy kind of wholeness and oneness.

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All healing, by whatever means, is ultimately spiritual (that is, non-physical) in nature. Further, all “healing comes from the Most High” (Sir 38:2).405 The present writer has found in Church services and in meetings of Twelve Step groups such as Alcoholics Anonymous and Narcotics Anonymous the most incredible results of the healing Power of the Written and Spoken Word - what may be termed the “Healing Christ” - but this Christ appears to be simply a special manifestation of Christ Jesus and the “other Christs” elsewhere referred to in this thesis, all of whom are ultimately One and Indivisible.
It should also be kept in mind that healing - the ideal intention and active will of God for all - takes various forms (for example, physical healing, mental healing, emotional healing, spiritual healing, as well as reconciliation in the form of re-establishing broken relationships between ourselves and others or God), but the overall aim is always the same … wholenesss in body, mind and spirit.406 According to Scripture, suffering has several reported purposes, such as to perfect, to establish, to strengthen, and to settle:
But the God of all grace, who hath called us unto his eternal glory by Christ Jesus, after that ye have suffered a while, make you perfect, stablish, strengthen, settle you.407
God always answers our prayers and request for healing,408 but not necessarily in the way we think is best for us. Thus, even where there is no physical healing as such, and even when the most painful form of dying ultimately eventuates, the ability to accept, with calm equanimity and a spirit of godliness, the inevitability of one’s sometimes imminent and otherwise inevitable death, to make the necessary adjustments such that one gains the power to live, with comfort,409 with the problem and even use it creatively for the greater glory of God, and thus to not only endure but actually transcend circumstances that would
405 See also Ps 103:2-3 (“Bless the Lord, O my soul, ... who heals all your diseases”); Jer 17:14 (“Heal me, O Lord, and I shall be healed”). Parry (1960) writes: “Necessarily we must realize that all healing which truly heals may be classified as spiritual healing. It does not matter whether health results from a surgeon’s skill, physician’s care, the ministry of intercession, or anointing with holy oil. All healing which truly heals, or makes whole, can be called spiritual.”
406 See, eg, 1 Thess 5:23 (“And the very God of peace sanctify you wholly; and I pray God your whole spirit and soul and body be preserved blameless unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ”). Insofar as heath and holiness are concerned, see Acts 9:34: “Jesus Christ maketh thee whole.” As Dr Peale would often point out in his writings, sermons and addresses, the three things - heath, wholeness and holiness - have a common origin and, at the deepest level, a common meaning.
407 1 Pet 5:10.
408 See Ps 34:4 (“I sought the Lord, and he heard me, and delivered me from all my fears”).
409 See, eg. 2 Cor 1:4 (“... who comforts us in all our affliction ...”).

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otherwise hold us back and even destroy us spiritually,410 is not only a gift from God (as a special form of blessing) but is also a form of divine healing in its own right: see Clebsch (1974). As Bishop Leadbeater has written (1919:Online):
If a patient is not restored to health even after repeated attempts it must not be thought that the Holy Spirit cannot heal; it may be that there are circumstances and factors, not known to us, which may prevent or hinder the desired results. The Priest will do his best to help the patient; the patient will do his best to prepare himself to be helped; what will come of it is in higher hands than ours - in the hands of Christ the Healer and the King.
Theosophist and former Liberal Catholic priest Brian Parry (1960) writes:
Ill-health is a condition where the individual is not able to express his innate possibilities through his body, mind, and emotions – his personality. This definition applies to most types of sickness or disability, whether they are inherited, organic or functional, or whether it is emotional sickness; all such disorders are barriers to the abundant life which surrounds each individual [cf Jn 10:10]. The Church aims at eliminating those barriers, at helping the patient to restore the free expression of his possibilities.
Similarly, Nona L Brooks, cofounder of Divine Science, wrote in her book Mysteries (see Brooks [1924] 1977:Online) that healing was “not a physical process but, spiritual realization” and that health was “not a condition of physical well-being only but the realization of a state of wholeness in the individual”.411 She also writes that healing is “the turning from the belief in disease to the realization of God’s Presence and Perfect Activity”.
There are so many “Christian” books that have been written on the subject of healing. Many promulgate the totally unbiblical view, for example, that if one is not, say, physically healed, it is because of a lack or deficiency of faith on the part of the person who is sick, as well as several other unbiblical and unscientific ideas. Bishop Wedgwood, in his ever-insightful way, has articulated the need for a certain healthy skepticism on the whole subject of spiritual or divine healing (without, in any way, doubting that there is such a phenomenon, and that we need to be a “healing church” in the fullest sense as was the very earliest church). Wedgwood has written (1976b:154) of the need to exercise “sane and clear thinking on this subject of healing”. For example, even The Liturgy itself expressly
410 See, eg, Ps 41:3 (“The Lord sustains him on his sickbed ...”); Ps 55:22 (“Cast your burden on the Lord, and he will sustain you; he will never permit the righteous to be moved”); 2 Cor 4:8-9 (“We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed”).
411 Online version: see <http://www.angelfire.com/wi2/ULCds/nona1.html> (viewed 2 April 2009).

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recognizes that it is not always God’s will for everybody to enjoy perfect health, whether at all times or otherwise, because of such things as ignorance on our part, a lack of knowledge of the natural laws relating to health and wellbeing, the errors of others, so- called “acts of God”, lack of faith, unwillingness to surrender, and so forth. Thus, we read in that part of A Service of Healing known as “The Unction” (see Liturgy 129):
O Lord, who hast given unto man bodily health and vigour wherewith to serve thee, we pray thee to free thy servants from their sickness (or imperfections or weakness) [so far as may be expedient for them], and by the might of ++ thy blessing to restore unto them full health, both outwardly in their bodies and inwardly in their souls; through Christ our Lord.412
Just as God is Mystery, so is illness, pain and suffering, and God never answers the question “Why?”, because the person who asks such a question doesn’t want an answer, only an argument, for any answer would only lead to another question, “But why not ...?” Perfect health is not always achievable, for it is part of the Mystery of God that God is able to weave suffering into the divine plan for the world.413 As the Apostle Paul wrote (2 Cor 12:9):
And he said unto me, My grace is sufficient for thee: for my strength is made perfect in weakness. Most gladly therefore will I rather glory in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me.
A Service of Healing in The Liturgy makes it clear that healing comes from “Christ the Son of God”. It is the latter who is called upon to “pour down his healing power” (Liturgy 330) upon the person or persons who have come forward for healing. Who or what is this “Christ the Son of God”? In the view of the present writer, it is a composite reference to all the various senses in which the word “Christ” is understood in the Liberal Catholic Church and its Liturgy, but most especially is it a reference to the Person and Power of Christ Jesus who, in the introduction to the Service of Healing in The Liturgy, is referred to as “Christ himself [who] had to apply his treatment twice in the case of the man born blind” (Liturgy 324). This is clearly a reference to a specific incident that is recorded in the Gospels.414
412 Emphasis added.
413 Christian psychiatrist William P Wilson writes (Wilson, with Slattery 1984:94-95) that the service of the Holy Eucharist, “properly understood, is also a powerful tool for bringing about both spiritual renewal and healing”. Wilson (at p 132) refers to the views of Ken McAll, a British psychiatrist, who explains that through the Eucharist a Christian believer “not only shares in Christ’s death and resurrection” but also finds himself or herself in “mystical communion with all believers (also known as saints), including those who have died”. Thus, through the Eucharist “the chasm between heaven and earth is bridged”, which can greatly assist in the grieving process among other things.
414 See Mk 8:22-26.

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Now, although the healing takes place in “the name of our Lord Christ” - the word “name” in sacred scripture refers to the essential nature or character of a person or thing415 - the assistance, that is, the “help” of the “holy Archangel Raphael” is also invoked in the Service. That does not in any way detract from the fact that it is Christ who is “the Healer and the King” (Liturgy 324). Invoking the help of Saint Raphael, one of the “seven mighty spirits before the throne”, is quite appropriate in a service of divine healing as the word “Raphael” (Standard Hebrew רפאל [“rapha”]) means “God has healed”, “God heals”, as well as “God, please heal”, and is also often translated to mean physician.416 Bishop Leadbeater in The Masters and the Path writes ([1925] 1969:Online):
We all stand always in the presence of the Solar Logos, for in His system there is no place where He is not, and all that is, is part of Him. But in a very special sense [the] Seven Spirits are part of Him, manifestations of Him, almost qualities of His – centres in Him through which His Power flows out. ... Raphael signifies “The Healing Power of God,” and He is associated with the Sun, which is the great health-giver for us on the physical plane. ...
In short, although the holy Archangel Raphael has a special closeness and affinity with healing and is, along with all the “glorious saints from the beginning of the world”, a “choice vessel” of Our Lord’s grace and “a shining light unto many generations” (cf Liturgy 219; 237), being ever committed only to do the Will of God, it is the Lord Christ himself who heals and whose wondrous healing power is sought to be made manifest in the Service. Liberal Catholic priest Raymond J Blanch (1963:7) writes:
The source of all strength and health is God within us, about us, above us. In the Healing Service of our church we try to pour in from above us some of its strength and health that is spiritual, mental, emotional and physical – so that we may live and work to the greater glory of God in His World which is about us.
415 See “name”, in Fillmore ([1959] 1981: 137).
416 In Tob12:15 Raphael identifies himself as “one of the seven, who stand before the Lord” (cf Rev 8:2). Raphael may have healed Tobias’ blindness, bound the demon that previously had slain seven husbands of Sarah on her wedding nights, and brought Tobias and Sarah together, but, as the name itself makes clear, it is still God doing the healing. In any event, the reference to the “seven, who stand before God” (cf the “seven mighty spirits before the throne”) is a reference to the seven holy angels who present the prayers of the saints to God. Raphael also features in the 2nd century Jewish Book of Enoch, in which God commands Raphael to heal the earth and bind the demon Azazel. In Jewish lore Raphael is also credited with healing Abraham of the pain of circumcision and is one of the three angels who visited him and his wife Sarah (see Gen 18). Perhaps more importantly, many Biblical commentators identify Raphael as the otherwise unnamed “angel who went down at a certain season into the pool [at Bethesda], and troubled the water” such that “whosoever then first after the troubling of the water stepped in was made whole of whatsoever disease he had” (Jn 5:4). Note the reference to being made “whole” as Raphael is traditionally associated not just with assisting in healing per se but with bringing about wholeness of body, mind and spirit.

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The Service of Healing also enunciates some very important spiritual propositions or principles concerning divine healing.
First, in all aspects of healing, including the manner, mode and extent of healing, God is entirely sovereign, and it is God’s sovereignty (as opposed to faith) that determines health:417
O Lord, who hast given unto man bodily health and vigour wherewith to serve thee, we pray thee to free thy servants from their sickness (or imperfections or weakness) [so far as may be expedient for them], and by the might of ++ thy blessing to restore unto them full health, both outwardly in their bodies and inwardly in their souls; through Christ our Lord. [Liturgy 329]
Secondly, healing is an integral part of God’s plan of renewal,418 re-creation,419 restoration420 and redemption, ultimately in the form referred to in Acts 3:21 as the “restitution of all things” or the “restoration of all” (apokatastasis panton) – the revelation of a new world order and its very nature:
Our outward lips confess the name
All other names above;
Love only knoweth whence it came,
And comprehendeth love.
We need not climb the heavenly steeps
To bring the Lord Christ down;
Alike within the lowest deeps
Is he, of heaven the crown. [Liturgy 326]
Thirdly, healing must be sought from the “Infinite Power”421 God (whether through the Church or otherwise) and from the deepest reaches of the soul, with all that is required by way of faith,422 at least initially, being a genuine desire on the part of the sufferer to seek healing (“Let him call ...”: Ja 5:14):423
417 On some occasions Jesus healed “as many as touched him” (Mt 14:35, 36). On other occasions he healed all the sick in his presence: see, eg, Mt 9:35. On other occasions he healed only some, or only one person: see, eg, Mt 10:46-52, 20:29-34. On one reported occasion it appears Jesus did not heal anybody: see Lk 5:16.
418 See, eg, Eph 4:23 (“... be renewed in the spirit of your minds”).
419 As Dr Peale often would say, “God is not only the Creator, He is also the Re-creator”.
420 In the New Testament, the two main words used for healing are therapeuō and iaomai, both of which convey the idea of restoration. The word therapeuō is used some 10 times to refer to the miracles of Jesus.
421 Peale, in Peale and Blanton (1955:234).
422 See Mt 9:22: “... your faith has made you well.”
423 Emphasis added. See also Mt 17:20: “And Jesus said unto them, Because of your unbelief: for verily I say unto you, If ye have faith as a grain of mustard seed, ye shall say unto this mountain, Remove hence to yonder place; and it shall remove; and nothing shall be impossible unto you.” In most of the recorded instances of healings by Jesus, there was an implicit demand for faith to be exercised by the sufferer: see, eg, Mt 9:29; Mk

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Is any sick among you? Let him call for the elders of the church; and let them pray over him .... And the prayer of faith shall save the sick and the Lord shall raise him up ... The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much. [see Ja 5:14- 16; Liturgy 327-328]
Christ the Son of God pour down his healing power upon thee, and enfold thee in the light of his love. [Liturgy 330]
We need not climb the heavenly steeps To bring the Lord Christ down;
Alike within the lowest deeps
Is he, of heaven the crown.
But warm, sweet, tender even yet
A present help is he;
And faith has still its Olivet,
And love its Galilee. [Liturgy 326-327]
Fourthly, healing is extremely difficult, if not impossible, without completely surrendering one’s life to God, that is, placing oneself, “body, mind, and spirit, in the direction of the flow of God’s power” (Peale, in Peale and Blanton 1955:239). See, in that regard, the Confiteor (especially, “.. our hearts are ever restless till they find their rest in thee”) and the Veni Creator (especially, “Far let us drive our tempting foe”) in The Liturgy (326 and 328, respectively).
Fifthly, healing is impossible without the forgiveness of sins and other wrongdoings, for forgiveness and healing are inextricably interrelated, and mental and spiritual health are the foundations of physical heath.424 See, in that regard, the Confiteor and the Absolution425 in The Liturgy (325-326).
5:34, 10:52; Lk 17:19. (However, there are some recorded exceptions: see, eg, Mk 2:5,11; Jn 5:19). Martin (1960:25) writes that whilst “faith in the Son of God” on the part of the sufferer is a “regular element” in Divine healing, this faith may “manifest itself as a consequence of healing rather than as a preliminary condition”. Faith per se does not determine health, but is used by the Divine One as a means of manifesting God’s sovereignty and glory through human lives yielded to God, for “this is the victory that overcometh the word, even our faith”(1 Jn 5:4).
424 See, eg, Lk 5:17-26, where friends of a paralysed man lowered him through the tiles of the roof. When Jesus saw their faith, and after making clear his conferred authority to forgive sins, said. “Friend, your sins are forgiven”. As for what is now known as psychoneuroimmunology (PNI), the Bible has a lot to say about the matter: see, eg, Prov 14:30 (“A tranquil mind gives life to the flesh, but passion makes the bones rot”); Prov 17:22 (“A cheerful heart is a good medicine, but a downcast spirit dries up the bones”); Prov 23:7 (“For as he thinketh in his heart, so is he ...”); Job 3:25 (“For the thing that I fear comes upon me, and what I dread befalls me.”)
425 Bishop Wedgwood writes (1976b:161): “Absolution is a straightening out of kinds in the higher nature, which obstruct the direct flow of the Divine Life.”

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Sixthly, healing must be prayed for,426 as prayer “constitutes the basis of the healing ministry in the Church” (Martin 1960:35) and prayer “really works miracles when our faith is active” (Peale, in Peale and Blanton 1955:236):
Come, thou Creator Spirit blest,/And in our souls take up thy rest;/Come with thy grace and heavenly aid,/To fill the hearts which thou hast made. (Liturgy 328)
Seventhly, healing must be worked for, but healing must never be sought simply for the sake of healing, for its aim is “the glorification of God” (Martin 1960:42):
Far let us drive our tempting foe./And thine abiding peace bestow;/So shall we not, with thee for guide,/Turn from the path of life aside. (Liturgy 328)
Eighthly, healing must be anticipated and expected with assurance and confidence,427 with the knowledge that healing “provides the means for [us] to discover that [we] are lacking something of capital importance” (Martin 1960:62):
O Lord, who hast given unto man bodily health and vigour wherewith to serve thee, we pray thee to free thy servants from their sickness (or imperfections or weakness) [so far as may be expedient for them], and by the might of ++ thy blessing to restore unto them full health, both outwardly in their bodies and inwardly in their souls; through Christ our Lord. (Liturgy 329)
Ninthly, healing must be nurtured by a grateful, humble, forgiving and contrite heart, and is “one of the most effective means of glorifying God in the presence of His Son, our Lord” (Martin 1960:42):
Unto God's gracious love and protection we commit you; the Lord ++ bless you and keep you; the Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious unto you; the Lord lift up the light of his countenance upon you and give you his peace, now and for evermore. (Liturgy 331)
The present writer has found, in attending healing services conducted by Churches of various denominations (including but not limited to “High Church” and “Low Church” Anglican, Roman Catholic, Maronite Catholic, Liberal Catholic and Pentecostal) that healing is most likely to occur when there is a rather unique, but altogether genuine and heartfelt, desire for healing, on the one hand, combined in equal measure and sincerity with a
426 See, eg, Sir 38:9 (“My son, when you are sick do not be negligent, but pray to the Lord, and he will heal you”; Ja 5:15 (“... the prayer of faith will save the sick man ...”; Jn 16:24 (“... ask, and you will receive ..”.
427 See, eg, Mk 11:24 (“...whatever you ask in prayer, believe that you receive it, and you will”). See also Job 22:28 (“You will decide on a matter, and it will be established for you ...”).

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willingness to submit to whatever may be the Will of God, that is, a willingness or preparedness to relinquish oneself or the other person for whom healing is sought to God - ”praying only for knowledge of His will and the power to carry that out”.428 In short, as Martin (1960:63) points out, “sickness is, in the hands of God, a means of astonishing efficacy to attract souls to Him”.
Peale (1938:64-65), after referring to the Gospel account of the healing of the man at Bethesda, who had laid helplessly by the pool, utterly defeated, for some 38 years, was asked by Christ Jesus, the Supreme Healer, “Do you really want to be healed?” Too often, we cling to our illness or disability. Take, for example, the alcoholic. He or she will never get better until the person makes a decision that they want to get better.429 Peale goes on to write (1938:65):
At last he [the man at Bethesda] was revealed to himself. For the first time in his life he really wanted with all his heart to be healed, and when, in tones of ringing authority, Jesus said, “All right, if you really want to be healed, you don’t need anybody to put you in the water; stand to your feet like a man and walk,” the man stood up radiant in his new-found strength.
So we who need strength from God and want it after a fashion must decide whether we really want it badly enough to take it. How glorious to realize that if we really want the great things God can give us and tell him so, meaning it with all our hearts, we shall hear him say, “Arise and walk away from every crippling, unhappy thing which has deprived you of spiritual power”! Today, wherever you are reading this book, Christ draws near and puts to you the question, “Do you really want to be healed of your difficulty? Do you really want to be better?”
So great is the power of change, that if one really wants change, including change at a very deep level, and seeks first the Kingdom of God, forsaking everything else (meaning, among other things, letting go of all negative thoughts and emotions, especially such things as anger and resentment including but not limited to anger at God or Christ,430 which block,
428 Excerpted from Step 11, “The Twelve Steps” of Alcoholics Anonymous (New York: Alcoholics Anonymous World Services, Inc).
429 The so-called Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous, appropriately entitled Alcoholics Anonymous, makes it perfectly clear: “If you have decided you want what we have and are willing to go to any length to get it ...”: Alcoholics Anonymous, 3rd ed (new and rev) (New York: Alcoholics Anonymous World Services Inc, 1976), p 58 [emphasis added].
430 “Roman Catholic priest and author McAlear ([1999] 2005:61) writes that forgiveness is the key that unlocks the depth of the mystery of Jesus”. He also writes (at p 71): “To forgive God is to allow Him His Mystery. It is to embrace the cross in trusting surrender with Jesus. It is to move beyond the limitations of human understanding, allowing the immensity of God’s wisdom to prevail.” Most Liberal Catholics would read and construe the references to “Jesus” as being, for the most part, references to what has been called “the Healing Christ”, but many, if not most, Liberal Catholics, would embrace the basic thrust of what McAlear has written, and means, namely that, when we forgive God when things do not happen as we wanted them to, we allow God to be God

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indeed prevent, the flow of healing, and repenting of all wrongdoing), healing will indeed come ... in one form or another.
Bernard Martin’s seminal book The Healing Ministry in the Church (1960), which is widely regarded as being one of the best Biblically centred studies of the Healing Ministry of the Christian Church, has had a great impact on the present writer. Martin, a pastor of the Reformed Church in Geneva who also worked at a psychiatric clinic in that city for many years, writes (1960:122):
It has been well said that a healing Church is a healed Church. This is more than a publicity slogan. It expresses with admirable consciousness this fundamental principle: A Living Church is a Church conscious of the supreme reason for her existence; the Lord has need of her for healing the world. She prays and acts to achieve that end because she believes in it.
Finally, as Christ Jesus pointed out, “What shall it profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses his soul? (Mk 8:36). Insofar as the ministry of healing is concerned, the healing of the soul is paramount. Martin has written (1960:21) that the “will of God being the salvation of the human being, physical healing is [only] one of its constituent elements”. Further, as the late Anglican priest William Weston has written (1976:51):
The words of Christ for us today are the same, and the power freely offered is the power which was available then, the power of the Holy Spirit.
Today we are called to use the power and make the Church living and glorious, acting on the word of Our Lord in his prayer to his Father.
“As you have sent me into the world, I have sent them into the world – that the world may believe that you have sent me” [Jn 17:18-21].
Dr Weatherhead has written these powerful words about the Christian quest for healing and the true “aim” of Christianity (1951:398):
We insist that the aim of Christianity is the reconciliation of the soul with God, through Christ’s grace and man’s penitence. If healing of mind and body follows, well and good. But God is an end, not a means. To use religion as a useful treatment because other treatments have failed; to “try Christianity” because our holidays, surgical operations, ointments, drugs and massage have failed, is to so misunderstand Christianity as to become incapable of “using” it. What is used, if this misconception is held, is not Christianity at all, but a false, even if specious, substitute; not the real thing, but a sham.
and we accept whatever happens as being God’s will, whether in an active or passive sense or otherwise. As metaphysicians have said for years, “Whatever we resist, persists”, and “Whatever is, is best ... because that is what is”.

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CHAPTER 5 EXPERIENCING THE CHRIST THROUGH ENCOUNTER
The Christ of the Author’s Personal Encounter and Experience and the Future of the Liberal Catholic Church
In this chapter,431 I wish to set forth an account of my own personal encounter with and experience of Christ both within the context of the Liberal Catholic Church and otherwise. (I will use the first person in this chapter, as I think that what I have to say will come across more forcefully that way.)
After spending some time expressing, as best as I can, what Dr Mowle kindly suggested, as a working description, the “Christ of personal encounter and experience”, I then intend to offer some suggestions as to what I respectfully submit we, as a church, need to do, and not do, if the Liberal Catholic Church is to survive, particularly in Australia, using, at least in part, my own experience of Christ and the views of certain others whom I believe to be of value.
The Christ of my own Personal Encounter and Experience
I call myself a Christian because I am committed to what has been referred to as the “Way of Jesus” (which, for me, constitutes what others sometimes refer to as the “Higher Path”). I was reared a Baptist, and later was conformed in the ultra-conservative Anglican Diocese of Sydney. For many years, I laboured under what I now see was a delusion – of a non- clinical kind – namely, that Christianity was religion about Jesus Christ,432 who died to save
431 Some of the material contained in this chapter was the subject of an address delivered at the Sydney Unitarian Church, Sydney NSW, on 21 December 2008: see Ellis-Jones (2008c). See also Ellis-Jones (2009b), which is an adapted and abridged version of the above mentioned address.
432 Some more recent scholars (see, eg, Bütz 2005; cf Welburn [1991] 2004) have challenged the dominant traditional position (particularly among evangelical Christians such as Barnett and Wright) that asserts the “Jewishness” of both the Gospel accounts and the Apostle Paul’s theology and rejects the views of proponents of the “History of Religions” Movement of yesteryear (eg the New Testament scholar Samuel Angus ([1925] 1975; 1929; 1931) and the classical scholar Gilbert Murray (1940)), both of whom wrote of the influence of pagan Greco-Roman mystery religions upon early Christianity, and, in the case of Gilbert Murray, upon Jewish monotheism as well. Bütz, in The Brother of Jesus and the Lost Teachings of Christianity (2005), makes a convincing case for the proposition that James, the brother of Jesus, and his associates did not believe in the Deity of Jesus, thus repudiating the notion that even Jesus’ own family, let alone all of his first followers,

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me from my sins so that I might gain eternal life.433 However, in my young adulthood I began to read books by more liberal Christian theologians, and a whole new world opened up for me. In the early 1980s I discovered the Liberal Catholic Church (although I had heard of it much earlier, as a result of my regular presence in Sydney’s Adyar Bookshop) and about another decade later I became associated with the Unitarian Church as well. By now, I was a fully fledged religious liberal, but still very much in the Christian tradition.
Ernest H Vines was a prominent Australian liberal Presbyterian minister of yesteryear, a former Moderator of the Presbyterian Church of Australia in the State of New South Wales, and a former student, “disciple”, and fearless and tireless defender of the teachings and theology of Dr Samuel Angus, the world-renowned authority on Christianity and the mystery religions. The writings of both of these two famous Presbyterians have had a great impact on the development and content of my theology. Vines wrote in his book Gems of the East (1970:91):
Christianity is the religion of Jesus Christ, the religion which He taught and by which He Himself lived. Its great purpose is the Kingdom of God, that is the rule of God in your heart and mine and in the hearts of all men. Jesus taught us to seek first this Kingdom. “Seek ye first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness” (Matt 6:33). He taught us to pray, “Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven” (Matt 6:10): By constant preaching and in many parables he taught the nature of this Kingdom. It is the rule of God in man’s hearts and is revealed in our loving service to fellow men. Or this phrase, “Kingdom of God”, may refer at times to the community of those over whom God rules and who acknowledge God as their ruler. This special purpose set before us by Jesus embraces all truth, beauty and goodness. We welcome as part of the Christian truth all that is true in Hinduism, Zoroastrianism, Buddhism, Confucianism, Islam and the Baha’i faith. …
To that, I say, “Amen”. We can talk all we like about the Cosmic Christ, the Mythic Christ, the World Teacher, and so forth - and there is much of truth and value and worthy of retention and preservation in all of that - but, at the end of the day, Christianity, properly understood, interpreted and applied, must surely be the religion of Jesus Christ, the religion which he taught, and by which he lived.434 That does not make me a fundamentalist or even
affirmed what has since become one of the key, if not the most important, doctrines of traditional mainstream Christianity.
433 I have since learned that all of life is eternal, that there is “only one Eternal Life and that is [Christ] Himself” (Raynes 1961:64).
434 Having said that, whilst we must be careful to avoid a religion about Jesus in the way most traditional churches have done, Angus (1934a:4) was undoubtedly correct when he wrote: “The early Christians were supremely right in having not only a gospel of Jesus but a gospel about Jesus” [emphasis in the original]. The important thing is that the latter must not be antipathetic to the former, otherwise our religion is something other than Christianity.

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an evangelical of any kind, and I am certainly not advocating that the Liberal Catholic Church go down that path, for to do so would, in my opinion, be a complete perversion of what Jesus actually taught. However, unless we truly believe that “Jesus Christ himself [is] the chief corner-stone”435 of our religion and of the spiritual temple each of us is building in our respective hearts, minds and souls, then I think we are doomed as a church. Dr Mowle has written (2007:183):
Jesus the man literally became that which all mankind is called to embrace when individually appropriate: becoming one with all that is, i.e. the Father.
I am a liberal Christian because I do not believe that Jesus was, or ever claimed to be, God in any exclusive or unique sense to be god. Divine, yes, but not God in any exclusive or unique sense. I believe in the Divinity of Jesus, but not the supposed Deity of Jesus.436 As I see it, the essential message of Jesus of Nazareth is this – we are all divine. Jesus himself affirmed, “Is it not written in your law, I said ye are gods” (Jn 10:34; cf Ps 82:6). I am also a liberal Christian because I reject many other so-called orthodox Christian doctrines such as vicarious atonement (at least as traditionally understood), the total depravity of humankind, belief in the bodily, physical resurrection of Jesus, belief in the virgin birth (again, literally interpreted), other so-called “supernatural” miracles437 generally, Biblical infallibility and inerrancy, and so on.
Nevertheless, I truly believe that Jesus is much more than a teacher, moral exemplar and way-shower. Although one can seek and find the Divine in various places, sources and persons (for example, in nature, in the world’s various sacred scriptures, in corporate worship, prayer and meditation, and so forth), I fundamentally and primarily encounter the Divine through and in the person of Jesus, whose Divine personality abides in each of us as our potential perfection. In that sense, for me at least, Jesus is a unique personage, my “Lord”, because he reveals in a very special and preeminent way - more so than other Holy Ones whose lives I have studied in some depth over the years - both the nature and
435 Emphasis added.
436 Burt (1960a) makes the valid point that the belief that Jesus was God places “an unbridgeable gulf … between Christ and mankind”.
437 Dr Norman Vincent Peale, in Peale and Blanton (1955:235) defines a miracle as “a phenomenon not explainable by existing natural law”, as opposed to an alleged phenomenon that supposedly violates some natural law (cf David Hume’s fallacy). Peale’s definition makes sense, and is consistent with both Liberal Catholic and Theosophical thought on the matter, provided the reference to “existing natural law” is understood as referring to “presently known” natural laws.

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essence of the Divine Life which is love (cf 1 Jn 4:8) and the nature of my manifold imperfections and shortcomings. If God is Love, and one’s experience of God is primarily mediated to us through others, then Jesus is God in a form that I can understand and relate to. Not exclusively or exhaustively or uniquely God, but God nevertheless, as we are all part of God’s Self-Expression in varying degrees of manifestation, expression and development. In short, “Jesus is the fundamental sacrament of God” (Rohr and Martos 1989:8).
What about the idea of Jesus as “Saviour”? Well, certainly not in the sense of Jesus dying for our sins on the Cross at Calvary, because on the basis of my prayerful reading of the Bible Jesus did not think that his death was in any way necessary to secure our forgiveness.438 What is the evidence and authority for such an assertion? The authority of Jesus himself. One need only read the Lord’s Prayer, and the Parable of the Prodigal Son, among other portions of Scripture, in order to conclude that once we are truly sorrow for any wrong that we have done, and reverently and humbly turn to the Light of Truth, then our sins are forgiven. Karma can be seen to be no more than the unwanted, but otherwise necessary effects of unlearned lessons - in the words of Geoffrey Hodson, “karma producing transgressions” resulting from “deficiencies of character” (Hodson 1930:54-55). Once we have learned the lesson, and moved on, the karma dissipates. I have already mentioned that each one of us must “work out our [own] salvation with fear and trembling” (Phil 2:12), although help is available from others, both visible and invisible, and that includes Jesus.
Now, having said all that, there is a very real sense in which Jesus “saves”. If one is lost in a very dark and heavily wooded forest (in this case, a forest of largely self-imposed selfishness, self-absorption, self-obsession, loveless behaviour and a state of profound separation from others and from one’s true Self), and someone, in this case Jesus, can provide a means of escape and show you the way out of the forest - this state of spiritual darkness - and bring you back into the light of day, then that person may rightly be referred
438 True, Mk 10:45 says, “The Son of Man came … to give his life a ransom for many”, but Higher Criticism makes it clear that those words come from Mark or the editor. Indeed, the words occur in a portion of Mk 10:41- 45 which is known as a duplicate of another portion (viz Mk 9:33-35) in which the “ransom” idea is wholly absent. In fact, there is no reference to Jesus’ martyrdom at all. The obvious interpolation represents not a teaching of Jesus but the faith of the church. As for Mt 26:28 (“For this is my blood of the new testament, which is shed for many for the remission of sins”), the last mentioned words (“for the remission of sins”) are, as critical commentators such as Dr Vincent Taylor have pointed out, a comment added by the evangelist and unauthentic.

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to as one’s saviour, metaphorically or otherwise,439 but we must still make the decision, and put in the effort, to leave the forest. No one else - not even Jesus – can do that for us. Sometime Australian Liberal Catholic priest and Theosophist Brian Parry expressed it well when he wrote (1962:7):
As St Paul wrote to Timothy –
“Christ Jesus came to save sinners”
Saved, it should be noted, not from hell but from sin itself.440
Yes, the “sin” which, as mentioned previously, has an “I” in the middle, the essence of which is selfishness, self-absorption and self-centredness. I am not talking about salvation by blood or any form of expiatory or propitiatory sacrifice. I am talking about “vicarious spirituality” whereby the Holy Ones - not just Jesus - are able “to show [us] the light [we] seek, give [us] the strong aid of their compassion and their wisdom” (from the First Ray Benediction, Liturgy 222, 240). By means of their expanded consciousness, they are able to perpetually stimulate all who genuinely seek their spiritual energy and self-giving and enter into their spiritual sphere of influence, such that we are freed “from our old Adamic, sinful self, into the freedom of a ‘life hid with Christ in God’” (Parry 1962:7).
For me, Jesus’ spiritual potency and energy - derived from his self-giving and overcoming - are part of the life of the race and are also a living symbol and allegory of that cosmic Self- giving by which the whole world is nourished, sustained and maintained. What Jesus, in particular, and other Holy Ones have done is to establish a consciousness of Spirit, whether in the form of an “oversoul” or otherwise, into which all committed followers may enter and be nourished and strengthened. As Mowle (2007:183) has rightly pointed out, some (I think, too many) Liberal Catholics think that it is “through our own striving alone that we’ll arrive at the ‘kingdom’ of full consciousness”.441 In the words of Samuel Angus (see Dougan 1971:13-14):
By the glory of His incarnation and through the power of His indissoluble life He has brought, and continues to bring, many sons to the glory of their divine sonship, that He may be the First-born among the many brothers whom He is not ashamed to call brothers.
439 This is a way of recognizing the redemptive power of the Cross (see Clebsch 1974) whilst eschewing altogether, as we must, crude and otherwise unacceptable notions of expiatory and propitiatory sacrifice.
440 Cf 1 Tim 1:15 (“This is a faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners; of whom I am chief”).
441 Emphasis added.

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True, the historical Jesus and the Christ (or various Christs) of faith coalesce in a manner that makes it extremely difficult, if not impossible, to separate them, but perhaps that it is a good thing. If anything, it adds credence to the historicity of Jesus. As Shorto (1997:123) points out:
We may see an echo here [in the Gospel accounts of the turning of water into wine] of how the Jesus Christ legend, as it grew and gained momentum, consumed stories associated with older deities, resulting in the pastiche of wondrous deeds found in the New Testament. But this is not a simple dismissal of the significance of this miracle. The more one reads the gospels with critical but searching eyes, the more one becomes convinced of the depth of layers they contain: not just historical layers, but layers of symbolism and fecund devotion. If the John tradition appropriated this miracle from the Dionysus cult, it also wove and rewove it into a fabric rich with shaded meanings. ... Thanks to Jesus, the party can begin all over again. Water and wine – the source of life and the source of intoxication, of organic ecstasy – were vital symbols for the earliest Christians, as evidenced by the fact that they became incorporated into the Christian liturgy, along with other root symbols: bread, blood.
I mentioned above the notion of “salvation” – a concept which is an anathema to many, if not most, Liberal Catholics, but it need not be so.442 Salvation, in the proper Biblical sense, is a past, present and future reality, all at the same time. Saint Paul writes (see 1 Cor 15:1- 2):
Moreover, brethren, I declare unto you the gospel which I preached unto you, which also ye have received, and wherein ye stand; By which also ye are saved, if ye keep in memory what I preached unto you, unless ye have believed in vain.
First, we were saved by the power of the written and spoken Word of God (and, for Liberal Catholics, that includes the Ancient Wisdom), which is the very impress of Christ’s Spirit within us as that “still, small voice” - a past reality.
Next, we are in the process of being saved - a present reality - for so long as we stand firmly in faith and remain part of Christ’s Mystical Body the Church, and the sacraments play a vital part here for they keep us in touch not only with Christ Jesus of history but the mystical indwelling God-Presence within each of us.443 That is part of the reason why I am a liberal Christian in the Catholic sacramental tradition. We may be travellers on the path to
442 Wedgwood (1976b:15) uses the word “Salvation” but immediately offers the following alternative expressions: “Nirvana, Liberation, Fulfilment – whatever word one likes to use.”
443 In Zen Buddhism the state of one’s awareness and realization of one’s true spiritual nature (“the Self”, or Ultimate Reality) is called kensho or satori (meaning “seeing into one’s True Nature” or discovering “Big Mind and Big Heart”).

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eternity, but in our present earthly state we are otherwise bound in time and space, so how else can we ever hope to make contact with what is a Mystery except through our senses? In that regard, Croucher (nd:Online) writes, every so insightfully:
The sacraments are external realities that first touch our senses. Through the messages that reach and get through our senses Christ “speaks” and “touches” the depths of our being …
Finally, we will be saved - a future reality – if we hold fast to the reality of the Omnipresence and Omnipotence of God (the “real presence” of Christ not only in the sacraments but in all of life) and never forget the lessons we have been privileged and honoured to learn. This knowledge, or gnosis, is a free and unearned gift from God Itself, and is revealed most supremely and preeminently in the person of Jesus but also in the lives of all the Holy Ones who have descended into incarnation to help us on our journey to our eternal home.
The sacraments of the Church make all of this real to us, in the Eternal Now, beyond the limited confines of time and space. Wedgwood (1976b:17) writes:
This is the truth which lies behind the old theological idea of the “free gift of grace”. Because of this unity of life, the Elder Brothers of the race can pour out upon us blessing altogether surpassing in measure that which we can earn or merit for ourselves. It is through this law that Our Lord, as the “first among many brethren”, can give us His Divine Life through the Sacraments that He instituted for this purpose.
Croucher (nd:Online) also makes this important point:
The presence of Christ in the ordinary events of our lives and his presence in the sacraments are not in opposition to each other. In the sacraments we celebrate in a special ritual way the love of Christ we experience in our lives. In turn, these celebrations help us become more aware of the presence of Christ in all our human experiences...
For me, participation in and reception of the sacraments (especially the Holy Eucharist), in addition to other non-liturgical forms of spiritual practice, provides opportunities to not only affirm in some intellectual sense but also directly experience what the late Bishop Burt, in his Provincial News article entitled “Is Jesus God?”, referred to as “the Immanence of God in all, that Christ shares the One Divine-life with all mankind, that He differs from man not in nature, but only in degree of development” (1960a).

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Although I was brought up, first as a Baptist, and then in my University undergraduate years as a Sydney Anglican, to reject all notions of “Real Presence”, “Transubstantiation”, and the like, and to treat the bread and the wine on the Communion Table - there was no altar, heaven forbid – as mere “elements” (and not even true symbols) of the Body and Blood of Jesus, it is now the case that, since my first association with the Liberal Catholic Church, my present and ongoing encounter with the Eucharistic Lord is one that is palpably real to me. The Lord that I encounter in the consecrated Host is not only the Jesus of both my childhood and my adulthood mediated by means of the creative power of the Spirit of Life, revealed knowledge as well as imaginative mystic reflection, but also the indwelling Christ who created all things, is in all things as all things, and whose very Real Presence in and to me is “nearer to me than hands and feet, indwelling in my very heart” (Raynes 1961:67). In the consecrated wafer is all of life – past, present and future – and that includes the man who once walked this earth known as Jesus of Nazareth as well as the indwelling Presence and “substance” of all persons and all created things. In and by means of the Eucharist, I feel an intuitive connectedness, intellectually, emotionally and spiritually, with all of life. To this wonderful, mysterious Self-revelation and experience of Life Itself – a veritable “microcosm of the Macrocosm” (Hodson 1977:26), I can only say, with deep humility and thankfulness, “... My LORD and my God” (cf Jn 20:28).
Jesus’ followers were originally known as “people of the way”. Jesus, in his vision of the Anonymous Christ (see Mt 25:34-40) offers us, as a Church and as individuals, both a vision and a challenge. The call to follow Jesus is not a call to worship Jesus. He never sought nor wanted that. Harry Emerson Fosdick, the distinguished American Baptist minister, author and academic, wrote (1933:118 [SCM edition]):
The world has tried in two ways to get rid of Jesus: first, by crucifying him, and second, by worshipping him. The first did not succeed. It required more than a cross to stop the influence of that transcendent character. ...
The world, therefore, foiled in its first attempt to be rid of Jesus by crucifying him, turned to the second, far more subtle and fatal way of disposing of great spiritual leadership – it worshipped him.
No, Jesus did not seek our worship. The Way of Jesus is a call to follow – that is, to follow Jesus’ path, to live as he lived, and to serve others as he did. Fosdick wrote that a Christian is one who answers Jesus’ two-worded appeal, “Follow me”. Thus, it is written:

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For even hereunto were ye called: because Christ also suffered for us, leaving us an example, that ye should follow his steps.444
The Presbyterian theologian Samuel Angus, referred to previously, described a Christian as a person who is inwardly and whose life is moulded after that of Jesus. Roman Catholic priest Harry Morrissey (2004:63-64) has written of the need to rediscover the divinity of Jesus in and through his humanity:
Speak of Jesus as a man like us making our human discoveries, and it will be classed as heretical denial of his divinity [sic]. The tragedy does not lie in our being accused like that, but that our fellow Christians have been left in ignorance of the very dynamic of the Christian Mystery! ...
Yet the wonder of faith, located deep in the Mystery of the Incarnation, can only emerge for us within this very human Jesus with all his mortal limits. The energy we are to find in the Mystery of God lies with bringing together as one two seeming opposites, without diminishing the path of truth on either side ... .
Morrissey then goes on (2004:64) to refer to the respective notions of immanence and transcendence on the one hand, and humanity and divinity on the other.
Vines (1970:93) wrote that “[t]he Cross of Jesus has ever been a magnet to draw men to Him, and self-sacrifice ever stands in the centre of the Christian life”. It is in that sense only that the Cross saves, when we, in self-sacrifice, take up our own cross on a daily basis and walk the path that leads to righteousness (see Ellis-Jones 2009). The power to live such a life comes directly from the Spirit of God, through faith in God (cf Mk 11:22). The method by which we live such a life is ... love (see Vines 1970:93), for it is written (see Mk 12:30-31):
And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength: this is the first commandment. And the second is like, namely this, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. There is none other commandment greater than these.
I am also reminded of something else that Dr Angus wrote, which is contained in his wonderful book Jesus in the Lives of Men (1934a:98-99):
Jesus is not accredited to us today by his miracles, or by a virgin birth, or by a resurrection from an underworld, or by a reanimation of his body from the grave, or by fulfillment of prophecies; he is accredited by his long train of conquests over the loyalties of men, and chiefly by the immediate, intimate and inevitable appeal made
444 1 Pet 2:21.

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by him to everything that is best and God-like in each of us, and by his ability to “make men fall in love with him”, and “to win the world to his fair sanctities”.
Liberal Catholics have traditionally had a strong aversion to the crucifix, which, up to a point, is perfectly understandable given the association of the crucifix with the traditional Christian notion of vicarious atonement – a notion that Liberal Catholics, along with other religious liberals such as Unitarians, have rightly condemned as “a perverse and pernicious corruption and distortion of true Christianity if ever there was one” (Ellis-Jones 2008c:Online).
Thus, Leadbeater [1920/1929/1967] 1967:129), after referring to Origen as “the most brilliant and learned of all the ecclesiastical Fathers”, quotes from Dean Inge’s classic text Christian Mysticism in which Inge writes that Origen taught that “the Gnostic or sage no longer needs the crucified Christ”. I respectfully disagree. As Leslie Weatherhead pointed out in a sermon entitled “The Power of the Crucified and Risen Christ” (see Weatherhead 1953:187), the Cross on which Jesus died is
... the symbol of the greatest energy the universe knows – the divine love which suffers, but never bullies; which knocks, but never burgles; which waits, but never breaks down our resistance; and goes on loving and goes on loving until frankly there is nothing else you can do but surrender to it. It is overwhelming, never tiring, and utterly convincing. It expresses the highest values humanity knows.445
The Very Rev Dr Ronald Rivett, a former Vicar-General of the Liberal Catholic Church in Australia, and someone who does not share the traditional Liberal Catholic aversion to the Crucifix (provided its true meaning is properly understood and articulated), has written of this Power of the Crucified and Risen Christ in the following terms (see Rivett [nd] 2008c:83):
We have to remember that even in history – especially in history – Jesus was not dragged screaming to his crucifixion. He said quite clearly that he was laying down his life of his own free will. So what we see on the Cross is what Jesus wants us to see - a man filled with God, giving the totality of himself in sacrifice to a greater and higher good, as a matter of utter necessity. We see there, on the Cross, self- offering and self-emptying personified. We see a complete rejection of self- concern. And we perceive above all the motivation for all this – a wholly pure, selfless and universal love, which is indeed God’s love fully manifest. Jesus is saying to us from the Cross: “This is the self-giving I want you all to attain. Only in this way can you awaken to new, full, timeless or eternal Life, in the Presence of the Father’s glory. So take up your cross, and follow me.”
445 See also Ellis-Jones (2008b).

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But this symbol of his Crucifixion implies rather an infinite degree of self-giving, and need not be taken as a recommended harsh mode of suffering. There is no need for us to be nailed to a cross! Crucifixion is not a stereotype of self-renunciation or self-forgetfulness, but an extreme example of it: a potent symbol that has been strong enough to stand the test of time, and to have sufficient dramatic impact on our consciousness, waken us out of complacency, and spur us to emulation. We humans invariably need a shock to get us moving! We have to be shown Truth larger than life. Gentle persuasion would seem to be a waste of time!446
Baptist pastor John Piper in his book The Passion of Jesus Christ spoke, not dissimilarly, about what it means to follow Jesus and to undergo crucifixion (2004:94-95):
In a sense, the Calvary road is where everyone meets Jesus. It’s true that he has already walked the road, and died, and risen, and now reigns in heaven until he comes again. But when Christ meets a person today, it is always on the Calvary road – on the way to the cross. Every time he meets someone on the Calvary road he says, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me” (Luke 9:23). When Christ went to the cross, his aim was to call a great band of believers after him.
The reason for this is not that Jesus must die again today, but that we must. When he bids us take up our cross, he means come and die. ... “Whoever does not take his cross and follow me is not worthy of me” (Matthew 10:38).
There is another sense in which the symbolic power of the Crucifix appeals to me, and it was never more beautifully and powerfully expressed than in a sermon delivered by one of the greatest American Unitarian ministers of all time, A Powell Davies, who was for many years the pastor of All Souls Church in Washington DC and the author of many scholarly texts (see, eg, Davies 1956a and 1956b). The Rev Dr Davies wrote (1946:Online):
And if we turn to the New Testament we have to remember that Christianity began, after all, not only with a life, beautifully lived, but with a certain man nailed to a cross. A man who cried that his God had forsaken him, yet somehow knew that he was not forsaken. As I have often said, I have no use, myself, for the conventional Protestant cross, that shiny brass thing with no man on it. In that respect at any rate, the Catholics did better: they left the man on the cross. I could never accept a Catholic creed but I have known for years that the crucifix, a cross with a man on it, was at the real heart of Christianity and an ultimate authentic symbol. What it is trying to say to the world is that faith is not to be had cheaply; that if we will not reckon with the tragic we shall never know the deeper essence of religion; and I think it is also saying that not even God can take mankind off its cross until a world is made that does not crucify the true, the just and the loving; a world that does not stone its prophets and resist the living God whose spirit burns in what they say.
Now, that is a mature vision of the Cross (indeed the Catholic cross, or crucifix), coming as it does from a religious liberal in a church that, even in 1946, was very much a post-
446 Emphasis in the original. Rivett is, of course, right. Jesus gave up his life voluntarily, as his ultimate act of sacrificial self-giving, consistent with the way he lived his entire life. From a cosmic or more esoteric point of view, Wedgwood is also correct when he states (1929:68) that the sacrifice of Christ, the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity, was “an act of self-oblation, made voluntarily”.

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Christian one. Yes, there on the Cross, Jesus was utterly defenceless and vulnerable beyond belief. It seemed as if he did not even have the protection of God Himself: “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” (Mt 27:46).447
As already mentioned, Jesus preached the Kingdom of God (referred to in Matthew’s gospel as the “Kingdom of Heaven”).448 Just like the concept of salvation itself, the Kingdom of God is a past, present and future reality, all at the same time, and whereas the Jews of Jesus’ day were expecting the coming of the Kingdom, it was an earthly kingdom they were expecting. Jesus, however, speaks of an altogether different type of kingdom – namely, a spiritual or heavenly one. The Kingdom of God is a multi-faceted concept embracing all of the following:
 the mighty “tide” of God’s Life and the indwelling presence of God in every part of our being, and in all created things,
 the rule, sovereignty and reign of God in our hearts, minds and souls, as the indwelling reality of ourselves, but most importantly as revealed in self-sacrifice and loving service to others,
 the community of those over whom God rules and who acknowledge God as their ruler,
 the most intimate and inmost state of consciousness and interior awareness within us (the “secret place of the most High”: Ps 91:1)449 in which we are aware of, and can know, feel and “touch” (that is, experience), the Presence, Power and Love of God, together with an inner, spiritual assurance of our union with the Divine, manifesting itself in equanimity, poise, dignity, truthfulness, absolute honesty, deliberateness and a lack of precipitancy,
447 This notion of the “ultimate defencelessness” of Jesus on the Cross was a major theme in the writings of the sometime Lutheran pastor and neo-orthodox (but otherwise quasi-liberal) theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer.
448 The phrase “Kingdom of God” does not appear in the Hebrew Holy Scriptures (the “Old Testament” of the Christian Bible). The writer of Matthew’s gospel had in mind a Jewish audience and readership, hence his apparent reluctance to use the name of “God”. Additionally, the Jews were expecting an entirely different kind of kingdom.
449 Holmes (1956), referring to the “secret place of the most High”, would always make it clear that this “place” was not a location but “a state of thought, an interior awareness, a spiritual faith”.

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 that which is our highest good and most valuable treasure (cf Mt 13:45-46: the “pearl of great price”), manifesting itself as a state of being quickened in spirit,
 eternal life,450 not so much in the sense of ever-enduring or never-ending life (or “life after death”, the latter being a most unbiblical concept) but life entered in the present and otherwise lived at a very deep and meaningful level, that is, the kind of life that Jesus and other Holy Ones have lived throughout the centuries as well as the godly knowledge and the godly wisdom that flows from such a life (cf Jn 10:10: “... I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly”; Jn 17:3: “This is life eternal, that they might know thee, the only true God …”), and
 an ideal state of both human society and the church, both being progressively transformed to a higher and better level, manifested especially by healings of various kinds and at various levels.451
The Kingdom of God is a past reality because it has been in preparation - and been prepared for us - from the very foundation of the world (“the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world” (Mt 25:34)) in the form of
… the Oneness That spans the fathomless deeps of space And the measureless eons of time, Binding them together in act, As we do in thought. …
… the unity Of all that is, The uniformity of all that moves, The rhythm of all things And the nature of their interaction.452
So wrote Rabbi Mordecai Kaplan, the founder of Reconstructionist Judaism. The great American Unitarian minister of yesteryear Robert T Weston expressed it beautifully when he wrote:
450 The expression “eternal life” is used frequently in the Gospel of John to refer to what is otherwise referred to, described and known as the “Kingdom of God” and the “Kingdom of Heaven” in the Synoptic Gospels.
451 See also Murphy (1997) and the writings of Ken Wilber on the subject of transpersonal psychology.
452 Excerpted from “God the Life of Nature” (by Mordecai M Kaplan) in Liebman (1946:170).

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There is a living web that runs through us
To all the universe Linking us each with each and through all life On to distant stars.453
The Kingdom of God is also a present reality. And what did Jesus say about the Kingdom of God? Well, many things, but perhaps his greatest pronouncement on the Kingdom is this, “… the kingdom of God is within you” (Lk 17:21).454 This is the true “good news” of the Christian gospel. Not coincidentally, it is also the essence of the Ancient Wisdom that lies at the heart of all religion, properly construed.
As a present reality, Jesus revealed that the Kingdom of God was already present in his own life. Jesus formed a community that strove, in steadfast service, to be a living model of God’s reign. Liberal Catholic priest Raymond J Blanch (1971:89), in referring to what is known as the “First Ray Benediction”, writes this about the particular benediction:
It assumes the Kingdom of God as existing now; it assumes that the members of that Kingdom, the “Holy Ones”, the Communion of Saints, assist those who have made themselves ready to enter into the lower ranks of that kingdom. ...455
The Kingdom of God is also a future reality:
... The kingdoms of this world are become the kingdoms of our Lord, and of his Christ; and he shall reign for ever and ever.456
We accept the Kingdom of God (the “good news” of the Christian gospel), and help to make it a future reality as well, by building it here on earth – a kingdom that will develop and grow to maturity with Jesus as the Great Exemplar, inspiring us all to believe that God is love (1 Jn 4:8) and to follow his example, which we do when we give life to others.457 Yes, “Thy kingdom come” (Mt 6:10), and we need to pray and affirm that because - and I include
453 Excerpted from “The Web of Life” (by Robert T Weston) in Montgomery (2001). For the full meditation, “The Web of Life”, see <http://www.uua.org/spirituallife/worshipweb/meditationsand/submissions/58069.shtml> (viewed 19 March 2009).
454 See also Mt 11:12; Lk 16:16. In Lk 17:21 the Greek word entos is used. Jesus used that word on only one other reported occasion (see Mt 23:36). The “better” view, despite differences in various versions of the Bible, is that Jesus was referring to a kingdom that was “within” us, as opposed to one that was either “in the midst of” us or “among” us.
455 Speaking personally, I have one some problem with Blanch’s choice of words, namely, his reference to “the lower ranks of [the] Kingdom”, preferring the view that all are equal in the eyes of the Lord, and in the Kingdom of God, notwithstanding that there is much that we can learn, and still have to learn, from those Holy Ones who have gone before us.
456 Rev 11:15. See also Rev 19:11-16 as well as Acts 3:21 (the time of universal restoration).
457 Holmes (1956) writes that we may “”enter in and possess this kingdom of good if we have the will to do so”, but first “we must have faith that such a kingdom exists”.

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myself in this - not yet are all of us, or perhaps any of us, ruled by God in every thought, word and deed. In The Problem of Christianity the American objective idealist philosopher Josiah Royce458 ([1913] 2001) saw the main “office” (his word) or function of religion as being “the creation on earth of the Beloved Community”. The Kingdom of God, in a futuristic sense, also refers to those “vast cosmic cycles” (Fosdick 1929a: 555) in which Life, otherwise indestructible but always in a state of change, forever manifests Itself in one form or another … ever onward, Godward and upward.
The Kingdom of God – a past reality, a present reality … and a future reality. The Liberal Catholic Church began as an adventist church. It believed that the Kingdom of God, in the form of a return of the World Teacher, was again about to manifest Itself in a very special way, just as had happened previously with Jesus. “The Coming has gone wrong”, Bishop Leadbeater is quoted as having said privately (see Tillett 1982:230). Perhaps not, for in a very real and eternal sense the Kingdom, or the Coming, is an event which is always manifesting itself on earth.
Further, the Kingdom is not synonymous with any particular church or other organization. If anything, despite the purported words of Jesus (“... thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church ...” (Mt 16:18)), I truly believe that Jesus came first and foremost to proclaim the coming of a Kingdom as opposed to forming a church. Nevertheless, I am firmly of the view that the task of the extension and fulfillment of the Kingdom of God (and the brotherhood/sisterhood of all humanity – the “Beloved Community”)459 is the first, and most important, purpose of our Church. Indeed, if we are doing our “work” right as Liberal Catholic Christians, we should start to see evidence of the manifestation of the Kingdom in our Church life as well as in our own individual lives.
In short, the Kingdom of God has always been, is now, but is also not as yet.460
So, for me, Jesus, the preeminent harbinger and apologist for the Kingdom of God, exists not just as a historical person but as a living presence and power that is an integral part of
458 Josiah Royce (1855-1916) was the author of many highly regarded published works, perhaps the most important ones being The Religious Aspects of Philosophy, The World and the Individual and The Problem of Christianity.
459 Martin Luther King Jr used the expression, the “Beloved Community”, a lot in his speeches and writings. Possibly the earliest use of the expression was in the writings of Josiah Royce.
460 As regards the Kingdom of God simultaneously being both present and future, see Mt 25:34, 1 Cor 15:50, 2 Ti 4:18, and 2 Pet 1:10-11.

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my consciousness, my intellect, my emotions and my will. Even more importantly, he becomes really present to me in the sacraments of the Liberal Catholic Church461 as well as in the power of the written words of Sacred Scripture. Building upon the Ancient Wisdom which our Church must forever retain and promote, Jesus is a living symbol of the perfectibility of each one of us as well as the promise of our ultimate redemption – the embodiment and affirmation that all things and all people will eventually be restored to God, or their Source, or Original Essence. This is referred to in the Bible, in Acts 3:21, as the “restitution of all things”, or the “restoration of all” (apokatastasis panton). Jesus affirmed our innate divinity, our innate perfectibility, and our ultimate oneness with the One who is Life Itself. He affirmed that we are, or at least ought to be, the light of the world. He never claimed anything for himself that he did not also claim for those who were his followers.
Jesus Christ is “the chief corner-stone” of my Christian faith and practice, and, as part of the very Consciousness of Life which is God Himself, Jesus is objectively real to me, not only as part of my own consciousness and as a “Real Objective Presence” in the services of the Church, especially those of the Holy Eucharist and Solemn Benediction, but also by means of what Roman Catholic priest Christopher Kiesling has referred to as “imaginative reflection”:
Although all men do not experience Jesus Christ as his disciples did, he is accessible to men’s experience ever since he lived. He can be experienced imaginatively. Imaginative experience of Jesus results from a combination of (1) the witness borne to Jesus in the Gospels by those who directly experienced him, (2) imaginative reflection on Jesus as portrayed in the Gospels, together with acceptance of him as a real and living person whose influence one sincerely wishes to feel in one’s life, and (3) the guidance and enlightenment of the Spirit of God.
Cynics and skeptics may say this is no better than having an “imaginary friend”, but there is a real difference. Imaginary friends are just that – imaginary. In the case of the man Jesus, I am more than comfortably satisfied that he did, in fact, exist and that, through the immortality of the human spirit, still exists. Weatherhead, in his seminal book The Transforming Friendship, wrote, “I think the essence of the matter might be stated by saying that Christianity is the acceptance of the gift of friendship of Jesus” ([1928] 1930:25). Further, as the title of Weatherhead’s book indicates, this friendship is transformative in
461 Wedgwood (1976b:16) rhetorically asks the question, “Why do we celebrate the Holy Eucharist?”, before immediately providing this answer: “We do so because Our Lord himself said to His apostles and their successors: ‘Do this in remembrance of Me.’” (See Lk 22:19.)

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nature – “a fact which we symbolize in the Hoy Communion, for in communion with Jesus our very souls feed on His nature as our bodies feed on bread” ([1928] 1930:95). However, we must still be careful with what Kiesling has referred to as “imaginative reflection”, for, as is written (by one “L J B” [sic]) in the foreword to Wedgwood’s helpful little book Meditation for Beginners (1961:8):
But it must be a real Master who is sought, not a personal idea of Him. It has been said: “Man makes God after his own image”. This can be applied equally to the Master. Yet both God and Masters exist in Their own right, and it is these self- existent Beings we should try to find, not merely our own wishful idea of Them. …
Although God is not a Person - for if He were he would be finite and therefore not God - the philosophy and movement of Personalism (also known as “Boston Personalism”), that were associated with and led by the theologian and philosopher Borden Parker Bowne (see Bowne 1887) at Boston University in the early 20th century,462 and which emphasized the person as the fundamental category for explaining reality, even going so far as to assert that only persons were real and enduring in the ontological sense and had both value and free will, provide a means by which we can appropriate, both mystically and by way of imitation of character,463 the Personhood of Jesus, filling us with a “high endeavour” and making us ever “mindful of [his] indwelling presence” (Liturgy 220, 238). As a sidelight, the great rationalist and skeptic J B S Haldane, of Cambridge University, England, also regarded “personality [as] the great central fact of the universe” (Haldane, cited in Fosdick 1929b:52). Fosdick himself wrote (1929a:555):
If one thing more than another seems to fly in the face of appearances, it is the statement that personality is the primary and victorious element in this universe. …
Take it or leave it, that is what Christianity is about. That is its guiding star and dynamic faith. Personality, the most valuable thing in the universe, revealing the real nature of the creative power and the ultimate meaning of creation, the only eternal element in a world of change, the only thing worth investing everything in, and in terms of service to which all else must be judged – that is the essential Christian creed. …
Anglican priest William Weston (1976:13) expressed it well when he wrote:
462 Some famous theological students and graduates of Boston University, whose theological school was renowned for its religious liberalism, who were influenced to varying degrees by Personalism include the Rev Dr Norman Vincent Peale and the Rev Dr Martin Luther King Jr. The late Pope John Paul II, who did not attend Boston University, and who was otherwise much more conservative in his theology than Peale and King, was nevertheless also influenced to some extent by Personalism.
463 Cf Thomas à Kempis, The Imitation of Christ (New York: Pocket Library, 1954).

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In these days we have to find Jesus as he is revealed in the New Testament and see him as God in all the glory and humility of his complete humanity.
The Future of the Liberal Catholic Church
Bishop F W Pigott, a former Presiding Bishop of the Liberal Catholic Church, once described the Church as being a “Divine society ... a body corporate which is ensouled by the life of the Lord Himself ... [and] an apparatus, a piece of intricate mechanism, by means of which grace or spiritual benediction is brought from on high and distributed far and wide” (foreword, Hodson 1930:vii).
The age in which we now live has been variously described philosophically and ecclesiastically as being Post-Denominationalist, Post-Modernist and Post-Christian, among other things, and there is truth in all of that. It is my respectful opinion and submission that there are basically two important things the Liberal Catholic Church needs to do in order to survive, especially in Australia. Those two things are as follows:
1. We need to rediscover, or perhaps discover for the first time, the true Jesus, and the true meaning of the Kingdom of God, without simply being another liberal Christian Church.
2. We need to remain a mystical, sacramental and healing Christian church in the Catholic tradition, but in a way which not only provides a vehicle for the continuance and promulgation of the Ancient Wisdom or gnosis but which more fully takes into account and synthesizes such matters as the “new physics”, psychology and other disciplines and techniques such as transpersonal psychology.464
I will deal with each in turn.
First, as I see it, the Liberal Catholic Church needs to rediscover, or perhaps discover for the first time, the true Jesus. For too long, we have simply dismissed him by either doubting or otherwise questioning the relevancy of his very historicity465 or simply rejecting what is otherwise a caricature of the real Jesus who believed that we are all little gods, not just
464 See Wilber (1996 and 1998) and Murphy (1997).
465 See Mowle (2007:182-184).

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gods in the making, that nothing is impossible to us if we believe, and that we are not miserable sinners (for he never called anyone a sinner). As Mowle (2007:184) has rightly pointed out, “we Liberal Catholics [need to] have another look at the Jesus story, in the light of some of the more recent work coming from the investigations of modern early-Church scholars”. In that regard, although I reject their conservative evangelicalism, one cannot dispute the depth of scholarship of persons such as N T Wright, the Anglican Bishop of Durham, and Paul Barnett, the former Anglican Bishop of North Sydney, whose seminal writings on early Christianity are probably unknown to most Liberal Catholics.
It is one thing to “move within the orbit of Christianity” - as the Liberal Catholic Church has always claimed to do - it is something else altogether to follow Jesus and promulgate his real message and teaching. At the risk of repeating myself, we ought not to be become Christian fundamentalists or evangelicals, nor should we be just another liberal Christian Church that is solely or primarily committed to matters such as socio-economic and political change.466 No, we must remain a sacramental, mystical and healing church in the Catholic Christian tradition that is nevertheless ever-open to the wisdom and inspiration from other religions, in particular, the Ancient Wisdom which, I believe, Jesus espoused, albeit at times in different words and thought forms. Rivett ([nd] 2008c) writes:
Jesus, being one with his Father through self-renunciation, contained the fullness of the Divine Consciousness, and so of course commanded the Father’s authority and power amongst mankind. ..
…
Jesus the fullness of [the] Cosmic Christ was (and is) manifest, and that he has shown us that that Christ is indeed our own indwelling life.
As Mowle (2007:182) has written, we, as Liberal Catholics, every time we celebrate the Holy Eucharist, “confront in no uncertain way a Jesus who at one time truly shared in our collective humanity, as well as proving that its limitations could be surpassed”. I suspect that most Liberal Catholics have little or no understanding of, or any real desire to understand, the enormous import and implications of Dr Mowle’s words.
Douglas Lockhart has written of the “lost secret”, “lost heart” and “lost truth” of Christianity. Lockhart says that this “lost heart” is “not something to be believed, but something to be experienced”, and that the “lost truth” is not so much lost as “merely mislaid”
466 Sadly, this has happened to the Unitarian Universalist denomination in the United States of America and to a large extent to much of the Uniting Church in Australia.

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(2006:5:Online). After stating that Jesus’ mind “wasn’t centred on God ... it was centred in God” (2006:5:Online),467 and that “what [we] need to search for first is not God, or Jesus, but [oneself]” (2006:6:Online), Lockhart goes on to write about, among other things, the need for a proper appreciation of Jesus’ unique understanding of the Kingdom of God and for the ability or willingness to get to the heart of the Christian message. Both of those things will require that we repudiate most, if not all, of the Christian Church’s traditional interpretation of the New Testament story. Lockhart writes (2006:7:Online):
We've been hoodwinked. With regard to our spiritual education we have been led away from our depths and furnished with a surface-bound vision carrying the long- term capacity to do us more harm than good. Approaching God via this vision, we end up in the arms of a Jewish Messiah reconstituted as God, and blissfully while away the years inside a propositional dream. We dream that Jesus is literally God's
presence on earth. We dream that we will live for all eternity in his august presence if we can accept the Church’s interpretation of the New Testament story. And we dream that the whole universe has been created with this in mind - it is God’s will that we accept this story from the first century as the only viable explanation for our being on this planet.
This is a sad, sad misreading of a great spiritual truth; it is a proposition that has backfired on the Church and caused endless, useless suffering for many millions of human beings. For it is not the New Testament story that matters. It is not whether Jesus had a virgin birth, a precocious childhood, could walk on water or still a storm with upraised hand that matters. Or whether he raised a man from the dead or could read people's minds. It is, as Jesus never tired of saying, the “Kingdom of God’ that matters. Why? Because the Kingdom of God signals the presence of God on earth. The presence of God is the point, the whole point and nothing but the point of the Jesus story. Hell, by definition, is whatever it is for very reason that the presence of God is missing; heaven is the exact opposite. Hell on earth, in turn, is due to the fact that our fundamental presence as human beings is generally missing. We are the potential carriers of God’s presence, not in the sense of some external force erupting within us (that would equal possession and diminished responsibility), but in the sense that our presence, when consciously established and sustained, turns out to be the presence of God.
Our crucifixion of Christ is therefore a metaphor for our not being properly awake and aware, properly conscious, properly available in our full humanness; it has nothing whatever to do with a vicarious sacrifice. We are, as St Paul says, crucified in Christ Jesus, not through identification with Jesus, but with the world at large. The outside has become the inside. And so Jesus' statement "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do" is not some oblique reference to the idea that God has been unwittingly crucified in the person of the Son; it is a simply [sic], straightforward observation that his tormentors were in a state of submerged consciousness. It wasn't knowledge they lacked, it was “being” they lacked.
467 Emphasis in the original.

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All we really need to know about Jesus and what is, or at least ought to be, our vision and challenge as Christians and as a Christian Church, can be found in one verse of the Bible, namely, Luke 9:11, which reads:
When the crowds learned [where Jesus was], they followed him; and he welcomed them and spoke to them of the kingdom of God, and cured those who had need of healing.
Four things are referred to in this verse from Luke’s Gospel which, in my view, collectively describe what is meant by the “Way of Jesus”. The first thing is “following Jesus” in the sense I’ve already described. The second thing is that we must welcome people - all people - and that is why we erect no barriers around our altars. The third thing is that we must promulgate the good news of the Kingdom of God as a past, present and future reality. The final thing is that we are there to provide opportunities for people to be healed by the Power of the Healing Christ “so far as may be expedient for them” (Liturgy 329). Elsewhere I have written (see Ellis-Jones 2008c:Online):
... [O]ur task here, in this Church of ours, is to provide opportunities for healing, particularly through the power of the written and spoken word. We come here as broken, damaged people in need of healing. The healing words of Jesus and other enlightened teachers, thinkers and writers, as well as the healing power of music, have the power to change lives. Yes, the Anonymous Christ is present here in all who come for healing of body, mind and soul. Jesus rightly saw healing as the sign of the Kingdom of God coming upon us. As a church, we exist to point to the Kingdom of God - sensibly and properly interpreted - preach that kingdom, and help to bring into visible manifestation, in this dangerous, broken, and very sick world of ours, the marvelous works of that kingdom.
The second thing we must do in order to survive and hopefully grow as a Church is this - we need to remain a mystical and sacramental Christian church in the Catholic tradition in a way which not only provides a vehicle for the continuance and promulgation of the Ancient Wisdom or gnosis but which also more fully takes into account and synthesizes such matters as the “new physics”, psychology and other disciplines and techniques such as transpersonal psychology.
If the Liberal Catholic Church persists in the belief (I would call it, with respect, a delusion albeit of a non-clinical kind), held especially by some of its older members and adherents, that it is either or both of a “Theosophical Church” or a “Gnostic Church”, then I fear the Church will not long survive, for there are so many other groups and organizations,

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including but not limited to the Theosophical Society itself, that are doing a much better job at promulgating ideas and belief systems of those kinds that we have ever done or could ever hope to do. I have already tried to dispel the myth that the Liberal Catholic Church is a Theosophical Church. As to its being a “Gnostic Church” (as opposed to a Christian Church with a special emphasis on what has rightly been referred to and is known as the Ancient Wisdom) Mowle (2007:183) has made reference to something Andrew Welburn (1991:11) wrote in his book The Beginnings of Christianity, and I think what Welburn wrote is worth reproducing here:
... [T]he writings of the Gnostics pose in the most direct and challenging way the question of Christianity’s relation to the esoteric teaching of the Mysteries. At the same time, they illustrate once more the dangers which an esoteric connection could constitute to the integrity of the Christian Mystery itself. For it certainly seems to be true of many of the Gnostics that in their pursuit of esoteric enlightenment they lost their inner grip upon some of the central truths of Christian teaching, particularly on the subject of the earthly work and historical ministry of the Christ.
However, we need to be very careful here. Whilst we must eschew the excesses and distortions of Gnosticism per se, unless we remain a mystical church in the Christian sense we run the terrible risk, as Blanch (1971:16) points out, of taking literally the purported sayings and teachings of Jesus, the Apostle Paul, and others.468 Blanch gives, as an example, the doctrine of vicarious atonement – a wonderful myth that has otherwise been carnalized, and thus distorted in its meaning, by the traditional Christian churches – and goes on to say (1971:16):
Mystical statements, which imply a higher and deeper interpretation of the words used, readily understood by mystics and metaphysicians, are always liable to be misunderstood by literally and worldly-minded people, who through the centuries so often have taken over the instruction of the people. So much so that misconceptions of Paul’s teachings – the “Vicarious Atonement”, for instance, have become almost the main principles of orthodox teaching. Whereas it is clearly stated that “Whatsoever a man soweth that also shall he reap” [Gal 6:7]. So that in some cases absolutely illogical and unacceptable doctrines have been established as a basis for Christian belief and theology.
The late Bishop Lawrence W Burt (1960a), after referring to the Apostle Paul as “the most ardent follower and greatest advocate of Jesus … [one] who loved Jesus supremely” - now there’s a challenge for us as Liberal Catholics, especially coming as it does from one who
468 If the findings and conclusions of The Jesus Seminar are even only partly correct, it is very hard to be sure just what Jesus said on any given matter. Of the 500 or more “sayings” attributed to Jesus in the New Testament Gospels, only about 90 can be said to be sayings of the kind Jesus “undoubtedly” or “probably” (more likely the latter in the case of most of the 90) said: see Funk (1996a and 1996b); cf Barnett (2009).

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was both a regionary bishop of the Liberal Catholic Church and a leading Australian Theosophist (and, with no disrespect intended, a very “conservative” one at that) - then sets forth, much more eloquently than I could ever hope to do, what is, or at least ought to be, the essence of true Liberal Catholicism, as a Christian, sacramental and mystical church, and it is this:
… In the earliest form of Christianity there is that definite teaching of “God-in-us,” and this thought comes naturally to St Paul and colours all his writings. The most marvelous event that the universe offered to St Paul was the revelation that God exists not only with-us, but that God also exists in-us.
That is St Paul’s most valuable contribution to Christian thought, expressed in the words:
“The word of God; even the mystery which has been hid from ages and from generations, but now is made manifest to his saints;
To whom God would make known what is the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles; which is Christ in you, the hope of glory.” [Col 2:25-27]469
It is not just the Apostle Paul who presents us with this wonderful teaching regarding the Indwelling Christ which found full expression in Jesus of Nazareth, for, as Parrinder ([1976] 1995:142) has pointed out, “Christ [Jesus] is both the partner of mystical union and the prototype of union with the Father”. This is especially true when it comes to the sacraments, especially the Sacrament of the Altar, where, through the Power of the written and spoken word, and the Spirit of Life Itself indwelling matter that has been consecrated in the name of the Most Holy One, his perfected consciousness is made available to us.470 We should also remain a sacramental Church in the Catholic tradition, not only because of the intrinsic value and beauty of the sacraments, and the fact that they were Divinely instituted, but also because, as has already been mentioned elsewhere in this thesis, we human beings, in our present earthly state, are so bound in time and space that there would not appear to be any better way - both for ourselves and for our world - to make contact with what is, and always will be, a Mystery except to the extent perceived through our senses.
Unfortunately, so much of our Liberal Catholic literature is so very 19th century (or, at best, early 20th century) in origin, content and thought form. We speak of a “Hidden Dweller in the human spirit”, “the veil of earthly things”, and the like - all of which are so very real - but we
469 Emphasis in the original.
470 Parrinder ([1976] 1995:142) refers to the essence and thrust of the Gospel teaching as being “the immanental presence of God, but personified in Christ [Jesus]”.

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remain bound in time and space to a very large extent to the language and thought forms and religious idealism of a bygone era. We can learn much from the transpersonal psychologists and the so-called “new scientists”.
There are two systems of thought, belief and practice that, I believe, can be used to assist us in re-inventing ourselves as Liberal Catholics – one is enactment theology, and the other transpersonal psychology. Elements of each of these two systems of belief and practice are already to be found in the language and thought forms of The Liturgy, so we do not have to travel far to find them. However, by expressly acknowledging their existence, and by consciously applying the “apparatus” each system provides as well as their underlying principles, we can “put new wine into new bottles, [so that] both are preserved” (cf Mt 9:17).
First, there is what is known as enactment theology.
Enactment theology,471 one of several forms of radical theology, has much that is worthy of consideration, and sits quite comfortably with panentheistic views of God held by many Liberal Catholics. Indeed, enactment theology is inherently panentheistic in nature, asserting that God is not separate from us, that our supreme responsibility is to help bring God into existence, so to speak, so that God can emerge, be enacted, and be called into being, not only in our liturgy, ritual and ceremonies, but also in our day-to-day relationships with other people. Enactment theologians see the Church as being present wherever God is being formed among people in the world. The God of enactment theology may not be omnipotent or omniscient in any traditional theistic sense, but it is still a God that is “with us”, “in us”, and “other than us”, in the fullest sense of those words – in other words, a God that is still both transcendent and immanent whilst also being transpersonal and relational in nature, effect and consequence. The God of enactment theology is not a person, and does not otherwise act in persona. Rather, God lives in and manifests in each and every one of us on a daily basis, and is as great or as small as we choose to make this God, whether on an individual or a collective basis. Mordecai Kaplan describes this God as being “the
471 This form of theology is associated with the Roman Catholic theologian Richard Grigg, Professor of Religious Studies at the Sacred Heart University in Fairfield, Connecticut, USA. See Grigg (1995 and 2000). See also Bumbaugh (2000). However, the foundations of enactment theology can be seen in the theology and writings of Rabbi Mordecai M Kaplan (see, especially, Kaplan 1937, 1956, 1958, and 1962) where God is spoken of as being, among other things, the Power that makes for truth, goodness, freedom, justice, love, and so forth, such that whenever we display these qualities, we are manifesting the Presence of God.

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Process by which the universe produces persons, and persons are the process by which God is manifest in the individual” (1956:103). Kaplan also wrote this (1956:87):
It matters very little how we conceive God, as long as we so believe in God that belief in Him makes a tremendous difference in our lives.
The God of enactment theology is immanent in the sense that it is the very ground of our being, and represents the best to which we can aspire, as well as transcendent in that the special qualities or attributes that we ordinarily associate with God (for example, Goodness, Love, Power, Truth and Light) can be seen to be derived from a power other than ourselves, the power being the very primeval power of Being Itself, with God being a relation enacted and brought into existence by us in and through the power of Being Itself - Life, in all of its fullness - in which we live and move and have our being. This is the God that we speak about when we “work” the Liturgy, and, through the power of the written and spoken word, we bring into manifestation not only the “God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob” but also the God of that “still small voice” that is “not in the wind ... not in the earthquake ... [and] not in the fire” (cf 1 Kings 19:11-12). It is also the God that Jesus spoke of in the parable of the growing seed:
And [Jesus] said, So is the kingdom of God, as if a man should cast seed into the ground; And should sleep, and rise night and day, and the seed should spring and grow up, he knoweth not how. For the earth bringeth forth fruit of herself; first the blade, then the ear, after that the full corn in the ear. But when the fruit is brought forth, immediately he putteth in the sickle, because the harvest is come. And he said, Whereunto shall we liken the kingdom of God? or with what comparison shall we compare it? It is like a grain of mustard seed, which, when it is sown in the earth, is less than all the seeds that be in the earth: But when it is sown, it groweth up, and becometh greater than all herbs, and shooteth out great branches; so that the fowls of the air may lodge under the shadow of it.472
Our Liturgy recognizes our role, especially on a collective or collegiate basis, for doing all that we can to take the Presence and Power of God and call it into being or enactment. Thus, we are exhorted to “lay the foundation of our temple” (Liturgy 224), to “see [God’s] life in all the peoples of thine earth” (Liturgy 207, 227), and, having “built a temple for the distribution of Christ’s power ... [to] prepare a channel for its reception” (Liturgy 231) so that “our strength [may] be spent in thy service and our love poured forth upon thy people” (Liturgy 232). Many years ago, Bishop Lawrence W Burt wrote of the mystery drama that is
472 Mk 4:26-32.

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constantly being enacted in our respective lives (Burt 1946:1):
The mystery drama of the Gospel story which tells of the suffering, the cross, the passion, the betrayal, the death and resurrection in the life of Jesus is an allegorical presentation of the conflict of man’s personal self as it is finally conquered and purified of the great illusion of separateness that it may become a worthy shrine of the resurrected impersonal self.
Secondly, there is the whole field of transpersonal psychology (and, when its principles are applied to spirituality, what is known as transpersonal spirituality).
Transpersonal psychology (see, especially, the writings of the American philosopher, psychologist and mystic Ken Wilber (1996; 1998; 2006)) speaks in terms of a hierarchical sequence of stages through which human consciousness progresses. When applied to the subject-matter of religion (that is, organized spirituality), the earliest stage of religion is that of “magic religion”,473 with the next stage being “mythic religion”,474 followed by “scientific religion”,475 “rational-individuated religion”476 and, finally, what has been referred to as “transpersonal spirituality”.477 The Australian Roman Catholic priest and psychologist Desmond Murphy (1997) has applied Wilber’s paradigm to the Church and to Christianity in his seminal book A Return to Spirit: After the Mythic Church.
Regrettably, too much Liberal Catholic thinking and literature - and, dare I say it, liturgy - remains in something of a time warp wherein “magical religion” and “mythic religion” tend to predominate. “Scientific religion” is not the answer, indeed all too often science, and not religion, is the problem, unless it be the science of persons such as Paul Davies (see Davies 1992) and, more recently, the French theoretical physicist and philosopher of
473 Magic religion involves the use of repetitive rites, chants and incantations that are designed to appease or otherwise win favour with something perceived to be divine, sacred or holy.
474 Mythic religion places much greater emphasis on the needs and aspirations of the individual, but tends to be ritualistic and legalistic.
475 Scientific religion began with Deism (God as the “disinterested watchmaker”) and gained ascendancy with Darwinism. In many places, the pursuit of science has become a secular religion in its own right.
476 Popa (2009:Online) writes: “The process of individuation refers to the accomplishment of the Self in Jungian understanding. A process of conjunction of the contraries, of union between conscious and unconscious, in short of unification of the being. This process is not restricted to moral integration - it also involves emotional integration.”
477 “Transpersonal spirituality”, in brief, refers to a mystical form of spirituality, based upon the principles of transpersonal psychology, in which the ultimate “goal” (for want of a better word) is the disappearance or dissolution of the self (as opposed to “the Self”).

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science Bernard d’Espagnat (see d’Espagnat 2006), the 2009 Templeton Prize Laureate,478 who, having gone beyond classical physics and quantum mechanics, has written of a “hypercosmic God” in the form of “a ‘veiled reality’ that science does not describe but only glimpses uncertainly”.479 Even our Church’s otherwise enlightened concept of the “Mystic Christ” is, I suspect, largely unintelligible to an increasingly secular and unchurched world, as is the bulk of our Liturgy. As long ago as 1964 a Dutch Liberal Catholic bishop, H M Brandt, wrote (1964:1):
Christian terminology and ideas were formulated in the middle ages, a time with a totally different outlook on life, a different conception of the universe, and so they are often meaningless to the modern mind.
Yes, and even more so today, some 45 years later.
Old-style “TS” Theosophy is not, with respect, the answer either. J J Van der Leeuw (1930:Online) rightly takes Theosophy (in the forms of both “the archane system of esoteric wisdom in the keeping of the brotherhood of adepts” and the system of doctrines put forward in TS literature and lectures) to task for being based on outmoded and discredited notions of the nature of the universe (eg the supposed dualism of “gross matter outside and a world of subtle spirit within”) and for its extremely “idealistic world-view as against the materialistic”. Quantum mechanics, and the “new physics” generally, have changed our understanding of human consciousness and reality to such an extent that, as the late Christian philosopher Jean Guitton (author of such works as The Problem of Jesus: A Free- Thinker’s Diary) and others have pointed out, we have every good reason to discard forever the once sacrosanct distinction between so-called “matter” and so-called “spirit” – a distinction which many traditional Theosophists nevertheless still seek to preserve to this day, but which has become increasingly untenable in light of advances in scientific thought and discovery:
The fundamental distinction between matter and spirit has been changed deeply and in a non-reversible way. Hence a new philosophical concept which we have
478 The Templeton Prize, first established in 1972 by Sir John Templeton (1912-2008), “honors a living person who has made an exceptional contribution to affirming life's spiritual dimension, whether through insight, discovery, or practical works”: <http://www.templeton.org/prizes/the_templeton_prize/> (viewed 20 March 2009).
479 See A Gefter, “Concept of ‘hypercosmic God’ wins Templeton Prize”, New Scientist, 16 March 2009, [Online] viewed 20 March 2009, <http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn16769-concept-of-hypercosmic-god- wins->.

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called “metarealism”; for the first time, we have made materialism compatible with spiritualism, we have reconciled realism and idealism.480
Another distinction that needs to be discarded as a result of the “new physics” is the materialistic so-called distinction between time and space. As Paul Davies in his book God and the New Physics has pointed out (Davies, as quoted in Wosmek 1988:43):
The physicist ... does not regard time as a sequence of events which happen. Instead, all of past and future are simply there, and time extends in either direction from any given moment in much the same way as space stretches away from any particular place. In fact, the comparison is more than an analogy, for space and time become inextricably interwoven in the theory of relativity, united into what physicists call spacetime.481
This has enormous implications for our understanding of the presence of Jesus and other Holy Ones who, in the consciousness of the Eternal Now, are ever-present to guide, sustain and inspire us. They are not just figures from the past, nor even archetypal figures, but real beings who are with us in spacetime right now as Life is Consciousness.
In recent years there have also been great advances in psychology and psycho-spirituality that provide us with useful “tools” with which to see our Liturgy and our role as a Church and as individuals in a refreshingly new light. For example, in “transpersonal spirituality”, the emphasis is not on words - even beautifully composed and well-structured words such as those contained in The Liturgy to which we tend to be far too attached and wedded more often than not - nor on the intellect, thoughts or feelings, for all of these things are passing illusions and creations (if that be the right word) of the “false self” or our ego.
The emphasis in transpersonal spirituality is on knowledge and wisdom gained by means of direct experience and spiritual intuition, and the concomitant transpersonal sharing, in unconditional love, of ourselves with others in our communal religion and liturgy – a sharing of our own respective realisations of who and what we are, namely, transpersonal selves beyond persons who have bodies, persons who think thoughts, and persons who feel feelings – that is, persons who have transcendental needs that go beyond time and space and which can only be met in the Eternal Now when we are in a state of inner
480 I and G Bogdanov, Dieu et la Science: Vers un Métaréalisme (Paris: Gresset, 1991), as cited in Léna (nd:165; Online). Old-fashioned materialism, with its assertion that everything is matter, is arguably untenable in the light of advances in science.
481 Emphasis in the original.

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intercommunion after we have already come to know the Self as one,482 and moved on from there … in a state of “choiceless awareness” (cf Krishnamurti) that transcends, and ultimately eliminates the need for, all labels, categories, myths and symbols. That will prove very hard, if not impossible, for many Liberal Catholics … and I include myself in that. The former Theosophist and Liberal Catholic priest J J van der Leeuw had, I think, an epiphany when he became convinced that Krishnamurti was right, stating that “there is no ‘merging in the absolute,’ if such a thing were possible” but only “the actual common experience of the actual present moment at the actual place where man finds himself” (1930:Online). Realization, not revelation, is what is needed.
We are thus talking about something transpersonal and meta-realistic, that is, something “that exists beyond and, as the synthesis of all personalities - is defined and yet indefinable … at the same time, both the question and the answer known but unspeakable … the Union of the Seeker, the Sought-For and the Act of seeking”.483 Wilber (1996; 1998; 2006) refers to the “transpersonal realm” consisting of four great dimensions or categories which can be applied to both psychological and spiritual development:
1. The realm of mystical experience in which one discovers the existence of one’s “true” or “real” self (“the Self”).
2. The realm of ideas, images, symbols, myths, archetypes and dreams (including deity figures).
3. The realm of “deep spirituality” (cf “depth psychology”)484 where all such ideas, images, symbols, myths, archetypes and dreams (including deity figures) disappear, in order that we may be left “alone” with the Infinite Divine One.
4. The realm where all categories, including the very notion of the Self Itself, disappear or dissolve.
482 Cf The First Ray Benediction. In transpersonal psychology and spirituality this Self is often referred to as the “Transcendental Self”. The present writer finds that expression far too limiting, as the Self referred to must surely be both transcendent and immanent. Corelli (1966:422), referring to “the Soul which knows itself to be eternal”, writes: “To its Being there can be no end – therefore it never ages and never dies.”
483 “Psychosis … forsaken by god” (excerpted from transpersonal.com.au website), [ Online] viewed 20 March 2009, <http://www.transpersonal.com.au/psychosis.htm>.
484 The psychiatrist Dr Smiley Blanton, who worked closely with the minister of religion Dr Norman Vincent Peale, was a pioneer in depth psychology. Blanton had this to say about Peale (see Gordon 1955:25): “Dr Peale is a great pioneer. He was one of the first men – if not the first – to combine the new science of human behavior known as depth psychology with the discipline of religion.” Both men often expressed the view that God presided in the unconscious mind, in terms of which so much of our behaviour can be explained.

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The last mentioned realm is said to constitute the ultimate mystical experience. Perhaps we Liberal Catholics, along with other mystics of Christian and non-Christian traditions, have placed far too much emphasis on the first and second realms mentioned above. Certainly, more is required than both an intellectual and an intuitive acceptance of the existence of the Self.485 As elsewhere mentioned in this thesis, the Dutch Theosophist and Liberal Catholic priest of yesteryear, E Francis Udny (1927:36), referred to that which transcended even God Himself. Udny called it, perhaps unhelpfully, the “Lord of Hosts”, but what he was referring to was the inconceivable and otherwise unknowable transpersonal God beyond God, the indescribable Ultimate in both transcendence and immanence – Being-Itself, or Life IT-self. In the words of one anonymous writer (see Aguilar [nd]:43):
GOD AND I
I walked with God, God walked with me.
But which was God, and which was me?
And thus I found, the Truth profound,
I live in God, God lives with me.
However, are we Liberal Catholics ready to “embrace” the final two dimensions or categories of the transpersonal realm in Wilber’s list? Speaking personally, I am not sure that we are at all up to it, for it would mean the effective end of ritual, liturgy, sacramentalism, our healing ministry, and the like. For what it’s worth, my own personal view is that, provided we do not treat these things as crystallized, immutable, untouchable things-in-themselves (as opposed to “living symbols” in the sense previously explained) without which there can be no spiritual growth, salvation or sense of oneness with the One Indwelling Infinite Life, then we can and should allow some flexibility and forbearance in our practices.
We are not bound to follow the advice of Wilber or any “guru” for that matter. However, the time may well come when we may see the need to fully embrace what Krishnamurti said way back on 2 August 1929, namely that “Truth is a pathless land, and you cannot approach it by any path whatsoever, by any religion, by any sect” (Vernon [2000] 2002:181]. I well recall something that the late Liberal Catholic Bishop Christopher Bannister said in a homily delivered at the Liberal Catholic Church of Saint Francis, in Gordon, New South Wales, in 1987. He said words in or to the effect of the following:
485 For many Liberal Catholics it is only the so-called “Holy Ones” who, after many supposed incarnations, come to “know the [S]elf as one”. We may need to reconsider that notion.

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We are living in a dark age of fundamentalism, and we have to face the fact that organizations such as our church – the Liberal Catholic Church – may well disappear altogether. It may happen more quickly than we think.
More recently, another Liberal Catholic Bishop, Pedro Oliveira, has written about the future of our Church in more optimistic, but still quite guarded, terms (2007b:209-210):
As Our Lord taught, there is no renewal without death. “Very truly, I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.” [Jn 12:24] St Paul preached the very same truth when he said: “I die every day!” [1 Cor 15:31] Self-centredness slowly but surely kills the life of the Spirit. Our Church as a liturgical community can grow and prosper, attract new members, new vocations, if those who are primarily responsible for it – its clergy – grow in selflessness, attention, compassion and unreserved giving.486
At the end of the day, whatever be the future of the Liberal Catholic Church and other liberal churches, we must never forget that God - the Absolute - has not left us without witness, and is continuously revealed to us in many ways. As the Apostle Paul wrote (see Rom 1:20):
For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse.
Similarly, in the Tao Tê Ching Lao Tzu said:487
Without going out of door
One can know the whole world;
Without peeping out of the window
One can see the Tao [Way] of heaven.
The further one travels
The less one knows.
Therefore the Sage knows everything without travelling;
He names everything without seeing it;
He accomplishes everything without doing it.
We must never lose sight of the mystical, for God is Mystery. The strength of the Liberal Catholic Church is its celebration of all the mystery of life. This is also its weakness, when mystery becomes a “thing-in-itself” and the be-all and end-all, veiled in Liturgy from which even the Godhead Itself can’t escape, when “vague emotion … usurp[s] the place in
486 With respect to Bishop Pedro, there is no hope for our Church if the laity do not also “grow in selflessness, attention, compassion and unreserved giving”.
487 Tao Tê Ching, by Lao Tzu, new trans by Ch`u Ta-Kao (London: Unwin Books, [1937] 1972), Ch 47, p 62.

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[religion] of clear and reasoned thinking” (Wedgwood 1976b:150). No, may we ever remain a mystical church, in the true sense of the word, for the mystical approach to reality ultimately makes more sense than the so-called rational alternative. That much I have learned from personal experience. Mysticism is a vital part of the Christian heritage, and we, as Liberal Catholics, have a special mission to keep alight the flame of Mystery. Indeed, despite the efforts of so many who would like it to be otherwise, the Christian Church was founded as a mystical church, mystery being the very core and spiritual essence of Christian spirituality. Indeed, I believe that true Christian mysticism, rooted in the essential Oneness of the Jesus of history and the Christ of faith, is the only means by which we “may so pass through things temporal as never to lose sight of the things eternal and may ever live in the service of Christ our holy Lord” (Liturgy 140).488 Elsewhere I have written (2007:1:Online):
Mysticism is not essentially about "mystical experiences” – experiences come and go - but is focused on the lasting experience of God, leading to the transformation of the believer into a transforming union with God. “In him we live, and move, and have our being .... We are his offspring” (Acts 17:28). Jesus proclaimed, "I and the Father are one" (Jn 10:30) showing the world what the union of God and man can be. It is also written, “There is one God who is father of all, over all, through all and within all” (Eph 4:6).
Ken Wilber (1996:42-43), in his usual insightful and forthright way, has written:
Are the mystics and sages insane? Because they all tell variations on the same story, don't they? The story of awakening one morning and discovering you are one with the All, in a timeless and eternal and infinite fashion. Yes, maybe they are crazy, these divine fools. Maybe they are mumbling idiots in the face of the Abyss. Maybe they need a nice, understanding therapist. Yes, I'm sure that would help. But then, I wonder. Maybe the evolutionary sequence really is from matter to body to mind to soul to spirit, each transcending and including, each with a greater depth and greater consciousness and wider embrace. And in the highest reaches of evolution, maybe, just maybe, an individual's consciousness does indeed touch infinity—a total embrace of the entire Kosmos—a Kosmic consciousness that is Spirit awakened to its own true nature. It's at least plausible. And tell me: is that story, sung by mystics and sages the world over, any crazier than the scientific materialism story, which is that the entire sequence is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying absolutely nothing? Listen very carefully: just which of those two stories actually sounds totally insane?
In Chapter 4 of this thesis I listed, as one of the key purposes of the Holy Eucharist, “the progressive divinisation of the world”. This is no mere Theosophical teaching, but the inner meaning of all true religion, properly and mystically construed and applied. Thus, the Apostle Paul writes (see Rom 8:29 [The Amplified Bible]):
488 Excerpted from the Collect for The Fifteenth Sunday after Trinity.

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For those whom He foreknew – of whom He was aware and loved beforehand – He also destined from the beginning (foreordaining them) to be moulded into the image of His Son (and share inwardly His likeness), that He might become the first- born among many brethren.
In an article entitled “The Treasures of Wisdom and Knowledge” (2007a) I made the point that there are three important distinctions to be kept in mind:
 the distinction between worldly knowledge and worldly wisdom,
 the distinction between worldly wisdom and godly wisdom, and
 the distinction between godly knowledge and godly wisdom.
As respects the last mentioned distinction, namely the distinction between godly knowledge and godly wisdom, I had this to say in my article:
Both are gifts of the Spirit (see 1 Cor 12). Godly knowledge is, of course, more than just intellectual or spiritual illumination. It also involves and confers practical insight into and an in-depth understanding of situations and spiritual issues. Godly wisdom refers to the spiritual ability to make godly choices in our life, to perceive life and truth from a spiritual perspective, to make decisions according to God’s will and then apply that wisdom to specific situations, and to give reliable guidance to others on such matters. Pulitzer Prize-winning historian and philosopher Will Durant once wrote, “Ideally, wisdom is total perspective - seeing an object, event, or idea in all its pertinent relationships.” Krishnamurti said as much, all the time, when he spoke of the importance of seeing things as they really are - life as it really is - without judgment, without condemnation, without any interpretation, explanation or mediation of any kind - choiceless awareness, he called it. That, to me, is godly wisdom, although Krishnamurti would not have referred to it as such.
At the risk of sounding overly simplistic, if the Liberal Catholic Church is to survive, especially in Australia, it needs both “godly knowledge” and “godly wisdom” … as well as a fair bit of common sense.
We also need to familiarise ourselves with some of the more recent thinking in the Roman Catholic Church on the nature of the sacramental priesthood: see, for example, Gleeson (1993). In many ways, we Liberal Catholics are still locked into the Alter Christus view of the role of the priest – that I, that the priest is another Christ (however we may construe the word “Christ”).489 Now, there is and hopefully always will be a special place for the concept of Alter Christus in any church in the Catholic tradition, particularly in relation to the
489 R Laird Harris writes: “First century Christianity had no priests. The New Testament nowhere uses the word to describe a leader in Christian service.” See Boettner (1962:50). It was in the 3rd century CE that we find the beginnings of a sacerdotal priesthood in Christianity.

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administration of the Sacraments, but we also need to balance the sacerdotal role of the priest in persona Christi with that of the priest in persona Ecclesiae, as the Roman Catholics have been largely successful in doing since Vatican II: see D Coffey (in Gleeson 1993:80). For the most part, a priest is, and should be seen to be, “the duly commissioned minister of the church, its official representative” (Coffey, in Gleeson 1993:80), the first among equals, so to speak. As a church, albeit one in the Catholic sacramental tradition, we have lost sight of the Biblical (and not just Protestant) doctrine of the “priesthood of all believers”.490 In the words of the 1973 Anglican-Roman Catholic International Commission report Ministry and Ordination:
The goal of the ordained ministry is to serve the priesthood of all the faithful.491
Gleeson (1993:ix) has written of the “decisive shift in the Catholic understanding of ordained ministry [that occurred] during the latter half of the twentieth century”:
No longer is the priest elevated as a more or less isolated mediator between God and the Christian people. Rather, the ordained priest finds his identity within the community of the church, enabling the church to be and become more truly itself.492
In a letter to Catholic priests on the occasion of Holy Thursday 1991, His Holiness Pope John Paul II expressed a more conservative but otherwise conciliatory approach to the matter:
... Another grace of the synod [Synod of Bishops, October 1990] was a new maturity in the way of looking at priestly service in the Church: a maturity which keeps pace with the times in which our mission is being carried out. This maturity finds expression in a more profound interpretation of the very essence of the sacramental priesthood, and thus also of the personal life of each and every priest, that is to say, of each priest's participation in the saving mystery of Christ: "Sacerdos alter Christus". This is an expression which indicates how necessary it is that Christ be the starting point for interpreting the reality of the priesthood. Only in this way can we do full justice to the truth about the priest, who, having been "chosen from among men, is appointed to act on behalf of men in relation to God" (Heb 5:1). The human dimension of priestly service, in order to be fully authentic, must be rooted in God. Indeed, in every way that this service is "on behalf of men", it is also "in relation to God": it serves the manifold richness of this relationship. Without an effort to respond fully to that "anointing with the Spirit of the Lord" which
490 See, eg, 1 Pet 2:5 (“Ye also, as lively stones, are built up a spiritual house, an holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices, acceptable to God by Jesus Christ”). Individual Christians are also a “royal priesthood” (1 Pet 2:9) and “children of God” (1 Pet 1:3, 23; Gal 3:26) through faith in Jesus Christ.
491 See Anglican-Roman Catholic International Commission (1982:33).
492 Emphasis in the original.

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establishes him in the ministerial priesthood, the priest cannot fulfill the expectations that people —the Church and the world—rightly place in him ...493
Sadly, we Liberal Catholics are perhaps at our most conservative and sacerdotal when it comes to our understanding of the priesthood. Part of the problem is that some more Theosophically minded members of the Church have a shaman or Brahman-like priestly class view of the role and powers of the priest – a view that, with respect, is quite non- Christian. We expect too much of our priests, and fail to recognise the role of the laity in the task of serving the world. Without in any way wishing to downgrade the significance of the priesthood it is submitted that what F F Bruce wrote (1964:407) on the nature of the Christian religion has important implications for how we ought to see the role of the priesthood, and that is in terms of the priest leading by way of example in the same manner as did Jesus of Nazareth:
Christianity is sacrificial through and through; it is founded on the one self-offering of Christ, and the offering of His people's praise and property, of their service and their lives, is caught up into the perfection of His acceptable sacrifice, and is accepted in Him.
True, we must never minimise the role and special functions of the priest, and the manner in which the priest is set apart (or, better still, sent forth) for the performance of certain designated priestly functions, but we need to remember that all who are “on the path” constitute a holy and royal priesthood (cf 1 Pet 2:5, 9) who, with the clergy, are jointly and severally responsible for the work of the Church, that work which our first Presiding Bishop James Wedgwood referred to as both a service “rendered to the world in which we live” and a service “rendered to God because we are privileged in being able to co-operate with Him, and to take our share in His work of pouring out strength and blessing upon the world” (1929:59). Yes, our first presiding bishop had the vision and foresight to recognise that all the faithful are co-creators with God and in that sense priests of the Most High through faith in our Master Christ, the one High Priest. O that we might recapture the splendour and the reality of that vision! We all have become too worldly - this worldly, that is – and, as Saint Francis of Assisi reportedly said, “Don’t change the world. Change worlds.”494 All Liberal Catholics, whether laity or those in holy orders, need to follow the advice of Saint Francis, as well as that recorded by
493 Quoted in “'Alter Christus?' Sure They Are”, [Online] viewed 2 June 2009, <http://www.lazyboysreststop.com/odds12.htm>.
494 Quoted in Ellis-Jones (2008d:50).

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the Apostle Paul, namely, “Come out from among them, and be ye separate, saith the Lord” (2 Cor 6:17).495
What does the Liberal Catholic Church have to offer to those who want to find a way of being spiritual in today’s world but who are still prepared to express their spirituality, at least in part, in a churchlike manner, albeit in a Christian Church that has all of the distinguishing features and characteristics that have been referred to elsewhere in this thesis? May I suggest the following, which is not intended to be an exhaustive list of what our Church has to offer or now offers (for in many respects I think we are currently missing the mark, so some of what is mentioned below are more in the nature of ideals):
 a welcoming community for people of all beliefs, and of none, that was founded by people who had the courage to challenge dogma and outmoded interpretations of so-called Christian orthodoxy
 a home and sanctuary for those who need rest and who seek comfort, blessing and transformation
 a church which believes in the sacredness, oneness and ultimate indestructibility of the same stream of life in which we all live and move and have our being
 a church where people can “receive a kingdom that cannot be shaken ... and [can] worship God ... with reverence and awe”496 in a shared liturgy – something that is not possible in churches that place entertainment above the need for there to be awe and reverence in the presence of the Divine
 a church which believes that Christianity is not a system of doctrines and dogmas but a means by which we can come into conscious awareness of our oneness with the Divine and thereby achieve our full God-given innate potential
 a church which, although Christian and Catholic in orientation, draws upon religions and spiritual traditions other than Christianity, and which erects no barriers around its altars
 a church which seeks to preserve and teach “the wisdom underlying all religions when they are stripped of accretions and superstitions ... teachings [that] aid the unfoldment of the latent spiritual nature in the human being, without dependence
495 Cf Rev 18:4.
496 See Heb 12:28.

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or fear”497 a church which seeks to keep abreast with, and otherwise embrace, developments in science, philosophy and psychology to the extent to which they honour the totality of human experience
 a church which believes in religious freedom, reason and tolerance, and therefore affirms that each person should be guided by their own heart, conscience and spiritual intuition in shaping their respective spiritual beliefs
 a church which believes that we are responsible not just for ourselves but for the world in which we live.
I finished my article entitled “The Treasures of Wisdom and Knowledge” (2007a), and I will finish this thesis, with these words:
I leave you with this. What the Bible, indeed all sacred scripture, makes clear is that a vital, living and evolving relationship with the One that is all Life and Power and Truth is the starting point, the path, and the endpoint, in the search for true, godly wisdom. May our faith “not rest in the wisdom of men but in the power of God” (1 Cor 2:5).
497 See Besant ([1909] 1984:60).

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III. MULTIMEDIA
Hidden Story of Jesus, The 2007. Presented by Dr Robert Beckford and directed by David Batty. London: Juniper Communications/Channel 4 Television Corporation.
Latin High Mass for Nostalgic Catholics [Bonaventure Choir; Celebrant: Rev C Kline OFM]. Franklin Park IL: World Library Publications [1969] 1999. Compact disc/WLP 002280.
Liberal Catholic Church in Australia 1991. International Videocassette No 2: The Larger View/The Instruments of Transformation/The Work of Transformation. Lane Cove, Sydney NSW: St Alban Press (The Australian Liberal Catholic Tape Library). VHS video cassette. [DVD copy in possession of Ian Ellis-Jones.]
Liberal Catholic Church in Australia nd. The Larger View: The History and Ideals of the Liberal Catholic Church, narrated by L Furze-Morrish. Gardner VIC: The Australian Liberal Catholic Tape Library. Audio cassette/Program GP 26.
Martin, J C (Joe) 1979. Spirituality and Religion. Beresfield NSW: Caring and Sharing Tape Library Inc. Audio cassette/Tape No 00285.
National Geographic 2006. Gospel of Judas. Washington DC: National Geographic Society.
Peale, N V 1992. The Power of Positive Thinking. New York: Simon & Schuster Audio. Compact disc/0-671-58186-4.
St Alban Press 2005. Liberal Catholic Church International Liturgical Music. San Diego CA: St Alban Press/LCCI. Compact disc/CD#4.
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