Questions
A. Does Spiritism propose that we reject the Biblical Genesis due to its errors?
B. What wrong so significant committed by Adam and Eve led to the punishment of all their descendants?
C. According to Spiritism, which people do Adam and Eve represent?
Text for reading
702. Spirit phenomena are most often spontaneous and are produced without any preconceived idea on the part of the persons who least think about them. Under certain circumstances they can be precipitated by agents known as mediums. In the former case, mediums are unconscious of what is produced through their intermediation; in the latter, they act with full knowledge of the fact. The latter are the most numerous and are frequently found among the most obstinate disbelievers.
703. Regardless of whether or not the phenomena are the result of an act of the will, the primary cause is exactly the same and in no way does it deviate from natural laws. Therefore, mediums produce absolutely nothing supernatural; consequently, they perform no miracles. Even instantaneous healing are no more miraculous than other effects because they are due to the action of a fluidic agent performing the role of a therapeutic agent, whose properties are no less natural for having been unknown until today.
704. The intervention of unseen intelligences in spirit phenomena do not render them any more miraculous than all the other phenomena caused by invisible agents, because the unseen beings who populate space are one of the forces of nature.
705. By enlightening us about this force, Spiritism gives us the key to a multitude of matters inexplicable by any other means, and which might have passed as miracles in days gone by. Just like magnetism, Spiritism reveals a law, if not unknown, at least poorly understood; or, better stated, the effects are known because they have been produced throughout time; however, the law governing them has not been and it is the ignorance of this law that has engendered superstition.
706. Since Spiritism rejects all pretension of producing extraordinary things, are there miracles outside of it in the usual acceptation of the word? First of all, let us state that, among all the supposedly miraculous events that occurred before the coming of Spiritism, and which still occur nowadays, most, if not all, find their explanation in the new laws that it has come to reveal.
707. These events, therefore, albeit under another name, are included in the order of spirit phenomena, and as such represent nothing supernatural. It is well understood that we are dealing only with authentic events and not those that, under the label ‘miracles’, are the product of despicable knavery aimed at exploiting gullibility.
708. Does God perform miracles? - As for miracles per se, since nothing is impossible for God, they could of course be performed by God. Has this happened? In other words, does God derogate from the laws that God has established?
709. It is not up to humans to prejudge the acts of the Divinity and to subject them to the weakness of their understanding. Nonetheless, regarding divine matters, we have God’s own attributes as the criteria for our judgment. Supreme power is combined with supreme wisdom, from which one must conclude that God does nothing pointless. Why, then, would God perform miracles? To attest to God’s power, it is said. However, does not God’s power manifest much more impressively through the magnificent whole of the works of creation, through the providential wisdom presiding over the tiniest parts as well as the greatest.
710. The matter of miracles per se is not, therefore, within the jurisdiction of Spiritism; however, supported on the reasoning that God does nothing pointless, it states the following opinion: Since miracles are not necessary for the glorification of God, nothing in the universe deviates from the general laws. God does not perform miracles, because, since the divine laws are perfect, God has no need to derogate from them. If there are occurrences that we do not understand, it is because we still lack the necessary knowledge.
711. If we were to believe that, for reasons indiscernible to us, God could derogate unexpectedly from the laws God has established, such laws would no longer be immutable; but at least it is rational to think that only God has such power.
712. The Church also distinguishes good miracles, which come from God, from evil miracles, which come from Satan. But what is the difference? Whether a miracle is satanic or divine, it would nonetheless be derogation from the laws issued by God alone. If an individual is healed by a supposed miracle, whether by God or Satan, the person is healed nonetheless. One would have to have a very poor idea about human intelligence to think that such doctrines could be accepted nowadays.
713. Recognizing the possibility of certain reputedly miraculous phenomena, one must conclude that whatever the source attributed to them, they are natural effects, which, like everything else, both spirits and incarnates may use, as they can their own intelligence or scientific knowledge, for either good or for evil, depending on their goodness or perversity.
714. But, it is said, religion is founded on phenomena that are neither explained nor explainable. Unexplained, perhaps; unexplainable — that is a different matter. Who knows what discoveries and knowledge the future reserves for us? Without mentioning the miracle of creation — the greatest of all without argument — which today has entered the realm of universal law, do we not see, under the control of magnetism, somnambulism and Spiritism, ecstasies, visions, apparitions, perception-at-distance, instantaneous healing, suspensions in the air, oral and other types of communications with beings from the invisible world?
715. These phenomena known since time immemorial, considered yesterday as extraordinary, but shown today as belonging to the order of natural things in conformance with the constitutive law of beings? The sacred books are full of incidents of this kind, qualified as supernatural. However, since similar and even more extraordinary phenomena may be found in all the pagan religions of antiquity, then if the veracity of a religion depended on the number and nature of such incidents, then there is no telling which one would have prevailed.
716. The supernatural and religions - To insist that the supernatural is the necessary foundation of all religion, that it is the cornerstone of the Christian edifice, is to uphold a dangerous thesis. Making the bases of Christianity rest on the sole base of the extraordinary is to give it a fragile support, whose stones are coming loose every day. It is not the supernatural that is necessary for religions, but rather the spiritual principle, which has erroneously been confused with the extraordinary, and without which no religion is possible.
717. Spiritism considers the Christian religion from a more elevated point of view. It gives it a more solid base than miracles: the immutable laws of God, which govern both the spiritual principle and the material principle. This base defies both time and science, because both time and science will come to sanction it.
718. God is no less worthy of our admiration, our recognition or our respect for not having derogated from the divine laws, which are great especially because of their immutability. There is no need of the supernatural to render to God the worship God is due.
719. Religion will encounter fewer disbelievers the more it is sanctioned by reason at every point. Christianity has nothing to lose with such a sanction; on the contrary, it has only to gain. If there has been anything that could harm it in the opinion of certain individuals, it is precisely the abuse of the supernatural and the extraordinary.
720. Does one wish to give people, the unlearned, the poor in spirit an idea of God’s power? Show them that the infinite wisdom presides over everything: in the admirable organism of everything that lives, the fructification of plants, and the appropriation of all the parts of each being for its needs according to the environment into which it has been called to live. Show them God’s action in the sprig of a bush, in the flower that blooms, and in the sun that gives life to everything. Show them God’s goodness in God’s kindness for all creatures no matter how tiny they may be; none of which are useless.
721. Especially, enable them to understand that true evil is the work of human beings and not of God. Do not seek to scare them with a picture of eternal flames, which they no longer believe in and which makes them question God’s goodness; instead, encourage them with the certainty that they will be able someday to redeem themselves and right the evil they might have committed.
722. Show them the discoveries of science as revelations of the divine laws and not as works of Satan. Finally, teach them to read the book of nature that is constantly open right in front of them; in that inexhaustible book, where the wisdom and goodness of the Creator is inscribed on each page. Then they will comprehend that a Being who is so great and concerned about everything, who watches over everything and foresees everything, must be supremely powerful.
723. Farmers will see God whenever they plow their furrows and the unfortunate will bless God in their afflictions, because they will say to themselves, “If I am unhappy, it is my own fault.” Then, men and women will be truly religious and rationally religious especially, much more so than if they believe in stones that sweat blood or statues that blink their eyes and shed tears.
Answer Key
A. Does Spiritism propose that we reject the Biblical Genesis due to its errors?
No. We should not reject the biblical Genesis; on the contrary, we shall study it as if we were studying the childhood history of cultures. It is an epopee rich in allegories whose hidden meaning must be searched for and which must be commented upon and explained in the light of reason and science. Having highlighted the poetic beauties and veiled teachings under the allegorical form, it is necessary to honestly point out its errors in the interest of religion itself. Religion will be more respected when such errors are no longer imposed on faith as truths, and God will seem greater and more powerful only when the divine name is not mixed with controversial facts. (Genesis, chap. XII, item 12)
B. What wrong so significant committed by Adam and Eve led to the punishment of all their descendants?
No theologian can define it logically, because they all take it literally and thus go around in a vicious circle. Today, we know that this wrong was not an isolated, personal act by an individual, but that, beneath a unique allegorical event, it comprises the whole of the sins for which imperfect earthly humankind is guilty, and which are summed up in these words: the infraction of God’s laws. This is why the wrong of the first man, symbolizing all humankind, is portrayed as an act of disobedience. What comprises an impasse for theology, Spiritism explains without difficulty and in a rational manner by means of the preexistence of the soul and the plurality of existences, a law without which everything is a mystery and an anomaly in human life. In fact, let us believe that Adam and Eve had lived previously and everything is justified: God did not speak to them as children, but as beings capable of understanding God and who did understand — obvious proof that they had previous knowledge. Furthermore, let us admit that they had lived on a more advanced and less material world than ours, where the labor of the spirit supplants the labor of the body; that, because of their rebellion against God’s law — portrayed in their disobedience — they had been excluded and exiled, as a punishment, on the earth, where due to the nature of the globe, humans are subject to bodily labor, then God would have been right in telling them: “In the world where you are going to live from now on, you shall cultivate the land and take from it your food with the sweat of your brow”; and to the woman, “You shall give birth in pain”, because such is the condition of this world.
The earthly paradise, whose vestiges have been pointlessly searched for on earth, was the symbol for the happy world where Adam used to live, or rather the race of the spirits whom he personified. The expulsion from paradise marks the moment in which these spirits came to incarnate among the inhabitants of this world, and the change in the situation that as a result of the expulsion. (Genesis, chap. XII, items 19 to 23)
C. According to Spiritism, which people do Adam and Eve represent?
Adam and Eve symbolize a group of spirits who rebelled against the law of God. Then consequently were exiled to our planet. A fact that gave rise to various allegories as the paradise lost, the doctrine of fallen angels and that the Church later established as dogma — the original sin. Punished for their rebellion, they atoned on earth their mistakes and at the same time contributed to the material and the intellectual progress planet. (Genesis, chap. XII, items 22 and 23)
