Editorial January 21, 1950 Issue

THE METAPHYSICS OF THE BIBLE

Helen Wood Bauman

The Scriptures are deeply metaphysical. They deal with the divinely real and carry the logic of their vivid presentments to the inevitable conclusion that all which contradicts God and His perfect creation is unreal and is destined to disappear. The Bible is not mystical. It teaches the simple dominion of good over evil. It records the gradual unfoldment to human consciousness of the true idea of God and man. Here the emergence of humanity from the shadow of animality is shown forth as familiar Scriptural characters portray the attributes of God, which constitute man in God's likeness.

Christian Science interprets this emergence—this unveiling of spiritual man—and it explains true metaphysics as the divine Science of Christianity. Mary Baker Eddy says in "Miscellaneous Writings" (p. 69), "Divine metaphysics is that which treats of the existence of God, His essence, relations, and attributes." And she says further, "Christian Science is the unfolding of true metaphysics; that is, of Mind, or God, and His attributes." The Bible treats of the existence of God and of spiritual man, through whom He manifests His attributes. And it records the unfoldment of true metaphysics, or Science, to its perfect fulfillment in the life of Christ Jesus, the Way-shower. The interpretations of Christian Science show Scriptural metaphysics to be the pattern for universal salvation from mortality.

The good anyone expresses should be identified with God's image and not with physical personality, which seems to hide man from view. In the character of Abraham we glimpse the real man, the identity which coexists with its Maker. Abraham's faith in invisible good, his desire for peace between brethren, his passion for justice, his tender grief for the persecuted Hagar, his wide vision of God's bounty—all disclosed the presence of real consciousness and presaged the revelation of God's man, whose senses are spiritual.

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