Course XXXIV - Teaching 4: Bases and Method

As Theology is an essentially rational activity, and also a science par excellence, it must have bases as starting points and supports, and characteristic methods in agreement with its objectives.
At this point you have seen that, ultimately, the objective of Theology is to know the truth, or also in other words, to know God; so human reason cannot speculate any longer, and must hold and base on the only thing that God permits him to understand as a more or less intelligible manifestation: the Revelation.
In fact, man can glimpse his longed-for final truth only through Revelation.
Revelation is his only contacting-connecting point –although dark and general– to use and enter the great mystery of himself and God.
Traditions of the past, and even those of our days, tell that God sometimes reveals Himself to some chosen souls by teaching and enlightening them by means of extraordinary knowledge. These revelations, however, cannot serve humanity as a whole, since as they are imparted to certain being, generally fulfill particular objectives of an individual soul and tend to a specific mission that this being fulfills in his own life.
So, Revelation as a theological basis must contain certain general conditions that are over and above an individual being, by comprising Humanity as a whole not only for one generation, but also for the entire period of human evolution in agreement with a characteristic mode.
So, in Revelation you find in one of its fundamental characteristics: its antiquity. Or in other words, the source of Revelation vanishes in the past of Humanity.
But also, as Revelation must be in force for the entire period of human evolution according to a characteristic mode or finality –which here is conquest and development of the rational mind– of course Revelation, as basis of any rational development to achieve the Final Truth, must arise from the dawn of the Root Race.
So, theologically speaking, Revelation implies Great Fundamental Traditions of Humanity, and its source vanishes in the past to such an extent that it would be useless to place it chronologically, or to determine its author, who obviously belongs to an earlier stage than the present one.
In fact, as Revelation may practically be called the ruling development law of the Race, necessarily it will be previous to its clear emergence, which means that the individual being that has fixed it belongs to an evolutionary stage differing from that which later developed under this law, and therefore is beyond any possible determination.
So, obviously just a Solar Initiate can have launched through the Mother Idea that which we call Fundamental Traditions whose source is truly divine as this Solar Initiate is a simple channel for the word of God. By the way, this clarifies and gives validity to the statement that Revelation is the only basis to enter the Final Truth tentatively.
Finally, Revelation must be by writing so that it can be held as such. This written condition implies an affirmation concept. This means that the original Revelation, orally transmitted from generation to generation in the beginning, later was transmitted by writing by other initiates, who by doing so, confirm its own Verities on the light of his experiences gathered, corroborated and confirmed throughout the times.
So, Revelation as such must ever have an oral stage, and later another written stage, and behind this form it passes to posterity.
This way, Revelation becomes an Orthodox Scripture by means of its uninterrupted written affirmation since times beyond any possible determination; so Revelation can be defined as Orthodox Scriptures of Great Fundamental Traditions.
From these sayings, the following qualities of the Revelation emerge with clarity:
Perpetuity: Revelation is perpetual. As one speaks humanly about perpetuity, we must take this concept in its human dimension, and not in relation to the Absoluteness held as eternal.
As one sees it in this way, you understand as humanly perpetual all those things with real validity and duration in a complete cycle of human development. The Truth and Teaching of Revelation is valid in the whole existence of the Root Race, because is constituted by the Mother Idea. So it is humanly perpetual. Infallibility: Revelation is infallible because the Mother Idea is a true Law of Cyclic Race Predestination that is dependent on the Great Law of Universal Predestination, which, although is unknown and unknowable to man, one intuits it divinely governing the manifestation.
The Only Exponent of the Doctrine: because Revelation guides and signals means that Humanity can use to complete their Law of Chances in its racial cycle and in the circle of their predestination. So, Revelation contained in the Orthodox Scriptures is the spring of all human knowledge; therefore, it is basis and starting point of any efforts to come into and conquer the Divine Wisdom by means of Theology.