Article February 7, 1920 Issue

A more careful reading of the letter to which exception...

Robert G. Steel—Lansing, Mich.

State Journal

A more careful reading of the letter to which exception is taken by the self-appointed critic of Christian Science writing in a recent issue would have satisfied him that no great difference exists between his contention that sin comes from wrong choice of a free moral agent, and the Christian Science teaching that sin, as the term is generally understood, is solely the product of mortal mind, alias mortal man. Unfortunately for our critic, however, he is laboring under the delusion, perpetuated by popular theology, that this free moral agent—this mortal, material man, the dust man of the second chapter of Genesis—is the man created by God, in God's own image and likeness.

Charging God with the creation of a material, mortal, free moral agent capable of a sinful choice not only dishonors God but repudiates the plain teachings of the Bible. According to Scripture, God is Spirit, infinite good. The man made in God's image and likeness, therefore, must be spiritual and must be wholly good. He cannot be the author of sin, since it is unthinkable that an infinitely good God could create anything capable of sinning. Sin, then, is illusion, originating in the false belief of a mortal, material mind, setting itself up as a power opposed to God. It is material falsehood, and like any other lie, is destroyed by knowing the truth. This is the process by which Jesus cast out sin and evil, and it is the same method successfully exemplified in Christian Science to-day in the destruction of sin and the healing of sickness.

In his attempt to prove the theory of a God-created free moral agent capable of sin, by comparing it with a carpenter doing a good thing by erecting a store building which might later be used for an evil purpose without subjecting the builder to the charge of creating an evil, our critic violates the admonition of Paul in his first epistle to the Corinthians. Paul tells us that we must compare spiritual things with spiritual, whereas our critic's illustration attempts to unite the spiritual and material, or good and evil.

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February 7, 1920
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