Christian Science and Its Private Interpretation of the Word
THE apostle Peter, in admonishing the believers in Christ to take heed to the word of prophecy, gives them a principle with reference to the interpretation of that word. It is one of the very first things that they are to know in interpreting the Scripture. He says, “Knowing this first, that no prophecy of Scripture is of private interpretation.” In this statement he at once precludes individuals’ speaking by authority of themselves. No one is to set himself up as an interpreter of the Bible, and give it private, or special (as the margin reads) interpretation. The reason is given for this in the verse following the one already quoted. He says, “For no prophecy ever came by the will of man: but men spake from God, being moved by the Holy Spirit.” The prophecy, not having been given by the will of man, is not to be subjected to the will of man. “Men spake from God, being moved by the Holy Spirit.” This gives us the Scriptures as a direct Word of God. In this strange anomaly called Christian Science, we have a body of doctrine in which no believer attempts to interpret the Bible for Himself. Neither is he free to take the Bible’s interpretation of itself. There is only one authority in Christian Science, and that is the statements of Mrs. Eddy. If she says that a certain text, or a certain word in a certain text, has a certain meaning, her word, her interpretation, is law. According to her interpretation, there is no literal meaning to the Bible. All its meanings are figurative; she says, spiritual. But as one studies her interpretations, he sees that these interpretations are really figurative, and Christian Scientists may think that they are the spiritual explanations of the text. In some cases, however,—in fact in many cases,—this spiritual explanation is really a denial of the plain statement of the text. In other words, Mrs. Eddy’s spiritual explanation makes the text precisely the opposite of what the literal reading of it gives. Thus she makes the text in Gen. 6:3 contradict itself. According to the literal writing, the first clause of the passage reads thus: “My Spirit shall not rule in man forever.” She makes the word “rule” “be humbled.” Now to be humbled means just the opposite of rule. The second clause of the text says, “for that he also is flesh.” This one scripture is enough to annihilate Christian Science, if allowed to stand just as it reads, the very thing we would allow everywhere else, at10least. But as it denies Christian Science, and as Christian Science is not to be denied by the Bible, because, in pretension at least, Christian Science is to be Biblical, therefore she explains “for that he also is flesh” so that it should read, “In their error they are but dust.” Now everybody knows, who knows anything at all about the matter, that “in their error” is not in that scripture. There is nothing in the scripture to hint any such thing. “In their error” is an explanation that comes direct from Mrs. Eddy; and although it is not by the will of man, it is by the will of woman, which amounts to the same thing. Now we reject any scripture that has to come in part from any human being. The Scripture is not brought, does not come, by the will of men. It comes from God, through men that are moved, or that speak it, by the Spirit of God. What is more, the spirit of the prophets is subject to the prophets. That is to say, he who would be one of God’s teachers, will not teach in denial and rebellion of the great teachers from whom has come the Word of God. If the statement of God that man “is flesh” is displeasing to Mrs Eddy, what will she do with that word in Psalms, which tells us that the Lord knows our frame, and remembers that we are dust? Dust seems more materialistic than flesh; but why should it not be dust, since we read that on the last day of creative work God formed man of the dust of the ground? With this last scripture, that man was formed of the dust, Mrs. Eddy boldly takes issue, it being so utterly contrary to Christian Science. She tells us that here error has done its work. An enemy has written these things. This part of Genesis is not from God. It has been put in by some false teacher. And so Christian Science does not agree with this part of the Bible as it stands. Of course any doctrine can be supported by the Bible, if this is supporting it by the Bible. To reject all parts that disagree with one’s teaching, and accept only some which seem to agree with it, is certainly blowing hot and cold alternately, so far as following the Bible is concerned. And if it is not private interpretation, then we fail to know what private interpretation is.