All scripture was inspired, no matter at whose hand it was penned!

” In like manner!” Chapter two needs be read as well, for context.

The lesson in Romans 13 bears witness to this subjection, and why subjection is so necessary… Romans 13:5 Wherefore ye must needs be in subjection, not only because of the wrath, but also for conscience’ sake.

Lordship is never to be taken, but it is to be *given* voluntarily by the submission of the other. This takes place when the one doing the submitting is in agreement and trusting that the one given Lordship has their best intersts at heart.
It is as we, submit to our Bridegroom, He becomes our Lord. Otherwise, we are still lord.
He may be Saviour, but is He Lord?
Barelohm.

I learned a lot of interesting information about the letter Paul wrote to the Corinthians a little while ago, from my teacher of Christian Science. First, did you know that there is debate among Biblical scholars as to whether Paul was actually the one who wrote the couple of verses about women “keeping silence” in churches at all? Based on their research, many scholars feel like these verses in particular were added in by later translators, and never by St. Paul himself.

But even if he did write those verses, you also have to consider the context. The church at Corinth was known for its loose morals, so some scholars feel this verse was actually a protection to some of the women in that church. By not talking, the men wouldn’t have thought of them as much and so wouldn’t be as tempted to think lustfully about them during church services. Obviously that’s not really an ideal treatment in today’s society, but we have come a long way.

Thirdly, if you take away a literal interpretation of those passages, you could also interpret the “keep silence” passages to mean, spiritually, to forever silence a lower concept of womanhood, a concept that defines women as a symbol of lust and stupidity, and instead to recognize the womanhood of God as the messenger of Christ. I do realize that some may find that interpretation a bit of a stretch, but personally I’m inclined to take into consideration the conclusion some scholars have had that it wasn’t actually Paul who wrote those verses at all, but that they were later additions by misguided translators.

This statement of the Holy Spirit has been taken so out of whack, it is no wonder there is controversy over it.

Paul is not saying that woman can’t teach……! He is saying it is the subject, that is not to be taught or practiced… Women are not to have authority over the man. Otherwise it gives the wrong impression of Christ and His Bride. The Bride of Christ does not have authority over the Bridegroom. Ephesians goes further and is comparing the woman and man, as to head and body. The man being the head, and woman as the body.
The man is to care for his body, and nourish and cherish and provide for her/it, as Christ does the Bride, the Church. BUT the head is not to be ruled by the body, but the body is to voluntarily submit to the head.
Lordship is never to be taken, but it is to be *given* voluntarily by the submission of the other. This can only take place when the one doing the submitting is in agreement and trusting that the one given Lordship has their best intersts at heart.
It is as we, submit to our Bridegroom, He becomes our Lord. Otherwise, we are still lord.

Barelohm.

Barelohim

Barbara as a hospital chaplain brings wonderful insights. I love that for her, as for Christian Scientists, there is a spiritual dimension to “Thy will be done,” that means a desire for spiritual growing, a change of heart, or seeing things in a new way that God is showing.

I appreciated that you both distinguished between Jesus the historic person and the Christ who is present with us all the time.

I have a Catholic friend and neighbor who is dealing with multiple physical woes, trying acupuncture and continued medical tests that have not yet solved anything for her. Over the last few months she has shifted from being a bit of a control freak to becoming very serene — exactly what Barbara described for those whose prayers engage them with spiritual, rather than physical, expectations. My friend clearly isn’t looking for a physical outcome first.

You both agreed that healing is a natural experience. Shirley strongly feels that healing is something we should experience here and now because of our relationship to God.

How helpful to hear Barbara’s question of why is the central focus of Christian Science on healing? And your response that a Christian Scientist seeking healing would be asking the deeper questions, Where is God in this story? Where do I find my peace with God, my relationship with God? How is God showing me I’m loved and cherished? And recognizing that this means that fear and human will have to go, being wrapped up in a material world has to go. And that person would also assume that a genuine encounter with the divine would include healing as a natural outcome.

Thank you for sharing such a thoughtful discussion. So glad to have caught this podcast.

What a wonderful way you have in bringing different faiths together in light of Christian Science. It takes a very special person to do that.

I particularly enjoy the podcasts and have been learning so much from you

Blessings,
Sherry

Knowing all the time that my thought and the thought of humanity

-Danielle
Writer, Enviroselects.com

Now…I want to share my thoughts, comments, and observations after listening to this podcast. I should tell you that I am male. I am not a feminist, but I am a Christian Scientist. I was very impressed by much of what was said in this talk, but also occasionally disappointed at two recurring tendencies: the tendency to want to associate this evil of exclusion / oppression / dominance solely with men, and the tendency to harbor resentment, however small, for those that have sinned.

Maybe 11 minutes (or so) into the talk, Shirley said this:
“That’s the thing that amazes me…the people who are in a dominant position hardly ever notice that they are not only not doing something to somebody else, but they feel like they are good people.”

Well first of all…they are good people! God didn’t create “bad people.” I understand that this may seem overly simplistic, but from what I’ve learned in Christian Science, if you start with the premise that you’ve got both good and evil commingling, you aren’t going to come up with very positive results, and you aren’t going to find healing. You always have to start with the premise that God is good, and God is all.

But I will admit that I have, actually, noticed this same pattern with others in my own life as well. Believe it or not, I can completely empathize with your statement there–that feeling that someone has wronged you in an unfair way, and how they’re often completely blind to the fact that they’ve done anything wrong at all. However, in my own personal experience, those “others” who have wronged me or excluded me from something have not been men–they’ve actually been women. This leads me to reason that this condition of dominance and abuse of power is not in any way tied to gender, race, or any other demographic, but is purely what we call in Christian Science a “false belief.” An impersonal evil.

When I was listening to that part, a passage from the book Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy came to mind. I’d like to share it with you:

“Human sense may well marvel at discord, while, to a diviner sense, harmony is the real and discord the unreal. We may well be astonished at sin, sickness, and death. We may well be perplexed at human fear; and still more astounded at hatred, which lifts its hydra head, showing its horns in the many inventions of evil. But why should we stand aghast at nothingness?”

What I feel Mrs. Eddy was saying in this passage was that it’s very easy to be impressed by evil. It’s very easy to take offense to evil when it seems to be targeted specifically at you. However, ultimately all forms of evil are nothing when brought under the healing light of God. Darkness flees before the light.

When the discussion moved on to say that the statements the person in the dominant position makes can be very insidious–and can look good on the surface when in fact they aren’t–my immediate thought was, “well that’s not what God is seeing!” I wonder if the idea that we should be constantly analyzing and running over with a fine tooth comb our brothers’ actions for their imperfections is really the most Christian thing to do. I acknowledge that I too have been guilty of this myself on plenty of occasions, as most people probably have. Make no mistake: I’m not claiming to be humanly perfect. I’ve had times where I’ve really questioned if someone was being genuine with me. And not without good reason: many of those times, they haven’t! and their statements have been surface-level statements only. I can relate to the idea of really wanting to evaluate whether someone is saying something because they really mean it, or whether they’re saying something just because it makes them look good. However, I do believe that it is a downward tendency of “the enemy” to get people to buy into the drama–to want to always get in the last word, to assign blame, and to keep adding more fuel to the fire. During any of the times, in my own experience, where I’ve felt justified by insisting that another person was not being genuine or fair to me, that has only seemed to make them want to exclude me all that much more. That has only seemed to make things worse, without exception.

In cases where I have felt trapped or condemned by someone else’s statements or actions, ultimately the one and only thing that has ever proved helpful at all was first to remember Christ’s command to “bless those that curse you,” and then to remember that I (or anyone else) can never be deprived of anything good, because God bestows all good gifts and they cannot be taken away. Rather than taking offense at the other person, what has helped has been to try and see them how God is seeing them–understanding that they are loved, appreciated, cherished, adored–and then reaffirming that that is also true about myself. This whole concept of analyzing what another person is doing wrong just never seems to bring genuine healing to any situation.

So I suppose my question to you would be: is the banter about how men have sinned and oppressed and wronged people ultimately doing any good? Believe me, if you got me going I could go on and on about how women have wronged me, but I don’t really think it would accomplish much.

Here are two quotes from the Manual of The Mother Church by Mary Baker Eddy, which contains all the by-laws governing the Christian Science Church:

“As adherents of Truth, we take the inspired Word of the Bible as our sufficient guide to eternal Life.”
(1st Tenet of The Mother Church, p. 15)

“THE BIBLE, together with SCIENCE AND HEALTH and other works by Mrs. Eddy, shall be [a member's] only textbooks for self-instruction in Christian Science…”
(Qualifications for Membership, p. 34)

Christian Science’s teachings are set out clearly and completely in Eddy’s works, particularly Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures. As an adherent of Christian Science myself, I find these give a great sense of focus and direction to my life and to my church work, a deepening understanding of the God revealed by Christ Jesus, and the desire to follow Jesus’ words and works in my own life.

It’s true that New Thought does not have any one authoritative Scripture, leader, or teaching. This is one of the factors that separates it from Christian Science. Many early figures in New Thought started out in Christian Science, then broke away from it, specifically because they did not accept Eddy’s leadership or her firmly Christian and Bible-based focus.

Although Christian Science’s teachings differ somewhat from mainstream Christian denominations, they are still thoroughly Christian in their basis and direction. Eddy’s theology is drawn entirely from the Bible, and from the life and works of Christ Jesus in particular. For example, it gives a vital and indispensable place to these essential elements of Christianity:

- one supreme and infinite God, one Christ, and the Holy Ghost or divine Comforter
- man (all men and women collectively) in God’s image and likeness – see Gen. 1:27
- Christ Jesus’ atonement for sin and the salvation of man through Christ
- Jesus’ crucifixion, resurrection, and ascension
- the demand for his followers to have the “Mind [within them]… which was also in Christ Jesus” (Phil. 2:5) and to live by the Golden Rule that Jesus gave (“Do unto others as you would have them do unto you” – Matt. 7:12).

These are all included in the basic tenets of Christian Science, which can be read online here:
http://christianscience.com/church/the-mother-church/membership/applications/tenets/

Other foundational elements of Christian Science, as with all Christian churches, are the Ten Commandments (Exodus 20:3-17), the Lord’s Prayer (Matt. 6:9-13), and Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount (Matt. chapters 5-7).

While Mary Baker Eddy does at times refer to Christian Science healing as “mental healing”, her writings make clear that this refers solely to the divine Mind, or God – the same “Mind that was in Christ Jesus”, spoken of in the Bible – as the one true healing power, in contrast to what we might call the limited human mind. As far as I’m aware, New Thought does not make this distinction, which is another vital difference between it and Christian Science. Christian Science healing works through yielding to this one divine “Mind of Christ”, not through any human mental power.

Regarding creeds, it’s worth bearing in mind that Christianity itself predates any attempt to rigidify it into doctrine and dogma. Christ Jesus himself never gave any creeds for his followers to merely “believe”, but he did make very clear how he expected them to live and act – in particular, loving God supremely and our neighbour as ourselves – and the healing and saving effects that would flow from this. That, to me, is the essence of all Christianity, including Christian Science.

There are no bridges to be built between Christian Science and any other NT organisation. They are one. Its like me giving you a carrot and telling you it is a tomato and there are two other carrots next to it so you call one a tomato and the other two carrots…

Good luck with it anyways.