Contradictions of Bible Doctrine
By J. O. Beard
“CHRISTIAN SCIENCE.” NO. II.
Contradictions of Bible Doctrine.
The Bible tells us: “Believe not every spirit, but try the spirits whether they are of God; because many false prophets are gone out into the world. Hereby know ye the Spirit of God: Every spirit that confesseth that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is of God.” 1 John 4:1, 2. But Mrs. Eddy has it that there is no flesh for Christ to come into, for flesh is an illusion. Page 577. Other points of Christian faith fare no better, as the following will illustrate:— 1. “Christian Science” denies miracles:— Miracles are impossible in Science, and here it takes issue with popular religions.—Page 249. 2. “Christian Science” has no pardon for sin:— Science is a divine demand, not a human. Always right, its Principle never repents, never dishonors the claim of truth by forgiveness. Through understanding it destroys error, but never pardons it.—Page 223. More legal pardon (and there is no other, for Principle never pardons our sins and mistakes) leaves the offender free to repeat the offense.—Page 316. On pages 461, 462 we are told there is only one Principle, “and this is God.” So, according to her, God never pardons sin. See 1 John 1:9. 3. We are not cleansed by the blood of Jesus:— The material blood of Jesus was no more efficacious to cleanse from sin, when it was shed upon the “accursed tree,” than when it was flowing in His veins, as He went daily about His Father’s business.—Page 330. Does erudite theology regard the crucifixion of Jesus as chiefly providing a ready pardon for all sinners who ask for it, and are willing to be forgiven? Then we must differ. The efficacy of the crucifixion lies in the practical affection and goodness it demonstrated for mankind.—Page 329. These statements sweep away the entire plan of redemption at one stroke. The idea that man is “sold under sin” (Rom. 7:14); that Jesus tasted death for every man (Heb. 2:9); for “without shedding of blood is no remission” (Heb. 9:22), has no place in Mrs. Eddy’s system. On the contrary, she tells us:— One sacrifice, however great, is insufficient to pay the debt for sin. . . . That God’s wrath should be vented upon His beloved Son is divinely unnatural. Such a theory is man-made.—Page 328. 4. “Christian Science” denies the resurrection:— As death findeth mortal man, so shall he be after death, until probation and growth shall effect the needful change. Mind never becomes dust. No resurrection from the grave awaits mind.—Page 187. As matter has no existence except as an error in belief, when she says there is no resurrection for mind, she is saying there is no resurrection for anything. John 5:28, 29; 1 Cor. 15:12–18. 5. “Christian Science” denies the judgment of the Bible:— No final judgment awaits mortals; for the judgment-day of Wisdom comes hourly and continually, even the judgment by which mortal man is divested of all material error. As for spiritual error there is none.—Page 187. 6. Mrs. Eddy asserts her discovery is the second coming of Christ:— Its discovery is the second coming of the Gospel of “peace on earth and good-will to men.”—Page 43. The claim that soul and man are immortal, that there is no evil, and that sin is an illusion, was given in the first article, and need not be repeated. But death, that great enemy of man, and the last to be destroyed (1 Cor. 15:26), from the bondage of which Christ came to deliver us (Heb. 2:15), Mrs. Eddy defines as “an illusion, the lie of life in matter,” etc. Page 575. “Man’s individual being can no more die, or disappear in unconsciousness, than can soul, for both are immortal.” Page 424. This position she does not hesitate to follow to its logical conclusion; for the unscriptural doctrine of probation after death, with the liability of future sickness, sin, suffering, and death itself, with universal salvation as the climax, are plainly taught in the following passages:— When we learn that sickness can not kill us, and that we are not saved from sin or sickness by death, this understanding will quicken us.—Page 424. Understanding little about the divine Principle which saves and heals, mortals get rid of sin, sickness, and death only in appearance. These errors are not thus really destroyed, and must therefore cling to mortals until, here or hereafter, they gain the true understanding of God.—Page 223. “Death will occur on the next plane of existence as on this, until the understanding of Life is reached.”—Page 243. Universal salvation rests on progression and probation, and is unattainable without them; . . . as death findeth mortal man, so shall he be after death, until probation and growth shall effect the needful change.—Page 187. Angels are dismissed as being only thoughts:— They are pure thoughts from God.—Page 194. Angels are God’s impartations to man, not messengers, or persons, but messages.—Page 195. Concerning God she says that in Gen. 1; 2:1–3, “it is Elohim [God] who creates;” but in the next three or four chapters “the Creator is called Jehovah, or the Lord.” Page 516. Elohim she considers the true or spiritual God. But of that sacred name, which the Jews so revered, she says:— In that name of Jehovah the true idea of God seems almost lost. He becomes “a man of war,” a tribal God, to be worshiped,” etc.—Page 517. The Jewish tribal Jehovah was a man-projected God, liable to wrath, repentance, and human changeableness.—Page 34. And on pages 517 and 582, calling the worship of Jehovah a material mythology, she charges it with being the cause of the lewd, idolatrous worship of Baal, Chemosh, the Hindu Vishnu, the Greek Aphrodite, and “a thousand other so-called deities.” Having denied the existence of evil, called sin an illusion, repudiated the work of Christ, dismissed the angels as merely God’s thoughts, reviled the great name of the Creator, and charged upon that name the idolatry of the6world, but one thing is lacking in this new system of philosophy, and that is a denial of the devil’s own existence. And that denial is fully and promptly made. Throughout the book the word devil is paraphrased “evil,” the “evil one” is turned into “one evil,” “Jesus cast out evil spirits, or false beliefs” (p. 245), and finally we are told, in the glossary, that the word “devil” means “evil, a lie, error, neither corporeality [matter] nor mind.” We will next consider some of her bold assumptions of authority. J. O. BEARD.