A Course in Miracles and Christianity: A Dialogue

The book is an intelligent discourse between two religious experts. Ken and the priest debate politely on the differences between Catholicism and A Course In Miracles and boy what a difference. Nevertheless they emerge with respect and new found knowledge. Catholicism teaches exclusivity and specialness as well as an angry God.The course teaches that we are all Sons of God and that God is Unconditional love and ultimately there has never been a separation from God. The book is well worth reading. Martin Chretien [...]

A COURSE IN MIRACLES AND CHRISTIANITY: A DIALOGUE is a conversation between Kenneth Wapnick, Ph.D., and W. Norris Clarke, S.J., Ph.D. on the differences between A COURSE IN MIRACLES (a self-study book about spiritual psychotherapy) and Christianity. Such a dialogue is appropriate since A COURSE IN MIRACLES claims Jesus as its author. As the two men make quickly apparent, however, the "Course" and Christianity are mutually exclusive paths. I found A COURSE IN MIRACLES AND CHRISTIANITY: A DIALOGUE very helpful because I come from a Catholic background, but left Catholicism for the Course. It is interesting that comparing and contrasting these two paths makes their respective positions even more clear and understandable. I learned things in this book about Catholicism that I had not known (it's interesting to note that Mr. Wapnick had, at one time, studied to become a Catholic priest). Another interesting thing is that it is thanks to W. Norris Clarke that Mr. Wapnick no longer describes A COURSE IN MIRACLES as being a "correction" of Catholicism; as Norris notes, in order for the Course to be a correction of Catholicism and Christianity, the Course would have to retain the same basic framework. A COURSE IN MIRACLES contradicts Christianity on almost every count: the Bible says God created the world; A COURSE IN MIRACLES says the world was made by the ego as an attack *on* God (and that God doesn't even know about the world because for God to know about the physical world would be to make it real). The Jesus of A COURSE IN MIRACLES teaches that death, the body, and suffering have no meaning, that there is no sin, and that his name and very identity is ultimately just symbolic (as is everyone else's); the Jesus of the Bible is a very real individual personal identity who teaches that pain is very real and that he suffered and died for our sins. The extraordinary thing about A COURSE IN MIRACLES AND CHRISTIANITY: A DIALOGUE is that these two men are able to openly state that their paths are mutually exclusive and disagree on about every issue, and yet they never get hostile toward one another. They even come across as friends. The book buyer may be interested to know that A COURSE IN MIRACLES AND CHRISTIANITY: A DIALOGUE is a transcript of a conversation between the two authors (it had originally been intended to be an audio program). The conversation format provides this book with an accessibility that it may not have had otherwise, due to the fact that the theological points tackled are very, very "heady" at times.