Cognitive Theology

Author: Richard R. Tryon

Cognitive Theology
And what it means in the 21st Century

By Richard R. Tryon, Jr.

This is the term that best describes the methodology for "You Can't Escape God". But, behind the need to find the way to meld philosophy and religion into a common set of logical thought is the goal of stripping away some of the mystery that has always defied the logic of religion to the philosophers and scientists.

The first book is, according to its main author, a ‘failed’ attempt to offer logical arguments to explain the details of Christian and Jewish religion’s needs to relate to a common God, that could leave the reader convinced of a ‘proof’ of God’s existence, nature and character and man’s relationship to the Christian Trinitarian concept. It is therefore, not surprising that almost all Christian and Jewish theologians, keepers of and defenders of the faith have no problem in quickly dismissing the book as being irrelevant and probably irreverent!

What they are missing is that they can not let themselves study any of the big questions about ‘faith’s cornerstones’ and the postulates of “You Can’t Escape God” except within the context of what is known from the magnificent documents of the past- The Old and New Testaments, and also of all other religions of history. It is clearly very dangerous to one’s professional career in any faith to consider in any theological question, information or thinking that is not taken from some defined ‘Holy Book’ of antiquity.

It really is not too hard to understand why God, in the time of Moses and Abraham or later at the time of Christ, could not reveal more than a little of his nature and relationship to man for the very simple reasons that:

a. No man of that age could have known enough about this world, much less the universe to have comprehended God as more than an omniscient and omnipotent power to be awed, respected, feared and obeyed. Men of that age understood these concepts very well, but knowledge of science and the characteristics of nature as employed over millions of years was beyond the ken of such persons and their peers around them; and

b. No man of the age of Christ was any better prepared to know of either the science or of the real connections between Father and Son. But the Apostles did witness the power of the Holy Spirit in the hands of the Lord and they too were empowered to have and use it. Some men were ready to consider God as a forgiving and loving Deity.

Of course, God the Father and the Son knew that no man 2,000 years ago was ready to understand the science of nature, but there were many who then and since have understood the importance of giving themselves to Christ as the means for their personal salvation.

If Christ had needed to accomplish more and had chosen to defy his chosen enemies so as to live in perpetuity among us, we would have no way to question the need for faith. We would have no free-will choice to make and it would not matter whether we had been just fertilized eggs with an active soul at conception that failed to implant or to gestate to birth; or if our souls had a hundred years of living life experience on Earth. We would always be free of any sign of a free will choice to be anything apart from obedient to God the Father and His living among us Son. At the one extreme, we would be pure, for lack of chance to be anything else; and from the other, we would be pure because we would abandon all pretense of independent thought and submit to the living Christ’s direction here. It was therefore necessary that Christ not stay forever after his death and resurrection. Without mystery there is no chance for free-will and God and his Son were careful to leave both room for doubt as well as evidence for faith. But, without CNN or millions of feet of video and other recordings, countless interviews and repeated demonstrations of Divine power to cut through mystery or endless questions from doubters needing more evidence, it took from sixty to two hundred years just to get the oral traditions converted into written records!

Why then did my father attempt to prove the impossible?  I believe that he was trying to win an argument with real or duped intellectuals in the headquarters of the Associated Press in the late 1930’s who thought that Joseph Stalin was as great a patriot of mankind then as some want to think of Fidel Castro now. He needed to win the argument by showing that God does not want man to be a slave to the state in order to survive and prepare for the eternal goal of the soul- to be at one with God. Substitution of the State for Divine intervention of a Christ that is physically among us to direct our lives both fail to develop the intellectual readiness of the soul to be with God in Heaven.

But, knowing how hard it would be to make the proof, my father labored at it for over forty years because he felt that if he could achieve his goal of showing strong evidence to help man understand both the existence of God the Father, Son and Holy Ghost, but also provide a better comprehension of a life style for proper development. One that would be free of the endless progression of wars, pestilences, disease, and self-destruction. He wanted to compose and illustrate a political-socio-economic system that would be acceptable to all and consistent with a theology and philosophy that all could embrace.

Obviously, it is clear to all that religious leaders and their minions in various institutions are generally recognized as being the most literate and expert in understanding theology. But, these paragons of virtue and truth all suffer from one intractable failing. They dare not stray from orthodoxy or use any source for consideration except the approved ones from the past. They can study and try to find hidden meanings in ancient words or try to improve the translations, but they dare not introduce any new Revelation. In fact, the early writers of the New Testament did try to create an extra Book of Revelations. Why, and what happened to it?

The answer to the why is simple: it was needed to help prepare the people for the expected return of the Lord who had visibly risen from the Earth to someplace above it as contrasted to someplace below it! The Earth then, was deemed to be flat and was thought to be the center of the universe. These errors have haunted the oldest of the Christian and all Jewish churches that stick to the concepts that all was known and written in the good books!

In most Christian churches today, the Book of Revelations is rarely used or read in any service where ordinary people are expected to attend! It is so confusing and irrelevant to what happened as to really constitute a low grade embarrassment. Most clergy would be happy if nobody ever asked for explanations of any part of it!

Yet it is only via the spirit of Revelations that we can ever hope to expand upon our understanding and find the way to make a religion that has meaning to more people. Indeed many churches, especially the so-called ‘main-line’ ones see declining membership, lack of success in evangelism, and a succession of internal failures of all sorts. To find the way to appeal to more people, we must revitalize all religions and churches to help them acquire a new understanding of mission, and the underlying truths of theology.

But, if the keepers of the faith are hand picked to keep them orthodox and unable to consider any facts or ideas that are not found in accepted Scripture, then from where is any new Revelation to be found? I submit that we have learned why God came in the time of Abraham and Moses and could send his Son just 2,000 years ago to teach the New Testament. Clearly there is no way for either to come again without being forced by modern communications to be instantly known to all mankind in a way that will instantly destroy free-will which is mandatory to preparing any soul for further development beyond this life on Earth.

Clearly, the established order of the priests, clergy and even dependent lay leaders is in no position to discover any Revelation that is not ‘official’. A Pope has now shown that he can admit to the sins of his predecessors so he could visit the Jews in Israel, but nobody pointed out that such a confession drives a stake into the heart of the concept that Popes can’t make sins in matters of decisions over faith and morality and still be ‘infallible’!

Therefore, it will take a movement of significant proportion by men and women of faith to be able to discover that Yaweh “I am he that reveals himself” has been quietly providing the stuff of New Revelation, but nobody in any official church position has been listening.

For example, we now know that human life does not begin by the Grace of God and His Divine intervention to place in the womb of a woman, an egg that has been fertilized by a man’s sperm. Nor should we assume that God also turns on the soul for that fetal mass at the instant of conception which precedes by several days the time when the mass acquires an ability to attach itself to the lining of the womb, if it is in fact ready to accept it. Our great political debate over this issue has clearly shown that most lay people understand this process, which God authored or designed, but which doesn’t happen the way the Pope thinks it does.

Therefore, the second book, originally the second half of the first, is aimed at helping the individual understand how and why all of the myriad churches were formed to help us honor, obey, pray to, and seek solace, community fellowship and pastoral care, but fail to give us a theological basis for understanding how all people should live and relate to one another that provides a framework of poliitcal-socio-economic understandings that can be universally accepted as being at one with God.

The roots of this failure are many. Each of them deserves and gets a chapter in this book. They include the failures caused by misunderstanding of the Word of God as found in the incomplete writings and erroneous parts of the Bible; the tendency to accept slavery to the state as an acceptable institution aimed at protecting the weak while serving the few; and the collaborative actions of political parties, unions, associations and other forms of economic monopoly aimed at providing special advantage to some without equitable contribution to all.

Richard R. Tryon, Sr. set about designing in the second book a prescription to help provide a way for all churches to come to grips with the revelations that the secular world has been allowed to learn without Divine Intervention or presence. If and when a large mass of individuals come to know and understand what the needed changes require, it may be possible for some churches to find the pathway to reform. Considering that it took the Roman Catholic church over 1,500 years to accept Galileo as being a man who told the truth and not a lie about the relationship of the sun to the earth, one need not be expected to hold one’s breath waiting for any church to change. But the revelation of Galileo has, can and will be repeated and slowly these truths will come into play in ways that change the churches and make them more attractive to the members and to the non-members alike.

It is the intent of Richard R. Tryon, Jr. to present as much of the writings of his father that relate to these tasks, updating them where possible for evidences available now that were not in existence when he wrote his last words in 1973. A few points may relate to his words uttered vocally to me in the remaining five years of his life that expired on March 15, 1978, just two days after he set-up and started to get ready to write again!

Among the many subjects to be considered in this book will be:

1. The need to seek harmony among all churches over the nature of God the Father; and to seek ways to cause acceptance of the Son and the Holy Ghost among the faithful of the ancient Hebrew divisions (Orthodox, Reformed, and Modern); and also among the many branches of the Christian and related faiths such as the Mormons, the Unitarians, and literally hundreds of splinter sects and groups. One need not expect such to happen quickly! After all, it is a major revelation to determine that science shows us that the universe goes back billions of years and that life most certainly developed elsewhere long before our solar system even took form. Therefore it is more logical to accept that God evolved out of the Universe rather than the other way around as was the only way that the ancients could have been able to think. It takes nothing away from God’s current position as being omnipotent and omniscient throughout the existence of our solar system. So, God the Creator of our solar system and as many others as He has had reason to develop, is real; but we do not need to be stumped by would be followers who ask how God could have created the universe out of nothing or how could God have been created first out of the same nothing? True, we can’t yet explain the totality of the ‘big-bang’, but we keep getting closer. Yes, we can accept God as Creator of Heaven and Earth, but we do not need to include all of the universe.

2. We need to come to grips with the mysteries of the life of Christ to understand why God sent his Son and how it was done. Reincarnation on Earth, a process similar to that no doubt awaiting our further development after a life of some dimension and time frame here, is not an easy concept to grasp. But, we can help the ‘un-believers’ find a way to accept that God and his Son work so-called ‘miracles’ by using the laws of nature, not by breaking them. We need to learn more about the substance of the Holy Ghost, even though we can’t see, touch, taste, hear, or feel it yet! The first book already covers this array of theological development and revelation. It will take the questions of many thousands of additional readers and thinkers to refine the base of knowledge needed to help vast numbers come to accept the truths of these revelations.

3. While it is not necessary to construct a monolithic church of some denomination, we need to recognize that Christ did found the concept for the church, but he did not Consecrate any one structure, faith or even form of worship beyond the essence of that presented by the last supper. Still, we need to deal with the questions of what the clergy accomplish with various forms of re-enactments of that event.

4. Perhaps the single most devastating lament of non-believers is the challenge to all faithful of hypocrisy! The contention that the ‘piousity’ of the so-called faithful is marred by the distinctions between the words espoused on the Sabbath and the deeds accomplished in between is key to the problem of meaningful revelation. Fortunately, much of this arena is the material of the second book for it deals with the practice of the Lord’s way in our socio-political-economic systems throughout the world.

All of the key problems of the world as perceived by the many special interest groups come to play. Unless we can find common ground to resolve all of them in ways acceptable and understood to be fair, equitable and consistent with a universal theology, we shall not overcome the resistance to accept any revelation, including those of the past 5,000 years!

Problems of how to relate between employee and employer, student and teacher, man and wife, parent and child, nature and civilization, including population control or development, are just a partial list of issues to be addressed.

Finally, it is the invention of the internet that provides a special tool to help bring knowledge to the many difficult assignments implied by the words above. That tool is interaction with you the readers! For it will ultimately take consideration of many points and perspectives before we find the right expressions of the ways to conduct life that will yield a socio-political-economic result that is consistent with and in harmony with an understanding of the philosophical and religious truths that will ultimately show why nobody should fail to realize that “You Can’t Escape God”, so why not come to learning how to be in harmony with God by using your free-will to chart the courses of actions in your life that truly lead it to the ultimate Oneness with our Creator.