Article May 26, 1917 Issue

A local clergyman has asked for some passage of Scripture...

W. Stuart Booth

Englewood (Col.) Enterprise

A local clergyman has asked for some passage of Scripture to prove that the Bible does not teach a vicarious salvation. In the second chapter of his epistle to the Philippians Paul writes: "Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling. For it is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure." Now if Christ Jesus had done their work for them, Paul certainly would not have called upon the Christian believers at Philippi to work out their own salvation. What Paul clearly saw is stated by Mrs. Eddy on page 18 of Science and Health, where in speaking of Jesus she says: "His mission was both individual and collective. He did life's work aright not only in justice to himself, but in mercy to mortals,—to show them how to do theirs, but not to do it for them nor to relieve them of a single responsibility. Jesus acted boldly, against the accredited evidence of the senses, against Pharisaical creeds and practices, and he refuted all opponents with his healing power."

Because the world was apparently lost in the belief that evil was more powerful than good, that matter was more real than Spirit, because scholastic theology had nothing more to offer than the husks of material ceremonial and creed, it was necessary that Christ Jesus should come to prove the impotence of evil, pain and sorrow included, by means of his recognition of the omnipotence of good; to prove the utter nothingness of matter and its supposed laws by means of his recognition of the eternal truth expressed in his own words, that "it is the spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing."

Christian Science shows that since God is Love, as the Bible teaches, Jesus' sacrifice of his material selfhood was not to appease or reconcile an angry manlike God, but rather that the omnipotence of Spirit might be demonstrated and man's true spiritual nature be expressed as the present fact. As Science and Health states, "Jesus aided in reconciling man to God by giving man a truer sense of Love, the divine Principle of Jesus' teachings, and this truer sense of Love redeems man from the law of matter, sin, and death by the law of Spirit,—the law of divine Love" (p. 19).

Send a comment to the editors

We'd love to hear from you!

Easily submit your testimonies, articles, and poems online.

Submit

A local clergyman has asked for some passage of Scripture...

We'd love to hear from you!

Sign up for unlimited access