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A Course in Miracles and Christianity: A Dialogue

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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.

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
[...]

There are some fine things in this book, but also some serious problems. Most of the latter stem from the fact that Clarke seems to have taken what he knows of the Course from Wapnick, in the form of a six-hour workshop. The result is that at times they discuss not so much the differences between Christianity and the Course as between Christianity and the idiosyncratic interpretations which Dr. Wapnick brings to the Course. This tends to make the teachings of the Course and of Christianity seem to differ more than they actually do. Since this suits both of them down to the ground, they are happy with the result, but it needs to be taken with a degree of skepticism.

For instance, they discuss the difference between what the Course says about the origin of the material world and what Christianity says, without acknowledgment that in the so-called Urtext we find a flat-footed statement that the material world was created by God as a means of undoing the separation. The whole question of what the Course actually teaches on this issue is a very difficult one, and hardly something we can oppose to traditional Christian thought quite so readily. Certainly, however, you will not find a collective ego as the creator of the world, since the Course knows nothing of that concept. It does not state that our various selves were created by a process like cellular mitosis, as the supposed "one false self" divided over and over. Rather, the Course teaches that each of us individually is a soul, spirit, or thought directly created by God.

The Course also does not teach that Jesus does not concern himself with our bodies or our behavior, and again, the original dictation proves the opposite to be the case. This supposed difference between Christianity and the Course is simply an aspect of Wapnick's theology, arrived at by a process of reasoning which he gives in this book, and not a teaching of the Course. The Course likewise does not teach that the disciples projected their inner experience of Jesus and thus hallucinated a bodily resurrection-and Dr. Wapnick really ought to know better than this, since he was there when Helen heard her Voice explain that Jesus did appear to them in a body as real as any body ever is.