Article November 20, 1915 Issue

Our critic, continuing his cogitations on Christian Science,...

Ezra W. Palmer—Grand Junction, Col.

The News,

Our critic, continuing his cogitations on Christian Science, appears to have discovered for the first time that God is Mind. How God could be anything else but Mind, since He is the supreme, omniscient intelligence of the universe, is beyond explanation. Because Christian Science teaches that God is Mind, the critic concludes that He is not therefore a personal God. Christian Science teaches that God is not a person in the sense of finite personality—God is not a man greatly magnified. God is personal in the sense of infinite personality. He is individual in the sense of infinite individuality, but not in a finite sense. We cannot understand the nature of Deity if we clothe the infinite God with our human conceptions. "We do not conceive rightly of God," Mrs. Eddy says, "if we think of Him as less than infinite. The human person is finite; and therefore I prefer to retain the proper sense of Deity by using the phrase an individual God, rather than a personal God; for there is and can be but one infinite individual Spirit, whom mortals have named God" (Rudimental Divine Science, p. 2).

This critic assumes that Christianity teaches that Christ is a person, entirely overlooking the distinction between Jesus and Christ made by Jesus himself, and later clearly defined by Christian Science. Jesus manifested the Christ, God's spiritual idea. Through this manifestation of the Christ, Jesus healed the sick and raised the dead. Jesus was a person; Christ is incorporeal, the divine image of the infinite person called God. When speaking of himself in his human relation, Jesus called himself "the Son of man;" when speaking of his inseparable relation with God as the Christ, he called himself "the Son of God."

The denial of the existence of a personal devil by Christian Science disturbs this critic, although he can find no warrant that either Jesus or his apostles taught that God created a devil. Jesus declared that the devil was "a liar, and the father of it." Christian Science accepts this explanation of the devil as a liar, namely, the false belief of a personal existence of evil opposed to God. The belief of a personal devil is an inevitable corollary of the belief of an anthropomorphic God, a man-made God who creates evil as well as good.

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Our critic, continuing his cogitations on Christian Science,...

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