
Existential insecurity vs Internal craving
While we are desperate to find financial security and satisfaction in the material world, we become hungrier and hungrier for personal and spiritual fulfilment.
It is important to mention, that one of the most relevant element of Gnostic Christianity to Unity is that in philosophical thought, logos (“word”) was the principle of rationality that connected the highest god to the material world. In Unity, you will find that we place emphases on the words we use. We create positive affirmations and so-called denials to elevate our consciousness.
Personally, among all Christian traditions, I feel the closest to Gnostic Christianity. I highlighted parts of the text below that felt meaningful to me.
Gnostics: those who embody the highest ethical and spiritual values, such as temperance, diligence, humility, chastity, generosity, etc. and who can at will have personal experience with divinity.
I found this fascinating and rather thorough article on the Protestant Churches. I hope you find it revealing!
Christianity was born out of the teachings of Jesus Christ of Nazareth. More specifically, his disciples began to spread The Gospel, or ”good news,” of Jesus after Jesus was crucified and resurrected. After Christianity had spread for centuries, Christians began to disagree on certain minute theological beliefs. These disagreements spawned different denominations or branches of Christianity. Each denomination slightly differs from the next based on each one’s theological beliefs. Such disagreements include different beliefs on baptism, the means of salvation, and God’s sovereignty.
Protestantism was born in response to what many saw as the rigid teachings and traditions of Roman Catholicism. The spark that began the Protestant flame was Martin Luther’s “95 Theses,” critiquing the legalism within the Roman Catholic Church. Martin Luther was a monk who had extensively studied the Bible and Christian tradition. In his view, Roman Catholicism was the antithesis of Christ’s teachings of salvation through grace alone because Roman Catholic church leaders were selling indulgences as absolution to sin. In addition, Luther believed that Roman Catholic leaders were abusing their power and that they had lost focus on the gospel of Christ. After Martin Luther tacked his “95 Theses” on the door of the Wittenberg Castle church, Catholicism would be permanently divided.
I created this document as part of my Unity Ministerial training. I read Rev Roach’s book and made notes on my observations on how the 5 Principles of Unity is compared to the theology of the main stream Christian Churches.
Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength. The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself. There is no commandment greater than these. Mark 12:30-31
This chapter seeks to understand Christianity and Jesus through the lens of Unity’s five principles. Rev Roach looks at how each Unity’s principle understands or differs from the traditional Christian perspective.
As part of Christian history, it was interesting to learn that only 4 of the original 45 gospels made it to the final version of the New Testament and by 325 A.C. Jesus was clamed to be fully God and fully human by the Council of Nicaea. After the Great Schism in 1045 which was mostly about the disagreement on the Holy Trinity, the Christian churches shattered into numerous divisions in 1517 when Marin Luther placed the 95 Thesis on the church door of Wittenberg. Part of this thesis was about the nature of Jesus.
Because the Unity Movement finds its roots in Christianity I decided to start investigating different aspects of Christianity and see how relevant they are to Unity today.
We have just celebrated Orthodox Easter. I have been investigating the differences between the Orthodox and Catholic Churches.I found this amazing article. I have copied out some of the article that I found interesting. You can read the entire article HERE (CLICK)
Because the Unity Movement finds its roots in Christianity I decided to start investigating different aspects of Christianity and see how relevant they are to Unity today.
Modernly, the Eastern Orthodox and Roman Catholic Churches remain separated with key doctrinal differences between them. The primary theological difference is that the Catholic Church believes the Holy Spirit proceeds from God the Father to Jesus Christ the Son, and the Orthodox Church believes the Holy Spirit proceeds only from God the Father. The second major theological difference is that the Catholic Church believes the Pope has supreme authority over the Christian faith, while the modern Orthodox Church has no doctrinal authority. Aside from these key theological differences, modern religious practices and beliefs vary between the two churches. For example, the Orthodox Church allows for divorce, while the Catholic Church does not.
The primary organizational difference between the Eastern Orthodox and Roman Catholic Churches is the question of Papal Primacy. The Catholic Church believes that the Pope is the bishop of Rome and heads the Catholic Church. Papal Primacy is a doctrinal belief concerning the respect and authority that all Catholics and members of the Catholic Church must afford the Pope due to the belief that he has primacy jurisdiction over the governance of the church.