In the Christian Science Bible Lesson March 14, 2011 Issue

Probing the unreality of matter

For the lesson titled "Matter" from March 14-20, 2011

Kathleen Collins

This week’s Bible Lesson, titled “Matter,” probes a distinctive concept in Christian Science theology—the unreality of matter. A verse in Jeremiah shows how there can’t be room for matter in God’s universe: “Do not I fill heaven and earth? saith the Lord” (Jer. 23:24, citation 3). Science and Health takes the question one step further: “If Spirit is all and is everywhere, what and where is matter?” (p. 223, cit. 1). 

Each of the Lesson’s eight sections includes at least one question that guides the reader to an understanding of matter’s illusory nature. (For Mary Baker Eddy, the question and answer method was a favorite system of education.) Well then, what is it that we call matter? “Matter is neither a thing nor a person, but merely the objective supposition of Spirit’s opposite” (Science and Health, p. 287, cit. 6). And though human belief suggests that matter and Spirit can coexist, Science and Health states categorically, “Spirit can have no opposite” (p. 278, cit. 2). This Lesson nullifies every material claim of an opposite to Spirit.

The Golden Text promises escape from identification with matter: “Henceforth know we no man after the flesh” (II Cor. 5:16). The Apostle Paul often uses “the flesh” as a Biblical synonym for matter. In his letter to the Galatians, Paul demonstrates how the flesh and the Spirit “are contrary the one to the other” (Responsive Reading, Gal. 5:17) using a long list of vices, or works of the flesh, to oppose a list of virtues, or the fruits of the Spirit (Gal. 5:19–23). Ethical lists such as these were a popular literary style of the Hellenistic culture of Paul’s day.