An Old Doctrine Refurbished

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Tacoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Aug 27, 1908

An Old Doctrine Refurbished

THE teachings of the “New Theology” are, after all, simply a cultured and refined form of the old pagan doctrine of self-exaltation, the real heart of all heathenism. Expressed in that modern literary style which savors strongly of the mystical, this teaching appears in the following statement:—

Spiritual well-being, spiritual life, all that is meant by “salvation,” depends not so much on verbal and mental assent to certain formulas, as on inward spiritual awakening, growth in spiritual life, and a gradual raising of the interior consciousness until it reaches and becomes one with the divine consciousness; that thus through “the new birth from above,” the spiritual man comes into being, and this spiritual man is of his own nature, or rather through his sharing in the divine nature, immortal, a habitant of eternity.

This is salvation by the development of the divine nature within, and is also a direct assertion of natural immortality. This is a claim that the divine nature was bestowed in the original creation, and not imparted in the re-creation. Such is the present perversion of the gospel of Christ.