 Posted Monday, August 27, 2007 9:53 AM
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| A Christian Scientist made the following statment in the thread entitled "Is CS starting to rub off on me? (post #13846): One thing I have not seen on this site yet is the fact that Mrs. Eddy wrote in the Manual of the Mother Church of Christ, Scientist is the first tenet: "As adherents of Truth, we take the inspired Word of the Bible as our sufficient guide to eternal Life." (Manual Pg 15:3) What I see on this site is the opinion that Christian Scientists choose Mrs. Eddy's words over and above The Bible. The problem with Mrs. Eddy's statement is that she doesn't define what she means by "the inspired Word of the Bible." I used to think she meant "the Bible," but now I understand that she meant only PARTS of the Bible -- parts of her choosing. Please allow me to clarify... First, consider what Mrs. Eddy says about the Bible: "[Jesus] spake of Truth and Love to artless listeners and dull disciples. His immortal words were articulated in a decaying language, and then left to the providence of God. Christian Science was to interpret them; and woman, “last at the cross,” was to awaken the dull senses. . . ." (Mary Baker Eddy, Miscellaneous Writings, 100:1-6) She also claims that the Bible contains “manifest mistakes in the ancient versions . . . thirty thousand different readings in the Old Testament, and . . . three hundred thousand in the New [Testament] . . .” (S&H 139:16-19) Mrs. Eddy says that CS finds its authority in the Bible, but that Bible turns out to be severely flawed. So SHE decides which parts of the Bible are "inspired," and she provides new or expanded definitions for many of the words central to an understanding of Christianity. Using her new definitions, she makes the Bible say things that it doesn't really say unless filtered through her definitions. That is why many people on this forum say that CSists choose Mrs. Eddy's words over the Bible.
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Posted Monday, August 27, 2007 12:12 PM
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| Anonymous, welcome & thank you for sharing the passages of Scripture that you see validating CS. Linda responded well to most of your post, so I won't repeat what she has already stated. What struck me most in your comments, though was your first statement: "TRUE Christian Scientists are loving because that is what Christ Jesus taught us to do." This struck me because I remember as CSist, I did not understand what love was. I thought, as most CSists think, that a major part of love is never disciplining those who go astray from what is right; nothing but tender mercy for all transgressions. But as I became a father I realized that if I do not do everything in my power to teach goodness & restrain my children from evil, I would in fact be showing hatred for them. To not punish my son for trying to stick a bobby pin in the wall socket would make me much less than a loving dad to him. Likewise, a distinctive part of God's love is His seemingly harsh discipline: "Those whom I love, I reprove and discipline, so be zealous and repent." Rev. 3:19 But this gets to another question- repent? Of what? If sin is not real, then how can I repent of it? Even more to the point, why would I need to repent of unreality? The same Bible that Mrs. Eddy says she believes in tells of God constantly reproving, disciplining, & punishing mankind again & again for sin. Why did God cause a flood to destroy all of mankind, save eight blessed souls if sin is not real? Why did He destroy Sodom & Gomorrah for a "false idea?" Wouldn't that make Him the most unloving God imaginable? zoarean
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Posted Sunday, September 02, 2007 5:33 PM
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Paul tells us (2 Tim 3.16-17),
All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, 17so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work. (NIV)
The King James Version puts it,
16All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness:
17That the man of God may be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good works.
First, let's be quick to observe, Paul is very clear: "All Scripture."
Not just some.
Not even most.
Not that which the "Jesus Seminar has deemed "historically (and politically) correct."
Not that which is "Spiritual."
Not that which we find convenient to our lax morals or casual-Christian lifestyle.
ALL SCRIPTURE! This is an unapologetically absolute statement.
What we have here, folks, is one of those clever, devious ways Eddy looks and sounds authentically Christian, but allows for different interpretations--one, and a lower one at that, for the general public, and a second, more "Spiritual" one for in-house ("just among us in the know") use. Consider:
"We...believe in the inspired word of the Bible:" Does this mean, "We believe in the Word of the inspired Bible," or "We believe in those parts of the Bible that are inspired?" (And if so, who determines what is inspired and what is not?) There is a critical difference here: No longer is it the text that is inspired, rather, it is the reader who is inspired!
Eddy's reference to the undocumented contains “manifest mistakes in the ancient versions . . . thirty thousand different readings in the Old Testament, and . . . three hundred thousand in the New [Testament] . . .” (S&H 139:16-19) indicates that she had bought into the so-called "Higher Criticism" of (mostly German) "scholarship," which has a strong following through liberal Protestantism. Thus the great apostasy of those denominations, but that's matter for another thread. But be alert to qualified statements such as, "I believe the Bible contains the Word of God." A giveaway is when people do not use the upper-case for "Lord," He," or "Him," when referencing Jesus. Gender-neutral references to Deity are an absolute indicator.
Lastly, I cringe at the number of times I was bamboozled by CS'ists who would deride me by saying, "you take the Bible so literally. My answer nowadays would be, "Well of course I take it literally! It's literature! Where it's clear and direct, I take it as absolute fact. Where it is symbollic, then I take it as symbolic. And where it is an allegory or a parable, then I interpret it accordingly But just because it is symbolic in some places does not mean you can render a text symbolically, allegorically, or 'spiritualized' anywhere you find a text you don't like!"
We sift our doctrines and understandings through the Bible. We don't force the Bible to fit into our opinions and predilections!
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Posted Sunday, September 02, 2007 9:15 PM
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| Thanks for your post, followingHim. A giveaway is when people do not use the upper-case for "Lord," He," or "Him," when referencing Jesus. I'll have to disagree with this statement. Neither the King James Version nor the New International Version of the Bible capitalizes "him" and "he" when referring to Jesus.
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Posted Monday, September 03, 2007 7:17 AM
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Posted Monday, September 03, 2007 7:27 AM
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| FollowingHim, Though I likewise feel the need to capitalize all titles, descriptors, & personal pronouns referencing a Person of the Trinity, I agree with Linda that many committed Christians do not seem to share this sentiment. Only about 20% of translations choose to do so. But there may be a trend towards it, because while the KJV & American Standard do not, the NKJV & New American Standard do. I would imagine the older versions don't because there was a great aversion to blending God's Word with commentary of any sort in Protestantism 400 years ago (a backlash against Rome). Since capitalization is often a departure from the strict translation of the Greek & Hebrew, it would be seen by some as making an assumption in translation. zoarean
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Posted Monday, September 03, 2007 7:35 AM
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| Following Him (or following him, as the case may be ), There is a critical difference here: No longer is it the text that is inspired, rather, it is the reader who is inspired! Thank you, this is one of the most critical and useful statements I've seen regarding the understanding and applicability of God's word. Do Go Be Man
<><
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Posted Monday, September 03, 2007 7:53 PM
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| The correlative question is: "..inspired by whom?"
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Posted Sunday, March 01, 2009 2:35 PM
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Although I see this thread is old, I've just recently found it and notice several of you who post here regularly keep bringing up the points mentioned here in order to justify the position that CS is not Bible-based. As a Christian Scientist, I would like to respond. While seeing what you've said here helps me understand some of the reasoning for your position, I respectfully wish to disagree with that position, as well as your interpretations of Mrs. Eddy's statements as given here, and explain what I understand to be her meaning instead.
Linda, I'm sure that through the eyes of traditional Christianity the texts you've identified sound heretical and alarming. I think that if you read them in a somewhat broader context they still may seem that way to you, but nevertheless they can be seen to mean differently than you interpret them here. In the paragraph before the one you quote in Misc. Wtgs, for example, Mrs. Eddy says:
Jesus [...] said 'Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away;' and they have not. The winds of time sweep clean the centuries, but they can never bear into oblivion his words. They still live, and to-morrow speak louder than to-day. They are to-day as the voice of one crying in the wilderness, , 'Make straight God's paths; make way for health, holiness, universal harmony, and come up hither.'"
To me, this clearly indicates that Mrs. Eddy did not find the words of the Bible at all flawed. She's declaring their immortality, their power, and the divinity of the message they embody. When she later says Jesus spoke to artless listeners and dull disciples, she's merely pointing out that others have often failed to understand this. As the Bible records, many of his listeners were completely antagonistic to what he had to say and even his disciples often failed to understand what he was getting at. She is not indicting the words of the Bible, however; it is those who dismissed it out of hand and those who were too mired in sin and sensuality to grasp the spiritual concepts Jesus was presenting that she was labeling as flawed.
The other paragraph you quote from reads in full:
The decisions by vote of Church Councils as to what should and should not be considered Holy Writ; the manifest mistakes in the ancient versions; the thirty thousand different readings in the Old Testament, and the three hundred thousand in the New, --these facts show how a mortal and material sense stole into the divine record, with its own hue darkening to some extent the inspired pages. But mistakes could neither wholly obscure the divine Science of the Scriptures seen from Genesis to Revelation, mar the demonstration of Jesus, nor annul the healing by the prophets, who foresaw that "the stone which the builders rejected" would become "the head of the corner."
Here Mrs. Eddy seems to me to be pointing out that even though there were flawed mortals making decisions about what should and should not be considered Holy Writ and more flawed mortals establishing Christian creeds and doctrines based on many divergent interpretations of the scriptures, these flawed actions cannot and have not been able to hide the truth that has always been and still remains in the words of the Bible.
When Mrs. Eddy says we CSists must "take the inspired Word of the Bible as our sufficient guide to eternal Life" she is not saying some parts of the Bible are inspired and others are not. Far from it. She is saying some people's interpretations of scripture are not inspired and that it is possible to read the Bible and still to fail to understand God's word. If you want to know what the Bible really says, in other words, you need to read it prayerfully so that you are open to the message God has infused into the word instead of simply accepting man's word about what the Bible says, since mortal man, not God or His word, is flawed.
The words of Paul in 2Tim that followingHim quotes is, from my perspective, at the heart and soul of Christian Science. As a CSist, I absolutely believe that
All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness:That the man of God may be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good works.
Thanks for letting me present this alternate perspective.
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Posted Monday, March 02, 2009 1:15 PM
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"When Mrs. Eddy says we CSists must "take the inspired Word of the Bible as our sufficient guide to eternal Life" she is not saying some parts of the Bible are inspired and others are not. Far from it. She is saying some people's interpretations of scripture are not inspired and that it is possible to read the Bible and still to fail to understand God's word. If you want to know what the Bible really says, in other words, you need to read it prayerfully so that you are open to the message God has infused into the word instead of simply accepting man's word about what the Bible says, since mortal man, not God or His word, is flawed."
Anonymous:
I will not get into my personal background with CS, although I have discussed this in many other posts on this site. Rather, I want to touch upon an area which is at the heart of everything in your post and what you will see here. (I also apologize in advance for my long post, but ask you to please stay with me).
I also was taught that Mrs. Eddy took her teachings from the Bible. As I later discovered, in order for Mrs. Eddy to claim this, however, she did one of the most intellectually dishonest things in the annals of the written word.
As you know, she literally changed the meaning of key words in the English dictionary (i.e., she rewrote the English Language). This was done so that when key words are read by CS church members in either the Bible or in Science and Health, they are taken to have their new Christian Science or Metaphysical meanings as defined by Mrs. Eddy, instead of the meanings that are commonly accepted in the English language. (Ala the new definitions on page 579-599 of S&H.) Examples include Death, which is defined in the dictionary as a permanent cessation of all vital functions; the end of life; S& H on p. 584 as “An illusion, the lie of life in matter; the unreal and untrue; the opposite of life”. Flesh in the dictionary is defined as the soft parts of the body of an animal etc.; S& H on page 586 defines it as “An error of physical belief; a supposition that life, substance, and intelligence are in matter; an illusion; a belief that matter has sensation.” Mrs. Eddy defines the Euphrates River in the Middle East on page 585 of S&H as “Divine Science encompassing the universe and man; a type of the glory which is to come; metaphysics taking the place of physics; the reign of righteousness.”, etc. And so forth…
Now, how does CS explain how Mrs. Eddy came to do such a preposterous thing (namely, to literally rewrite the dictionary and commonly accepted places on the map?) Mrs. Eddy, of course, believed she was the “revelator”, that the truth as she saw it, laid dormant in the Bible for 1866 years, until it was revealed to her and published in S&H. She was, in short, divinely inspired by an impersonal God or Divine Mind as she saw it.
But is that good enough? After all, Christians believe the New Testament is divinely inspired, but I’m not aware of any meanings or definitions in the Old Testament that were changed 180 degrees in the New Testament. Now, there are honest disagreements about the interpretations of certain passages, etc among various Christian denominations, Nobody, however, in orthodox Christendom has ever defined an actual river as “divine science”, etc. instead of a body of water.
Consider what has happened here. If you can arbitrarily change the meaning of words, redefining them at will, you can make the Bible, the Koran, the Hindu scriptures, the Constitution of the United States, or any other historical document or published work mean anything you want it to!!!
If you, Anonymous, had written a work about real people and utilized words whose definitions are commonly accepted to relate particular events or teachings (as the Apostles did in the New Testament), what right would I or anyone else have to change the meaning of those words to come up with an entirely different series of events or teachings??? (i.e. “we don’t like what this document says or the story it tells, so we’re going to change the meaning of a few key words in that document to come up with a story that we do like.”)
As an another example, suppose I read a hard copy of a CS lecture presented at a local branch church. Naturally, I don't like the meaning, so I decide to change the definition of key words in your lecture so that the message is more acceptable to me. I still claim, however, that the altered message is exactly what the author intended it to be in the first place!
I'm sure you'll agree with me that the lecturer wouldn't be very happy with me!
Of course, the above scenarios described are blatantly dishonest. Words mean particular things-words refer to specific things, or people, or events- that’s why we use them. If you don’t like an essay that’s been written by John Doe on a particular subject, write a different one which refutes it. Don’t redefine the words in John’s essay which gives it a new meaning more to your liking, and then have the gall to say that not only is your new version correct, but that after all is what John really intended to get across in the first place. Can you think of anything more disingenuous? But that is what Mrs. Eddy and Christian Science have done.
One of the key things to consider in comparing CS and the Bible is that MBE, consciously or unconsciously, founded or embraced a new religion (Metaphysics) then tried to make it "fit" the Bible and Christianity, instead of the other way around. Indeed, MBE initially called her new religion "Moral Science", not CS.
In fact, MBE, in a moment of candor, admitted that Jesus Christ was not even needed to embrace her teachings. If you look at one of her writings, Miscellany (318:32-319:2) she stated, “If there had never existed such a person as the Galilean Prophet, it would make no difference to me.” in response to a question at a lecture.
She had a problem, however. To advance her teachings, she had to find some way in 19th century America to persuade the world that they were Christian. People were not ready to accept the idea of leaving the Christian faith. She had to make metaphysics “fit” the Bible and Christianity somehow. Hence, the 100+ word rewrites in S&H, and “Christian Science” is born.”
I personally believe if MBE had been born 100 years later, she wouldn’t have bothered calling CS Christian. There would have been no need to, because all religions (or none at all) are quickly accepted socially in this day and age. She therefore would never have attempted to rewrite the Bible. If she had truly been intellectually honest, or courageous, she would have attempted this in her time. She was neither, however.
Per your quote from Paul in 2Tim:
"All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness: That the man of God may be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good works."
Paul also says in Galatians:
"1:6 I marvel that ye are so soon removed from him that called you into the grace of Christ unto another gospel: 7: Which is not another; but there be some that trouble you, and would pervert the gospel of Christ. 8: But though we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel unto you than that which we have preached unto you, let him be accursed.9 As we said before, so say I now again, If any man preach any other gospel unto you than that ye have received, let him be accursed."
I would really appreciate your thoughts on all of this, Anonymous, (if you've stayed with me to this point, for which I thank you if you have!!)
Best regards,
John
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