Church of Scientology

“ Before leaving, Armstrong and his wife copied a number of documents which he delivered to Garrison for his work on the Hubbard biography. After leaving, Armstrong cooperated with his successor, assisting him in locating documents and other items. *1067
Commencing in February 1982, the international Church of Scientology issued a series of “suppressive person declares” in effect labelling Armstrong an enemy of the Church and charging that he had taken an unauthorized leave, was spreading destructive rumors about senior Church officials, and secretly planned to leave the Church. ”

“ The attempt to explain the origin and course of religion by the study of the various heathen mythologies, and idolatries, and superstitions, is as absurd as to attempt to determine the origin and course of the Christian religion by the study of the thousand and one sects that have broken off from the church, and set up to be churches themselves. They can teach us nothing except the gradual deterioration of religious thought, and the development and growth of superstition or irreligion among those separated from the central religious life of the race. ”

“ No one who will read the whole history of the Latter-day Saints with a truly honest and unprejudiced heart, and look upon the blessings of prosperity which they at present enjoy, can for a moment doubt that they are members of a church which is under the direct guidance of God through new revelation. The only religion as taught in the Bible [but which churches that profess to believe in that Bible seem to deny] is the faith of visions, miracles, angels, revelations, and prophets. ”

“ Such a Church can meet new formulations of science and history and social ideals with no authoritative and conclusive word of God which automatically settles the issue. Its only weapons are truth and light, and these have to be continually re-discovered and re-fashioned to fit the facts which the age has found and verified. Its mission is prophetic. It does not dogmatically decide what facts must be believed, but it sees and announces the spiritual significance of the facts that are discovered and verified. ”

“ Surely these shadows are full of uncreated light; and from time to time the church retrims her lamps of dogmatic theology, and each time the light streams further down into the still, dim, uncertain regions of natural science, another precious secret is revealed, another ancient doubt dispelled; and matter and natural laws prove themselves each more and more to be the depositories of divine truth and the faithful creatures of the omnipresent Creator. ”

“ Let, then, all anxious but sincere doubters turn to Catholic doctors and Catholic books; let them hear the church—the old, calumniated church, the column of truth, the heir of the apostles, of the prophets, of the patriarchs, and the spouse of Christ. She will teach them how to reconcile reason with faith and religion with science, so as to believe rationally and consistently whatever God has revealed, while preserving the fullest liberty of judgment in regard to all other things. ”

“ Dogma can no more support the mythical element in one religion than in another. The time is coming when Christianity will abandon the effort altogether; but its last stronghold will be the Roman Catholic Church. ”

“ The devotees of each religion, and even of each sect into which a religion is so commonly split up, accept and even adore the absurdities of their own belief, while they scan, with a sceptical severity that cannot be surpassed, the not greater follies of other systems of belief. In no respect is this fact more glaring than in the case of miracles. Each Church has its own special miracles, devoutly believed in, but repels with contempt or horror the alleged miracles of other religions. ”

“ Superstition.―Just as in later times every great Christian missionary enterprise has seen religious ideas transferred from the old heathenism into the young Christianity, and, consciously or unconsciously, secretly or openly, acquiesced in or contended against, securing for themselves a footing, so also the Church of the first centuries did not succeed in keeping itself free from such intrusions. ”

“ For example, we should understand the doctrine of repentance and justification, of sanctification, of divine healing, of the one body, and of every other subject connected with our eternal interest. If a minister keeps the church well grounded in the doctrine of the New Testament, he will in a large measure forestall the possibility of their being seduced by false spirits and of giving place to doctrines of devils. ”

“ It is requisite for each to submit the results of his mystic excursions and explorations to the conclusions of the most advanced religion. Mystic observation and experience must have the support and purification of universal mystic experience that will distinguish between the false and the true, phantasm and reality, and deliver the individual from eccentricity and extravagance. In other words, a church is more necessary than a chamber of commerce, a national government, or an academy of science. ”

“ Now Sir as you argue that there can be no apostles and revelators unless they can prove their mission to be divine by miracles, so, upon the same principle I argue that there can be no Church of Christ unless they can prove themselves to be so by miracles, and the very same evidence which is brought to prove one of these things will prove the other. And there is no reasonable man, who is conscientiously convinced that there can be no apostles unless they can prove their mission by miracles, but must also be convinced that there are no Churches of Christ unless they prove it by miracles also. ”

“ This amounts to the same thing as saying that dogmatic belief, personal religious conviction, agnosticism, superstition, and imagination are all on equal terms, and are equally respectable factors when confronted with human historical evidence, so long as they are kept rigidly apart from the latter, As an eminent Catholic has recently said: "The Church has no more reason to be afraid of modern science than it was of ancient science." ”

“ The Church is the legitimate interpreter of the Bible, but only if she submits her interpretation to the rules of so-called critical science, which imposes itself upon theology and makes it its slave. ”

“ And what is the course it has taken with reference to the present spiritual manifestations, the claims of which it can no more overthrow than it can drag the sun from the firmament? Now a true church—a church to which is given the power to cast out devils, and take up serpents, or drink any deadly thing, without being harmed—will always be able to stand on the aggressive against its real spiritual foes more than on the mere defensive, and in no case will it ever turn its back to a fact in science. ”

“ It is especially with regard to the attitude of the churchmen, the people, and even the physicians of the Middle Ages toward insanity, that most opprobrium has been heaped upon the Church and her teachings in the so-called histories of the relations of science to theology or faith. Much of what has been said that has been supposed to tell worst against the Church, however, should not rest upon the shoulders of ecclesiastics, and should not be set down to the evil effect of theology. ”

“ In pursuance of this purpose, I have endeavored to select and group together events in the history of the church in such a manner as to trace the unfolding of the great testing truths that at different periods have been given to the world, that have excited the wrath of Satan, and the enmity of a world-loving church, and that have been maintained by the witness of those who “loved not their lives unto the death.” ”

“ Amid the increasing specialization of studies, amid all the new discoveries of science and historical criticism, with all the perplexities that arise as to the interpretation and inspiration of the Bible, now, if ever, there is need of a Church, which conscious of its own spiritual life, knowing that its spiritual truths have stood the test of centuries, has patience and courage to face all these new facts and see their bearing and take their measure ”

“ Jesus said that these signs should follow them that believe. His Church and Kingdom always have these signs which follow the believer in all ages when the true Church is in existence. Do they follow any but believers? They do not. The gift and power of the Holy Ghost, as enjoyed by the ancient saints, and its various manifestations, are not received in the faith of modern Christian sects. ”

“ And it may very reasonably be questioned whether any part of the Church has a right to identify herself with a creed which past experience proves that the whole Church will never adopt, and which therefore necessarily makes her schismatic and sectarian. As manifestoes or didactic summaries of truth, confessions of faith may be very useful. Systematic knowledge is at all times desirable; and as a backbone to which all the knowledge we acquire may be attached a catechism or confession of faith is part of the necessary equipment of a Church. ”

“ The fact is, as far as I am able to judge, every recent discovery of science tends to sustain the essential truths of the Bible, and confirm the religious concept.
Those who think that religion is losing its power should remember that thousands of converts are added to the churches daily, and fifteen church buildings on an average are erected every day in the United States alone. ”

“ In my intercourse abroad with divers holy priests and religious monks, I have seen and heard enough to convince me that many things take place in this world of a supernatural order. Nor do I believe there ever has been a period in the history of the Church, when our Lord has not borne testimony to her divine truth, and to the admirable sanctity of many of her children, by evident and glorious miracles. ”

“ The Martian logically deduces that by employing science for its defense, the Church admits the impotence of "divine revelation," in this age, to convince even its own adherents of the problematical existence of a divine being. Theology is no longer recognized as authoritative even by theologians! ”

“ With reference to the Christian Church, he remarks: "What does it matter that, during the development of the Church, the letter of symbolically-expressed truth has crystallized into fixed dogmas?... He who believes in a myth that contains, in the garb of a parable, a religious truth, and accordingly regulates his moral conduct, is better off than he who is void of any faith. The truth hidden in the myth teaches him and serves him as a guide; it comforts him in affliction, strengthens him in temptation, and shows him in an allegorical reflection the bliss that rests upon righteousness." ”

“ The idea that the Church would ever modify her teaching to bring it into harmony with modern science seemed utterly chimerical. But if the static theory of revelation is abandoned, and a dynamic theory substituted for it; if the divine part of Christianity resides, not in the theoretical formulations of revealed fact, but in the living and energising spirit of the Church; why should not dogmatic theology become elastic, changing periodically in correspondence with the development of human knowledge, and no longer stand in irreconcilable contradiction with the ascertained laws of nature? ”

“ From the day of its birth almost to the present hour the Church has been agitated by internal dissensions generated by the efforts of reason to understand and to define those inscrutable mysteries, to a belief in which every supernatural religion must owe its existence. ”

“ At this day, when so many of our clergy and intelligent laymen are beginning to doubt the special inspiration of the Sacred Scriptures, a knowledge of the Science of Correspondences, in accordance with which they were written, is wanted above every thing else, that the Christian Church "may revive again and draw breath through heaven from the Lord." ”

“ Indeed, if the historical accuracy of the Gospels and of the Acts of the Apostles is to be taken for granted, if the teachings of the Epistles are divinely inspired, and if the universal belief and practice of the primitive Church are the models which all later times must follow, there can be no doubt that those who accept the demonology are in the right. ”

“ The rejection of the divine authority of the Church to teach, and the subjection of all things belonging to religion to the judgment of each individual, have led to the production of many sects, and, as these differed and disputed with each other, all belief in Christ was overthrown in the minds of not a few, and the Holy Scriptures began to be counted as myths and fables. ”

“ Our worship differs from that of other religious people, inasmuch as we have the knowledge of God, and the true doctrine and order of his kingdom, beyond all perplexing doubt and diversity of opinion. It is utterly impossible for intelligent and devoted sectarian clergy to lead their hearers into any considerable knowledge of God, for this very potent reason, that they neither know much of him themselves, nor, indeed, have they the means of knowing him. ”

“ We have already called attention to the fact that the Church of Christ is called in the Scriptures the ‘Mystery of God,’ because, contrary to expectation, the Church was to be the Messianic Body which, under its Anointed Head, Jesus, shall rule and bless the world. ”

“ Unless the church will follow on in His opening providence, accepting every ray of light, performing every duty which may be revealed, religion will inevitably degenerate into the observance of forms, and the spirit of vital godliness will disappear. ”