What Mrs. Eddy Taught: Christian Science v. The Gospel
Christian Science
God
• God is the divine Principle, known as the Divine Mind. God has no personhood and no personality. God is "All in All," meaning that God inheres in all the spiritual individualities that God created. God did not create the physical universe, which is an illusion.
Christ
• Jesus is a Way-shower who leads to understanding. Jesus was a mortal man who epitomized the true principle of the divine Christ-Consciousness/Christ-Character which indwells all humanity. Jesus was not God in flesh. Nor was Jesus the Christ.
• The Christ is a higher, transcendent, impersonal Idea, a principle that dwells within each and every individual. Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, 333:3-15; 334:3.)
• Christian Science absolutely rejects the Christian understanding of the substitutionary atonement of Jesus and states that the death of Jesus had no efficacious value (S&H, 25:6).
The Individual Human Being
• God is all that exists and what we perceive as matter is merely an interpretation of the divine mind. A human beings is not an integrated reality consisting of body, soul, and spirit. The human being is merely a particular instantiation/expression of the single Divine Mind- an “individual.”
• Christian Science teaches that man does not have a sinful nature and is a perfect reflection of Divine Mind. Sin is a false interpretation of Divine Mind, and is really nonexistent (Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, 335:7-15).
• To achieve "salvation," humanity needs only to achieve understanding of true reality, as revealed in Christian Science teachings. Truth is a matter of higher understanding and learning. Salvation is achieved through progressive spiritual understanding. A person is not saved from hell, but from his or her belief in materiality.
Christianity
God
• God is one God in three divine Persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. God is Personal. God is the Creator of the physical universe and has provided redemption for the fallen creation through the body of His Son, Jesus Christ, who is God Incarnate.
Christ
• Jesus Christ is the second Person of the Trinity, the fully divine Son of God who became fully man and died for our sins. He will come again to judge the living and the dead.
• Jesus is God physically incarnate in human flesh from the Virgin Mary, His mother. Jesus became incarnate in physical human flesh for our salvation.
• Jesus Christ suffered physical death under Pontius Pilate for our atonement and was resurrected on the third day. His sinless nature made him uniquely qualified to bear the judgment and punishment that God’s holiness and divine justice demand. Our salvation from sin and death is possible only in Him.
The Personal Human Being
• Made in the image of the personal God, the human being is rightly described as an integrated person. God created the physical universe as an act of His free grace. God created the physical bodies of humanity as well as the human soul and spirit. Human beings were created to fellowship with God with their whole selves- body, mind, and spirit. Christ redeems humanity by taking onto Himself the human soul and body and returning it to the Father on the Cross.
• Fallen from communion with God because of sin, salvation is offered to humanity in Christ as the gift of God’s grace. It cannot be earned or achieved by human effort, but must be accepted by confession of one’s sins and by faith in the sacrificial death of Jesus Christ on one’s behalf. Salvation is not from a belief in materiality, but from damnation.
posted by MM at 8:17 AM
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