Editorial August 9, 1958 Issue

GOD'S ALLNESS

Helen Wood Bauman

In introducing Christian Science, Mary Baker Eddy was sometimes called pantheistic, a charge which she vigorously refuted. Pantheism has been variously defined by its different exponents through many ages. But, generally speaking, it may be considered the theory that God is all, and all is God, with the implication that God is the universe, and the universe—the material universe—is God. This supposition would reduce the order of being to a state in which God, Life, inhabits matter, and every fragment of matter is a fragment of God.

Mrs. Eddy teaches that God is All, but she excludes matter from this allness, designating it as a frail illusion. In Christian Science we learn that there is no more life and intelligence in matter than there is in the mirage, which illustrates the ephemeral nature of matter.

But some who do not understand Christian Science believe that because this Science asserts that God is All-in-all, it is a kind of spiritual pantheism, which claims that God is in His spiritual creation. Nothing could be farther from the fact. Mrs. Eddy states in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 467): "The greater cannot be in the lesser. The belief that the greater can be in the lesser is an error that works ill. This is a leading point in the Science of Soul, that Principle is not in its idea. Spirit, Soul, is not confined in man, and is never in matter."

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