Paul Kautz
July 2008

Idea

Four or five years or so ago, upon revisiting the first paragraph of Mary Baker Eddy's answer to the question, "What is man?" for perhaps the umpteenth time in my decades of study of Christian Science, my thought was arrested by the three words "Man is idea,..." and those words were so filled with significance for me that it was as if I had never really seen them before. (These words appear in line 13 on p. 475 of the Christian Science textbook, Science and Health, with Key to the Scriptures, by Mary Baker Eddy.)

With wonder, I began to recognize and realize that if man is idea, then I am idea, spiritual idea, divine idea, and that means I actually exist as spiritual idea, that the very nature of my being is spiritual idea and therefore entirely spiritual with no part material. And of course this accords perfectly with the first chapter of the Bible, in Genesis, verse 27, where it states, "So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them." For if God is Spirit, as Jesus tells us in the Gospel of John (4:24), the image of Spirit must be purely spiritual.

My thought soon turned to another statement in our textbook, "A spiritual idea has not a single element of error, and this truth removes properly whatever is offensive." (463:12) I had not paid much attention to this statement over the years, because it is embedded in a paragraph devoted primarily to spiritually scientific obstetrics, and I had been more or less assuming that the sentence applied primarily to the appearing of new borns. Now, having a newly keen interest in spiritual ideas of any and every kind, I recognized that this statement applies to every spiritual idea, anywhere, anytime, without exception. "A spiritual idea has not a single element of error,..." What a sweeping, magnificent spiritual fact! In other words, spiritual ideas are divinely created, and are therefore without any possible defect. Like God whom they reflect and express, spiritual ideas are altogether good. And I realized that it could be very helpful to substitute for the word error in that statement, any negative condition (or feeling or imagery) that might be suggesting itself to thought as having presence or power: in other words, any and every particular spiritual idea can have no possible element of pain, or sorrow, or inharmony, or injury, or limitation, any kind of error, ever.

It can be difficult humanly, sometimes, given the constant bombardment of physical sense testimony on our consciousness and experience, to see clearly and consistently how a material body can never be injured or function poorly. However, it is relatively easy, comparatively, to see how a spiritual idea, by definition having not a single tinge of physicality, and resident in and comprehended and governed lovingly by divine Mind, which is itself, divine Love--it is easy I find, to see how a spiritual idea cannot be so much as touched by any suggestion of hurt or malfunction.

Then the realization unfolded to me that everything we can possibly conceive of, or perceive, in God's creation, exists as spiritual idea. What a grand sense of universality! Where matter and material body appear to be, Spirit is--and spiritual idea as the manifestation of Spirit, is.

I was led to these conclusions by the following passages from our Leader's writings.

S&H 502:28
"There is but one creator and one creation. This creation consists of the unfolding of spiritual ideas and their identities, which are embraced in the infinite Mind and forever reflected. These ideas range from the infinitesimal to infinity, and the highest ideas are the sons and daughters of God."

Unity of Good 24:19-20
"God and His ideas--that is, God and the universe--constitute all that exists."

S&H 295:5-8
"God creates and governs the universe, including man. The universe is filled with spiritual ideas, which He evolves, and they are obedient to the Mind that makes them."

S&H 115:15-18
"MAN: God's spiritual idea, individual, perfect, eternal.
IDEA:  An image in Mind; the immediate object of understanding.-- Webster."

S&H 129:7
"If you wish to know the spiritual fact, you can discover it by reversing the material fable, be the fable pro or con,--be it in accord with your preconceptions or utterly contrary to them."

It was not long before I decided to review and prayerfully reconsider every one of the 524 references to idea and ideas in our Leader's writings, using the tremendously versatile and useful Concord electronic concordance. This has proved to be an immensely rewarding study, which I come back to again and again.

With renewed inspiration, I revisited the two seminal passages where Mrs. Eddy speaks about resolving things into thoughts:

S&H 123:12
"Divine Science, rising above physical theories, excludes matter, resolves things into thoughts, and replaces the objects of material sense with spiritual ideas."

S&H 269:14-22
"Metaphysics resolves things into thoughts, and exchanges the objects of sense for the ideas of Soul. These ideas are perfectly real and tangible to spiritual consciousness,..."

In conjunction with her statement above, "Divine Science ... excludes matter...," I considered the following element of her definition of matter in the Glossary of the textbook (S&H 591): "MATTER. ...that of which immortal Mind takes no cognizance;...," and at this point felt myself mentally equipped as never before to address a question to which I had not found an adequately satisfying answer for many years, namely, "If, as Mrs. Eddy says (S&H 151:20-21) 'Every function of the real man is governed by the divine Mind,' and (S&H 111:28-29) 'Mind governs the body, not partially but wholly,' how can this apply to the apparently physical and mortal body, when as indicated above, Mind takes no cognizance of matter?"

My transcendent recognition at this point was that if "...Science...replaces the objects of material sense with spiritual ideas," these objects include physical bodies and their component parts. In other words, I can replace that apparent physical body in my thought with "MAN: God's spiritual idea, individual, perfect, eternal."

I find it greatly rewarding that fresh inspiration regarding the concept of spiritual idea in divine Science is continually unfolding to my consciousness and revitalizing my entire experience.

I close this article with the following grand spiritual facts, which I believe follow self-evidently from the foregoing and from all the writings of Mary Baker Eddy, the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, and the forever Leader of students of this Science, wherever found--in her spiritual reasoning from spiritual cause, God, to spiritual effect. We are able to take Mrs. Eddy's writings as authority, because we are able to test them for consistency with the Christ, as she asked us to do, when she said, "Follow your Leader only so far she follows Christ." ('01 34:25, '02 4:4) She spoke with the humility, and the authority, that flow from following the Christ faithfully and consistently.

The entirety of our being is spiritual.

Spiritual ideas are the manifestation of Spirit, that is, God.

Spiritual ideas make Spirit tangible, comprehensible and concrete.

Spiritual ideas are the building blocks of creation.

The spiritual fact that all things exist as spiritual idea denies the existence of physicality.

Spiritual reality is the ultimate only. It has never been absent, nor can be.

God is the all of spiritual reality.