Science and Health Offered as a Key to the Scriptures
Such as these have been almost pathetically eager to accept any interpretation, no matter how capricious, which seemed to read an intelligible meaning into its difficult passages, or reconcile its contradictions, or make it a more practical guide in the conduct of life. Any cult or theory, therefore, which can seem to secure for itself the authority of the Bible has obtained directly an immense reinforcement in its appeal to the devout and the perplexed, and Mrs. Eddy has taken full advantage of this. Her book is veined with Scripture references; two of her chapters are expositions of Biblical books (Genesis and Revelation); and other chapters deal with great doctrines of the Church.
It Ignores All Recognized Canons of Biblical Interpretation. Illustrations
Mrs. Eddy naturally sought the authority for her philosophy between the covers of the Scriptures. Beyond debate her teachings have carried much farther than they otherwise would, in that she claims for them a Scriptural basis, and they must be examined in that light. Now there are certain sound and universally recognized rules governing the scholarly approach to the Old and New Testaments. Words must be taken in their plain sense; they must be understood in their relation to their context. A book is to be studied also in the light of its history; the time and place and purpose of its composition, as far as these are known, must be considered; no changes made in the text save through critical emendation, nor any translations offered not supported by accepted texts, nor any liberties be taken with grammatical constructions. By such plain tests as these Mrs. Eddy's use of the Scriptures will not bear examination. She violates all recognized canons of Biblical interpretation on almost every page.[42]
[42] This is a brief—and a Christian Scientist may protest—a summary dismissal of the claim of "Science and Health" to be a "key to the Scriptures." But nothing is gained—save of the unnecessary lengthening of this chapter—in going into a detailed examination of her method and conclusions. She has insight, imagination, boundless allegorical resource, but the whole Bible beneath her touch becomes a plastic material to be subdued to her peculiar purpose by omissions, read-in meanings and the substantial and constant disregard of plain meanings. To the student the whole matter is important only as revealing the confusion of the popular mind which receives such a method as authoritative.
Her method is wholly allegorical and the results achieved are conditioned only by the ingenuity of the commentator. It would require a body of citation from the pages of "Science and Health," not possible here, to follow through Mrs. Eddy's peculiar exegesis. One needs only to open the book at random for outstanding illustrations. For example, Genesis 1:6, "And God said, let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters and let it divide the waters from the waters." The word "firmament" has its own well established connotation gathered from a careful study of all its uses. We can no more understand the earlier chapters of Genesis without an understanding of Hebrew cosmogony than we can understand Dante without a knowledge of medieval cosmogony. But, given this knowledge which is the common possession of all sound scholarship, we can at least understand what the passage means, even though we have long left behind us the naïve conception of the vaulted skies to which it refers.
All this is a commonplace not worth repeating at the cost of the white paper upon which it is printed, save as the ignoring of it leads to such an interpretation of the passage as that which Mrs. Eddy offers: "spiritual understanding by which human conception material mind is separated from Truth is the firmament. The Divine Mind, not matter, creates all identities and they are forms of Mind, the ideas of Spirit apparent only as Mind, never as mindless matter nor the so-called material senses" (page 505). Comment is not only difficult but impossible in the face of a method like this. If such an interpretation were an exception it might seem the unfair use of a hypercritical temper to quote this particular expression of Mrs. Eddy's mind. But her whole treatment of Scripture suffers from the same method.
Everything means something else. The Ark is "the idea, or reflection of truth, proved to be as immortal as its Principle." Babel is "self-destroying error"; baptism is "submergence in Spirit"; Canaan is "a sensuous belief"; Dan (Jacob's son) is "animal magnetism"; the dove is "a symbol of divine Science"; the earth is "a type of eternity and immortality"; the river Euphrates is "divine Science encompassing the universe and man"; evening "the mistiness of mortal thought"; flesh "an error, a physical belief"; Ham (Noah's son) is "corporeal belief"; Jerusalem "mortal belief and knowledge obtained from the five corporeal senses"; night, "darkness; doubt; fear"; a Pharisee, "corporeal and sensuous belief"; river is "a channel of thought"; a rock is "a spiritual foundation"; sheep are "innocence"; a sword "the idea of Truth."[43]
[43] Glossary, p. 579—passim.
Mrs. Eddy does not hesitate to make such textual modifications of passages as suit her purpose and even when she is not dealing with her texts in such ways as these, she is constantly citing for her proofs passages which cannot by any recognized canon of interpretation possibly be made to mean what she says they mean. Beneath her touch simple things become vague, the Psalms lose their haunting beauty, even the Lord's Prayer takes a form which we may reverently believe the author of it would not recognize.