Christian Science by Walter Clair Thompson

Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · Dec 5, 1911

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 38, No. 48.

Christian Science

By Walter Clair Thompson

IV—Its Philosophy in the Light of Reason and Revelation

(Continued)

BRIEFLY stated, Christian Science means to deny reality and ignore environment. But despite all their metaphysics and "ethereal theories," Christian Scientist experiences are not unlike those of the balance of humanity. Life is made up of experiences. We must have experience of some kind before we can have thoughts. We may call these experiences what we please, it does not alter them. Call them illusions or realities, the experience remains unchanged.

In theory we may call matter material, illusion, or "sensation in the sensationless," but in practise the material must not be ignored. To illustrate, if one wishes to catch rain-water, he must use a barrel instead of a clothes-basket,—it matters not whether he be orthodox or Christian Scientist.

The Reality of Experience

What Prof. Borden P. Bowne has to say of the reality of experience is very much to the point:

The experience remains the same under one system of metaphysics as another. Thus Berkeley, Mill, Hume, Reid, and Hamilton differed widely in their metaphysics, but practically they had to live in the same way. Kant, with his ideality of space and time, found it no easier to get around the world than the ordinary realist on that subject. Berkeley found his butcher bills and his grocery bills just as important a matter and just as difficult to pay as Reid. So on the plane of experiences we are all alike, and the philosophers can not help us. . . . If the philosophers can do anything it must be in the way of interpreting experience, not in the way of producing or verifying it. In this sense experience is real and carries its truth or verification in itself.

Evidently Christian Science will not stand the search-light of investigation and reason, much less will it stand the Bible test. As revelation and matter have a common authorship, and that divine, we find that all things that do not harmonize with the one, are also in conflict with the other. It is because this philosophy is unbiblical that it is so contrary to nature and nature's laws. Instead of being science, it is its antithesis; it may be metaphysics—clearly it is not science.

Who Is Responsible?

A question that arises to the rational mind in pursuing this anomalous religion, and which, like Hamlet's ghost, will not down, is, If sin, sickness, and death, and the sensibility of matter, are only illusions of mortal mind, who is responsible for this nightmare in which the world has been enthralled for so many centuries? Using the Christian Science formula for reasoning, and God is the guilty party. There is no escaping this conclusion. I repeat the formula, that you may see the force of the conclusion:

God is all in all. God is good. Good is Mind. God, Spirit, being all, nothing is matter. Life, God, omnipotent good, deny death, evil, sin, disease.

God, then, is responsible? No, they won't allow us to put it that way. True, it is the result of inevitable sequence, but it simply won't do, that is all, and we must not fall into the error of reasoning adversely, cautions our Christian Science friend. But he has forgotten that there is no such thing as error. "Error is mortal mind. Mortal mind does not exist." Driven to the extremity of his logic, he admits that, while there is no sin, there is a something—not very clearly defined—which they call "malicious animal magnetism."

You ask, "What is malicious animal magnetism?" You may as well spare yourself the trouble and fatigue of witnessing his mental gymnastics to escape the perils of the situation that logic has forced him into. Does he extricate himself? Well, not very gracefully, we should think, unless we lack appreciation; but, lacking appreciation himself, or refusing to recognize the dilemma, or renouncing its reality, he appears to come out triumphant—at least he is satisfied. That he frequently has to abandon his position, does not trouble him as such things would the uninitiated.

Will Not Stand the Test of Reason

The facts of the case are, Christian Science will not stand the test of reason. Logical conclusions always get them into difficulties. No doubt this is why we read in "Science and Health" that "knowledge impedes progress" in this science. It also explains why ignorance is at such a premium, and why all literature aside from "legitimate metaphysics" is renounced as refuse material. Catholicism in the darkest midnight of its career never put a more rigorous ban upon education than does this cult in this enlightened twentieth century.

Recognizing that education militates against its progress, a fundamental principle in Christian Science is to repudiate all learning other than prescribed by their ritual; thus we find such proscriptions against education as the following:

Mortal mind is the chief husbandman of error.—"Science and Health," page 171.

The so-called laws of matter are nothing but false beliefs in the presence of intelligence where mind is not.—Id., page 171.

Physiology is one of the apples from "the tree of knowledge."—Id., page 165.

Obedience to material law prevents full obedience to spiritual law.—Id., page 182.

The so-called laws of health are simply laws of mortal belief.—Id., page 184.

The brain can give no idea of God's man.—Id., page 191.

The senses are illusive.—Id., page 191.

Many a hopeless case of disease is induced by a single post-mortem examination.—Id., page 196.

How thinking and apparently intelligent people can be gulled into accepting such reason-impeaching sophistry is difficult to comprehend. However, there is an explanation that throws much light on the question; it is a Scriptural one:

Having the understanding darkened, being alienated from the life of God through the ignorance that is in them, because of the blindness of their heart.

And for this cause God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie.

The Contrast

Let us now contrast the principal tenets of the so-called Christian Science with Bible doctrine and observe how opposed it is to the plainest Scriptural teachings:

BIBLE	CHRISTIAN SCIENCE
Teaches reality of matter:	Denies the reality of matter:
And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into the nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul. Gen. 2:7.	Matter and death are mortal illusions.—"Science and Health," page 289. All must be mind or else all must be matter.—Id., page 551.
Affirms the existence of sin:	Denies the existence of sin:
Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned. Rom. 5:12.	In reality there is no evil. Sin exists so long as the mortal illusion of mind in matter remains.—Id., page 311.
Teaches vicarious atonement:	Denies vicarious atonement:
Being justified freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus: whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in His blood, to declare His righteousness for the remission of sins that are past, through the forbearance of God. Rom. 3:24, 25.	One sacrifice, however great, is insufficient to pay the debt of sin. That God's wrath should be vented upon his beloved son is divinely unnatural. Such a theory is man made.—Id., page 23.

Would space permit, these comparisons could be greatly multiplied, but these, cited on the most vital points, will suffice to show Christian Science to be fatally unscriptural. Being thus arrayed against both science and the fundamentals of Christianity, it is proved to be neither Christian nor science. Its title therefore is a misnomer; a mask worn that it might parade before the world in acceptable form to bid for disciples from both the church and the world.

In summing up the matter, we find that, as pertaining to religion, it is unbiblical and antichristian; and as pertaining to science, it is the despair of reason and a discordant note in the realm of nature. In the words of the apostle Paul, it is "science falsely so called: which some professing have erred concerning the faith."

Let us also heed the apostolic admonition: Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ.