🔥 Is A Course in Miracles Heretical?
Yes. Also no. (Welcome to theology.)
This is the fifth post in my series, “Grace Between the Lines”—a journey through the beautifully strange overlap between Lutheran theology, mystical spirituality, and the books and ideas that have shaped me along the way. Whether you're deeply churched, gently deconstructing, or just spiritually nosy (my people), I’m so glad you’re here.
In the last post, we talked about mystical experiences, inner voices, and whether Paul may have had more in common with modern-day “channelers” than we’d like to admit. This week, we’re stepping directly into the theological tension.
Because sooner or later, if you start talking about A Course in Miracles, someone’s going to ask:
“Wait… isn’t that heretical?”
Short answer: Yes.
Also: No.
Welcome to theology.
In case you missed the previous posts in the series…
Intro - ✨ This Time, It’s Not a Comeback — It’s a Reconciliation
Post #1 - 📚 Did You Hear the One Where the Lutheran Pastor Walks Into the Metaphysics Aisle?
Post #2 - 📺 How a PBS Mystic Became My Spiritual Gateway Drug
Post #3 - 💔 When I Drifted
Post #4 - ✨ If Channeling Freaks You Out, Let’s Talk About Paul
🙃 Heresy Is a Moving Target
Here’s the thing about heresy: it depends on where you’re standing.
To many conservative evangelicals, my Lutheran theology of baptismal regeneration would be heretical. To many progressive Christians, belief in any kind of divine revelation might be heretical. To the 16th-century Roman Catholic Church, Luther’s theology was definitely heretical. To the religious gatekeepers of Jesus’ own time, his teachings were downright dangerous. (I mean, they didn’t nail him to a cross because he fit neatly into their doctrinal statements.)
So when we call something heresy, we’re not just describing the content, we’re revealing our frame.
Which brings me to A Course in Miracles.
📘 The Big Blue Problem
If you’re new here: A Course in Miracles (ACIM) is a channeled spiritual text said to be dictated by Jesus to a woman named Helen Schucman, a clinical psychologist at Colombia University in the 1960s.
It’s thick. It’s mystical. It reframes sin, guilt, and even reality itself. And it’s been incredibly influential in New Thought and spiritual-but-not-religious circles.
It is definitely not orthodox Christianity.
But it also isn’t trying to be.
ACIM isn’t interested in creeds, denominations, or institutional belonging. It’s not focused on sin management or atonement theory. It’s doing something else entirely.
Which is why evaluating it on traditional doctrinal terms will always feel a little off.
Because A Course in Miracles isn’t trying to systematize belief. It’s trying to retrain perception. It’s a psychological-spiritual manual for shifting your mind from fear to love, from separation to unity, from ego to grace.
It fuses traditional Christian language with the language of depth psychology. It doesn't obsess over behavior or external metrics of holiness. It cares about thought patterns, perception, and inner orientation.
At its heart, it’s Jesus taking us by the hand and walking us out of the fog of our fear-based illusions and into the sunlight of divine connectedness. With God. With ourselves. With each other.
It’s weird. It’s wordy. It’s slow. But it’s also, for some of us, holy ground disguised as a workbook.
🧠 Where It Diverges (Clearly)
Let’s be honest about the dissonance:
The Christ of ACIM isn’t quite the Christ of the creeds. In the Course, salvation doesn’t come through blood sacrifice but through inner awakening. Jesus isn’t so much the sinless substitute absorbing divine wrath as he is a luminous older brother extending a hand from the far shore, reminding us the whole ocean was love all along.
The incarnation, cross, and resurrection are held differently. In ACIM, these aren’t events to be defended with apologetics but symbols meant to awaken us to eternal truth. Less timeline, more inner transformation.
It redefines sin as a perceptual error, not a moral failing. That’s a big shift.
It emphasizes waking up from illusion rather than being saved from judgment.
If you're grading this by Nicene standards, it's gonna get flagged. (Maybe even red-flagged, circled, and returned with “See me after class.”)
So yes, there’s plenty here that would make a Lutheran priest (like me) shift a little in their collar, glance longingly at the Book of Concord, and wonder quietly whether they should mention this in spiritual direction... or just nod and smile.
But here’s the twist:
🩵 The Heart of It Sounds Like Grace
For all its doctrinal weirdness, what A Course in Miracles actually says -beneath the metaphysics and occasionally frustrating language - often lands like grace.
It says:
“Spirit is in a state of grace forever. Your reality is only spirit. Therefore you are in a state of grace forever.”
“You are a child of God, a priceless part of His Kingdom, which He created as part of Him. Nothing else exists and only this is real.”
It doesn’t punish. It doesn’t shame. It doesn’t separate.
In that sense, it echoes what I love most about the gospel. The sense that God has already bridged the gap. That the work is done. That love gets the last word.
You don’t have to agree with its metaphysics to recognize the grace beneath the strangeness.
And if you’ve ever felt crushed by the version of Jesus you were handed, this Jesus might sound like water in a desert.
But make no mistake. A Course in Miracles isn’t spiritual cotton candy. It’s not some floaty affirmation parade where everyone gets a trophy for manifesting. It’s tough. It’s relentless. In its own gentle yet unnervingly precise way, it holds up a mirror to how deeply we’ve bought into the illusion of separation from God, others, and ourselves.
In the Course’s view, our problem isn’t just that we’ve made a few moral missteps. It’s that we’ve wandered into a full-blown authorship crisis. We’ve forgotten that we didn’t create ourselves. We’ve tried to take over the role of God, placing ourselves at the center of meaning, love, and identity. And the kicker? It’s impossible. That role’s already filled. But the attempt at believing in a self-made identity creates a whole ecosystem of fear, control, scarcity, and suffering.
This isn’t a gentle rebuke. It’s Jesus, lovingly but firmly, calling us back from the edge of our ego cliff and saying, “You’ve forgotten who you are. Let’s go home.”
🤷♂️ So Is It Heretical?
If by heresy you mean “different from orthodox Christianity,” then yes. No question.
But if by heresy you mean “dangerous, delusional, or spiritually toxic,” then no. At least not in my experience.
I’ve known plenty of heresy that wounds. And I’ve known plenty of orthodoxy that wounds, too. Anything can be weaponized if you're fueled by fear. But I’ve found it much easier to hurt people with Bible verses than with ACIM passages.
That doesn’t make one true and the other false. But it does remind me that just because something doesn't pass a theological stress test doesn't mean it isn’t still breathing the Spirit in some hidden way.
💡 A Lutheran Both/And
Martin Luther once said, “Whatever preaches Christ is the true Word of God.” And then probably said something else five minutes later that would make a synod council do a spit take.
He also said a lot of other things, many of which I would not post on this blog.
But this has stayed with me.
I don’t think A Course in Miracles is divinely infallible. I don’t think it’s scripture. I don’t think it replaces the gospel.
But I do think it’s whispering a lot of the same tune, just in a different register. One I wasn’t listening for. One I didn’t even know I needed.
And I do think it helped me hear Christ again after a long silence.
And that’s not nothing.
In fact, I think that's grace’s signature move: showing up in places we weren’t trained to expect it. It’s how resurrection works. Quiet. Surprising. Unofficial. But somehow, still unmistakably real.
Next up in this series: we’ll shift from the blue book to a Finnish theologian in a wool sweater. Tuomo Mannermaa may not have written mystical poetry, but his work on union with Christ helped me find theological grounding for the mystical hunger that never left. In fact, Mannermaa’s theology of theosis - our real, participatory union with the risen Christ - felt surprisingly at home next to the voice I heard in ACIM. You might say he gave language and legitimacy to the kind of mystical Christianity that ACIM pointed toward, but with deep Lutheran roots. He made space within Lutheranism for my mystical side to breathe.
Still Along the Way,
Jonas
P.S. I’d love to hear from you! What’s your experience with heresy, orthodoxy, or spiritual ideas that others side-eye but feel like grace to you?
(Paid subscribers can jump into the comments and join the fun. The conversation is half the joy.)
P.P.S. You can access the entire Course and workbook online for free as well as additional materials here if you’re interested.