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Study
Topics
For
more information on the teachings of Christian
Science, explore the following study
topics:
Angels
Animal
Magnetism
Baptism
The
Bible
CS
vs. Evolution and
Creationism
Christ
Jesus
Death
Devil
God
Heaven
Hell
Holy
Ghost
Marriage
Mortals
and Immortals
The
New Tongue
Purity
Salvation
The
Term "Science"
"Science
and Health"
Stages
of Advancement
The
Tenets of Christian
Science
The
Trinity
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An Introduction to Christian
Science
GOD
Advancement
in the Concept of God
Perhaps the most significant advance in church
doctrine in the Protestant separation from medieval
Christianity during the Reformation was the
defining of God as contained in "The Augsburg
Confession" in A.D. 1530, which read in part:
"...there is one divine essence which is called and
is God, eternal, without body, indivisible
[without parts], of infinite power,
wisdom, goodness, the Creator and preserver of all
things, visible and invisible; ..." (Philip Schaff
Creeds of Christendom in 3 volumes; New
York: Harper & Brothers, 1890. Vol. 3, p. 7,
emphasis added)
The
first English Protestant articles of faith, "The
Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion of the Church of
England" adopted in 1562 (four years after the
accession of Queen Elizabeth), reads in part:
"There is but one living and true God, everlasting,
without body, parts, or passions, of
infinite power, wisdom, and goodness, the maker and
preserver of all things both visible and invisible.
..." (Ibid. p. 487, emphasis added)
Footnoting
the above, to give the Scriptural authority for the
words "without body, parts," are Deut. 4:15,
16; John 4:24; Luke 24:39; and for
"passions" is given Acts 14:11,
15.
While
this reformed doctrine acknowledged and avowed
belief in an incorporeal, bodiless God, the views
entertained by English Protestant Christendom, in
the centuries since its adoption four hundred years
ago, tend heavily towards
anthropomorphism.
Nevertheless,
this was a tremendous advance over the medieval
traditional Christianity of southern Europe, which
formulated their doctrines in the "Canons and
Dogmatic Decrees of the Council of Trent" in 1563,
and thereafter these two distinct forms of
Christianity moved separately.
Christian
Scientists know that their religion is emphatic in
stressing the importance of the incorporeality of
God. However, Mrs. Annie M. Knott, CSD, a personal
student of Mary Baker Eddy, writes editorially:
"Humanity has been slowly yielding up the belief in
a corporeal God, ..." (Christian Science
Sentinel, January 10, 1914). There is a great
need for understanding this fact of the slow
yield.
Even
though some denominations of Protestant Christendom
accept academically the fact that God is "without
body, parts, or passions," human thought is slow to
yield to this fact of God's incorporeality.
The
reason that Christendom is slow to yield to the
fact of God's incorporeality is because it believes
man to be corporeal, and made in the image and
likeness of God. Mankind cannot truly and
completely avow its belief in God's incorporeality
while believing man to be corporeal. If thought is
slow to yield to the incorporeality of God, it
seems even slower to yield to the acceptance of
man's incorporeality. Yet this is what Christian
Science teaches, and the time has come to
demonstrate this fact. (see The Christian
Science Standard, October 1, 1990)
References
for Study
The following passages are from the Bible (King
James Version) and the Christian Science textbook,
Science and Health with Key to the
Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy.
Deuteronomy
30:19, 20 (to 3rd ,)
I call heaven and earth to record this day against
you, that I have set before you life and death,
blessing and cursing: therefore choose life, that
both thou and thy seed may live: That thou mayest
love the Lord thy God, and that thou mayest obey
his voice, and that thou mayest cleave unto him:
for he is thy life, ...
Deuteronomy
32:3 I will, 4
I will publish the name of the Lord: ascribe ye
greatness unto our God. He is the Rock, his work is
perfect: for all his ways are judgment: a God of
truth and without iniquity, just and right is
he.
Psalms
18:2
The Lord is my rock, and my fortress, and my
deliverer; my God, my strength, in whom I will
trust; my buckler, and the horn of my salvation,
and my high tower.
I
John 4:16
God is love; and he that dwelleth in love
dwelleth in God, and God in him.
John
4:24
God is a Spirit: and they that worship him must
worship him in spirit and in truth.
John
1:18
No man hath seen God at any time; the only begotten
Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, he hath
declared him.
Science
and Health, p. 140:23
The Jewish tribal Jehovah was a man-projected
God, liable to wrath, repentance, and human
changeableness. The Christian Science God is
universal, eternal, divine Love, which changeth not
and causeth no evil, disease, nor death. It is
indeed mournfully true that the older Scripture is
reversed. In the beginning God created man in His,
God's, image; but mortals would procreate man, and
make God in their own human image. What is the god
of a mortal, but a mortal
magnified?
Science
and Health, p. 312:20-26
Mortals believe in a finite personal God; while
God is infinite Love, which must be
unlimited.
Our
theories are based on finite premises, which cannot
penetrate beyond matter. A personal sense of God
and of man's capabilities necessarily limits faith
and hinders spiritual understanding.
Science
and Health, p. 13:20
If we pray to God as a corporeal person, this
will prevent us from relinquishing the human doubts
and fears which attend such a belief, and so we
cannot grasp the wonders wrought by infinite,
incorporeal Love, to whom all things are possible.
Because of human ignorance of the divine Principle,
Love, the Father of all is represented as a
corporeal creator; hence men recognize themselves
as merely physical, and are ignorant of man as
God's image or reflection and of man's eternal
incorporeal existence. The world of error is
ignorant of the world of Truth,—blind to the
reality of man's existence,—for the world of
sensation is not cognizant of life in Soul, not in
body.
Science
and Health, p. 273:3-4
The physical senses can take no cognizance of
God and spiritual Truth.
Science
and Health, p. 330:13
Eye hath neither seen God nor His image and
likeness. Neither God nor the perfect man can be
discerned by the material senses. The individuality
of Spirit, or the infinite, is unknown, and thus a
knowledge of it is left either to human conjecture
or to the revelation of divine
Science.
Science
and Health, p. 200:20
The suppositional antipode of divine infinite
Spirit is the so-called human soul or spirit, in
other words the five senses,—the flesh that
warreth against Spirit. These so-called material
senses must yield to the infinite Spirit, named
God.
Science
and Health, p. 151:24
The human mind is opposed to God and must be
put off, as St. Paul declares. All that really
exists is the divine Mind and its idea, and in this
Mind the entire being is found harmonious and
eternal. The straight and narrow way is to see and
acknowledge this fact, yield to this power, and
follow the leadings of truth.
Science
and Health, p. 261:21
Detach sense from the body, or matter, which is
only a form of human belief, and you may learn the
meaning of God, or good, and the nature of the
immutable and immortal. Breaking away from the
mutations of time and sense, you will neither lose
the solid objects and ends of life nor your own
identity. Fixing your gaze on the realities
supernal, you will rise to the spiritual
consciousness of being, even as the bird which has
burst from the egg and preens its wings for a
skyward flight.
Science
and Health, p. 241:23
One's aim, a point beyond faith, should be to
find the footsteps of Truth, the way to health and
holiness. We should strive to reach the Horeb
height where God is revealed; and the corner-stone
of all spiritual building is purity. The baptism of
Spirit, washing the body of all the impurities of
flesh, signifies that the pure in heart see God and
are approaching spiritual Life and its
demonstration.
Science
and Health, p. 242:3
It is only a question of time when "they shall
all know Me [God], from the least of them
unto the greatest." Denial of the claims of matter
is a great step towards the joys of Spirit, towards
human freedom and the final triumph over the
body.
Science
and Health, pp. 465:8 - 466:1
Question.—What is God?
Answer.—God is incorporeal, divine,
supreme, infinite Mind, Spirit, Soul, Principle,
Life, Truth, Love.
Question.—Are
these terms synonymous?
Answer.—They are. They refer to one
absolute God. They are also intended to express the
nature, essence, and wholeness of Deity. The
attributes of God are justice, mercy, wisdom,
goodness, and so on.
Question.—Is
there more than one God or Principle?
Answer.—There is not. Principle
[God] and its idea [Christ] is one,
and this one is God, omnipotent, omniscient, and
omnipresent Being, and His reflection is man and
the universe.
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