Editorial August 10, 1981 Issue

To heal: find the real cause

NATHAN A. TALBOT

The discovery of Christian Science over a hundred years ago opened up fresh and compelling views of reality. It turned upside down many common assumptions. One such assumption was that "cause" could be found in matter.

Divine Science exposes matter as unintelligent, powerless. The human mind causes the effects that matter is supposed to produce; here is a concept with enormous implications. In the area of health, for instance, material mentality, not matter, is uncovered as the fundamental cause of all disease.

That's not quite as astounding a theory now as a century ago when Christian Science was widely ridiculed for holding it. Today it wouldn't be unusual for a medical practitioner to see a very direct cause-effect relationship between the patient's state of thought and the disease. Is there really a significant difference, then, between the point Christian Science pioneered and similar theories now held in, let's say, psychology or psychosomatic medicine?

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