Christianity and Theosophy, for more than a hundred years, have had a "complex and sometimes troubled" relationship. The Christian faith was the native religion of the great majority of Western Theosophists, but many came to Theosophy through a process of opposition to Christianity. According to professor Robert S. Ellwood, "the whole matter has been a divisive issue within Theosophy."

Beliefs God According to the Theosophical spiritual Masters, neither their philosophy nor themselves believe in a God, "least of all in one whose pronoun necessitates a capital H."

A Russian Orthodox cleric and theologian Dimitry Drujinin cited the Theosophical Master Kuthumi: "We know there is in our [solar] system no such thing as God, either personal or impersonal. Parabrahm is not a God, but absolute immutable law... The word 'God' was invented to designate the unknown cause of those effects which man has either admired or dreaded without understanding them."

A religious studies scholar Alvin Kuhn wrote that Theosophist Annie Besant believed: "God is a composite photograph of the innumerable gods who are the personifications of the forces of nature... It is all summed up in the phrase: Religions are branches from a common trunk—human ignorance.

In addition, the Master Kuthumi said, "In our [Tibetan] temples there is neither a god nor gods worshipped, only the thrice sacred memory of the greatest as the holiest man that ever lived."

An American author Gary Lachman, noting Blavatsky's "animus toward the Judeo-Christian ethos," cited her article in which she wrote that the Bible is not the "word of God" but contains at best the "words of fallible men and imperfect teachers."

In The Secret Doctrine Helena Blavatsky stated that "an extra-cosmic god is fatal to philosophy, an intra-cosmic Deity — i.e. Spirit and matter inseparable from each other — is a philosophical necessity. Separate them and that which is left is a gross superstition under a mask of emotionalism." Professor Santucci wrote that she has defined the Supreme in the Proem to The Secret Doctrine as an "Omnipresent, Eternal, Boundless, and Immutable Principle on which all speculation is impossible, since it transcends the power of human conception and could only be dwarfed by any human expression or similitude." John Driscoll, a theologian and author of The Catholic Encyclopedia, wrote in 1912 that Theosophy denies a personal god, and this "nullifies its claim to be a spiritualistic philosophy." Blavatsky proclaimed that the Theosophists believe "in the Deity as the All, the source of all existence, the infinite that cannot be either comprehended or known, the universe alone revealing It, or, as some prefer it, Him, thus giving a sex to that, to anthropomorphize which is blasphemy."

Professor Mary Bednarowski wrote that Theosophists "see the One as the cause of the universe," but not as its creator. When asked who it is that created the universe, Blavatsky responded that, "No one creates it. Science would call the process evolution; the pre-Christian philosophers and the Orientalists call it emanation; we, Occultists and Theosophists, see in it only the universal and eternal reality casting a reflection of itself on the infinite Spatial depths." Russian Christian philosopher Nikolai Berdyaev wrote that in the Theosophical books "the name of God is not mentioned."

Jesus

According to Blavatsky, Jesus was the grand "philosopher and moral reformer." She considered Jesus as "The Great Teacher," an avatar with healing and demon-exorcising abilities. An American author Joseph H. Tyson stated, "She did not view him as The Second Person of the Blessed Trinity, but a Brahman Perfect Master" with clairvoyance, supernatural powers, and "fakir-like unconcern for the morrow." In Blavatsky's opinion, "Jesus, the Christ-God, is a myth concocted two centuries after the real Hebrew Jesus died." According to Theosophy, the term "Christ" means the personal divinity "indwelling" each individual human.

In December 1887 Blavatsky printed an open letter to the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Lord Primate of England. This editorial letter gave proof to show that "in almost every point the doctrines of the churches and the practices of Christians are in direct opposition to the teachings of Jesus." She always opposed those who understood Jesus' teaching literally. Her representation of Jesus as similar of Buddha "grated on Christian nerves."

Prayer Drujinin wrote that to the question, "Do you believe in prayer, and do you ever pray?" Blavatsky answered: "We do not. We act, instead of talking. ...The visible universe depends for its existence and phenomena on its mutually acting forms and their laws, not on prayer or prayers." Blavatsky "rules out the propriety of prayer, except in the sense of an internal command." She said, "We call our 'Father in heaven' that deific essence of which we are cognizant within us." According to Bednarowski, in Blavatsky's opinion, prayer kills "self-reliance" and "refutes the Theosophical understanding of divine immanence." She stated, "We try to replace fruitless and useless prayer by meritorious and good-producing action."

Berdyaev wrote that the experience of "prayerful communication" with God, revealed to man by the Christian church, is not recognized by the Theosophical teaching. Prayer in Theosophy is only "one of the others forms of meditation."

Сondition after death Bednarowski wrote that Blavatsky objected to the Christian interpretations of the afterlife "because they are described as eternal." She stated that, "nothing is eternal and unchangeable." She said, "We believe in no hell or paradise as localities; in no objective hell-fires and worms that never die, nor in any Jerusalems with streets paved with sapphires and diamonds." René Guénon wrote that in the Theosophical "heaven" the condition of man is:

Karma and reincarnation According to The Catholic Encyclopedia, the main Theosophical teachings are karma and reincarnation. Karma is the law of ethical causation.

Reincarnation is directly related to karma. James Skeen stated that the Theosophical teaching about karma and "its relation to forgiveness and faith" contradicts the Bible definitions of these important concepts. Encyclopedia of New Age Beliefs argues that the laws of karma and reincarnation "are really a doctrine of self salvation." And consequently there is no need for "Jesus Christ's substitutionary death for our sins," when the person, who offends, pays himself.

Blavatsky and other Theosophists believed that karma, the "unerring law of Retribution," is a system of penalty "as stern as that of the most rigid Calvinist, only far more philosophical and consistent with absolute justice." Ellwood wrote that, according to Blavatsky, "Karma is an Absolute and Eternal law in the World of manifestation." Karma is the "impersonal force" which brings retribution for thoughts, words, and deeds of men without "destroy[ing] intellectual and individual liberty" in order to demonstrate that men must live with the consequences of their choices. A religious studies scholar Jeffrey D. Lavoie noted that, in Blavatsky's opinion, the soul "must purify itself through cyclic transmigrations." Ellwood has quoted in The Secret Doctrine: "Intimately, or rather indissolubly, connected with Karma, then, is the law of re-birth, or of the re-incarnation of the same spiritual individuality in a long, almost interminable, series of personalities. The latter are like the various costumes and characters played by the same actor."

Drujinin stated that the concept of reincarnation fundamentally contradicts the most important dogmas of Orthodox Christianity. Moreover, he stated that there are good reasons to believe that the concept of reincarnation, brought into Theosophy, was entered "by the inspiring in it of dark spiritual forces" for the preparation of an appearance of Antichrist. He wrote that the Theosophical doctrine of reincarnation denies the tragedy of death and glorifies it as a positive moment of the cosmic evolution. Depreciating "death, this doctrine thereby devalues life and reconciles man with any suffering and injustice."

Accusations Fraud

In September 1884 the Rev. George Patterson, a principal of Madras Christian College, wrote about Blavatsky's occult phenomena: "What if these signs and wonders are proofs of something very different?... Instead of a message from beings of supernal wisdom and power, we shall have only the private thoughts of a clever but not over scrupulous woman." The anti-Theosophical publications in The Madras Christian College Magazine in September 1884 were made by the time of arrival of Richard Hodgson, an expert of the Society for Psychical Research, aimed at studying the phenomena of Blavatsky. The Committee of SPR, after analyzing and discussing Hodgson's research, came with reference to Blavatsky herself to the following conclusion published in December 1885: "For our own part, we regard her neither as the mouthpiece of hidden seers, nor as a mere vulgar adventuress; we think that she has achieved a title to permanent remembrance as one of the most accomplished, ingenious, and interesting impostors in history." According to the Rev. George Patterson, "It is to these phenomena, and to the openly expressed antagonism of Theosophy to Christianity, that the rapid spread of the new cult in India is to be ascribed, and not to any system of positive doctrine."

Spirit communication

Theologian Kuraev wrote that Theosophists' feature is spirit possession. If the usual scientific or philosophical book appears as a result of systematic and consistent reflections of its author, then the theosophical treatises are written as a "dictation of capricious spirits." A person-medium does not have power over the text that is "communicated" to him, he is not fully competent in its planning and word processing. In Drujinin's opinion, Theosophy preaches "reckless" communication with spirits. And the spirits who presented themselves as "teachers-mahatmas" can expel the disciple in general from his body. In confirmation, he quoted Ignatius Bryanchaninov: "The desire to see spirits, curiosity to learn something from them is a sign of the greatest folly and complete ignorance of the moral and active traditions of the Orthodox Church." Theologian Martin noted that the Bible prohibits to practice a communication with spirits. Nevertheless, in 1860 at Zadonsk, Isidore, the Metropolitan of the Russian Orthodox Church, seeing the manifestations of Blavatsky's mediumship, said: "Let not your heart be troubled by the gift you are possessed of, nor let it become a source of misery to you hereafter." According to Blavatsky, mediumship is the contrast of adeptship, because the medium is the "passive instrument of foreign influences, [while] the adept actively controls himself and all inferior potencies."

Demonization Mersene Sloan, an editor and Bible teacher, called the theosophical initiation a process of "disguised" demonization, a "gross perversion" of the Christian regeneration. "The pupil [of Theosophy] becomes an Adept. This is one of many theosophic statements proving the end of the cult's endeavors to be the incarnation of demons in human beings. Of course, it is denied that the masters are demons, but the doctrines and practices of the cult prove them to be such, and such only. Some know it by actual contact with them... It is not, then, a matter of developing latent powers in man that Theosophy seeks, but the subjection of man to the invading powers of demons."