Simple Salvation Church of God

Divine Revelation and the Pursuit of Truth

The Christian Universalist Association affirms the following in our statement of faith:

Christians consider the Bible to be the authoritative textual basis of their faith, a collection of writings that contain divine revelations and which, in some sense, is collectively a divine revelation. As a Christian organization, the Christian Universalist Association agrees with this view of the Bible. We would encourage all people to study the Bible in a prayerful and meditative spirit, and to seek a correct, scholarly understanding of how the canon we know today as "The Holy Bible" was put together by the early church and the cultural context and background of the individual books and authors that comprise it. Neglecting such study tends to lead to grossly inaccurate, laughable, even monstrous views of scripture.

As Universalists, we also recognize that the revelation of divine truth is not limited to the pages of the Bible. For one thing, many great Christian thinkers, such as church fathers, saints and mystics, have written texts which are just as inspiring and valuable as canonized Biblical books. Looking beyond the confines of Christianity, all people throughout history have been able to seek and find God in nature (Rom. 1:20), as well as through the rational discourse of philosophy (Prov. 4:5-9, 24:14, Isa. 1:18, Acts 17:28). Some attained great levels of understanding in these ways. Furthermore, there have been various holy persons and prophetic figures who have lived within the context of a wide variety of cultures and spiritual and philosophical traditions, whose explorations led them to gain and share important ideas in the progress of humanity's search for the divine.

We believe that the Spirit of God, the Divine or Holy Spirit, is the way that God is accessible to every individual who has ever lived. People who did not have the opportunity to know God in Christ or the scriptures of the Hebrew tradition have nonetheless been able to seek God through prayer, meditation, praise and worship, through which they might receive inspiration from God's Spirit (Job 1:1-5,20-21, 2 Chron. 36:22-23, Isa. 44:28). The reason the Spirit is always accessible to us is because we ourselves were created with a portion of God's own Spirit, and our spirits are destined to return to God, the Source of our being (Ecc. 12:7, Acts 17:25-28, Rom. 11:36, Eph. 4:4,6).

God has given each and every one of us the opportunity and the responsibility to seek truth by connecting with His Divine Spirit which is already within us all. Truth is to be found both in great spiritual writings of the past and in our own hearts and minds today. When we discover truth, we must not be passive but must use what we have learned actively to help ourselves and others (Mat. 5:14-16). How could God expect anything less from the powerful offspring of God that we are!