Editorial October 30, 1920 Issue

Science

Frederick Dixon

Doctor Angelicus , writing, in his philosophic way, in defense of the great order to which he belonged, declared that, properly considered, there is but one absolute Science, that of theology, and, consequently, that all the older so-called sciences are but relative to this in the theories they propound. Between the teaching of an Aristotelian schoolman of the thirteenth century and that of Christian Science in the twentieth there is, of course, a great gulf fixed. But read this passage, from Mrs. Eddy's "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 84): "All we correctly know of Spirit comes from God, divine Principle, and is learned through Christ and Christian Science. If this Science has been thoroughly learned and properly digested, we can know the truth more accurately than the astronomer can read the stars or calculate an eclipse." Then the wonder will grow as to why Aquinas slammed the door he seemed to be opening. The answer is very simple. Believing in matter, he was opening a door not to Spirit but to the catacombs, to death and not to Life.

Theology is the only Science, but theology is the Science of God, of Spirit, not of matter. Aquinas thought that Spirit was the ultimate of matter, that matter was somehow or other evolved from Spirit, eternal Life, and returned somehow to eternal Life through the gateway of death. Mesmerized, as he was, by the actuality of matter and death to his human senses, he nevertheless saw that if God were God, the only absolute Science possible was a knowledge of the word of God or theology. And hopelessly at sea for an explanation of the apparently inexplicable, he took refuge in the Aristotelian philosophy, and set to work to destroy unwittingly the Science of the gospel by reconciling matter with Spirit, instead of reducing it to its proper classification as a negation or nothing. Yet Jesus had made all this perfectly clear when he said to Nicodemus: "That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. Marvel not that I said unto thee, Ye must be born again." The spiritual significance of these words the writer of the Fourth Gospel had perfectly elucidated, in his exordium, when he wrote, "He was in the world, and the world was made by him, and the world knew him not. He came unto his own, and his own received him not. But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name: which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God."

The Science of theology is, then, though Aquinas did not know what he was implying, the absolute Science, and so the only Science. It is what the Greek text of the New Testament refers to, again and again, as "a scientific knowledge of God," though the translators, in their blindness, will translate it "knowledge of God." And this being so, it becomes immediately apparent that the only absolute knowledge there can be is a knowledge of Spirit, and that any attempt to plumb the depths in matter is foredoomed to failure, inasmuch as it is an attempt to discover Science in a negation. "For," says the apostle to the Gentiles, with grim irony, "if a man think himself to be something, when he is nothing, he deceiveth himself. But let every man prove his own work, and then shall he have rejoicing in himself alone, and not in another. For every man shall bear his own burden." A tolerably plain hint to the world to mind its own business, and keep its hands off its neighbor, though a hint this world has shown no alacrity to take.

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