Article August 1, 1959 Issue

THE ALLNESS OF GOD'S GOODNESS

JOHN M. TUTT

No cleaver of diamonds ever drew so fine a line as that which separates Christian Science from pantheism. When in the Christian Science textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," Mary Baker Eddy declares (p. 339), "Since God is All, there is no room for His unlikeness," she does not subscribe to the pantheistic "nothing but God."

Pantheism dogmatically holds that God is everything and that everything is God. Christian Science by no means has any savor of pantheism. But does not the ease with which "God's allness" flows from tongue and pen suggest the necessity to follow that sharp dividing line alertly and to keep consistently on the Christianly scientific side? Thus alone can be avoided the contamination of thought and life with the paganism of pantheism.

Christian Science and the practice of Christian Science are based on the unity of the Divine Being, that is, Mind and its manifestation, and this oneness and allness of God is the unity of creative force in action. There is unity but not synonymity in creator and creation. The allness of God is the oneness of cause and effect, plus their distinctness. God's allness cannot be thought of adequately or completely without the conviction that the universal intelligence, or Mind, we call God, is omniaction. Science and Health declares (p. 240), "Mind is perpetual motion."

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