MBB asks: “What is esoteric Christianity?”Great question!
Esoteric Christianity is said to be a version of Christianity which can only be understood by those who have acquired secret knowledge. Supposedly, only a small number of people ever achieve this kind of enlightenment which believers say is the only way to crack the code of the Bible and truly know God.
Purveyors of this pseudo-Christianity are usually theosophists, gnostics, Rosicrucians and other New Age/occult enthusiasts. They assert that Christianity is a mystery religion in which there are at least two different dimensions - the exoteric or "outer" form which consists of rituals, beliefs, and dogmas - and the esoteric or "inner" form that "invites a person to experience divinity for themselves."
In other words, it’s very much in line with the New Age belief that we are all gods who need to develop our inner divinity.
Many believers in esoteric Christianity take this even further, such as Richard Smoley, who asserts in his article entitled “The Future of Esoteric Christianity” appearing on the Theosophical Society website, that religious authorities are deliberately ambivalent toward any kind of awakening to esoteric Christianity in their congregations because “An individual with his or her own direct contact with spiritual realities is less likely to need the priests . . . “
He goes on to reflect on the various astrological “ages” of the world (another New Age construct) such as the Age of Aries when God required blood sacrifice of animals. In the age of Pisces, which is the time of Christ, it was the blood sacrifice of Jesus that appeased God.
“Why, after all, should God, having become irked at the human race because someone ate a piece of fruit six thousand years ago, feel the need to send a part of himself down to earth and have it tortured to death as a way of making it up to himself?” Smoley asks.
Instead of clinging to this exoteric Christianity, Smoley posits that “the human race is ready for something different, something, we may hope, that is more advanced and more pronounced” than the death of Christ 'to appease a peevish and self-important deity. . .'”
These ideas are obviously heretical, as well as being outlandish, but they are also very telling. Too many people have tossed out the real Jesus and the Church He founded on earth for strange substitutions such as this one.
Could this be because we are not doing enough to reveal His grandeur to our non-practicing brothers and sisters?
© All Rights Reserved, Living His Life Abundantly®/Women of Grace® http://www.womenofgrace.com
