by Dr. Louis T. Talbot, Chancellor, The Bible Institute o f Los Angeles, Inc.
CHRISTIANITY?
U n i t y is o f t e n confused with Christian Science, and no wonder, for there are many similarities in their teachings. Much of the phraseology is the same; both are taken up with ontology, or the science of being. This is not to be wondered at when one realizes that the found ers of Unity, Charles and Myrtle Fillmore, were once ardent Christian Scientists themselves. However, the sys tems are now complete and separate organizations. In 1903 a group of so-called Truth students incorpor ated under the name of Unity School of Practical Chris tianity, independent of all other metaphysical groups. They began to apply modem business methods to the propagation of their particular views. Their headquarters now are at Lees Summit, Mo., where they have an im pressive plant. The name originated in 1891 when Fillmore was meeting with a group “in the silence.” Suddenly he startled everyone with the spoken exclamation: “Unity! That’s the name of our work!” He claimed afterward that it was a revelation to him. It does not refer to the unity of the Godhead or to the unity of believers as some have imagined. With this background, one can readily understand- how so much of the Christian Science terminology got into Unity. Terms such as Mind, Intelligence, Spirit, Love and Life are used in an identical way in both cults. There is little difference in their conception of God, Christ, the atonement, and in all the cardinal teachings of the Word of God. Clarence Woodbury defined Unity as follows: “What the sect has done, speaking generally, is to combine Christian beliefs with the tenets of several Eastern reli gions, wrap them all up in a new package, and put a label on the package which guarantees hope to every body everywhere.” * Unity does indeed promise peace, hope, prosperity, every good thing—freedom from want and worry—but it is all false, because Unity is not built upon the founda tion of the written Word of God, the Bible, or the living Word of God, the Lord Jesus Christ, the only Saviour. Nowhere in all of its teachings is the sin question dealt with. Nowhere is man given any real hope of eternal life through the shed blood of the Son of God. At its heart Unity is cruel and corrupt and a deadly foe to the Gospel. UNITY AND THE BIBLE It is very difficult to find in Unity a definite statement about any subject. This is particularly true of its esti mate of the Scriptures. For instance, you read this in “What Unity Teaches” by one of their writers, Elizabeth Sand Turner: “Unity seeks to interpret the Bible. All its teachings are based on it. Some of its teachings are in accord with orthodoxy [these I have been unable to * American Magazine, March 1947. Used by permission. JULY, 1961
discover]; some are quite unlike it. Unity does not claim that its interpretation of Biblical statements is infallible or that it is final. It holds that as man’s spiritual con sciousness expands, he will receive ever-increasing rev elations of Truth.” Two things at least are clear from this: It will not be found to be an orthodox interpretation of the Bible; Unity does not believe that with the book of Revelation the canon of God’s Word to man was completed. Unity’s interpretation is wholly allegorical, meta physical, “ spiritual.” Their Metaphysical Bible Diction ary takes the names of persons, events and places and defines their “inner meaning.” It is absurd, making a travesty of God’s Word. If other literature were dealt with in this way, we would have no history, no biog raphy, no law, no medicine—nothing but fairy tales. Charles Fillmore wrote a book entitled Mysteries of Genesis in which he taught his kind of “ Bible interpreta tion.” The book is a grotesque parody on the first book of the Bible. His estimate of Genesis is stated on Page 13: “The whole Genesis record is an allegory explaining just what takes place in the mind of each individual in his unfold- ment from the idea to the manifest. God, the great uni versal mind, brought forth an idea, a man, perfect like Himself, and that perfect man is essentially in every individual, working himself into manifestation in com pliance with law.” He elsewhere calls Genesis, “interesting, if not ac curate,” and states that Biblical words have an “ inner” and an “ outer” meaning. He of course gives the “ inner.” For instance, in his allegorical method, “ Day” in Genesis becomes “ a state of mind in which intelligence domi nates” ; “ firmament” is “ faith.” Fillmore stated: “ Jehovah (I am) in the Hebrew is written Yahweh. Yah is the masculine and weh is the feminine. The word is made up of masculine and femi nine elements and represents the joining together of wisdom and love as a procreating nucleus” (M ysteries of Genesis, p. 32). This goes beyond allegory. It is a complete falsifica tion of the word, Yahweh, the archaic word for the name of God, from the imperfect of the verb hajah, to be or become. So literally it can be translated “He who in the absolute sense exists and who manifests his existence and his character” (Ex. 3:13,15). This translation is as close as our English can come; the gender has no connection with it. Unity distorts the Word of God, destroys its meaning, and leads its followers into such an intellectual and spir itual maze that only the power of God can ever extricate them. We read in the Psalms “ Every day they wrest my words: all their thoughts are against me for evil” (Ps. 56:5). There is a terrible denunciation of such false prophets in 2 Pet. 2:1-3: “ But there were false prophets (continued on next page) 19
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