© 1999 Meredith Sprunger
© 1999 The Christian Fellowship of Students of The Urantia Book
Dr. Robert T. Osborn, professor emeritus of religion at Duke University, in an article, “The Possibility of Theology Today,” (Theology Today, January, 1999) says that contemporary theology has lost its credibility — “it has lost contact with ultimate foundations.” (p. 562) In our postmodern world “Religious studies has no interest in theology at all, for theology is without foundation.” (p. 567) In the new pseudo theology of today, one must be “politically correct.” It is time, Osborn declares, for theology to “say something foundational.” (p. 568) But, he observes, Christology is a problem. In Trinitarian terms, theologians prefer to speak of God the Creator or of God the Holy Spirit.
In all of this theological confusion and anguish, students of The Urantia Book will recognize that the Most Highs are preparing our world for a new religious-theological paradigm. As Osborn’s comment suggests, the religion about Jesus has become a stumbling block for the religion of Jesus: the Fatherhood of God and the brother/sisterhood of humankind. There is a general subliminal recognition that the religious cosmology of the Middle Ages and the prescientific theology of much of Christianity and the other religions of the world no longer speak creatively to the contemporary mind and soul.
We are experiencing the gestation of the enlarged spiritual vision of the Fifth Epochal Revelation in our society. The birth pangs of this new vision of spiritual Reality will extend well into the next century. But students of the Urantia Papers can live in its liberating message in the here and how!